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FEMALE BIOGRAPHY OF SCRIPTURE.

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA.

No. II.

THE great Poet of our country, has given us in his portraits of Lear and the second Richard, a touching representation of the wrongs and sorrows of degraded majesty-"glory made base and sovereignty a slave." Still more touching are many of those simple narratives, which testify to the humiliations that befel another British King, whose sufferings for truth's sake have given him a name and record in the church's roll, among her noble army of martyrs.*

* We must acknowledge our inability to discover for what part of revealed truth King Charles suffered martyrdom. He was most wickedly and savagely murdered by his rebellious subjects; but we cannot recognize the features of martyrdom in his involuntary death. He erred, through a spirit of despotism, and yet more by a decided leaning to Popery, through the evil influence of his Queen, whose baneful genius made itself felt in the days of Charles II., and bore ample fruit in her favorite son James. Not the shadow of an excuse can be alleged on behalf of the regicidal traitors, who first revolted against an ordinance of God, and ended by committing the foul crime of publicly butchering their ruler. Yet we cannot concede to any church the power of canonizing assumed by our own in the very strange service appointed for the 30th of January, where the language used by God the Holy Ghost, in reference to the Lord Jesus Christ, is unequivocally applied to this king. We need only instance, among many others, the verse and response, "O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou

But pitiful as it is to contemplate the abject state of despoiled sovereigns, still, their individual degradations sink in comparison with the desolations of empires. It is when reposing amid some wilderness of ruins, once the site of a capital which gave laws to the world, that man reads the most affecting comment upon earthly greatness. Nineveh, Babylon, Rome, Jerusalem; these are names, (especially the latter) which call up images of dethroned and outcast sovereignty, more appalling in their "voiceless woe," than any portraiture of human desolateness.

We judge of degradation by the height from which greatness has fallen; and which, among "the daughters of the famous nations," was ever throned so high, or laid so low, as poor Jerusalem? Her strong bulwarks levelled; her people slain; her riches plundered: and the Roman ploughshare driven through her solitary wastes! The very rest and stillness of the tomb is denied to her. The dim obscurity, the shadowy repose, which have long since settled over the memory of other states; softening the record of those crimes for which they fell, and encircling them with the flowers of fancy, (as nature wreaths her tracery around the broken ruins of the material world) does not attach to Jerusalem. Hers is a living tomb, a frightful syncope, which forbids alike the pomp of funeral honors, and the solace of affliction's cares. "The multitude of Egypt, of Asshur, and Elam, Mesech, and Tubal, and Edom, with their kings and their princes, are gone down to the nether parts of the earth." "Asshur is there and all her

united; for in their anger they slew a man :-Even the man of thy right hand; the Son of man whom thou hadst made so strong for thine own self."-[EDITOR.]

company; and there is Elam and all her multitude round about her grave:" but the children of Jerusalem live. Without a country: without a home : scattered, peeled; tossed to the four winds of heaven : the sceptre departed, the priesthood lost: still the children of Zion live: a never-ceasing miracle: a body dead, yet alive without breath or motion, yet undecaying and unimpaired. The glory is departed from Israel. Jerusalem is trodden down of the Gentiles; and where, on Mount Moriah, the silver trumpet's sound, called daily to the glad service of the sanctuary, the Muezzim's cry alone is heard, summoning to the Moslem's worship, and bearing witness to the Moslem's rule.

Once it was not so.

There was a time, when Jeru

salem was 66 a praise in all the earth." There was a time, when "all the kings of the earth sought the presence of him who reigned there, and brought every man his present, vessels of silver, vessels of gold, and raiment." There was a time, when "from the utmost parts of the earth, the Queen of Sheba came to hear the wisdom of Solomon." How beautiful, then, girt by its encircling hills, and planted high within their rocky bosom, "a city that could not be hid;" an eyry of the human race, from whose renovated ashes a young and vigorous and immortal faith should spring ;—how “beautiful then for situation, the joy of the whole earth," shone out the city of the great King. What a sight to gladden the eyes of the royal Pilgrim, when, through receding rocks, her eyes first rested on the vision of Jerusalem! There, in crowned beauty, the queen of cities rose. There, on Mount Zion, won by the invincible valour of the warrior-king of Israel, stood

the cedar palace of that hero: and there, too, was the sepulchre where "the man of war and blood" found rest. And there, beneath the frowning summits of the citadel, flowed “Siloa's fount,” filling the air, as of old, with murmurs, which the royal poet's ear had drunk in, when, from his gardens that overhung the vale, he snatched a few brief hours from the state and "toil of kingly rule" to tune that sacred harp, whose chords still find an echo in the breast of every child of Adam; and whose mysterious utterances deepen and expand, as ages roll. Towering still above Mount Zion, rose the Holy Hill: "the place which God had chosen out of all the tribes to put His name there." Based upon Moriah's precipitous height, was that renowned shrine, "exceeding magnifical of fame and glory throughout all countries." There, upon the pedestal which nature had supplied, and art completed; its glittering dome reflected by the deep clear azure of a Syrian sky; its marble porticos, tier upon tier, whitening the still ascending slope, stood the temple of the God of Israel; "The God of earth and heaven," as His votaries declared : the God "concerning whose name,” the Queen of Sheba was come to inquire. Travellers have delighted to record the overmastering thoughts which have subdued their souls, when, from afar, they came and stood where erst the mighty dead had spoken, or where the withered urns of departed genius lay crumbling at their feet. Pilgrims too, have told, how faith was raised to fervour on the heights of Bethany, and contrition deepened on the soil of Gethsemane or Golgotha. But of a deeper source than either must have been the emotions which stirred the heart of the Queen of Sheba at sight of the towers of Jeru

salem. An inquirer in search of truth:-a human being possessed of all this world could give of pomp and honors to satisfy the cravings of its lower nature: the daughter, too, of a race by whose austerer science the earth was tilled, the mountains levelled, and the rivers turned from their course: yet, restless and unsatisfied; "crying after knowledge; lifting up the voice for understanding,” “searching for her as for hid treasure," and beholding at length, with half doubtful, half expectant gaze, the portals of that city which was to unlock to her the fountains of a new revelation; and to pour water on a spirit athirst ;—who shall pourtray the mingled hope and fear, the joy and awe, rending the breast in such an hour? The past, indeed, has ever a mysterious influence over the human mind. The spot where heroes nobly fell, may kindle in him who treads the hallowed scene, the spirit of a hero: and the heart may melt at once, where suffering virtue bled. Still, those are not the deepest emotions of the soul over which the past has power. The future; the dim mysterious future, momentous to ourselves, and hard to be unriddled; it is this which has power to stir the heart to its profoundest depths.

The scriptures assign two objects of research, in pursuance of which the Queen of Sheba left her own land to journey to Jerusalem. "She came, first to prove Solomon with hard qustions:" that is, to test his skill in that enigmatic lore, for which the oriental sages of old were so renowned, and of which both the sacred writings and the mythology of the ancients, afford some striking exemplifications.* It

* Judges xiv. 12, &c.; Prov. i. 6; Judges ix. 7, &c.; 2 Thess. xiv. 9.

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