If there are those here to-day who have been favored of fortune, or, as I might better put it, favored of God, surrender all you have and all you expect to be to the Lord who blessed this Queen of Sheba.  Certainly you are not ashamed to be found in this queen’s company.  I am glad that Christ has had His imperial friends in all ages—­Elizabeth Christina, Queen of Prussia; Maria Feodorovna, Queen of Russia; Marie, Empress of France; Helena, the imperial mother of Constantine; Arcadia, from her great fortunes building public baths in Constantinople and toiling for the alleviation of the masses; Queen Clotilda, leading her husband and three thousand of his armed warriors to Christian baptism; Elizabeth of Burgundy, giving her jeweled glove to a beggar, and scattering great fortunes among the distressed; Prince Albert, singing “Rock of Ages” in Windsor Castle, and Queen Victoria, incognita, reading the Scriptures to a dying pauper.

I bless God that the day is coming when royalty will bring all its thrones, and music all its harmonies, and painting all its pictures, and sculpture all its statuary, and architecture all its pillars, and conquest all its scepters; and the queens of the earth, in long line of advance, frankincense filling the air and the camels laden with gold, shall approach Jerusalem, and the gates shall be hoisted, and the great burden of splendor shall be lifted into the palace of this greater than Solomon.

Again, my subject teaches me what is earnestness in the search of truth.  Do you know where Sheba was?  It was in Abyssinia, or some say in the southern part of Arabia Felix.  In either case it was a great way off from Jerusalem.  To get from there to Jerusalem she had to cross a country infested with bandits, and go across blistering deserts.  Why did not the Queen of Sheba stay at home and send a committee to inquire about this new religion, and have the delegates report in regard to that religion and wealth of King Solomon?  She wanted to see for herself, and hear for herself.  She could not do this by work of committee.  She felt she had a soul worth ten thousand kingdoms like Sheba, and she wanted a robe richer than any woven by Oriental shuttles, and she wanted a crown set with the jewels of eternity.  Bring out the camels.  Put on the spices.  Gather up the jewels of the throne and put them on the caravan.  Start now; no time to be lost.  Goad on the camels.  When I see that caravan, dust-covered, weary, and exhausted, trudging on across the desert and among the bandits until it reaches Jerusalem, I say:  “There is an earnest seeker after the truth.”