XI.

RIZPAH AND THE SEVEN Sons oF SauL: A STORY OFA
MortrHErR’s DEATHLESS LOVE.

“ Love is strong as death.”—Eccles. viiz., 6.

A mother is a mother still
The holiest thing alive.
—S. T. Coleridge.

“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother—blessings on her mem-
ory.”—A braham Lincoln.

“ Hundreds of stars in the beautiful sky;
Hundreds of shells on the shore together;
Hundreds of birds that go singing by,
Hundreds of bees in the sunny weather.

“ Hundreds of dewdrops to greet the dawn,
Hundreds of lambs in the purple clover;
Hundreds of butterflies on the lawn,
But only ONE mother the wide world over.”

Rizpah is not a common name. It is one of the least
familiar of all the names of Scripture. And yet, considering
what Rizpah did and suffered—her long, sad vigil on the
lonely mountain height—it is wonderful that it has not taken
its place amongst the most familiar, as well as the most
famous, of all the names that women bear.

Many names have become illustrious whose deeds and
daring are not for one moment to be compared with the
patient heroism of this mother of ancient Israel. Her weary
watching all summer long beneath the crosses of the slaugh-
tered sons of Saul, stands without rival as an example of a
mother’s deathless love.

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