The poor widow so mercifully relieved and blessed, marks the social and spiritual condition of the humbler classes of Israelitish women. We are now about to consider a Jewish female in a much higher station.

In the town of Shunem dwelt one, designated in the Bible as a “great woman,” meaning a woman of rank and consequence, to whose hospitable house the prophet Elisha ever turned when he passed through the town. It was not the custom of the prophets to enter the houses of the great and eat at their luxurious tables, preferring the humble meal and lowly roof as more accordant with their heavenly mission than the good things of earth. Not that they resembled the self mortifying ascetics of some Gentile creeds, and imagined that their merit in the sight of God was weighed according to the extent of their self-inflicted penances; but simply, that the mind might be kept clearer, the spirit poorer, and the body healthier, by moderation in all things. Their mission of love, too, was to all classes, and the poor could not have come to them with such confidence, as in the case of the widow, if their luxurious style of living placed them with the nobles of the land.