she remembered in that hour what was said by Simeon: "A sword shall pierce through thine own heart also." Grieving for the death of her son; unconscious of the fact that in this manner he would redeem Israel, broken in her mother's heart, crushed in her patriotic hopes, she was consoled in her deep affliction by his remembrance of her in his last agonies, when he commended her to the protection of John. Blessed indeed was she among women! But her blessedness was of a nature, in which every one may participate. When it was said by a woman who witnessed the miracles of Jesus, and listened to His teaching, that the mother of Jesus was blessed, He said, "Yea, rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it." Mary dwelt upon the lips of her son—and so must we upon the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth. Then shall we be blessed, if we hear the Word of God and keep it. Referring to the sacred record for the light in which we are to regard the influence of woman, we find the faith of Sarah as well as that of Abraham accounted righteousness; and her faults as well as her virtues left us for our warning. In the Bible are no accounts given of perfect men and women. The plain and simple narrative portrays all sides of the human character. Sarah's jealousy of the Egyptian handmaid and her child, comes down to us, in Christian times, as the illustration of the evils of divided interests in a household. In the history and characteristics of Hagar we have many instructive passages. One sentence in the history of Rebekah teaches us in a brief but impressive, though incidental manner, the sacred character of woman's mission-the part which Heaven has assigned her as an help-meet. Isaac, we are told, upon her arrival was "comforted for the death of his mother." Now the young bride had not the experience of the aged parent She had not, we may presume, the wisdom of the wife of Abraham. But she was a woman sought in - wooed prayer and won in the fear of God. The history of her betrothal and marriage is one of the most delightful instances which the sacred records furnish, of trust in God's direction. Isaac put er at once in the place of honour, as his counsellor and his riend. Thus has Providence ordered it that as man's early female friend passes away, her place shall be supplied by another. Rebekah erred. So do all. bitterly punished; and the fact that she had power over Isaac to procure the commission of wrong, is presumptive evidence that she participated also in the deeds of his life which were right. But her errors were As we follow the narrative of patriarchal times, we find the history of woman still brought forward. Imagination could not conceive so natural a pastoral scene as the meeting of Jacob and Rachel:- the active assistance which he rendered to her, the ready hospitality which was extended to him by his kindred-the character of their meeting, so simply and beautifully given in a sentence-“Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice and wept." Thus the exile from his father's house at once paid a tribute to the tender memories of the past, and spoke his deep feeling of the kindness of the new friends he had fallen upon. Then followed the fourteen years of service, which seemed. to Jacob but a little while, for the love he bare Rachel.- Passing onward to the deliverance of Israel from captivity, note how important is woman's part in the measures with which God paved the way for the Exodus. Woman's nature, ever responsive in mercy to the pleadings of the weak and friendless, took compassion on Moses in his frail cradle:- for "behold the babe wept :" - Miriam was ready with an innocent artifice to provide for her brother the nurture of his first best friend. All these, and other places where woman is introduced, are essential and integral parts of the sacred history. Woman does not appear in the narrative as the mere adjunct and domestic satellite of man. Nor is her history an episode in his or her life a sort of parenthesis which may be left out of the record without injuring the relation. She acts with him and upon him—his active partner and joint actor - ever preserving the fact that God created Adam male and female; "male and female," says the inspired historian, "created he them, and he called their name Adam." Deborah arose in the time of the Judges for the deliverance of her people; Deborah, who chose her own title-A Mother in Israel-and with others of her sex showed that the giants in those days were not men only. And while Ruth, guided by the love of Israel's God, came into the land from Moab that she might be the progenitor of David the king; the maternal piety of Hannah was consecrating the child Samuel. The youth thus vowed by his mother to the Lord anointed the son of Jesse-Jesse from whom sprung the righteous branch, the Desire of the Nations. Time would fail us to dilate upon all, or even to enumerate them:- the Shunamite whose liberal piety sustained the prophet - the Widow whose cruse, blessed of God, is the type of the inexhaustible nature of his benefits - Esther whose patriotism defeated the malice of Haman: All these. and all women, good and bad, mentioned in Scripture, appear not as accidents, but as an essential part of the history. And in the New Testament, beside her of whom we have already spoken, Mary the Mother of Jesus, we read of Elisabeta and of Anna- of the pious family at Bethlehem, the sisters whom with their brother Jesus loved- of the Woman of Samaria, who bore witness to His Divine character of the penitents saved by His loving kindness-of the women who followed Him to the Cross-of Dorcas and Lydia, who laboured in Christian charity for the necessities of the poor of the devout women, not a few, whose faith is honourably recorded. In the kingdom of Christ woman has a most important place to fill-no less than that for which God made her at the first. In the history of His people we are shown her importance-in the history of His church she is man's co-labourer in the Christian family she holds up the hands of the man, as the hands of the leader of Israel were held up by Aaron and Hur. More constant than man in her devotion to God and in her attachment to religion—she has chosen the good part. Honoured of our Lord in his instructions, for he frequently introduces her in his parables, let her virtues be honoured of men; and let not her Mission be held in disrespect to whom Jesus first declared himself as the Messiah. Let not her constancy be passed without imitation, since Woman was last at the Cross-Woman was first at the Sepulchre. Death is awful. Its thought comes as a chilling cloud interposed between us and the sun of health and prosperity. It checks the half-spoken jest on the lips of the speaker; and on the face of the listener the smile fades away, and the cheek blanches, as though the living flesh were turning into stone, and the heart's pulsations were about to stop in sympathy with him who, we are told, has ceased to breathe. If the thought or the tidings of death be thus painful—if we quail for an instant, in spite of ourselves, when we hear that our fellow mortal has paid the debt from which none are released — how much more awful is it in person to witness the sundering of soul and body! The scene and all its associations are woe and weakness. Perhaps a mother leans in sorrow which refuses to be comforted over the couch of a dying child; and in the hour when with the intensity of a woman's woe she yields him up, weeps almost with unthankful grief, that the beginning and the end of his life are thus to her, almost the surrender of her own. Perhaps a group of children are distracted in the thought that they are, by Heaven's inevitable decree, to lose her who in her blind love would never have consented to leave them or to forsake them. Or, those who have been declared in God's holy ordinance to be no more twain but one flesh, are compelled to yield to the putting asunder by Him who joined them together. Or, what is perhaps more deeply painful than all, it may be that the prayer "Let me die among my kindred," is not granted to the departing soul. The dying chamber has a darker gloom in the thought that there are absent hearts which are yet to be wrung with the sad intelligence: that there are kindred looking forward to a happy meeting — dear kindred it may be who have yet to learn that in this world they can meet no more: who when they return to greet with the smile of affection the dear friend or relative, will be led to the place where the grassy mound will silently—but oh how potently - speak to their fainting hearts the last intelligence of the departed! -- If to hear of these things and to think of them be full of awe - if to witness the living anguish of friends and the dying throes of the sufferer be dreadful—what words can paint the state of the soul whose departure is the centre of so fearful an interest! No man has come back from the grave to tell us of |