relations which have since constituted the peculiar charm and glory of Christian woman; in the character of mother and wife and sister and maiden, performing their holy ministries of love in that awful scene. The brief reference of the Evangelist to them is deeply significant. "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene." Where should a mother and wife and sister be, if not at such a scene? And from that day to this, when has Christian woman ever failed to be at the

cross of suffering virtue!

Here at the cross we behold the grand inauguration of woman's true mission and vocation amongst men. Here was she called and consecrated of God, as by a new baptism, to that companionship with suffering, and to those offices of kindness and condescension, which were to make her the ministering angel of a dying world from that day onward to the end of time.

Here in the deep, unutterable sympathy of these bleeding but still steadfast, loving hearts, at the cross, we discern the prophetic type of that wonderful combination of character-courage, compassion, fortitude and self-sacrificing devotion-which woman has ever since been winning for herself on a thousand fields, from the days of Anastasia, Monica, and Helena, of the ancient church, down to Elizabeth Fry, Dorothea Dix, Lady Colquhoun and Florence Nightingale of our own times.

And truly, if we needed any demonstration that the Christianity of this nineteenth century is a vital power in the earth, we have it in the fact that woman is still true to that great commission which was given her at the cross: that in the name of Jesus, she is willing to sacrifice all, to suffer all, to toil and die for the perishing. We have the proof in such a life as that of Ann Hasseltine Judson. We have the triumphant vindication

in such a character as that of Florence Nightingale. And the homage which the world-even the infidel world-is paying to such virtue, is but an unconscious tribute paid to the truth of Christianity. For what but that mighty influence of redeeming love which first attracted the women of Galilee to the cross of their suffering Saviour, could have called these young women away from their homes of elegant ease and affluence the one to go and die upon an inhospitable heathen coast after years of privation and peril, the other to brave all the risks of war and pestilence in a foreign land, and to watch day and night at the couch of sickness and death. What book but the Bible, and what influence but that which went forth from Calvary, ever förmed a character like this? If goodness be a test of truth, who will dare to say, in the face of such examples, that Christianity is not the very truth of God?

You need not fear to place the Bible in the hands of your daughters, just as it is, and in all its parts. For though it treats, with unsparing fidelity, of all subjects, and all shades of character, the vicious and the vile, as well as the virtuous and the good, yet, unlike any other book of genius, it leaves on all a hallowed influence. No one was ever corrupted by the plainspoken simplicity of the Bible.

Like the light of heaven, it is never contaminated by contact with impurity. It is as pure when shining on the stagnant marsh, as when playing around the tops of the snow-clad mountains. Beautifully and truly has it been said, that, “the finger of inspiration, like the finger of the sunbeam, touches corruption, and still remains pure." For, when the Bible speaks on themes too delicate for common speech, we are made to feel as though we were listening to the voice of God.

For beauty and sublimity, for taste and genius, for truth aud

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purity, there is no book of education for our sons and daughters in the world, that can take the place of the Bible. It is the book which every pious woman seeks to put into the hands of her child, as the earliest and best pledge of a mother's love, and which, ere long, when she comes to make her last legacy, she wishes to leave as a holy relic, sacred to a dying mother's memory. Whatever has been the success of the Bible on other fields, there is one field where its triumph has been complete, so far as it has gone. It has gained the female heart. It has won the victory of woman's love. It has linked her destiny with its own in the everlasting bonds of mutual affection and mutual interest. And the hold, which the Bible has today throughout Christendom upon the heart of woman is as strong and indissoluble as that which woman herself upon the heart of man. So, that if the infidel spee were true, that the Bible is fit only for women and children, it would be none the less true, that it has thereby controlled the destiny of the world. For as all men, infidels included, were once children born of women, how could God make a book more fit for man than by making it fit for women and children.

But we must close; and we know not how to close such a theme more appropriately than in the strong hypothetical language of another : "If Christianity should ever be compelled to flee from the mansions of the great and the noble, from the academies of philosophy and the halls of legislation, from the thrones of power and the throngs of busy men, we should find her last retreat around the hearth-stones of Christian homes, her last sanctuary in the hearts of the women and children of our firesides; her last altar on earth would be the female heart; her last audience, the children gathered around a mother's knees, her last sacrifice, the secret prayer escaping in silence from ber lips, and heard perhaps, only at the throne of God."

CHAPTER VI.

REPRESENTATIVE YOUNG MEN OF THE BIBLE.

Range and Limits of the Theme-The First of Young Men-The First Two BrothersCharacter of Joseph-The Youth of Moses-Sketch of David and Jonathan-Sketch of Samuel and Saul-Saul and Samuel at Endor-Character of Absalom-The Young Man as Sovereign-The Young Men of the Captivity-Young Men of the New Testament.

I.-RANGE AND LIMITS OF THE THEME.

IN speaking of the Young Men of the Bible as one of its attractions, and introducing them to you as the subject of a separate chapter, we would not, by any means, wish to incur the charge of taking undue liberty with sacred and venerable` names; or, of attempting to modernize antiquity beyond what is just and reasonable. Some degree of familiarity of this kind may do us good, just as it does to be brought into immediate contact or communication with the distant parts of the earth. We must modernize antiquity, somewhat, in order to appreciate it; even as we translate foreign tongues into our own idiom before we can feel their full import. The time is probably not distant, when the whistle of the steam-car shall be heard over the hallowed hills of Judea, and the electric telegraph will, no doubt, soon stretch its wires along the base of Ararat and across the plains of Shinar. And so, the more we can be made to feel that our antipodes on the other side of the globe are our

fellow-citizens, and the more we can be made to realize that the antediluvians on the other side of the flood were our brothers, men of like passions with ourselves, the better shall we understand them, and the better will it be for the world.

The young men of the Bible! How rich, how comprehensive, how suggestive the theme! How full of hope to the aged, how full of enthusiasm to the young, how fraught with interest to all! The majority of men in our day claim to be young men ; at any rate, feel themselves to be young; and this, for all the purposes of energetic life, is, in fact, equivalent to being young. To picture to ourselves the men of antiquity as young men, is, therefore the most effective mode of bringing them home to our own experience; because it is as young men that we have most in common with them.

It is as if the old world and the

new stood face to face, and thus shook hands with each other on friendly and familiar terms.

The patriarchs of the Bible, who stand in solemn grandeur, like sentinels along the lines of history, or, like mighty monarchs with the crown of centuries upon their heads, were all young men once; as truly young and hopeful as any of us. And if we wish them to come down from their hereditary heights to converse with us awhile, we must conceive of them as young men, like ourselves. Let us endeavor to get the impression fully into our minds that the first men in the world were young men ; that, before there were any patriarchs or venerable names in history, young men stood forth upon the stage of life as the fresh materials out of which all the patriarchs and ancients of history had to be fashioned. The child, it has been said, is father to the man; in the same sense, the young men of the earliest ages have become the founders and forefathers of the world. To them belongs, unsought, the high