tages must bring eminent guilt, if they are not improved.

Has Providence thrown a barrier very high and strong around female virtue, thus protecting her in an eminent degree from those vices which repel religion? Has he in a great measure delivered her from exposure to the absorbing passion of gain, the god of this world, which blinds the minds of many that believe not? Has he saved her from the perils attending the race of public ambition, office, power, and dominion? Has he given to her a tender frame, endowed her with keen and lively sensibility, and laid those sufferings and trials upon her which are eminently adapted to make her feel the need of Christ? Has he placed her in those circumstances of subjection, from her youth up, which render subjection to his authority comparatively natural and easy? To persist in impiety against all these, to overleap all these barriers against perdition and still go the downward way to ruin, must involve peculiar guilt and aggravated condemnation.

It is further to be remarked, that as Christianity has done so much for woman, she ought in return to do much for Christianity. Every thing that can render her life desirable she owes to Christ. Think for one moment, reader, of the hole of the pit from which Christ has taken you. Think of what would be your present condition, had it not been for the Christian religion. You might have been with the debased and wretched victims of pagan oppression,

cruelty, and lust; burning alive upon the funeral pile, or sacrificed by hands of violence and pollution. or cast out and neglected to pine in solitary and hopeless grief. Or, with the female followers of the false prophet, or in more refined but unchristian nations, you might have been little else than the slave or the convenience of man, and left to doubt whether any inheritance awaits you beyond the grave. From these depths of debasement and wretchedness Christianity has taken you and placed you on high, to move, and shine, and rejoice, in the sphere for which the Creator designed you. Not only has it made your condition as good as that of man, but in a moral view in some respects superior to it. How much then do you owe to Christ! To turn away from him with indifference or neglect, what ingratitude is this! How preposterous, how base, how unlovely, is female impiety. There was much sense in a remark made by an intelligent gentleman, who, although not pious himself, said, "I cannot look with any complacency upon a woman who does not manifest gratitude and love to Jesus Christ. Above all things, I hate to see so unnatural an object as an irreligious woman.

Such being the constitution and circumstances of -woman, it is the manifest intention of God that she should be pre-eminent in moral excellence, and, through the influence of this, take a glorious lead in the renovation of the world. This she has to some extent ever done. Let all females of Christian

lands consider well their high calling, their solemn responsibility, and their glorious privilege. While many of their sex have proved recreant to their trust, and wasted life in vanity and in vice, others, an illustrious constellation, the holy and the good of ancient time, the mothers and the sisters in Israel, "the chief women not a few" of apostolic times, the bright throng that have since continued to come out from the world and tread in the steps of Jesus, and lead on their fellow-beings to the kingdom of purity and joy, have proved to us that as woman was first to fall so she is first to rise.

Yes, though it is not hers to amass wealth; to aspire to secular office and power; to shine in camps and armies; to hurl the thunders of our navies, and gather laurels from the ocean; or to receive the vain incense offered to public and popular eloquence; yet hers it is, to be robed with the beauty of Christ; to shine in the honors of goodness; to shed over the world the sweet and holy influences of peace, virtue and religion; to be adorned with those essential and imperishable beauties, those unearthly stars and diadems, whose lustre will survive, with ever increasing brightness, when all earthly glory will fade and be forgotten. Come then, reader; come to your high duty, your glorious privilege; come and be blessed forever!

CHAPTER III.

THE CHRISTIAN EDUCATION OF

WOMAN.

'That our daughters may be as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a palace."

THE elevated and shining character of the female sex as here contemplated is recognised among the blessings of a prosperous state of religion. It is at once a means and a result of the most perfect and happy condition of society. Utility and ornament in the female character are here united. Our daughters are to be, not as in pagan and savage nations, the abject subjects of menial toil, drudgery, and sersuality; nor yet, as in luxurious and corrupt civilized communities, creatures of idleness, vanity, and pleasure; they are to sustain at once the relation of substantial utility and of the most beautiful ornament. They are to be corner-stones, and cornerstones polished, and polished after the similitude of a palace. The figure is highly expressive. Considering the kingdom of God, as manifested in a truly religious and elevated state of society, under the similitude of a palace, and Christ as the chief corner-stone, the daughters are to hold their place

among the lively corner-stones built upon him. They have a place with those on whom the support and strength of the building depend. But they are also to be polished, or, as it may be rendered, hewed, wrought, and finished with great care and beauty, as becomes the corner-stones of a palace.

That our daughters may sustain as important a part as our sons in perfecting human society and promoting or blessing the kingdom of God, the examples in the Scriptures fully prove. That they may embalm themselves in the happy recollections of thousands after them, send the sweet odor of their name and the excellence of their influence down through all succeeding ages, you have only to contemplate in proof the example of Sarah, who through her faith and piety became a source of unspeakable blessings to unborn nations; of Rebecca, the wife of Isaac; of Rachel, the daughter of Laban, wife of Jacob and mother of Joseph; of Hannah, the mother and spiritual guardian of Samuel; of Esther, the royal princess and the savior of her nation; of Ruth, whose steadfast piety secured, through her descendant David, the richest blessings to the world; of Elizabeth, "righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless," the honored mother and guardian angel of the great forerunner; of Mary, the "highly favored among women," whose soul did "magnify the Lord," and whose spirit did rejoice in God her Savior; of Lois and of Eunice, whose "unfeigned