nor does she thoughtlessly mingle with it. She considers what ties bind her to the common humanity. No righteous cause lacks her sympathy. No want cries to her in vain. The remotest claim is answered by her charities. "She stretcheth out her hands to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hand to the needy." Nor does she confer material benefits merely. She is the almoner of intellectual and moral blessings. She ponders that spiritual destitution which eclipses all external poverty. She disperses that ignorance which is the soul of superstition, and feebleness, and vice. Armed with a brave virtue, she visits the lonely moral leper, and finds out the lot of the doomed transgressor. She distributes to the despairing the medicine of holy encouragement, and pours healing mercy upon the head of the cast-away. "She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness." But in this out-door solicitude, she does not desert the more intimate claims of home. Her philanthropy is not a license

for domestic indolence or neglect. Her charity is not exotic, but indigenous, growing first by the threshold and the hearth. Because rooted in the heart, and illustrated in the love of the wife, mother, sister, daughter, it diffuses such a fragrance, and drops far and wide such fruitful benedictions. Only she who has been true to the duties nearest to her, can effectually reach the more remote. "She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her." In short, we have in the text a beautiful account of a true woman- - of one who touches faithfully all the springs that encompass of one who illustrates the extent and power of Female Influence.

Having urged upon you certain obligations of culture, accomplishments, duty, I would now proceed to resume, or apply, the general principles laid down in the first discourse in reference to a subject which presents you with a powerful motive to heed those obligations.

That subject, I have just shown, is suggested by the text; it is the subject of Female Influence. I have said that in the first discourse I presented the general principles upon which this influence is based. Of course, therefore, in the present remarks, I can only reiterate the essential truths which I then set before you. I can merely dwell upon them, and illustrate them by some peculiar considerations.

Of all the motives that can act upon us to bind us to duty, and make us faithful in the discharge of it, I know of none more stringent than the fact of our influence. If we wander so far in neglect or disobedience as to become reckless of our personal welfare, if we do not value health or length of days, if we grow careless of prosperity and shameless as to character, if we lose even the appreciation of virtue, still there is left to check us and to draw us back this great consideration - that our evil is not all self-absorbed, that our lives are not isolated. Let the father who is drowned in vice, and careless of all other ties,

consider that his little child, who looks up so wonderingly into his face, is receiving from him a baptism that shall consecrate its young soul to sin; that not from the precepts of sober hours does that child imbibe an influence, but that those more impressive eccentricities communicate a fruitful inheritance of shame and woe; and that, by and by, shall he, or others, behold as in a mirror the ghastly lineaments of his own life reflected and propagated; and if there yet burns in him one spark of better feeling, if his deadened soul can still catch one whisper of monition, he will repent.

Yes, it is thrilling to consider the extent of our influence for good or evil; how surely it reaches to all around us, and subtilely intermingles where we least suspect it; how it will live and operate long after we are dead; how it may mould the destinies of those now dearest to our hearts when those hearts shall cease to beat; how it will appear in future generations. In this point of view, we see that we live not merely for self and for the present.

Our acts have a deeper significance than may be perceptible in the momentary effect. They may touch some chord of another's soul that will not come in play for years, but which in future life will respond to that touch in music or in wailing. Great results are not always caused by prominent acts. The crisis that affects the destiny of thousands may not be decided in battle, may not come in pomp and pageantry. It may be far back and obscure. A simple thought, which made scarce a ripple in its first utterance, is the nucleus of mighty revolutions. The printed book, whose author has long mouldered into dust, still flies abroad, accumulating witnesses to its truth or falsehood. Nor can we escape from this responsibility by rating ourselves as nothing. By the very necessity of things, we communicate an influence. We live in an order of circumstances where not an atom is insignificant. A pebble shakes the huge fabric of the universe. A leaf shudders in sympathy with the remotest constellations. If we act, we touch the spring