human melioration, summoning her nature to noble deeds of charity and self-sacrifice. She is to be a co-worker with man in hastening that new and better age, that kingdom of God upon earth, for which we all pray. She is to second his reason with her love, his appeals for goodness and truth with her deeds of benevolence and peace. While he goes out into the great marts of traffic, into the haunts of wickedness, amid ghastly spectacles of vice and scenes of selfish conflict-while he goes there with a good will and a strong purpose to plead for God and humanity - let her triumphs- none the less great, none the less beautiful-be seen as she ministers at the bed of sickness, or fills the outstretched hand of want, or visits the desponding, the forsaken, and the guilty. Especially may she accomplish a good work with the sinful and the needy of her own sex. She can go where man cannot, and exert a power he does not possess. She may revive the life of virtue in many a blighted spirit, so that it shall depart

in peace, if not in innocence. Her words of mercy may open tears of penitence that have long been dry in the stony heart, and covered by the shameless and callous front of guilt. And in abodes of poverty, in homes of the virtuous but neglected, where man is too proud or too harsh to go, she may enter with her sympathy and her care, and the dim vision of age, and the eyes of the dying, will look upon her with a benediction.

Or if the restrictions of poverty, or the calls of domestic affliction, forbid these ministrations, then will it be hers still more to illustrate the true dignity and power of woman, in watching and waiting, in patient endurance and unwearied effort, in filling that narrower orbit with the fulness of love, and illuminating that dark fortune with the steady radiance of constancy and faith. And whenever she thus acts, at home or abroad, let her feel assured that man does no work which excels the grandeur of hers. The warrior watching on the tented field with the destinies of a nation com

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mitted to his trust, or striking in the conflict for liberty and right, may act in a wider sphere; but his work is not greater than hers as she keeps her vigil by the bedside of suffering, or toils in the rigorous and uncheered routine of domestic duty. The poet may make music that shall charm the ages, and elevate the race, and from the height of his lofty inspiration win immortal renown; but his melody is not equal to that which a Dix, or a Fry, or a Sarah Martin, wakes in the guilty heart when she has "touched it to finer issues," and taught the alienated spirit the worth of human sympathy, and subdued the stern nature to Christian meekness, until the prisoner's hymns of penitence and praise go up at midnight, and the rugged walls of his dungeon are tapestried with dreams of heaven. The statesman may regenerate nations by his polity, the orator may shake senates with his eloquence, the philosopher win new worlds by discovery; but greater is she who stands by the earliest springs of thought, and shapes their

tendency, and drops into them the balm of her affection, the purity of her virtue; greater she to whom is committed the plastic mind that shall control nations, and sway hearts, and course the stars. The deepest life of nature is silent and obscure; so, often, the elements that move and mould society are the results of the sister's counsel and the mother's prayer.

Let me call your attention, in closing, to the circumstances described in the text. It displays at a glance, without any effort, and only as a by-scene of the tremendous drama, the most exalted traits of the female character

traits which will always constitute her true power and glory; traits which brighten and increase all that is glad and prosperous in life, but which develop themselves with peculiar force in times of trial; traits which demonstrate what I have now urged, that the dominion of woman is the affections, that it is her office to reveal the secret power there is in love. The brightest lineaments of her character appear as the shadows of life grow darker.

In hours of sickness, in homes of pain, in weary vigils, she rises with a sublime fortitude. The spirit that shrinks with sensitiveness in calmer moments, gives out rich music in the storm. When impending danger, pitiless calumny, or cruel persecution assails the object of her affection, she gathers her virtue around her for a shield, and with a power that makes the weak things of the earth stronger than the mighty, and lends to the timid a bravery which defies all peril, she goes forth to share his fortune to the last, exhibiting a constancy that is more eloquent than words, and a love that cannot die.

The evangelist's description of the crucifixion, then, is touchingly true. Imposture would have overlooked such simple details, in its anxiety to produce a stronger effect. But here we have the immediate impression of nature, the sudden stamp of reality, in a picture so full of awful and thrilling incidents, that we might, without careful study, fail to discover those minute and beautiful traits which the