him, is compelled to confess that he had sought in vain for a woman after his own heart: "I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her. Behold, this have I found (saith the preacher), counting one by one, to find out the account, which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found."Eccles. vii. 26-28. Let not this passage, however, be mistaken, as if it meant that it was Solomon's opinion that the number of good women is inferior to the number of good men. Observation and general testimony assure us that this is not the truth. We are to consider where he made his inquiry for female virtue, and under what circumstances it was made. He who had crowded his court with wives and concubines, could little expect to find female excellence in such a situation. Instead of concentrating his affections on one woman as his wife, the partner of his joys and sorrows, and seeking his happiness in drinking with her the sweet cup of connubial bliss, he had gathered round him in his harem, for pride and sensuality, a multitude of women, amid whose jealousies and contentions he could no more find happiness than he could virtue amid their illicit pleasures. From such a scene virtue would retire abashed and weeping. If, therefore, in this passage, he satirized the sex, he did it on unjust, unwise, and unmanly grounds. "But," says Dr. Wardlaw, "I am far from thinking that he here speaks the language of a disappointed and waspish satirist. He rather utters the feelings of an abased and self-dissatisfied penitent, of one who had felt it to be an evil and a bitter thing,' to depart as he had done from God, who remembered 'the wormwood and the gall;' who perceived and lamented the folly and the wickedness of all those 'inventions,' by which himself and others had sought to find out happiness apart from the favor and the ways of God." If we speak of woman as a MOTHER, how often does that endearing relationship come upon us in holy Scripture: both literally and metaphorically, both in the Old Testament and in the New, both in the way of example and of precept. The maternal relationship is the theme of constant reference, both for the sake of illustrating other subjects, and for enforcing its own claims as those of the female head of the household. Had this character been omitted, or only introduced occasionally, and then invested with no more than a second-rate importance, the Bible would have been wanting in one of its sweetest harmonies with the feelings of nature, one of its strongest appeals to the sympathies of humanity and we should have doubted if it had come from Him who created woman and gave her as a helpmeet for man. The paternal character and relation are maintained in their primary rank, and authority, and dignity; no invasion is made upon the prerogative, or usurpation of the rights of the father -he is not called to yield his place of rule, his supremacy of condition, to the mother; and yet how is all her proper rank, and station, and influence maintained. There she is exhibited as being in the family circle, if not the circumference which includes all, yet in one sense as the center, in which husband, children, and servants, all meet. How resonant are the Scriptures with that sweet and tender vocablehow redolent with the fragrance of that odoriferous word-how rich with the ornament of that beautiful term-A MOTHER. There is sustained the poet's declaration "A mother is a mother still: If the mother's importance be not known-the mother's claims not conceded-her influence not felt her duties not rightly discharged—it is not the fault of the Bible, which is the friend of society by exalting the relationship of a mother. Nor is the MISTRESS Overlooked or forgotten, nor her duties left out of consideration. The WIDOW-that name for desolation-that sorrowful epithet-that type of woe, meets us at every turn. She passes before us in her weeds and in her tears, leading in her hand her fatherless children, and saying to us, "Pity me, pity me, O my friends, for the hand of God hath touched me!" More is said about, and for, and to, this bereaved one, than to any other class of women: a circumstance which exhibits with uncommon force and beauty the compassion of God. But there is a discrimination on this subject which shows the wisdom as well as tenderness of God. Young and vivacious widows are admonished, while aged and helpless ones are comforted. -1 Tim. v. Nor is the FEMALE SERVANT left out. A place for her is found among the various other and higher ranks and conditions of her sex. Her humble lot is recognized amid the provisions and commands of the law, and was announced and defended by the thunders of Mount Sinai. We find it protected by precept and illustrated by example, as if woman in her lowest grade of society should not be overlooked in the Bible-that blessed and glorious charter of rights and privileges. There the little maid lifts up her head among the queens and the peeresses of Scripture history. THIRDLY. But the most impressive and important point of view in which this subject can be placed, and the most convincing proof of the bearing of Scripture on woman's sex, is the very great number and variety of female EXAMPLES in the Word of God. It is one of the surpassing excellences of the Bible, that it is replete with narrative, history, and biography. And thus, apart from its sacred character and its momentous importance, it is one of the most entertaining books in the world. It is full, not only of precept, but of living, acting patterns of the virtues it inculcates and of the vices which it prohibits. It is a complete picture gallery, in surveying which we see portraits of every size, from the miniature to the full-length painting, and in every degree of representation, from the mere outline to the most finished production of the artist's pencil. Among these it would have been strange if female characters had been wanting. They are not wanting. There, amid kings, priests, warriors, and prophets, are to be seen, profusely intermingled, the portraits of "the holy women of the old time, who trusted in God," as well as of those who had disgraced themselves and dishonored their sex. In the great drama of life, as it passes before us in the Bible, no mean or inconsiderable part is assigned to female character. Her place among the dramatis persone is not that of some airy vision which lights upon our path, and which, after surprising and dazzling us for a moment, straightway vanishes and is seen no more, but of one of the veritable actors in almost every place and every scene. The sacred volume opens, as we have already seen, with Eve in Paradise, all beauty, innocence, and smiles, as its lovely frontispiece; and then shows us that same Eve, impelled by the vanity which she has bequeathed as a mournful legacy to her daughters, reaching forth her hand at the insti gation of the tempter, to pluck that fruit which was the test of her obedience, and the hinge of our destiny, and thus exhibiting to us the sad association of beauty with sin. In tracing woman's history from Paradise as the starting-point, as it is set forth on the page of Scripture, we will look first at |