and purity, rejoicing in God her Saviour, content that He had regarded the lowliness of His handmaiden, and rejoicing that God has honored the characteristics regarded as feminine, which she possesses, and which she may use for the glory of God and the good of the race.  Now, as in the olden time, it is her privilege to minister unto the necessities of Jesus, by cheerfully contributing of her substance to the support of His cause, and by lavishing her love, upon those qualities of the head and heart, which in Christ appeared in perfected beauty, and are to-day the charm of life, the power of religion, and the glory of Christianity.

WOMAN’S WORK AND WOMAN’S MISSION.

Woman’s work is a work of charity.  The fact points back to woman’s origin.  God brought her as a gift to man, with characteristics and endowments which fitted her to be his helpmeet, his counsellor, and companion.  Recall Adam’s position.  He was alone in the garden.  He found no helper in the beasts.  He longed for a kindred spirit.  Endowed with a nature too communicative to be content with itself, he requires society, a resting point, a complement, for he only half lives while he lives alone.  Made to speak, to think, to love, his thought seeks another thought to reveal and quicken itself; his speech is lost sorrowfully in the air, or only awakens an echo which reverberates it, but cannot reply; his love knows not where to fix itself, and falling back on itself, threatens to become a barren egotism; in short, fill his being aspires to another self, but his other self does not exist.  At this time, when the desire for communion was stifling him, he slept, and from his side God took a rib and made woman, and brought her to him.  Behold Adam.  He sees her, and is in rapture.

  “Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
  In every gesture dignity and love.”

Milton describes Adam as saying—­

  “I now see
  Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, myself
  Before me; Woman is her name, of man
  Extracted:  for this cause he shall forego
  Father and mother, and to his wife adhere;
  And they shall be one flesh, one heart, one soul.”

The imagination paints this scene.  In fancy we behold Adam winning Eve, “for she would be wooed, and not unsought be won.”  Won she was, and Adam was brought to the sum of earthly bliss.  They dwell together in sweet accord, Adam fears for her safety when apart from him.  Evil threatens them.  Together they would be strong, he thinks, apart they would be weak, and so in fear he speaks of the enemy lurking in the garden, and seeking to find them asunder.

  “Hopeless to circumvent us joined, where each
  To other speedy aid might lend at need;
  Whether his first design be to withdraw
  Our fealty from God, or to disturb
  Conjugal love, than which, perhaps, no bliss
  Enjoyed by us excites his envy more;
  Or this or worse, leave not the faithful side
  That gave thee being, still shades thee and protects. 
  The wife, where danger or dishonor lurks,
  Safest and seemliest by her husband stays,
  Who guards her, or with her the worst endures.”