WOMAN'S LOVE.

The very first

Of human life must spring from woman's breast,
Your first small words be taught you from her lips,
Your first tears quench'd by her, and your last sighs
Too often breathed out in a woman's hearing,
When men have shrunk from the ignoble care
Of watching the last hours of him who led them.

He must be singularly unfortunate in his society who does not know living instances of women whose love bears an analogy at least, to that of which we have been speaking. His sphere is, Indeed, confined, to say no worse of it, if he knows no woman who could, were it her duty, die with a husband for a child--no wife who has found the devoted, specious lover change into the unworthy, brutal husband, and yet has endured her lot with unrepining patience, and met the world with smiles of seeming cheerfulness, and

Learn'd the art

To bleed in secret, yet conceal the smart

and, higher and harder task, denied herself the privilege of friendship, and never told her grief; no intellectual and accomplished mother, who has surrendered early affluence, and accustomed comforts, the plestures of society, the indulgence of refined taste, and become a menial as well as mother to her children, and entered into all the harrassing details of minute daily economy, not with mere dogged submission, but with active, cheerful interest! Does he not know some daughter who has secluded herself from youthful companions and youthful pleasures, that she may employ her health and spirits, her days and nights, in soothing a parent to whom the grasshopper is become a burden," and existence a pain, but who can, nevertheless, depart quietly to his long home, because his last steps thither are supported by a beloved and affectionate child? Does he not know some sister, whose mild influence has controlled the follies, and whose tenderness, though at the risk of personal blame, has shielded the faults of a brother? Or has he never seen an instance of female friendship? His lip may combat the idea, but there is such a thing as female friendship: not often, I grant, between young ladies, but between the young and old; the matron who has safely trodden the ways of life, and the young blooming girl, who has just entered upon them. It is a beautiful, aye, and it is a frequent sight to behold the calm grav. ity of age tempering the enthusiasm of youth; and the bright influence of youth shedding, as it were, a sunset radiance over the sombre sky of age. But to come rather closer to the feelings of our sceptic-to touch upon his personal experience-if he ever lay upon a bed of sickness, what eyes became dim with weeping-what cheeks pale with watching over him? What hand administered the medicine and smoothed the pillow? What form glided round the bed with the quiet care of a mortal, and yet ministering spirit? Whose tear soothed his dejection? Whose smile

calmed his temper? Whose patience bore his many infirmities? Unless he live in a desert island, he will reply-Woman's! Woman's!

But to know, to the full extent of such knowledge, how noble, how sacred a thing is woman's love, it must be contemplated when straightened by the bonds of duty, when called forth by the ties of nature. Some think it needless to lay such strong and repeated stress upon this condition but for my own part, I do not believe that in the hearts of true women--(and such alone are worthy of mention)-love, the passion of love, has before marriage by any means the power generally supposed. I verily think that many a most exemplary wife has been, as the mistress, "Uncertain, coy, and hard to please."

No true woman will either do or suffer for the fondest and most faithfu lover, a thousandth part of what she will do and suffer for a husband who is only moderately kind. No-love must, with a woman, become a duty, a habit, a part of existence, a condition of life, before we know how completely it unites and exemplifies the natures of the lion and the dove, the courage which no danger can dismay, with the constancy no suffering can diminish.

It has been much the fashion, of late, to write and talk about woman's mind, and to make comparative estimates of the power of female and masculine intellect. Some with pleasant malice, have made the scale preponderate on the gentleman's side; others, with pleasant gallantry, have made it preponderate on that of the lady. Women of genius never argue for the recognized equality of female intellect; and men of genius never argue for its recognized inferiority; but, as in political subjects, those dispute loudest who have the least at stake. "Master and mistress minds" move in their separate spheres, like the rulers of distinct and distant kingdoms, seldom wishing, and scarcely ever tempted, to disturb each other's sovereignty. It is among those who reside in the nooks and corners of Parnassus, that disputes and litigation arise. We can only fancy such small occupiers of intellectual territory as Hayley and Miss Seward, extremely agitated about the mutual recognition of rights, and claims, and divisions. We can only fancy Shakspeare and Madame de Stael, regarding them with contempt and indifference. But by all means let the dispute go forwards, and if women are stimulated to give proof by their exertions, that there is such a thing as female genius, and men are stimulated to give proof by their surpassing productions, that there is no genius in the world but what is masculine, the public will be gainers any way. We shall have more clever people to write; more clever books to read. Without hazarding an opinion on the subject, for the very sufficient reason of not understanding its merits, I return to the theme with which I begun, and with which I would close-"Woman's love."

Let man take his claimed supremacy, and take it as his hereditary, his inalienable right. Let him have for his dower, sovereignty in science, in philosophy, in learning, in arts and in arms; let him wear, unenvied the ermine, the lawn and the helmet, and wield, unrivalled, the sword, the pen and the pencil. Let him be supreme in the cabinet, the camp and the study; and to women will still remain a "goodly heritage," of which neither force nor rivalry can deprive her. The heart is her do

main; and there she is a queen. To acquire over the unruly wills and tempers of men, an influence, which no man, however great, however gifted, can acquire; to manifest a faith which never fails, a patience that never wears out, a devotedness which can sacrifice, and a courage which can suffer: to perform the same unvarying round of duties without weariness, and endure the same unvarying round of vexations without murmuring; to requite neglect with kindness, and injustice with fidelity; to be true when all are false, and firm when all is hopeless; to watch over the few dear objects of regard with an eye that never sleeps, and a care that cannot change; to think, to act, to suffer, to sacrifice, to live, to die for them, their happiness and safety-these are woman's true triumphs; this--this is woman's love!

THE CHURCH.

BY ANSON G. CHESTER.

THIS is the Church with its lofty steeple;
There is the priest in his surplice drest---
Here is the place they preach to the people.

This is the Church with its high airy steeple,
There is the font with its lettered front-
Here is the place where they sprinkle the people.

This is the Church with its grand old steeple;
The glad bells chime in the merry June time-
Here is the place where they marry the people.
This is the Church with its towering steeple;
The sad bells toll for the flight of the soul--
Here is the place where they bury the people.

Here is the Church with its dizzy steeple;
Years hath it stood, through the gale and the flood,
The light and the love, and the joy of the people.

This is the Church with its stately steeple:

Still will they marry and still will they bury

And still will they sprinkle and preach to the people

Sprinkle and marry and bury the people

While the years pass on, and in years that are gone,
In the dear old Church with its time worn steeple.

And still in the shade of the ancient steeple
The dead shall sleep and the living weep,
Till the angel's trump shall arouse the people.

This is the Church with its hoary steeple.
Oh! long may it stand, in a goodly land,

The joy and the love and the light of the people.

EDITORIAL SEED-THOUGHTS.

"GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN, THAT NOTHING MAY BE LOST."

Ought not Christ to have suffered these things,

and to enter into his glory. Luke xxiv: 26.

It was neccessary for Christ to have suffered, because,

1. The Scriptures had so declared it. But this opens up the question why it was so declared in them.

ered even that independent of the fall,
it would have passed into something
higher. This is striking in the physical
and still more in the spiritual world.
But death prevailing over life rises
from the deeper law of sin. Under these
conditions the human world has become
unnatural, under another power, under
Satan himself-the Prince of this World.
(This expression applied to Satan him-
self is no metaphor.) Under both these
aspects, physical and moral, the signifi-
cance of the Saviour's person could not
have been developed. It could not have
been other than the theatre for the pre-
paration of such a development. If He
could have set up His kingdom here, un-
der such circumstances, it would have
been an imperium in imperio.

2. It was necessary in order that diNow wonderful kingdoms have been vine justice should be satisfied. Still it is imaginable that Christ could have died, established in the world,-those of Plato -that his death could have taken place, and Aristotle. But these could not break without a satisfaction thus having been through the kingdom of the world. made for sins; as for instance, if Christ Christ's kingdom must be above the limhad died in ANOTHER World, or if His itations of the moral and physical world. death had not been followed by His re- He must have passed our of the world, after a struggle with death. He could surrection. 3. This is the most important. IN OR-not have gone out of the world magiThe life with which He was inDER that he might enter into this glory,cally. he suffered. He could not have done the vested must be carried victoriously former, without undergoing the latter, through the Jordan of death. It would have been a moral solecism without suffering, dying and rising.

The incarnation is the central principle for Him to have triumphed WITHOUT Sufof the whole Christian religion. It im-fering. If a prince be in a foreign land, plied divine condescension. The Son of with an ocean between, he must pass God became a man. This is a fact of Rev- that ocean in order to assert his rights As a seed must die in orelation, which we hardly regard neces- to his crown. The Incarnation der that it may live, he had to die in sary to prove here. implies something more than the adop-order that a higher glory could be obThe Resurrection glory thus tion of a mere human life. The Divinity tained. descended into Humanity. The word included His human life. His death and became flesh, in order that certain pow-resurrection have a creative power, and confer immortality on man. He brought ers should enter Humanity. THAT life and immortality to pass.

The present world, physical and moral, No thought is more unequivocal than is insufficient in itself for the separation of the evils of the fall. The Constitu- that the Holy Spirit was NOT for man, We cannot betion of nature consists of a series of until Christ was gone. successions, which implied that the hu.lieve in the Holy Ghost or the Church, man life should be transferred into some-except we believe in the resurrection of He said it was expedient for thing higher. It may indeed be consid- Christ.

you that I GO. The victory was the judgment of the Prince of the world. The creed in all its articles springs out of Christ. We cannot separate these articles from such a connection.

The following reflections are obtained from this subject:

1. The Kingdom of Christ has its seat necessarily beyond this order of our present life. Hence our present life cannot be so changed as to make it even an approximation to this Kingdom. The personal reign of Christ on the earth can only be established after an entire change in its composition. There must be a victory over the powers of death and hell, and that requires a resurrection. It is a great error-the belief that the Kingdom of Heaven is an idea which can be reached by a cultivation of our natural powers,-by education, political science,-by the helps of political economy, of the arts and sciences, -by a mastery over the powers of nature, or that, in this way, we can even make any progress towards it. The error involves the substitution of a mere moral agency for Christianity, and produces what are simply "social dreams," forms of humanitarianism or rationalism. All such conceptions and thoughts are in full contradiction to the idea of Christ suffering, or of his people suffering, to the idea of his death and consequent resurrection.

istracies. There is a force in it that cannot be explained,-a divine force. He that heareth you, heareth me. The Holy Sacraments are the seals that authenticate and make real all these powers. There is something in Baptism and the Lord's Supper which eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive. There is a mystery which we cannot explain but must receive. The more wе can act as children with reference to these mysteries, the better for us.

3. The world is in opposition to and contrast with the Saviour. The opposition does not belong solely to the worst. form of the world,-it extends to the world in its most respectable form. The world should be subjugated and subordinated to that higher world. This is a hard problem. There is danger in living in this world.

Those things which we learn through our senses tend to lead us from things unseen. The world is a system under Satan, and a Christian life in it is a hard one. BUT we should cultivate a kind of abstraction from the things of the world. Our interest in the world must lose its force in order that we shall live the Christian life.

4. The law of suffering and death is the law of glory. Christ's life as regards the world must be the type of our life. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; 2. The Church and its powers are su- but if it die, it bringeth forth much pernatural, and cannot be measured by fruit. He that loveth his present life, natural means. This view differs widely &c., &c. If any man serve me let him from Humanitarianism. If I be lifted follow me. If men are comfortable in up, I shall draw all men. The redemp- this present order of life-this is not tion implies a system proceeding from enough. Such comfort must be sacriChrist himself, including in itself pow-ficed. We must go out of this order of ers from Him, which He brought into the life by an act of inward self-abnegation. world. He linked higher powers with Human prosperity can never be favorathose of this world. These powers are ex-ble to true welfare-that is if man should ecuted through the Holy Ghost-through surrender himself up to it. The qualiagencies, ministries and powers, differ- ties of natural man are always brought ent altogether from those which had pre- out better by adversity and distress. viously been in the world. These pow- This is still better illustrated in the ers introduced by him were supernatural, kingdom of grace. THE LAW OP SUFFER and, in this view, adequate to the end ING IS THE LAW OF FREEDOM AND THE LAW for which they were designed. Such OF POWER, No man has exerted any inpowers are involved in the mystery of the Holy Catholic Church, which cannot be received except through the earth. Being admitted it must be submitted to. Again, the word of God-the Scriptures -although written with human words, is something mysterious and powerful above all words. The ministry of reconciliation has a power above all civil mag

fluence on the world unless he has been a sufferer. Thus the Saints and Martyrs. That I may know Him, and the fellowship of his sufferings. The law of suffering brings man nearer to Christ,nearer to Christ's heart, and of course nearer to his cross. Here sorrow becomes sanctified,-flowing as it were from Christianity. This constitutes the