less purity and innocence; to hate, amid the meltings of infinite love. The exact sin which our first mother committed is not told us. It is enough to know that she did what God had forbidden. See her as she converses with the serpent! Her form inclines towards her foe, and her eyes sparkle with unusual brilliancy, as the archfiend discourses to her. She is already charmed. The heavens gather blackness, but she does not behold the threatening storm; shadows fall heavily all around her, but she heeds not the falling shades; angels flit by and whisper to her, but she hears not their voices. "Lead me to the tree of knowledge," she cries; and her fair hands clasp in the agony of the struggle between innocence and sin. With joy he led the way, through tangles and mazes, and she followed.

"Hope elevates, and joy

Brightens his crest; as when a wandering fire,
Compact of unctuous vapor, which the night
Condenses, and the cold environs round,

Kindled through agitation to a flame,

Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends,
Hovering and blazing with delusive light,
Misleads the amazed night-wanderer from his way
To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool,
There swallowed up and lost, from succor far,
So glistered the dire snake, and into fraud.
Led Eve, our credulous mother, to the tree
Of prohibition, root of all our woe."

But Eve will not eat. The stern, terrible command of God rings in her ears, and she stands half subdued, and almost lost. Satan beholds

her faltering, and says,—

"Queen of this universe! do not believe

Those rigid threats of death: ye shall not die:
How should you? By the fruit? It gives you life
To knowledge. By the threatener? Look on me,
Me, who have touched and tasted, yet both live,
And life more perfect have attained than fate
Meant me, by venturing higher than my lot.
Shall that be shut to man which to the beast
Is open? or will God incense his ire
For such a petty trespass? and not praise
Rather your dauntless virtue, whom the pain
Of death denounced?"

EVE AS A FALLEN WOMAN.

The deed was done. The tempter had succeeded, and Eve had taken of the forbidden fruit. The beauty upon her countenance is gone, and there gather the clouds of shame; the flowers at her feet have faded, and thorns spring up all around; dim shadows seem to fit through those abodes of peace, as if inhuman inhabitants had made their entrée, and every vestige of grace and loveliness to that fallen woman seemed to have changed. With her stricken and sinful husband she flees to the groves, gathers the fig leaves,

"And, with what skill they had, together sewed,
To gird their waist; vain covering, if to hide
Their guilt and dreaded shame! O, how unlike
To that first, naked glory! Such of late
Columbus found the American, so girt

With feathered cincture; naked else, and wild
Among the trees on isles and woody shores.

Thus fenced, and, as they thought, their shame in part

Covered, but not at rest or ease of mind,

They sat them down to weep; nor only tears

Rained at their eyes, but high winds worse within

Began to rise, high passions, anger, hate,
Mistrust, suspicion, discord, and shook sore
Their inward state of mind, calm region once
And full of peace, now tossed and turbulent;
For Understanding ruled not, and the Will
Heard not her lore; both in subjection now
To sensual Appetite, who, from beneath
Usurping over sovereign Reason, claimed
Superior sway."

But we are dwelling too long on these life pictures, and we proceed briefly to consider the mission of woman. As Eve stands at the head of the race, it is proper that she should be its representative. The purpose for which she was created is the main purpose for which every woman was created; and when we discover why Eve was given to man, we can detect the sphere and walk of all her daughters. What, then, is woman's sphere? Certainly not in the field. God never made her to be a slave, to plant the corn and raise the grain which should be the support of man. The constitution of woman,

her physical organization, the structure of her material nature, show that she was not designed for hard, out-of-door service. In the old countries of Europe, it is not seldom that the traveller sees a woman hard at work in the field, or driving her mule to market, or bearing a heavy burden on her head, while her husband looks on unconcerned; and while she toils, he smokes, enjoys himself, depending on her for his support. This is an entire disarrangement of the whole order of nature, an entire perversion of the whole purpose for which woman was brought into being. That woman, more than man, should live without work, we do not contend. Labor is a condition of life, and women, as well as men, are subject to it. But the kind of work which should be assigned to woman is written in her very nature, and those perverted views which originate in debased minds and countries are unworthy of our race.

Nor was woman designed for the tented field. Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, fancying herself called of God to a military mission, buckled on the armor, and placing herself at the head of the French army, gained several brilliant victories, but expiated her folly by being burned at the stake, and having her ashes cast into the Seine. The famous Charlotte Corday left her home, and journeyed to Paris, and there finding the bloody Ma

rat, plunged her weapon to his crime-blackened heart. Now and then, some woman has appeared to perform a soldier's work; but Joan of Arc, and Charlotte Corday, and every such woman, have been out of the sphere in which God placed them. A woman on the tented field, amid carnage and blood, shouting with the victor, escaping with the fugitive, or carousing with the dissipated, is as much out of place as an angel in the councils of the bottomless pit.

Nor is the forum her place. The public debate and the legislative assembly can derive no dignity from her presence and participation. God has not granted to woman those natural faculties which will render her fitted for a public office in the debates of men. If it had been her province to chain men by eloquence, He who does all things well would have given her a voice which would have sent its electric thrill, or rolled its deep thunders, over vast crowds. But woman has no such gift. Public speaking does not come within the line of her duty; and when she thrusts herself forward as an orator or a declaimer, she has mistaken her calling, and departed from her Heaven-appointed sphere.

Nor is woman at home in the pulpit. Christ called no woman to preach in his day, nor have we any evidence that he has called any since.