hierarchies of Heaven. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." Millions of Christian women make this petition every day, but how many of us exert a single intelligent energy to bring it about? Who of us understands "give us this day our daily bread" to mean "give it to us whether we strive for it or not?" Not one: and so, perhaps, we may pray unnumbered ages in this stupid and sluggish spirit for Christ's kingdom to come; but it never will come until, with all our feminine powers and all our mighty love, we do our share towards hastening it.
"Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but lost that build it." The wretched history of so many masculine nationalities that go stubbornly along in their own way shows but too well how lost! Yet, even granting that strong men could do without the Gospel, weak women cannot. Jesus was our first, as he is still our best and truest, Friend. In the depths of the unutterable degradation to which paganism had reduced the sex, he alone saw what was in us, and raised us up. If in anything at all we are better or happier than the women of heathen nations, we owe it all to him; and whatever remains to be accomplished of our elevation must come through devotion to his teaching. I believe that, except as Christians, "bearing all things" with each other, "believing all things" possible to each other, "hoping all things" for each other, "enduring all things" from each other,—and all for our Master's glory,—women can do nothing. For we care very little for ourselves or for each other; nearly all we attempt is for some outside object,—for some child, or some man, or some God. Were men, for instance, to tell us to undertake this reform, we should accomplish it quickly and gladly enough. I think they will tell us no such thing; but, in view of all the interests that depend on it, can we not believe that HE who loves us, and whom we love beyond men, asks us to do it for his sake and for humanity's sake? It may not be an easy task, and to succeed in it we shall need our intensest energy, and more than all our present self-command. But what we lack ourselves I believe to exist in the Gospel in
