:Moses' mother, :Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Jezebel, Athaliah, etc. Always women have found spheres among the children and dependents, but sometimes wider and public.spheres have opened to them. vyomen have little recognized legal or public rights m the East. Woman has no standmg apart from her husband, and this makeH the lot of the Eastern widow so inexpressibly sad. The name Zelophehad recalls a remarkable exception-a case in which women, having no ma.le protector, succeeded in securing and maintaining their own rights; and the story is detailed in the Scripture as affording important instructive features. Compare the modem assertion of woman':1 legal and governmental rights, and tell how modem legislation has aided in removing women's disabilities. This Zelophehad was a descendant of Manasseh, who died during the wilderness wanderings, leaving no sons, only five daughters, who, by the custom of the time, would be treated as unable to inherit his estates. These five daughters appealed to :Moses (Numb. xxvii. 1-7), on the ground that their father had not died under any such judgment as disabled his children, and they asked to be authorized to stand as his heirs. The matter was a new and difficult one, a.nd Moses took it directly to God, and by Divine direction established the new rule that when there were no sons the daughters might claim the rights of heirs. A remarkable illustration of the wise adjustment of law in its practical application to new and unanticipated cases. Bishop Wordsworth says," It seems to have been God's design in the Levitical dispensation to elevate woman from the degradation into which she had fallen, and to prep:i.re her gradually for that state of dignity and F:Tace to which she is now advanced in the gospel by the incarnation of the Son of God, the Seed of the woman." I. WOMAN'S PLACE IN FAMILY LIFE. '!'here she properly takes a headship, bearing rule over both children and dependents. Illustrate by the interesting picture of the "virtuous woman and wife " given in the Book of Proverbs. If the woman be but a member of the family and not the head, still there is the due and honourable place of childhood, sisterhood, and friendship. No woman lacks a sphere of kindly useful service save the woman who wants none, because life is for her a mere low self-sphere. Plead for the nobility of womanly duties and relations in the home. Martha aud Mary could even prove ministers to the bodily needs of a Friend who was the world's Saviour; many a woman since has" entertained angels unawares." II. WoMAN's PLACE IN PUBLIC LIFE. Home, in most cases, provides ample and satisfying spheres. But for women who are free from family ties suitable public spheres are found among otl1er women, among the sufferi11.g, the poor, and the ch-ildren; and where there is endowment literature finds work for woman. These spheres are daily enlarging. They should be fully detailed, and an earnest plea should be made against the wasting of woman's powers when such broad spheres claim her o.bi!ities uutl energies, and on them she mo.y enter into the joy of" serving Christ. "-R. 'l'.
Vera. 21, 22.-0ommon family sorrows. In these verses is given a very touching episode, and yet it is II very commonplace incident that is n11rrated. A father gains the news that his sons have been attacked by foes and killed, and, us tho poor father sits stricken with the great sorrow, his brethren, his relatives, come to mourn with him and to comfort him. Children are an anxiety and care, all through our relations with them, when" about us" in the frailtic5 of their childhood, and when nwny from us in the wilfulnesses of their young manhood. Sick-scenes and death-scenes are familiar to most parents, and few human homes la~t long unbroken. Nor is tho comforting of loviug friends other than a commonplace and yet moat gracious fact of our modern life. Still, tho thrill of hand and tenr-filled eyo and sympathetic word bring relief nnd rest to burdened and bereaved hearts. Life repeats itself over and over again, and tells its talo of grief and loss concerning one family after another. So it was in the olden times. Ephraim mourns the loss of his children, and his brethren come to comfort him ; and thus it is seen thatfamily life becomes o. moral training for us all; and as the experiences of sickness, sorrow, and loss go round to one after another, we all come under the great F11ther'd sanctifying, nnd find out how "i(OOd it is even to be affiictecl." I. Tm,: Loss OF CHILDREN, Hero especially the greater loss of their death rather than tho loss by removal, which never quite quenches hope. Such loss coml's at various stages, and we never kuow at which of their ages the stroke falls lightest. It comes in vurious ways, slowly or suu,\euly, auu we novc1· can tell which way seemed 108 THE FIRST DOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. [cu. vm. 1-40.
to crush us most. The reaper cuts the "bearded irrnin" and the "flowers; " beautiful infants fly away, bright childhood fades, and blooming youth is smitten; and all we can say about it we say after Jacob, "If I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved." On this we may dwell somewhat more fully. II. THE PARENTAL GRIEF AT THE LOSS OF CHILDREN. "Ephraim mourned many days." Such grief is well illustrated in David's wailing over Absalom, Elijah's friend's grief over her dead child, and the poor Nain widow going out to bury her only son. 'l'he Eastern thought ahout the children helps to explain the intensity of their grief. Easterns conceived of their own earthly existence as continued in their children-they had a kind of immortality in their children, and they pleased themselves with the idea that their descendants would reach higher dignity and place than they had done. So for their children to die was a plucking down of lofty imaginations, an uprooting of carefully raised hopes. And so it is in measure for us, as may be most tenderly illus- trated in the case of the talented young Hallam, whose early death Tennyson deplores in his "In Memoriam." III. THE FAMILY BONDS SANCTIFIED IN THE LOSS OF CHILDREN. Such points as these may be unfolded and illustrated. If rightly, piously borne, the death of children may be used : 1. To the producing of a hallowing tenderness of feeling on all the members. 2. To a solemnizing estimate of the relative interests of this brief life and the coming eternal one. 3. To the self-denying efforts of each member to comfort the others, often involving most precious lessons in self-restraint. 4. To the reknitting of the family bonds. One member of a home realized as being away in the heavenly brings won- drously near and makes affectingly real all that belongs to the " unseen and eternal." And in family griefs we are "comforted, in order that we may be able to comfort them that are in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God."-R. 'l'.