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IT IS THE UNSEEN WE LOVE.

and dear it can not be otherwise in good and cultured minds. Then we can love a father whom we have not seen. We all know that the idea of God is a spontaneity in the human mind. Though God may be incomprehensible and his ways past finding out, he is still so much within and around us that we can not keep the thoughts of him out of our minds. We know, too, that thousands do love Him with a deathless love who can comprehend him no better than we. We may infer from this that we can love Him also.

But when we think of His character, its infinite loveliness, its unfathomable depth of love, and wisdom, and holiness, it seems to me that the impossibility is in not loving him. How can we help loving him? Add to this that He is our Father, out of the depth of whose being we were born, and that he loves us with an unspeakable and eternal love, and the attraction to love him becomes still stronger. Then think how much He has done for us; how he has given us our parents and friends, and all the dear and delightful objects of life, thought, and hope; and more than this, has given us Jesus, and with him the glorious Gospel, revealing an immortal life and a glorious inheritance beyond the Jordan of death. These benefactions of His love make his character appear infinitely attractive, so that the wonder would seem to be that any should fail to love him.

I seems clear that the Father may be none the less loved on account of his being unseen. We are constituted to love things unseen. And if we scan it closely

LIFE WELL LIVED IS GLORIOUS.

we shall find that we really love nothing else.

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Character

So the charm

worth, virtue, goodness, love, wisdom, knowledge, science, philosophy, religion, are all unseen. about a person that makes us love him is unseen. Indeed, it is the unseen we love, and nothing else. We are spiritual beings, and made for spiritual exercises. Our nature is exactly adapted to the love and worship of an unseen God. When we do not do it we are acting contrary to our nature. We deny ourselves as well as God when we do not love and adore him. Is it proper for youth to do so? By no means. All youth, and especially young women, should feel that so long as they neglect their religious duties they neglect the most important concerns of their eternal existence. They are not ephemeral, but eternal creatures. and each other are eternal ones. of being-turn back they can not. around them, and always will be. Him, the better it will be for them. ual life; to love him not is death.

Their relation to God

They are on the sea

God is above and The sooner they love To love Him is spirit

It is a glorious thing to live life well. They can not do it without religion. Woman is scarcely woman unless the great principle of love guides her. That principle, directed toward God and man, is the sum total of the Christian religion. Let every young woman so direct it that her whole life may be radiant with the light and leeds of love.

Lecture Thirteen.

WOMANHOOD.

Woman not an Adornment only-Civilization Elevates Woman-Woman not what She should be-Woman's Influence Over-rated-Force of Character Necessary-The Virtue of True Womanhood-Passion is not always LoveTrue Love is only for Worth-Good Behavior and Deportment-Spiritual Harmony Desirable-Importance of Self-control-What shall Woman do?--Strive to be a True Woman.

WHAT is womanhood? Is there any more important question for young women to consider than this? It should be the highest ambition of every young woman to possess a true womanhood. Earth presents no higher

object of attainment. To be a woman, in the truest and highest sense of the word, is to be the best thing beneath the skies. To be a woman is something more than to live eighteen or twenty years; something more than to grow to the physical stature of women; something more than to wear flounces, exhibit drygoods, sport jewelry, catch the gaze of lewd-eyed men; something more than to be a belle, a wife, or a mother. Put all these qualifications together, and they do but little toward making a true woman. A true woman exists independent of outward attachments. It is not wealth, or beauty of person, or connection, or station, or power of mind, or literary attain

WOMAN NOT AN ADORNMENT ONLY.

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This is the grand shadow for the sub

ments, or variety and richness of outward accomplishments, that make the woman. These often adorn womanhood as the ivy adorns the oak. But they should never be mistaken for the thing they adorn. error of womankind. They take the stance the glitter for the gold-the heraldry and trappings of the world for the priceless essence of womanly worth which exists within the mind. Here is where almost the whole world has erred. Woman has been regarded as an adornment. Because God has conferred upon her the charm of a beauty not elsewhere found in earth, the world has vainly imagined she was made to glory in its exhibition. Hence woman is too often a vain, idle, useless thing. She stoops to be the plaything of man, the idol of his vanity, the victim of his lust. In stooping, she lays off her womanhood to pander to the low aims of a sensual life. In every country and in all ages woman has been thus abased. The history of the world is all darkened by the awful shadow of woman's debasement. While man has admired and loved her, he has degraded her. Savage and civilized man are not very dissimilar in this respect. They both woo, cajole, and flatter woman to oppress and degrade her. They both load her with honeyed titles and flattering compliments, as though to sweeten with sugar-plum nonsense her bitter pressure of wrongs. It is the consent of all historians that woman has been elevated in proportion as knowledge and virtue have advanced among mankind. No one can read the history of the world without seeing that woman

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CIVILIZATION ELEVATES WOMEN.

is upward bound. No one can look at woman's present estate, her devotion to vanity, her meagre knowledge, her narrow culture, her circumscribed sphere of action, her monotonous and aimless life, without feeling that she has many long steps yet to take before she will attain to her true position, her full womanhood. I would not intimate that man's love for woman is not sincere, nor that he designs any harm to her. Nor would I intimate that woman purposely stoops to degrade herself. The Indian loves his dusky maid with a deep sincerity of heart; but that love does not prevent him from acquiescing in the common custom of his people, and making her his drudge, and regarding her as his inferior and his life-bound slave. So the civilized man loves his wife with an ardency of devotion he feels for no other object; but that does not prevent him from subjecting her to the common lot of woman, or from believing it right that woman should be deprived by custom and law of that culture, those stimulants, and privileges, and rights which belong to her as an accountable being Civilized men do not demand that their women shall be trained to the highest culture-shall be taught in the deepest wisdom-shall live for the broadest and grandest purposes. No; they think it is enough if their women can have a little smattering of knowledge so as to appear well in the drawing-room parlor. Wisdom is for men. Man alone may draw from the deep wells of knowledge. Why have civilized men closed all their colleges and universities against women? Why have they shut almost every avenue to public usefulness,