"To a true woman no wealth is of worth to be compared for a moment with the love of a true heart. This is the lesson of the Song of Songs.

* Are we sure, as we look at life in America, that there is no need to be taught this lesson in our own world? Is marriage a la mode unknown with us? Are there no parents who think a good match for the daughter is a match to a wealthy suitor or a noble one? Are there no men and women in America who weigh love over against houses and lands, and call love the lighter weight of the two? Are there no women who find themselves distraught between the plea of ambition and the plea of love, and know not which road to take? If "love in a cottage" has been often sung, it has often also been scorned and scoffed at by the cynic. It may be said that literature is full of this story, that it is the common plot of the ordinary novel, that again and again through fiction, ambition and love are put in contrast, and love exalted

that is true; but what will you say of the first writer who told the story of the battle between love and ambition and put love first? I doubt

whether there can be found anywhere in ancient literature a story of pure womanly love antedating the Song of Songs. This sweet song of woman's fidelity is the spring out of which all the dramas of literature that have glorified pure, simple, earnest, honest, faithful love, have, as it were, come forth.

"I cannot but think that the lesson of this drama needs especial emphasis in our time and

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in our country. The higher education and the larger life of woman in our day bring temptation— higher education and larger life always bring temptation. Woman entering into literature, into business, into politics, is beckoned by ambition which before came not within her horizon. Now and again in public addresses the home is even scoffed at, the husband treated as a slaveocrat, love laughed out of court, and the notion sedulously advocated that a woman advances her position and rises into a larger life if she turns from wifehood I am not arguand motherhood and humble love to the forum, the lecture room, the business office. ing that she should not go into business; I am not arguing that she should not be lawyer, doctor, minister, or politician; I certainly am not arguing that the doors should be shut and she refused permission to open them. But this I do say: It is impossible to have those doors open, to have that larger life given, to have all the motive powers and the intellectual powers quickened by a broader and greater education-it is impossible in the rush and hurry and turmoil of our American life to bring about all this and not subject woman to the temptation to take ambition as her object in place of love. Against every notion, come how it may and whence it may, that it is a nobler thing to be in business or in a profession or in politics or in literature or on the platform than it is to love with fidelity one man, to be his companion, consecrated to him, joining her love with his, I raise

my voice, here and everywhere, and thank God for the Song of Songs, which teaches us that all the trappings and attractions, all the glory and the power, all the accoutrements and the elements that beckon to the court are as nothing compared with the sweet sacrednesss of humble, quiet love.

"In this Song of Songs I, too, see au allegory, as in marriage I see a symbol. In some true sense to every one of us, man or woman, these two beckoning spirits come. As Hercules was invited in one direction by pleasure and in the other by wisdom, so every one of us is called in one direction by love and in the other direction by ambition; and I take as the great and final message of the Song of Songs, this: No ambition can take the place of love; the man or woman who has the great possessions, the fine equipage, the royal apparel, fame, social splendor, and no love, is to be pitied. But the man and woman who have in their hearts faithful, loyal, true love one for the other. though their home be a cottage with a sanded floor, though their only equipage be the baby carriage. though their only literature be the daily press. though their only trappings be clothes twice turned and turned again, need pity of none. For if a man would offer all his houses and all his substance instead of love, he should be scorned with a great scorn."

WOMEN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

1. THE VIRGIN MARY.

There is an interval of more than four centuries between the close of the Old Testament history and the opening of the New.

During that

time the world passed through some very stirring scenes. The Persian empire fell before the Macedonian warrior-king, Alexander the Great. Out of the ruins of his colossal empire, two powers arose, These two struggled for the Syria and Egypt. mastery, and Palestine was their battlefield. The Jews were led first to one side of the conflict, then to the other, until Judea became a nation of mercenary soldiers, selling their swords to the highest Then the Jewish nation bidder in gold or power. itself was divided into two parties, headed respectively by the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and these fought a civil war which threatened for a time the very existence of the nation.

But another power, stronger than any which

had preceded it, was advancing from the west. Rome had conquered southern Europe and northern Africa, and was now pouring her legions into western Asia. As the great Roman general Pompey advanced into Palestine at the head of these legions, and saw the furious struggle of Jew against Jew, he took the side of the Pharisees, ended the struggle, put the province of Judea under Roman rule-and Jewish independence vanished forever. Soon Herod, the great descendant of Edom (Esau) won the favor of Jews and Romans, and became king, or governor, of Judea, with Roman sanction. It is in the last year of his reign that the story of the New Testament opens.

The story commences with two women, the mothers respectively of Jesus and John the Baptist. The little village of Nazareth lay nestling in the northern hills, in the despised province of Galilee. It was inhabited by a few humble peasants, of various tribes, many of whom poverty or obscurity had forced away from their native cities in richer and more populous Judea. These were looked down upon and despised by the wealthy aristocrats of the south, and this contempt had passed into a proverb, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?"

Among these poor and humble ones were some of the royal tribe of Judah, who had moved away from the city of David (Bethlehem) and taken up their residence in Nazareth. A woman, or rather a girl of this royal house; was betrothed, but not