raised up by Heaven to deliver our country. We own the brilliant exception, but we own it as an exception still. In spite of all our admiration for the heroine, we maintain that the proper sphere of woman in war is the sewing-room or the hospital, not the guard-room nor the battle-field. Exceptional cases, like that to which we have adverted, are a law unto themselves; but even they must obey certain conditions. The consecrating voice that spoke to Joan of Arc, while it gave her high honor in her unusual field of service, denied her a participation in the customary cares and delights of woman. Hear its utterance in Schiller's poetry: "In the rough brass shalt thou thy limbs array, No lovely child within thine arms shall rest ; Something, then, had to be given up to make the exceptional heroine. Something has to be given up to make the exceptional preacher. The Maid of Orleans, assuming the part of manly energy to deliver France, resigned of necessity the calm, gentle, confiding, dependent part of female loveliness and happiness. The female preacher of to-day, assuming the manly part of prominent action before a large and miscellaneous audience, resigns of necessity certain qualities which have, for six thousand years, been considered peculiarly feminine. She cannot be at once shrinking and prominent, timid and unembarrassed; of a low and gentle voice, "an excellent thing in woman," and of a loud, sonorous voice, an excellent thing in an orator. Exceptional cases cannot properly be taken to establish a rule. Providence makes them, Providence will take care of them; but for our guidance in establishing institutions and rules for their management, we must look at mankind in their normal condition, and govern ourselves thereby. It does not follow, because there was a Joan of Arc, and because she did right in coming forward to deliver her country, that we ought to have a female department at West Point, and let "the ever-feminine lead us on" in the day of battle; and it does not follow, because Madame Guyon was worthy to be the instructor of Fenelon, that we are to make the settlement of female preachers a regular thing in our churches, or the training of them a regular department in our Divinity Schools. The And let us observe that these two things must go together. Those who advocate the employment of ladies as preachers advocate also, very properly, their especial instruction for that office. There is a feeling, equally strong and correct, against lowering the standard of professional culture. Now, the idea of a clerical education for ladies involves considerations much more grave than that of the propriety of bringing the two sexes together in the same lecture and recitation rooms. question arises, Is it best to place before the mind of female youth an object in life inconsistent with that for which God and nature intended them, an object which, in most cases, will be relinquished as soon as the voice of God and nature is heard in their hearts, calling them to other scenes and other duties than those we have placed before them,- an object which, if retained in connection with the more natural and proper one, will result to the injury of both, the individual half-performing the duties of minister, and half-performing those of wife and mother? - Our preparation for the ministry takes about ten years. From the time when the boy shows a sufficient love of learning to encourage his friends to send him to college, three years may fairly be assigned for preliminary studies; then follow the four years of the college classes, and the three at the Divinity School. Apply the same system to female instruction. Your bright little daughter of twelve is waiting for your decision. She is fond of the studies of her day school, fond of the teachings of her Sunday-school. Will you bring her up to be a happy wife and mother, or will you bring her up to be a distinguished preacher? The precedents before you are too few to assure you that she can be both. Will you condemn her to celibacy, or to the state far worse, of one who has the cares without the tastes of domestic life, worn out with a double burden imperfectly borne; not the counsellor and fellow-laborer of her husband, but having her path apart from his, her circle of friends and admirers distinct from his, her will independent of his, the two ruling their respective provinces, and meeting on terms of cold and unnatural equality, as historians tell us of their two Catholic Majesties, Ferdinand, King of Arragon, and Isabella, Queen of Castile? However you may think it proper for others, you will make no such choice for the darling daughter who now comes to you so lovingly in bright and blushing girlhood. No; she must be a true woman, with all the softness of her sex, with its strength, indeed, of patient endurance and heavenward trust, but with enough of its weakness to appreciate the manly strength of that arm which Providence has in training somewhere for the sacred task of sustaining and protecting her. But even should you decide differently, will you be able to carry out your choice? Nature may have her way in spite of you. While you are maintaining your theory of woman's rights, you are not experimenting on dead matter, but on a living human being, with a warm heart, on which is inscribed Heaven's own law of woman's rights and woman's duties; and that law, thousands of years old as it is, may carry the day against the last refinement of the nineteenth century. You carefully train your future reverend lady, carefully and successfully through all the interesting period of "the teens." But when the funds have been collected from the churches, and your daughter is in the last year of the Madame Guyon scholarship in the Hypatia Institute of Theology, there comes a catastrophe. Is it "The blind fury wth the abhorred shears, That cuts the fine-spun life"? No, it is the blind god of love, with his bow and arrow, that cuts the fine-spun theory. The young divine, almost ready to preach, receives an invitation, not from a parish, but an individual; and the applicant, being a man, with the spirit of a man, thinks that he will be able to support his wife without the necessity of her preaching. She breathes one sigh, as all her visions of future triumphs in eloquence and scholarship take their flight, but that is succeeded by a tenderer sigh, and she turns from the Hypatia Institute to the arms of domestic love, her course being highly disapproved by the faculty and by you, but approved by the voice of Nature, which is the voice of its Divine Author. We have brought forward this supposed instance playfully; but does it not involve a serious argument? Ought we to subject our daughters to a period of ten years' training for a profession, a training which shall separate them entirely from what has been hitherto considered woman's work and woman's accomplishments, when the probability is that a Heavenordained and universal law of Nature will supersede the intended profession and render the education useless? We cannot be too careful that we connect no false idea, no questionable institution, with the grand future which Providence seems to be preparing for Liberal Christianity. In that future, woman will bear, as she has borne, a noble part. With such names as Mary Ware and Eliza Follen, and the living good and gifted whom we must not designate, will be associated others, in this and in coming generations, distinguished for varied scholarship, for poetic genius, for blessed works of Christian charity. With these endowments, they will not need the prominence of the pulpit to show forth their worth; but their exalted gifts will be more highly prized, because ever held in union with unobtrusive, delicate refinement. How often do we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! We go to him because we have nowhere else to go. And then we learn that the storms of life have driven us, not upon the rocks, but into the desired haven; that we have been compelled, as to the last remaining, so to the best, the only, the central help, the causing cause of all helps to which we had turned aside as nearer and better. MCDONALD. THE IRRELIGION OF POOR WORK. BY JOHN C. KIMBALL. HAPPENING, not long ago, to be in one of our large manufacturing places, where the chief article turned out is stockings, my attention was attracted by the exceeding care with which they were handled by the agent who was engaged in packing them away. He explained it was necessary to take them up tenderly and treat them with care, or they would fall to pieces before the establishment could get them off its hands. And thereupon, though they looked very nice and white and warm, he showed how it was possible to run the finger through many of them double, and that some would hardly bear their own weight in being lifted up. Yet they were going into the market for human beings with bones and flesh and muscle to put on and wear. They will be advertised and displayed from shop windows as a great bargain in stockings. Poor people will buy them because they are cheap; and they will be furnished to poor children, with shoes to match, as things with which to keep warm, and in which they are expected to grow up to the fear of God and the honor and love of all mankind. This case may have been an extraordinary one in the extent to which the worthlessness was carried, but there is the same element of shoddy and sham, of outside beauty and finish covering up inward defects, in a large part of our modern work. It is only by rare good luck that one can find an article, whatever its label or its cost may be, that is really good and genuine throughout both its workmanship and material. The market is flooded with poor manufactures in every department and variety of art. One of the secrets of success in business consists in the ability to work in the largest amount of poor stock with the least possible labor, and so as to have it look well on the outside. The process of imperfection is almost the only thing which is perfect. There is nothing which is too important or too sacred for its touch. Not the steamboat or the railroad car in which |