rth-stone. Her husband is a professing Christian, as is also
his yet youthful-looking mother and the wife herself. Beautiful children
gambol around her, and look wonderingly in her face as they see those
tears. What is the secret of her unhappiness? She deems hers a very hard
lot, and yet if we rightly judge, could her sorrow be resolved to its
elements, it would be found that the turmoil of her spirit is occasioned
solely by the fact that she finds it hard to maintain her fancied
rights, her desired superiority over her husband and servants, because
of the presence of her calm, firm, dignified mother-in-law, whose very
lips seem chiseled to indicate that they speak only to be obeyed. What
would be the result if the tender, considerate love of Naomi and the
yielding spirit of Ruth were introduced to the bosom of each?

We cannot leave this record of Holy Writ without commenting also on the
remarkable state of society which existed in Bethlehem in those far
distant days. When Naomi returned after an absence of ten years--an
absence which to many might have seemed very culpable--with what
enthusiastic greetings was she received. "The whole city was moved." It
made no difference that she "went out full but had returned empty;" nor
did they stop to consider that "the Lord had testified against her." The
truest sympathy was manifested for her and for the stranger who had
loved her and clung to her. In her sorrow they clustered around to
comfort her, and when the bright reverse gave her again an honored name
and "a restorer of her life" in her young grandson, they were eager to
testify their joy. The apostolic injunction, "Rejoice with them that do
rejoice, and weep with them that weep," seems to have been strictly
obeyed in Bethlehem. The distinctions of society, although as marked
apparently as in our own time, seem not to have caused either
unhappiness nor the slightest approach to unkind or unchristian
feeling. Witness the greeting between Boaz and the reapers on his
harvest field. "And behold Boaz came from Bethlehem and said unto the
reapers, The Lord be with you. And they answered him, The Lord bless
thee." Boaz was "a mighty man of wealth;" he had his hired workmen
around him, and in the same field was found the poor "Moabitish damsel,"
gleaning here and there the scattered ears, her only dependence. Yet we
find them all sitting together in the hut which was erected for shelter,
and eating together the parched grain wh