right and noble when performed
under the pressure of a great and noble aspiration, for "'tis sweet to
labor for those we love."

Woman's work is defined by her Creator to be a work of charity. She is
a helpmeet. A gift she came to man. Her life is a constant giving up
of rights and privileges for the happiness of others. She waits on man
not for pay, but for love. She ministers to him in sickness and in
health. It is not the deed, but the spirit which sanctifies the deed,
that makes it lovely. Compel her by force, by fear, or by rewards, to
do what she performs because of love, and you destroy all the beauty
of the action, and convert the ministering angel into a menial, the
God-appointed woman into a brutalized slave. God made her a gift, and
the law of her life is in giving. She fulfils the functions of her
life by living in harmony with the law of love. The woman, described
with such inexpressible tenderness by Luke (vii. 37-50), attracts
attention by this feature. She came to Christ while he was reclining
at table. She had sinned. Still she loved. Here were Christ's feet
hanging over the table's edge, while Christ reclined. As he was
talking, behold this woman bending over them, her hot tears raining
on them, and she busy wiping off the tear-drops with her hair, and
kissing them, anointed them with costly ointment. She loved, and
therefore evidenced it by deeds. Her love, blossoming into action,
won Christ. He saw that she loved. Perhaps love had led her astray at
first. No matter. Love she possessed, and love she desired to lavish
on some object worthy of her regard. That object she discovered in
Jesus. She took her alabaster-box of precious ointment, and went after
him. She enters the Pharisee's house; it may have been the house where
she had fallen. The Pharisee seemed to know her character, and so he
said, "This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what
manner of woman this is that toucheth him, for she is a sinner."
Christ did not at once recognize the suspicion, but supposing the case
of the two debtors, and having obtained from Simon the declaration,
that the one would love most who was forgiven most, turned upon him
the force of the logic, by saying, "Seest thou this woman? I entered
into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet, but she both
washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head.
Thou gavest me no kiss; but this woman, since the time I came, hath
not ce