anointing them, with a feeling akin to devotion.
The Magdalene, delivered of her seven demons, because of her devotion
to Christ, and the triumph won by her faith, achieved a position
which, in the regards of the church, is equal to that held by the
Mother of our Saviour.

Woman's daily life is to her spiritual life what the debris of the
stream is to the water-lily that floats upon the surface. What cares
the servant girl of Rome for the place where she toils? The cathedral,
and the wonderful pictures that hang upon its walls, are her glory
and pride. Look at her toil from that stand-point, and she becomes a
helper in the estimation of the world that cannot be ignored. We have
said woman's work is a work of charity. Satan has warped the truth and
wielded it against Christ; but as it is wrong to give up a good tune
because bad men sing it, so we must not give up a truth because Satan
takes advantage of it. This work of charity,--of giving up for others,
of denying self for another's advantage, of abandoning comfort to
assuage another's grief,--so wonderfully illustrated by a Florence
Nightingale, and by women quite as worthy in our own land, whose
presence in the hospitals was like a benediction from God, and whose
presence in our homes, in our churches, beside the sad and sorrowing
everywhere, is proof that woman has a mission which she alone can
fill, and a work which she alone can perform. "And now abideth faith,
hope, and charity, and the greatest of these is charity." Man has
faith, he has hope; but he lacks, to a large extent, in the charities
which come to woman as gifts of God, because of which Christ employed
her as an agency to win men back to faith in God. In the sick chamber
she moves with step noiseless as falling snow-flakes, and speaks in
a voice soft as an angel's whisper. Her touch is so gentle that it
soothes the sufferer, and her sympathy is more precious than rubies.
On this account she is man's first and last solace. Suffering never
appeals to woman in vain. "I never addressed myself," says Ledyard,
"in the language of decency and friendship to woman, whether civilized
or savage, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. With man
it has often been otherwise. In wandering over the barren plains of
inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, frozen Lapland, rude and
churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the wide-spread regions of
the wandering Tartar, if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, w