The fathers inculcate a diligent reading of the Scriptures as the only sure guide-Love-feasts described by Tertullian-Their excesses hibited to women Assemblies of the early Christains at the graves of martyrs &c.—The holy kiss - Con- duct in the house of prayer - Deaconesses Their office-Phoebe, Euodia, and others- Heretical women - - Difficulties of the married state - Diversity of habits Inhuman treatment of children among the heathen Læta and Paula - Jerome's exhortation - Per- - petua and her father - Martyrdom of Perpetua—— - CHAPTER XIII. THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE, 258-281. Severe treatment of slaves by the antient heathens - - - combats CHAPTER XIV. THE DEATH OF THE CHRISTIAN, 282-297. Consolation enjoyed by the believers - Darkness and - - Chry- FEMALE THE DISCIPLE. CHAPTER I. THE BENEFITS OF CHRISTIANITY TO WOMEN. Chose admirable! la religion chrétienne, qui ne semble avoir d'objet que la félicité de l'autre vie, fait encore notre bonheur dans celle-ci.-MONTESQUIEU. THE Gospel of Jesus Christ, which was to all good tidings of great joy, was so in a very special manner to the female sex. Though created by the Almighty as a help-meet for man; and, like him, invested with equal dominion over the animal world; yet, because the mother of the human race had yielded to the temptation of Satan, and was first in the transgression, God imposed upon her the law of obedience, and made her desire subject to her husband. B Sin, which has thrown its blight over every earthly relation, often leads us to regard submission as a punishment; yet, viewed apart, there seems but little harshness in an authority which Love itself has bound upon us; and when we have been taught to know the pride and selfwill of our own hearts, we see this memorial of our guilt converted into a blessing. The primitive dominion of the husband, and the subjection of the wife, flowed alike from a God of unerring wisdom and impartial love. In it, He shadows forth the intimate and mysterious union between Christ and his spouse the Church; and the closer we are conformed to His image, the more sweetness and harmony shall we discover in this fundamental law of nature. Yet such is the waywardness of the human heart, that it draws the deadliest poisons from the sweetest flowers; and a relation which was designed for the peculiar well-being of society was abused by the stronger sex, as a means to enslave and tyrannise over the weaker. The practice of polygamy and the facility of divorce became at once the bane of domestic happiness manners. and the cause of an universal corruption of This was the case even among the favoured children of Israel; we find the Lord remonstrating with them "because they dealt treacherously with the wife of their youth: that she covered His altar with tears, with weeping, and with crying out. The Lord, the God of Israel, saith, that he hateth putting away; she is thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. Did not He make one? therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously."- Malachi ii. It was not till the advent of the Messiah, who, in the time of her deepest humiliation, had been promised to the guilty mother of mankind as the seed which should bruise the serpent's head, that the moral and social condition of Woman was raised. He, who came to support the weak, was the first to vindicate her cause against the abuse of that easy law of divorce, which Moses had granted because of the hardness of their heart. Under the Levitical dispensation, a marked distinction had been observed between the two sexes; but in the irrespective freeness of the |