And when He raised us, His human creatures, above mere animal existence, did He not make the union, by choice and will, of the man and the woman the basis of all domestic life? all domestic life the basis of all social life? all social life the basis of all national life? How, then, shall our social and national life be pure and holy, and well ordered before God and man, if the domestic affections and duties be not carried out and expanded, and perfected in the larger social sphere, and in the same spirit of mutual reverence, trust, and kindness which we demand in the primitive relation? It appears to me that when the Creator endowed the two halves of the human race with ever-aspiring hopes, with everwidening sympathies, with ever-progressing capacities, when He made them equal in the responsibilities which bind the conscience and in the temptations which mislead the will,He linked them inseparably in an ever-extending sphere of duties, and an ever-expanding communion of affections; thus, in one simple, holy, and beautiful ordinance, binding up at once the continuation of the species and its

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moral, social, and physical progress, through all time.

Let these premises be granted, and hence it follows as a first natural and necessary result, and one which the wisest philosophers have admitted, that the relative position of the man and the woman in any community is invariably to be taken as a test of the degree of civilization and well-being in that community. Hence, as a second result equally natural and necessary, we find that all that extends and multiplies the innocent relations, the kindly sympathies, the mutual services of men and women, must lead to the happiness and improvement of both. Hence, thirdly, if either men or women arrogate to themselves exclusively any of the social work or social privileges which can be performed or exercised perfectly only in communion, they will inevitably fail in their objects, and end probably in corrupting each other. Hence, in conclusion, this last inevitable result; that wherever the nature of either man or woman is considered as self-dependent or self-sufficing, their rights and wrongs as distinct, their interests

as opposed or even capable of separation, there we find cruel and unjust laws, discord and confusion entering into all the forms of domestic and social life, and the element of decay in all our institutions. In the midst of our apparent material prosperity, let some curious or courageous hand lift up but a corner of that embroidered pall which the superficial refinement of our privileged and prosperous classes has thrown over society, and how we recoil from the revelation of what lies seething and festering beneath! How we are startled by glimpses of hidden pain, and covert vice, and horrible wrongs done and suffered! Then come strange trials before our tribunals, polluting the public mind. Then are great blue books piled up before Parliament, filled with reports of inspectors and committees. Then eloquent newspaper articles are let off like rockets into an abyss, just to show the darkness, and expire. Then have we fitful, clamorous bursts of popular indignation and remorse; hasty partial remedies for antiquated mischiefs; clumsy tinkering of barbarous and inadequate laws;

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then the vain attempt to solder together undeniable truths and admitted falsehoods into some brittle, plausible compromise; — then at last the slowly awakening sense of a great want aching far down at the heart of society, throbbing upwards and outwards with quicker and a quicker pulse; and then, what then? What if this great want, this something which we crave and seek, be in a manner a part of ourselves? — lying so near to us, so close at our feet, that we have overlooked and lost it in reaching after the distant, the difficult, the impracticable?

WORK in some form or other is the appointed lot of all, — divinely appointed; and, given as equal the religious responsibilities of the two sexes, might we not, in distributing the work to be done in this world, combine and use in more equal proportion the working faculties of men and women, and so find a remedy for many of those mistakes which have vitiated some of our noblest educational and charitable institutions? Is it not possible

that in the apportioning of the work we may have too far sundered what in God's creation never can be sundered without pain and mischief, the masculine and the feminine influences? - lost the true balance between the

element of power and the element of love? and trusted too much to mere mechanical means for carrying out high religious and moral purposes?

It seems indisputable that the mutual influence of the two sexes, brain upon brain, life upon life,- becomes more subtle, and spiritual, and complex, more active and more intense, in proportion as the whole human race is improved and developed. The physiologist knows this well let the moralist give heed to it, lest in becoming more intense, and active, and extended, such influences become at the same time less beneficent, less healthful, and less manageable.

It appears to me that we do wrong to legislate, and educate, and build up institutions without taking cognizance of this law of our being It appears to me that the domestic