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upon it all with sadness and pity. After doing every thing in His power to make His children happy-after filling the world with good things for their use, and giving them abundant faculties for enjoying them-after endowing them with beauty, and a sense of that which is beautiful-it must be sad to Him to see them wandering about in strange disguises, hugging to their halfrebellious hearts the awful mistake that, however much they may suffer, they are gaining favor thereby in the sight of their Maker. Of course, I believe in selfdenial, and in the nobility of self-denial, for the good of others; but I believe that all self-denial that partakes of the character of penance, in whatever form and under whatever circumstances it may develop itself, is always a thing of mischief, and always a thing of error. It has its basis in the miserable theory that there is something in the passions and appetites with which God has constituted man that is essentially bad -a theory as impious as it is injurious-as fatal to all just conceptions of the divine Being and of man's relations to Him, as to all human happiness.

Every thing which is truly admirable is good, and good and desirable in the degree by which it is admirable. A beautiful face and form are admirable, and just as good as they are admirable-just as good in their element of beauty. They are good for that quality, and in that quality, which excites our admira

tion. A beautiful bonnet, a beautiful dress, a beautiful brooch or necklace, are all admirable, and good because they are admirable, or good because every thing admirable is necessarily good. A family over which the father presides with tender dignity, and in which the mother moves with love's divinest ministry-where the faces of innocent children are shining, while their voices make music sweeter than the morning songs of birds— is admirable, and it is good in all those respects which make it admirable. A well-dressed man or woman is admirable, and that thing is good in itself which makes them so. A man who carries his heart in his hand, who deals both justly and generously by men, who bears a sunny face and pleasant words into society, whose cultured mind enriches freely all with whom it is brought into relation, who has abundant charity for the weak and erring, and who takes life and what it brings him contentedly, is an admirable man, and good in all the points which make him admirable. A house that presents a harmonious and handsome interior to the eye of the passenger, and whose exterior combines equal convenience and elegance, is admirable, and, by that token, good.

Now these very simple propositions have their correlatives, which it is not necessary to set down in order, any further than fairly to illustrate my point. Things that are not admirable are not good. If the

dress of a Shaker is not admirable, it is not good. If that sort of life which is led in a cloister, by monks or nuns, is not admirable, it is not good. If a man who professes to be a Christian lives a life out of which is shut all with which an unsophisticated humanity sympathizes—a life barren of attractive fruit—a life bare in all its surroundings-a life with no genial outflow and expression—a life of niggardly negatives rather than of generous positives-then that life is not admirable, and if it be not admirable it cannot be good in those respects. A man may carry along with such a life as this a spotless conscience and a strict devotion to apprehended duty, and these may be admirable and good, but the other characteristics cannot be either; and however much God may approve his honest heart and honest endeavor, He cannot admire the style of manhood in which they have their dull and difficult illustration. The idea that I wish definitely to convey is this: that on the basis of a right heart, God would have us build up a bright, generous, genial, expressive Christian character, and use gratefully and gladly all those things which He has prepared to make life cheerful and admirable. I believe a saint ought to have a better tailor than a sinner, and be in all manly ways a better fellow. I believe a true Christian should be in every thing that constitutes and belongs to a man the most admirable man in the world.

I have an idea that God looks with the same kind

of contempt on the prominent characteristics of certain styles of Christian men and women, that men of the world do. There is nothing admirable in cant and whine, and nasal psalm-singing, and men whose hearts are livers and whose blood is bile; and I cannot believe that He blames people for not admiring them, and not being attracted to them. I do not believe that an admirable Christian life is repulsive to the men of the world. I believe that wherever the human mind recognizes a rounded, chastened, rich, and outspoken Christian character, whether it belong to manhood or womanhood, it admires it, and feels attracted to it, by the degree in which it admires it. I believe, moreover, that the Christianity which discards as vanities those things which God has provided for the pleasure of His children, and mortifies the love of beauty, and adopts the theory that God is pleased with penance, and degrades, abuses, and traduces the body to win greater sanctity of soul, and finds a sin in every sweet of sense, is a bastard Christianity. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

LESSON VII.

THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN.

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore ye soft pipes play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tones."

JOHN KEATS.

"I am as free as Nature first made man."

DRYDEN.

"What she wills to do or say

Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best."

MILTON.

T was the sarcastic remark of a crusty old parson

IT

of Connecticut that woman has the undoubted right to shave and sing bass, if she chooses to do so. I question the right of bearded man to shave himself, and I will not concede that woman has a superior right, based on inferior necessities; but believing that man has an undoubted right to sing bass, I am inclined to accord the same right to woman. Woman is a female

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