But man is only half man without woman. God has decreed this; and the history of the human race has shown the imperative need, even for the well-being of man, that woman should be justly estimated, and treated upon a graduated equality.

And, if woman were the first to fall, through woman was the Fall remedied. It was the Seed of the woman that was to crush the serpent's head.

The text gives us one instance, of many, of the faithfulness and devotion of women towards Him who was, at worst, the despised and rejected, at best, the forsaken and deserted, of men. The most costly offering was not costly enough, in the estimation of Mary, for an offering to her Lord. Man straightway murmured at the costliness of the oblation, grudging the price, and calculating the value.

Here, perhaps, we see remarkably set before us the weakness, and yet the gain, of woman; the strength, and yet the loss, of man.

Cold calculation set against warm and sudden impulse. The impulse often right, as it were, by an instinct; the cold calculation often wrong. 'It might have been sold for an hundred pence and given to the poor: this the man's reasoning. Here is my dear Lord, and here is something of value to offer Him:' this the woman's. And her instinct was declared right, against man's calculation.

She was right: love attained to the truth, short of which reason fell. Nothing could be too precious, precious or costly enough, to offer to that Lord, whose 'Name is as ointment poured forth:' who redeemed us, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with His own blood poured out.

While man's caution hesitates and holds back, woman's impulse often hits the heart of the matter. She is more childlike than we are, and thus is less far from God. Her instinct, so to speak, detects in an instant the right, towards which we grope with helpless outspread arms of reason.

I shall not stay to point out that, as has been said, Judas was the first advocate of cheap worship,' and that this story teaches us that to give our most precious offerings to God is a thing acceptable to Him. That the poor should have their due part, and yet that gifts which honour God by beautifying God's house and God's worship should not be withheld. That our Lord Himself has reproved the idea which some still hold, viz. That it is waste to offer costly offerings to God simply for the decency or the beauty of His worship.

And I shall go on to say a few words om the Bible concerning the praise of women, and then to show what a power women may have for God in the world, and what a responsibility rests on them to use it for God.

Let us see how women are set before us in the New Testament. Let us look at them in their relation to our Lord. A woman, surely of all ever born the purest and the holiest, was His Mother. When Zacharias, angel-taught, doubted, and was punished; Mary, with guileless, childlike heart, believed and was blessed. We do not read aught of man's regard of that wondrous Childhood, but Mary, His mother, kept all His sayings in her heart. Women quietly ministered to Him of their substance, when men were full of cavils, and doubts, and desire of precedence. Women were near the cross, when men had forsaken Him, and fled. Women were first at the sepulchre when men stayed desponding at home. Women believed,

when men took the good tidings for idle tales and believed them not. To women the angels spoke, and through woman the news of the Resurrection was given to men. And, in fine, the whole love which the Church is to bear towards her Saviour and her Lord is summed under the figure of the love of a woman for her beloved. Jesus is up the Bridegroom. The Church, the whole company of faithful people, is represented to us as the Bride. Thy love to me was very wonderful,' weeps David of dead Jonathan; passing the love of women.' A magnificent hyperbole! Woman's love was the highest conceivable. What must love be which overpasses that?

Nay, only of One can this be truly said; of One, who is Himself not only Man, but Humanity; in Himself containing and setting forth the ideal of perfect man and perfect woman too. Only His love can surpass the love of woman; even more patient than woman's love under slights, under the wrong of sympathy withheld, under neglect, under desertion. A mother's love is wonderful. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget; yet will I not forget thee!'

With this one exception, then, even of Him who united all humanity, man and woman too, in Himself: the love of woman is our ideal of perfect love.

How patient it is! how untiring! how, while any return is possible, it endures and loves like those plants and trees which live and grow, rooted only in a cleft of the rock! How, while man, selfish and overbearing, exacts every care and study, she can submit, in time, to be content with the crumbs of courtesy, and attention, and kindness; which, as it were, fall from the rich man's table! How, contrary to man's nature, which is hard and resentful, we often hear and read of cases in which the gentleness and sweetness of woman's character come out more sweetly under unkindness;-as we do not detect the exquisite scent of some leaves and flowers until we crush them!

Let us then gather up, in thought, the privileges and power of women. Their might is and how mighty is this!-the might of gentleness; of strong love; of hopefulness that endures even against hope; of faithfulness even unto death. They do women infinite wrong who at all take away from their peculiar strength, which is, so to speak, that of weakness. Humility and love, the chief characteristics of Christianity, things laboriously attained by man, come to them, if they will, easily and sweetly.

I have said, there is more of the child in them, than in man; more belief, more trust, more reverence, more simplicity, more ready forgiveness, more love. There is, therefore, more of the Angel, and she is frail, and a fall shatters her. Ministering Angels. In poetry-aye, and also in the rough prose of life-we find women thus aptly described.

And this is why their fall is so calamitous. Man sets woman in his thought upon a high pedestal. He, coarser and rougher, standing lower, may fall and rise again, and yet again. The oak may lose a bough and yet flourish. The lily is struck down once for all. We call the fall of a woman, 'Ruin;' because, indeed, it partakes of the character of an Angel's fall.

Thus have I spoken, only too weakly, of the praise of woman. And why?

In order that, perceiving their power, they may be heartened to use it for Jesus, as did the holy women of old time. Very costly and precious is the offering which it lies in their power to make to the Lord; and the whole House of the Church may be filled with the odour of the ointment. Some, who have no home ties, may serve Him by entire devotion, as Sisters of Mercy, as Deaconesses; call them what you will. And who can doubt that thus, as it were, breaking the box, and pouring out the whole essence of their life at His feet, they are so accepted that, even through the endless ages, what these women have done shall be told for a memorial of them?

But other some may serve Him in the common routine of life, in its daily acts, endurances, opportunities: setting before them especially what I shall call the woman side of Jesus as their example. The sweetness, the gentleness, the tenderness, the faithfulness, even to the grave, the endurance, the sympathy, the hopefulness, and the love." Specially anointed, as He, to bind up the broken-hearted, to comfort those that mourn, to lift up the weak hands and the feeble knees. How special her share even in that sweet name of God-the Comforter! How mighty for good the patient gentleness of the Wife! How almost omnipotent (so to speak) the influence of the Mother! for, as it has been said, surely she that rocks the cradle rules the world.' How misunderstandings and angers between father and son, and the like tangles which man's clumsiness could never undo, fall into order under her delicate handling! How naturally and easily she can, if she will, take her place among the peacemakers, who shall be called the children of God! How properly all the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount seem to, as it were, belong to her! How great her influence to civilise, yea, to make man religious! How his dawning love for a pure and gentle girl seems somehow a lure to draw his aspirations Godward, and that if he were before careless and hard towards the love of his Lord!

So precious is the offering which women have to offer to Jesus. Shall I just glance at the perversion and ruin of all this sweetness and beauty, and remind you how desolate and what a wilderness may Eden be in its fall?

How very wicked woman may be; how outdoing man in fiendlike resentment, hatred, cruelty, vice!

Yes, the good lost somehow intensifies evil; and, as I said, a woman's fall is, more than a man's, the utter fall of an Angel.

Let us men, who call ourselves strong, tenderly guard these flowers on whose pure petals one spot will show. And let woman guard the grace and beauty of womanhood thus. By, even from the earliest, keeping as Mary did, near Jesus. By sitting at His feet to learn; by devoting their precious things willingly to Him. By keeping near His cradle; by ministering to His needs in His Church; by watching at His tomb.

Through evil report and good report, through encouragement and neglect; by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned. By ever keeping in mind their power, and trying to use it for their Lord. Remembering the confession of the Psalmist to God,—

"Thy gentleness has made me great.'

健康

FANCY PIGEONS.

HERE are few prettier sights than a collection of faney pigeons. Not the roses themselves can show a greater

diversity of form and colour than can these charming little

pets; and what is the most remarkable thing about both is, that they are each said to be descended from a common stock. It has been proved beyond question that all the varieties of fancy pigeons are but modifications of the common Blue Rock; and if left to themselves they soon exhibit a tendency to return to the original form, with its simple plumage of black bars across the wings. This tendency on the part of an artificially cultivated variety to revert to the original form is called by naturalists atavism, a term derived from the Latin word atavus (an ancestor), and is one of the great conservative principles in nature to prevent varieties separating off into species. The only feature possessed in common by all pigeons, however else they may differ from each other, is the colour of the legs, which, unless it may be in the feather-legged sorts, is always bright red. This, by the way, is the subject of the following Arab legend:-The first time the dove returned to the ark it was with the olive-branch, but without any indication of the state of the earth itself; but on its second visit to the earth, the red appearance of its feet proved that the red mud on which it had walked was already freed from the waters; and to record the event, Noah prayed that the feet of these birds night for ever continue of that colour, which marks them to the present day.'

One cannot look through Fulton's magnificent Pigeon-book without being astonished at the wonderful capability of variation from the original stock possessed by the pigeon tribe.

are

Four sorts-the Carriers, Pouters, Tumblers, and Barbsesteemed as high-class' birds. An example of the last is seen in the centre of the lower group in our picture. The Barbs, or Barbary Pigeons, came to us, as their name implies, from North-western Africa, and have long been kept as ornamental birds in this country. Shakespeare mentions them in As You Like It, where Rosalind says to Orlando, I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen.' The distinguishing marks of this variety are a thick flesh-coloured beak, broad forehead, pearly eye, and those strange ornaments which so irresistibly suggest to the unlearned the idea of dreadfully inflamed eyelids, but which, by the name of eye-wattles, are dear to the heart of the fancier.

The pair of birds at the top of the picture, with their heads muffled up in what look like enormous boas, are Jacobins, which, like the Capuchins, owe their name to their monk-like hood. Old John Moore, the contemporary with Pope and the earliest authentic writer upon fancy pigeons, describes the bird thus:-The Jacobine, or, as it is vulgarly called for shortness, the Jack, is, if true, the smallest of all pigeons, and the smaller still the better. It has a range of feathers