n the amount of blame due to the father is not a matter which
so nearly concerns us as to learn the lesson of true womanhood taught us
by the daughter. Hers was no blind obedience; her reason for sacrificing
herself gives us the true position of a woman as a helpmeet, and as a
helpmeet in the performance of public duty. "If thou hast opened thy mouth
unto the Lord"--her father must do his duty at all costs, and she will
help him to do it, even at the cost of her own life. The place of every
woman is to make duty possible and imperative for those about her--for
brother, sister, husband, friend. How many women keep their menkind back
from public duty by their fretfulness about the inconveniences entailed on
themselves? A clergyman or doctor has to face fatigue or infection,--a
citizen wishes to vote according to his conscience and against his
interest: how often a woman--wife, sister, or mother--puts expediency
before him, persuades him that "'second best' will do," instead of aiming
at "one equal temper of heroic hearts."

Besides the love of her country and the sense of public duty, which shine
out in Jephthah's daughter, notice the plain lesson of simple obedience,
"That she subdued her to her Father's will."

The ideal of obedience is less thought of now than in the "Ages of
Faith,"--perhaps, in one way, this is only a right development; but,
though obedience is a "young" stage of moral growth, it is a necessary
one,--mankind went through it, and each man or woman worth the name must
go through it even as our Lord Himself did. I recognize the strength, the
North-country virtue of "grit" in such independence and sturdiness as that
of the Yorkes in "Shirley," but the willing and reasonable obedience of a
strong nature seems to me still higher--it is a nobler attitude of mind to
feel, "I don't care whether I get my own way in this or that, or am my own
master; I want to be in touch with the larger, higher life around me,"
that larger life of moral growth into which only a humble, teachable
nature can enter. The larger, stronger nature--the big dog--yields gladly
to its master; the small terrier nature loves to find an opportunity to
yap and snarl. There is nothing fine about the unreasoning instinct to
resent an order--it is rather the sign of a small nature. To take the
commonest instances, when you are told to go to bed, or to mend your
dress, or to put on a wrap, or to tidy your room, are you in any way a
finer nature