y devouerent en heroines, depuis l'annonciation
du Sauveur jusqu'a sa mort; en effet, elles furent les premieres
aux pieds de sa croix, les premieres a son sepulcre. Presentant
avec leur tact si prompt et si fin, tout ce que cette cause leur
deferait d'elevation morale et d'avantages sociaux, elles s'y
attacherent avec un interet toujours croissant. Depuis les
saintes femmes de l'evangile et la marchande de pourpre de
Thyatire jusqu'a l'imperatrice Helene, elles furent les
protectrices les plus zelees des idees Chretiennes. Leur zele ne
fut point sans sacrifices, mais avec empressement elles
renoncerent a leurs gouts les plus chers, a la parure et aux
elegances du luxe, pour rivaliser avec les hommes les plus sages
de la societe Chretienne. Quelques rares exceptions ne se font
remarquer que pour relever tant de merite."--Matter, _Hist. du
Christianime_, Vol. I.

"The tendency of this creed," to use the words of our author, "is
to direct the aim and purposes of mankind to whatever can exalt
human nature and improve human happiness. It represents us as
gardeners in a vineyard, or servants entrusted with a variety of
means, who are not 'to keep their talent in a napkin,' but to
exert their skill and ingenuity to employ it to the best
advantage. The moral principles themselves are fixed and
unchangeable; but their application to the circumstances by which
we are surrounded, must depend very much on the degree in which
reason has been exercised. By no imaginable instruction could the
mind be so tutored, as to see through all the errors and
prejudices of its times at once, but the principles possess in
themselves a power of progression. The generosity of one time
will be but justice in another; the temperance that brings
respect and distinction in one age, will be but decorum in one
more civilized, yet the principles are at all times the same."

It is difficult to read without a smile some of the passages in which the
dress and manners of the first ages are described by the Fathers of the
Church; the fair hair, (our classical readers will recollect the

"Nigrum flavo crinem abscondente galero"

of the Roman satirist,) which the daughters of the South borrowed from
their Celtic and German neighbours, seems especially to have excited their
indignation. Tertullian, in his treatise "De Cultu Foeminarum,"