d yet remain
single--that the holy duties of the wife and the mother are not the only
duties. How many homes would be comparatively unblessed but for the
presence of a dutiful daughter or a loving sister! How largely our own
age is indebted to women as teachers; women, who, like the prophetess of
Israel, while assisting their brothers to proclaim the oracles of God,
devote themselves to the instruction of their own sex, and bless men by
instructing women!

[Illustration]

DEBORAH--THE INFLUENCE OF WOMAN.

The book of Judges gives a concise view of the people of Israel for a
period of four hundred years, extending from the death of Joshua to the
birth of Samuel.

It is peculiarly interesting as showing how God deals with the nations
of the earth in visiting national sins with national punishments. It has
ever been the painful office of the historian to record the crimes and
misfortunes of mankind, and to present the outbreaks of society rather
than to note its gradual advance and improvement, or to dwell upon the
periods of peaceful prosperity. Like the records of a court of justice,
it presents the criminals and the offences and those implicated, while
the thousands of peaceful citizens are never brought to view. The flow
of human life is, like that of a mighty river, unmarked during its mild
course; but when it bursts its bounds and overflows its channel and
spreads a wide destruction, it is watched with interest and its
desolating ravages are all recorded.

Of the many women who have attained honour and celebrity amidst the
intrigues of courts and cabinets and the revolutions of empires, few
have retained the purity and the peculiar virtues of their sex. Deborah
seems to have united the sagacity and courage of man to the modest
virtues of woman. She appears before us affecting no pomp, assuming no
state. The wife of Lapidoth--one known only as the husband of Deborah,
but thus known never to be forgotten--she abode with her husband in
their own dwelling, under that palm-tree distinguished, when Samuel
wrote this book, as "the palm of Deborah," between Ramah, where Rachel
died, and Bethel, where Jacob worshipped. "And all the children of
Israel came up to her there for judgment."

The people of Israel had departed from God and from the laws of Moses,
and for twenty years they had been mightily oppressed by Jabin. During
this long period no priest called the people to repentance, no prophet
was commission