her religion. Most ancient religions consisted of mere ceremonial, as we know from the full records of ancient Greece and Rome, and had no connection with moral conduct-if you cared to learn about that you must leave Religion and go to Philosophy —but Phenicia alone of all nations appealed to the worst lusts of human nature and organised them into a system and spread them wherever her ships touched shore. The degradation was unspeakable. The Hittites, Jebusites, Hivites and others were all tribes from Phenicia, and through the whole course of the Old Testament we have hints and horrible allusions to the wickedness of their groves and idols. Baal and Ashtaroth, Moloch and Dagon reigned supreme, but we did not realise how utterly immoral was their life until about thirty years ago, when their carvings and pictures were discovered at Gnossos. For the first time in the history of the world women figure largely in their art, and their whole story, rows and rows of them, is licentiousness. There is one single figure in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, doubtless not the worst, and yet one cannot look at it. Here in Phenicia is real vice, such as the Creator of all nations will not endure. The rotten apple must be cut out, lest it should infect all the rest.

This was effected in many stages, but it was done perfectly. First, we have the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. God had no servants through whom to work, so he worked direct. by sending a terrible volcanic cataclysm, and the Cities of the Plain lie buried for ever under the bitter waters of the Dead Sea. Too bad to be looked at, the only monument is the glare of burning Sodom, which gleams through our Bible from the first book to the last.

Next, our God brought against them the hardy, desert-trained bands of Israel under Joshua's leadership, and on the very hills. where the worst religion in the world was practised, He established the purest and best: He, the only Deity who cared for goodness and purity in His worshippers, took the land of sin and made it "The Holy Land."

But the capital, Tyre, still flourished and (585 B.C.) the heathen king, Nebuchadnezzar, came against it and then blow after blow came on it, like a hammer, from Persia and from others, until (about 332 B.C.) Alexander the Great burned all the shipping, massacred all the male inhabitants, and Tyre and Sidon were scraped like the top of a rock." Read Ezekiel xxvii and xxviii, one of the finest historical documents ever penned, and see

how the prophet bewails the lost glories and yet justifies God in the destruction and desolation He deals out to vice. Even so, Phenicia was not quite done with, for the colony, Carthage, was more splendid than Tyre. You all know the story of Cato and his reiterated Carthago delenda est," and how the austere and lordly Roman was brought against them and finally wiped them out. That is the verdict of God on such evil. It took 1500 years to effect, but it was done at last. Turn to Egypt. Among the thousands of pictures of social life, you find order and decency. You may see here and there gangs of slaves working under the cruel knout, but no representation of moral evil; therefore Egypt has been punished, but not destroyed.

To Greece we owe almost every good thing we possess, except religion. Israel alone was entrusted with the gem of the ring, the priceless treasure of the knowledge of God, but Athens gave us philosophy, poetry, art, civic free lom, and all the treasures of cultivation (except Science) which make life sweet to us. But, alas, Athens was not good in household relations, and sometimes we wish that we did not know so much about her. On the one hand we have detailed and most beautiful characters given us, such as Antigone and Electra, the very incarnations for all time of fidelity and loyalty, showing at any rate what the ideal was for a woman. It is always the same story of courage in the cause of the right and endurance undismayed by death. But on the other hand the domestic life was bad. I am afraid that the total verdict of the nobler men would be that of Hippolytus in the Phædra, where he says that women are the authors of all the real evils of life, all the biting, degrading evils, and that he wished the gods would propagate the race on some other plan; how nice it would be, he says, if a man might go to their temples and beg for a little son to teach and to train and to bear his name when he was dead! To look back over such a history is, alas, a sight to make us women ashamed. Rome we know from its very foundation, the one great virile nation of the world, having the force, the wisdom and the justice of an experienced man. Remarkably austere and pure to begin with, a rod in the hand of God to chastise the loose and selfindulgent lands, and then corrupted by nearly a thousand years of unmitigated success, and sinking to a dissolution so horrible that it filled the whole civilised world with its decay, and had to be swept off the earth by the hordes of the comparatively clean and strong barbarians.

Lastly, we have the history of Israel touching nation after nation in turn, from burning Sodom, through Egypt, Assyria, Persia, right down to the full power of Rome, as seen in the Acts of the Apostles. Under the Great Theocracy women fared infinitely better than they did anywhere else in the world. In all the lands we have passed in review, she was exploited by pitiless man, either as temporary plaything or permanent slave, both being conditions where advance is impossible; in Israel alone she was honoured. All the nation in all its functions was to be holy unto the Lord, and the maiden of the chosen people, the faithful wife, the exultant mother, was held in high respect all through their story. The time had not yet come for anything but reserve and quiet, but that is nccessary while the beautiful fruit is maturing. The glimpses of evil and frivolity we have recorded here and there seem to be entirely due to contact with the tribes of Phenicia. Read Isaiah iii, 16-26, and see the fashions of the day every detail can, I believe, be identified from the pictures at Gnossos.

There is one most charming glimpse of the ordinary social life of the Old Testament, and that, curiously enough, is not in the Old Testament, but in the New. St. Luke has the spirit of the true historian, and he opens his marvellous narrative with scenes of Israel's normal and quiet life. We used to think that the gap after Malachi was spiritually empty, but now we know it was very full. Idolatry at last was banished, cured by the Captivity; the Synagogue, established by Ezra, taught the mass of the people, the scribes multiplied copies of the Law and the Prophets, and the result is seen in the Psalter, the very crown and blossom of Israel's inner life, of which a large proportion was written at this time. Old as David or even Moses, new as the personal experience of men of that day, men we shall never know, all are edited together in the splendid hymn-book of Israel, the prayer-book and praise-book of the world.

A conquered State, a decadent Church, and yet how beautiful is the picture given! We are accustomed to think of Pharisaism as a malign influence, cramping and tyrannical as Rome before the Reformation, but in both cases the written Creed remained, and obscure and devout souls could live out their lives in communion with God and in great beauty of humility. St. Luke introduces us to six people living thus-Zacharias and Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary, Simeon and Anna, and all have the same characteristics, just, devout, righteous, blameless, good; of

the six, three are women, and these are fully as prominent as the men. Now of this retired little company, four added new Psalms to our Psalter, and again two of these are written by women -Elizabeth comes first and is "filled with the Holv Ghost." Her hymn is not suitable for public singing, but Mary's glorious Magnificat, Zachariah's beautiful Benedictus, and Simeon's Nunc Dimittis, are in unforgotten use among us. Such a glimpse into the hidden life of Israel speaks volumes to us, for doubtless there were many more like these.

At last the Sun arose, radiant, glorious, the Sun of righteousness with healing in His Wings, healing every sore of the world, and, therefore, among them the great, radical, far-reaching one of the position of women.

I am not going into the details of our Lord's life with regard to His remarkable relation to women. You can hear in sermons about the ambitious mother and the weeping Magdalene, the active Martha and the Mystic Mary, and how women never said a single unkind thing to or about our Saviour, as the men so cruelly did, but were faithful to Him throughout-" last at the cross and earliest at the grave." These things are often told and I leave them, save to point out two very short incidents. When men are dying they make their will and leave their library or any treasure they possess by name to the person who will value it most. Our Lord Jesus had only one precious thing to leave behind Him, and that was His mother. In the midst of the stupendous task of bearing the sin of the world, a task that produced the storm of pain we see in Gethsemane and the prolonged agony of Calvary, He turns aside for a single minute to leave His one treasure to the man who would most love and cherish her. That is an example of the perfection of His private relation; now for the public relation. Once, pointing to the crowd of disciples, the material out of which His Church was to be made, He said, "The same is my brother, and my sister, and my mother.' The idea of the brethren is often repeated, but here, added to that, we have the pure, friendly, brotherly affection for the girl and the sweet deference to the older woman; these, He said, are to be constant elements in His Church. son may know a hundred times more than his mother—that is not the point; it is faithful, self-denying love that is to be thus honoured. When we think of what Christ has done for us as women, it seems a shame that every woman who has heard the Gospel story should not be His devoted follower! To my mind,

The

the man who is a Christian is the more of a hero. He has difficulties that do not suggest themselves to us, both in body and mind. He may weigh the claims of Christ to be the Light of the whole World, he may find His rule of purity almost impossibly strict, but the woman has another weight in the scale and should listen to His elevating and consoling words, and kneel and kiss His feet. I think on the whole we do.

Let us now leave the sermons and endeavour to understand the great principles laid down for all time for our guidance. The aim of God is our perfection, but the progress is necessarily slow, for, once having created us with a Free-will, He will not force its obedience, but waits until it chooses to follow His leading. Even Omnipotence can only persuade. Once created free, we are free to commit spiritual suicide and to reject the offers of eternal life. This being granted, it is evident that we must not come down on such a living will like a hammer, not appeal to the bare bedrock of authority, but must have principles given us, which, illuminated by the Spirit of God, will by degrees enlighten our minds and capture our wills for good. Even the terrific splendour of Sinai was only for immaturity, only of use in the childhood of the world, and the prophets, and still more urgently the Gospel, restate the Law of God in terms of love and entreaty.

The civilised ancient world (for we do not here count the savages) was ruled by three great fundamental errors: First, that one nation was inherently better than another. Look at the proud isolation of the Jew in matters of religion, remember the contempt of the Athenian for the whole world of "barbarians," think of the quiet majesty of being able to say "Civis Romanus sum." Outside races like these there was no one worth considering.

Secondly, That one social rank was inherently better than another. The world was quite naturally divided into two : masters born to rule and slaves born to obey; these were people with no rights, no choice, no personal existence, but who are merely extra hands and feet to their rulers.

Thirdly, that one sex was inherently better than the other, that women were so obviously inferior in force of muscle and skill of brain, that anyone could see they existed solely for the comfort of men and the propagation of the race. Cared for, of course, like cattle, even looked on with some compassion, but not as possessing genuine independent wills to win and