And though Satan has taken this new thought and perverted it, as he has perverted all the rest, and though he has employed the Church of Rome, by organizing women into orders and sisterhoods of charity, so that woman may again be enslaved and destroyed; though the story of her confinement in nunneries and establishments little better in form than prisons, and far more cruel in character, has been written, let us not be discouraged, but believing that Christ’s plan is best, let us learn what his will is, and then let us do it in the fear of God and in the love of truth, assured that his ways are higher and better and grander than ours, and that it is safe to trust God even where we cannot trace him, remembering that “he doeth great things, past finding out; yea, and wonders without number.”

In considering Woman’s Work and Woman’s Mission, we discover that they go hand in hand, and faith is the bond which unites them.  Separate woman’s work from her mission, and you divorce it from that which makes it honorable and praiseworthy.  It is the spirit of faith, and love, and hope, and charity, which pervades the life of the true woman, that is her glory and her praise.  The difference between woman as a drudge and woman as a helpmeet, describes the relation existing between her work and her mission.  Work separated from this path of faith, love, and charity, becomes unholy to the world and unbearable to her.  The holiest of all work for a mother is to care for her child.  That child, so helpless now, is to reward her by acts of love and deeds of valor.  Take away from woman her faith, let her feel that her work is a degradation, and there is nothing more beautiful in her attentions to a child than there would be in her attentions to a pig.

When in the country the children and their parents were floating in a little boat on a river’s surface, they admired the lilies with their white leaves spread out on the wave.  After they had looked upon the flower, I asked them to observe the roots, and see in what they were embedded.  They replied, “The roots are in the mud.”  That lily illustrates truthfully the spiritual character of woman’s work.  Though her life may be passed in drudgery, yet the flower of her life is seen in the neatness, beauty, and comfort of the home, and her joy is derived from the commendation received by her diligence and toil.  Truly has the poet told, in this homely way, how

LOVE LIGHTENS LABOR.

  A good wife rose from her bed one morn,
    And thought, with a nervous dread,
  Of the piles of clothes to be washed, and more
    Than a dozen mouths to be fed. 
  There were meals to be got for the men in the field,
    And the children to fix away
  To school, and the milk to be skimmed and churned;
    And all to be done that day.

  It had rained in the night, and all the wood
    Was wet as it could be,
  And there were pudding and pies to bake,
    And a loaf of cake for tea. 
  The day was hot, and her aching head
    Throbbed wearily as she said—­
  “If maidens but knew what good wives know,
    They would, be in no hurry to wed.”