In conclusion, think of God’s care for man, in providing woman as a blessing.  There is no necessity for man’s being alone.  Some one waits to bless or has blessed him.  Let us make more of our wives and sisters than ever before.  Let us build them up in love and in those generous qualities which fit woman for her high destiny in this fallen world.

2.  Think, woman, of your noble mission.  You are to be a help to man.  You are to help him morally and spiritually.  For this God created you.  For this he preserves you.  “You are queens and bondmaids too, as royal when you serve as when you rule.”  Man must respect you, for when man loses his respect for woman he is lost.  He goes down, down to irremediable ruin.  With woman as God designed her, man gets much of Eden back, for in Christ she is reconciled to God.  It is for man and woman to get back Eden.  Christ came to be our common helper.  He is woman’s Saviour as well as man’s, and offers to all that help which changes life’s desert into a garden, and life’s gloom into the brilliancy of an eternal day.

  “Hail, woman!  Hail, thou faithful wife and mother,
    The latest, choicest part of heaven’s great plan. 
  None fills thy peerless place at home, no other
    Helpmeet is found for laboring, suffering man. 
  Hail, thou home circle, where, at day’s decline,
  Her moulding power, her radiant virtues shine! 
  Not in the church to rule or teach, her place;
    Not in the mart of trade, or senate halls;
  Not the wild, festive scene is hers to grace;
  Not Fashion’s altar her its victim calls;
  Not here her field of triumph; but alone
  She moves the queen of her own quiet home.”

  REV.  MARK TRAFTON.

WOMAN A HELPMEET.

The purpose of God in the creation of woman was to provide man with a helpmeet.  The language is unmistakable.  “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.  I will make for him a helper suited to him.”  Woman was made to be man’s helpmeet in Eden; that purpose survives the fall.  For right or wrong, for good or ill, her influence is felt.  She lifts man up or drags him down.  Scoff at it, oppose it, cast opprobrium upon this ancient utterance, the fact remains, woman is made for man.  Helpmeet she was, helpmeet she must be, or leave her work undone, and suffer the blight that results from the lack of love.  God placed man in the garden to keep it, and he placed woman there to fill the bower with love, and his home with joy.

The coming of Eve to Adam is a beautiful story.  He had been taught to realize his need of her.  It was a part of his constitution.  The same is true now wherever woman is appreciated.  The felt want is the recognition of the fact.  A wife chosen by one’s parents, not by himself, is devoid of all of those special characteristics which distinguish her where processes of love begin, go on, deepen and tighten, until the bond is woven and the union formed.