V. Again, I see in my subject an illustration of the beauty of female industry.

Behold Ruth toiling in the harvest-field under the hot sun, or at noon taking plain bread with the reapers, or eating the parched corn which Boaz handed to her.  The customs of society, of course, have changed, and without the hardships and exposure to which Ruth was subjected, every intelligent woman will find something to do.

I know there is a sickly sentimentality on this subject.  In some families there are persons of no practical service to the household or community; and though there are so many woes all around about them in the world, they spend their time languishing over a new pattern, or bursting into tears at midnight over the story of some lover who shot himself!  They would not deign to look at Ruth carrying back the barley on her way home to her mother-in-law, Naomi.  All this fastidiousness may seem to do very well while they are under the shelter of their father’s house; but when the sharp winter of misfortune comes, what of these butterflies?  Persons under indulgent parentage may get upon themselves habits of indolence; but when they come out into practical life their soul will recoil with disgust and chagrin.  They will feel in their hearts what the poet so severely satirized when he said: 

    “Folks are so awkward, things so impolite,
    They’re elegantly pained from morning until night.”

Through that gate of indolence how many men and women have marched, useless on earth, to a destroyed eternity!  Spinola said to Sir Horace Vere:  “Of what did your brother die?” “Of having nothing to do,” was the answer.  “Ah!” said Spinola, “that’s enough to kill any general of us.”  Oh! can it be possible in this world, where there is so much suffering to be alleviated, so much darkness to be enlightened, and so many burdens to be carried, that there is any person who cannot find anything to do?

Madame de Stael did a world of work in her time; and one day, while she was seated amid instruments of music, all of which she had mastered, and amid manuscript books which she had written, some one said to her:  “How do you find time to attend to all these things?” “Oh,” she replied, “these are not the things I am proud of.  My chief boast is in the fact that I have seventeen trades, by any one of which I could make a livelihood if necessary.”  And if in secular spheres there is so much to be done, in spiritual work how vast the field!  How many dying all around about us without one word of comfort!  We want more Abigails, more Hannahs, more Rebeccas, more Marys, more Deborahs consecrated—­body, mind, soul—­to the Lord who bought them.

VI.  Once more I learn from my subject the value of gleaning.