rules.  Brought together from different paths, unlike, it may be, in natural temperament, perhaps differing in opinion, the mother wishing to retain her wonted control over her son, the wife feeling hers the superior claim, there springs up a contest which is the fruitful source of unhappiness, and which mars many an otherwise fine character.  Before us in memory’s glass as we write, sits one of a most fair and beautiful countenance, but over which hang dark clouds of care, and from the eyes drop slowly bitter tears.  She is what all around her would call a happy wife and mother.  Fortune smiles upon her, and the blessing of God abides by the hearth-stone.  Her husband is a professing Christian, as is also his yet youthful-looking mother and the wife herself.  Beautiful children gambol around her, and look wonderingly in her face as they see those tears.  What is the secret of her unhappiness?  She deems hers a very hard lot, and yet if we rightly judge, could her sorrow be resolved to its elements, it would be found that the turmoil of her spirit is occasioned solely by the fact that she finds it hard to maintain her fancied rights, her desired superiority over her husband and servants, because of the presence of her calm, firm, dignified mother-in-law, whose very lips seem chiseled to indicate that they speak only to be obeyed.  What would be the result if the tender, considerate love of Naomi and the yielding spirit of Ruth were introduced to the bosom of each?

We cannot leave this record of Holy Writ without commenting also on the remarkable state of society which existed in Bethlehem in those far distant days.  When Naomi returned after an absence of ten years—­an absence which to many might have seemed very culpable—­with what enthusiastic greetings was she received.  “The whole city was moved.”  It made no difference that she “went out full but had returned empty;” nor did they stop to consider that “the Lord had testified against her.”  The truest sympathy was manifested for her and for the stranger who had loved her and clung to her.  In her sorrow they clustered around to comfort her, and when the bright reverse gave her again an honored name and “a restorer of her life” in her young grandson, they were eager to testify their joy.  The apostolic injunction, “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep,” seems to have been strictly obeyed in Bethlehem.  The distinctions of society, although as marked apparently as in our own time, seem not to have caused either unhappiness nor the slightest approach to unkind or unchristian feeling.  Witness the greeting between Boaz and the reapers on his harvest field.  “And behold Boaz came from Bethlehem and said unto the reapers, The Lord be with you.  And they answered him, The Lord bless thee.”  Boaz was “a mighty man of wealth;” he had his hired workmen around him, and in the same field was found the poor “Moabitish damsel,” gleaning here and there the scattered ears, her only dependence.