than what we think, for it is our love rather than our thought that impels us to act, to put forth and make objective the true self. We are judged by our works, but our works are the offspring of our love. Hence love is the test of the kind of being we are; it is the proof that we are the disciples of Him who is God's love made a sufferer and a sacrifice.
If love be the mark of discipleship, how shall woman be excluded? If sacrifice be the law of love, its way and means, how shall she who from the beginning has been the bearer of the world's burden of sorrow be unequal to the ordeal? If love be patient, kind, gentle, lowly-minded; if it bear all things, hope all things, believe all things, endure all things; if it run, if it fly, if it is glad, if it is free, where shall it find a home if not in woman's heart? If charity is the greatest of all things, and chastity its twin sister, where may the double crown be so fitly placed as on woman's brow? If the charity of Christ constraineth us, who shall so willingly yield to the heavenly compulsion as woman?
In truth, the Saviour is associated with woman as no man before or since has ever been associated with her. Through Him the Virgin Mother holding the Divine Child in her arms is the most hallowed object on earth. The woman taken in adultery, and that other whose sin was known to all the city, draw near to Him, and at once we breathe an air as pure as thoughts that rise in immaculate hearts. He never appears more beautiful and godlike than when mothers crowd around Him, kneeling for blessings on their children. How tender and holy are His relations with the sisters of Bethany! Mary Magdalen is the type of that innumerable multitude of victims whom man, in his brutal passion, having outraged and degraded, spurns and casts forth into hopeless misery. And Jesus speaks but a word to her and she is made pure and forever sacred to all noble and generous souls.
In His religion nothing great shall be accomplished unless woman put her hand to the work. To her the angel is sent to announce His coming. She is with Him at the manger, with Him in His flight and exile, with Him in all the years of His hidden life, with Him at the marriage feast, with Him when He hangs on the
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