The Wedding Ring.

 

 

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

 

    "Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or

    among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the

    uncircumcised Philistines?"--JUDGES 14:3.

 

 

Samson, the giant, is here asking consent of his father and mother to

marriage with one whom they thought unfit for him. He was wise in

asking their counsel, but not wise in rejecting it. Captivated with

her looks, the big son wanted to marry a daughter of one of the

hostile families, a deceitful, hypocritical, whining, and saturnine

creature, who afterward made for him a world of trouble till she quit

him forever. In my text his parents forbade the banns, practically

saying: "When there are so many honest and beautiful maidens of your

own country, are you so hard put to for a lifetime partner that you

propose conjugality with this foreign flirt? Is there such a dearth of

lilies in our Israelitish gardens that you must wear on your heart a

Philistine thistle? Do you take a crabapple because there are no

pomegranates? Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy

brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of

the uncircumcised Philistines?"

 

 

BEAUTIFUL JEWESSES.

 

Excuseless was he for such a choice in a land and amid a race

celebrated for female loveliness and moral worth, a land and a race of

which self-denying Abigail, and heroic Deborah, and dazzling Miriam,

and pious Esther, and glorious Ruth, and Mary, who hugged to her heart

the blessed Lord, were only magnificent specimens. The midnight folded

in their hair, the lakes of liquid beauty in their eye, the

gracefulness of spring morning in their posture and gait, were only

typical of the greater brilliance and glory of their soul. Likewise

excuseless is any man in our time who makes lifelong alliance with any

one who, because of her disposition, or heredity, or habits, or

intellectual vanity, or _moral twistification_, may be said to be of

the Philistines.

 

 

MODERN FEMALE LOVELINESS.

 

The world never owned such opulence of womanly character or such

splendor of womanly manners or multitudinous instances of wifely,

motherly, daughterly, sisterly devotion, as it owns to-day. I have

not words to express my admiration for good womanhood. Woman is not

only man's equal, but in affectional and religious nature, which is

the best part of us, she is seventy-five per cent his superior. Yea,

during the last twenty years, through the increased opportunity opened

for female education, the women of the country are better educated

than the majority of men; and if they continue to advance in mentality

at the present ratio, before long the majority of men will have

difficulty in finding in the opposite sex enough ignorance to make

appropriate consort. If I am under a delusion as to the abundance of