infallible authority; it is then to the New Testament we must look, and hold ourselves and others to that ordeal.*

From this careful and extended examination we are confirmed in the opinion that the statement of the Cambridge Platform is in substantial harmony with the New Testament. "This ordination we account but the solemn putting a man into his place and office in the church, whereunto he had right before by election; being like the installing of a magistrate in the Commonwealth." "If the people may elect officers, which is the greater, and wherein the substance of the office doth consist, they may much more (occasion and need so requiring) impose hands in ordination, which is less, and but the accomplishment of the other."

The inauguration of U. S. Grant did not make him President of the United States. It was not the parade, magnificent and imposing as it was-it was not the solemn oath adminis tered by the Chief Justice; it was simply and alone by the election of the people; that made him President. The inaugural services were appropriate and designated the time when official responsibilities commenced. It should never, however, be forgotten that election and ordination are parts of one transaction; together they make up the appointment of an officebearer. Much misconception has arisen from the separation of them into two distinct transactions; both are often comprehended in one word, as nadioτnμ, to appoint, to constitute.

I conclude this article with an extract from the treatise of Professor Samuel Davidson, LL.D., of England, on "The Eccle

*The Rev. A. D. Tait, Edinburgh, in a letter to the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, makes this emphatic statement: "It must never be forgotten that no virtue is derived from the person laying on his hands, by him on whom they are laid. No grace is conferred, no gift bestowed, no qualification communicated. The mind of him who is ordained is in the same condition as before, as far as the imposition of hands is concerned. He has the same ministerial functions and equal executive powers before as after it. In this manner we dissociate from the practice all ideas which priestcraft or superstition has attached to ordination. We divest it of the extrinsic and the accessory, now so intimately united with its very nature as to form an essential element in the opinion of the unreflecting. By those who are infected with the prevalent mysticism, we may be accused of making it a bare unmeaning ceremony, a mere empty form, a doctrine which leads, as an estimable writer has said, 'by a necessary and very obvious and very brief process to absolute infidelity.'"

"There is

siastical Polity of the New Testament Unfolded." a sensuous pietism which clings to forms more than verities, to outward and visible, rather than the inward and abstract. The former indeed should not be overlooked; but it is inexpedient to surround them with an air and aspect of importance, as if they were of supreme consequence. The ceremony in question is not an unnecessary one. It is symbolical and significant. Usage has given it a meaning. It indicates designation to a particular office or enterprise. It is a sign by which the object of the people's choice is marked out, and specially commended to the grace of Him by whom he has been called. In this manner he is inaugurated; the outward act being employed to affect the mind through the medium of the senses.' "Imposi tion of hands is not essential as a mode of induction to the office of elder or deacon, since all that is properly meant by ordination is not necessary to give validity to office." Nothing appears more clear than that the mystery of modern ordination was once unknown to the apostolic age.'

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ARTICLE IV.-HOW AMERICAN WOMEN ARE HELPING THEIR SISTERS.*

THE work which is being done for women at the present time gives illustration of the fact constantly recurring in human affairs, that the most substantial and far reaching social movements are wrought out quietly, and come slowly toward maturity. For the best social circles, in our country, are pervaded by a movement for woman's welfare, so wide-spread and even now so fruitful, as to promise results very far beyond any contemplated by those loud-mouthed claimants of the 'rights" of the sex to whom the general public has listened so frequently.

It is clear enough, indeed, that the degradation of woman, in the world, has not as yet been very widely or thoroughly understood. A rapid glance may show this, and give some fair gauge of the efforts which are now being made to remedy it. We may remember, then, first, that the women of the Indian Empire alone are a fourteenth part of the human race. Throughout this Empire, women on the approach of childbirth have an anguish which is quite unknown to mothers in Christian lands-the fear that their child may be a daughter. No joy greets the coming of such a child into an Indian home. The daughter is an intruder, without claim upon maternal affection. Caste distinction may even require that she be put to death. If she is not, she must be married in seven or eight years; but in high caste particularly, suitable marriages are not easily effected, hence the only way of escape often is to kill a girl as soon as she is born. A skillful pressure on the neck, a small pill of opium, would be often resorted to if governmental vigilance were not feared, but in most cases the desired end can be attained by other means. Intended lack of care, of one kind or another, will easily accomplish what is sought for. But suppose the girl to live, and at seven or eight years of age

The principal sources of information for this Article have been the publications of the Societies named within it.

to be married to a boy, perhaps a year or two older than herself; she enters his house, in a year or two more, to live in a labyrinth of dark passages, small damp apartments and dirty enclosures, from out which many wives never pass, but are confined to the same rooms, sometimes for forty years or more, without the sight of sun or moon, or outward face of nature. "When I teach in one house," says Miss Brittan, for many years a missionary in India, "I sit upstairs in a little verandah, which is walled all around. Into the verandah a strongly barred window opens, behind which sit the women who are being taught, passing their books and work through the bars. I always think of our Saviour's words, when visiting them, 'I was in prison, and ye came unto me.'" "A woman, whose eyes filled with tears when she saw a flower which was brought her to copy in wool, said: 'Ah, this reminds me of the time when I was a child, for there were others like this in my father's garden, and I have not seen it for so long.' Then, pointing a few yards before her to a high wall covered with dirt and moss, she added, 'That is the only prospect I have had for years.' "Yesterday, I entered a house which was exactly like those I had read of, before I came to India. The babu, or gentleman of the house, had a suite of rooms furnished ele gantly, rich carpets, sofas, chairs, beautiful paintings and statuary, with a centre-table covered with vases and curiosities. It really was refreshing to see such beauty and elegance. But alas! I was shown into the woman's apartments and the tears would come to my eyes, notwithstanding my efforts to restrain them. Ah! how sad! The babu spoke English to me and was a gentleman; his wife sat on a dirty mat, which was thrown on a damp stone floor, her hair uncombed, her one article of clothing, a sauree, wretchedly dirty, and the appearance of everything in the bare, miserable little room she lived in was that of lowest heathenism. As I saw no chair, I sat down on the mat beside the woman, until a servant brought me one, which he said the babu had sent me."

In the house which she has entered, a new bride is constantly watched by mother-in-law and aunts. She has little opportunity of solitude with her husband; within a few years she may be obliged to share her rights with some hated rival;

at best her life is a continual struggle. Under such surroundings children grow up to hate each other-strife and quarreling among them is the rule of the day; in old age, if the mother come to that, her own ungoverned passion has done its utmost upon her, and has usually effaced from both heart and countenance everything that is lovely. The husband, if he survive her, is not slow to manifest the contempt he had come to feel for her, the satisfaction he has in being released from such a companion. Ask him, then, why he neglects to shave his beard, and he may answer, "Will I shave, when I have lost an old shoe?"

And yet, however bad the condition of the Hindu wife, that of the Hindu widow is worse. Condemned to a perpetual widowhood, she is treated as a slave, is surrounded with the grossest immorality, and in multitudes of cases is murdered by poison. Indeed, of woman generally, the law of Menu declares that she has no business with the texts of the Vedas, the writings of her religion. No sacrifice or religious rite is permitted to her apart from her husband, and Menu classes her with the stupid, the dumb, the blind, and the deaf. The whole existence of woman, in this great empire, is utterly insignificant and debased. In a group of forty, whom Miss Brittan was instructing, not one even knew she had a soul.

So in China, with one hundred and fifty millions of women, the position of the sex is so pitiable that their most earnest prayer through life is, that they may be men in the next state of their existence. In many families, girls have no individual names, but are called Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4. If married, they are simply Mr. So-and-So's wife; if they have sons, they are such and such a boy's mother. In a single Chinese city four thousand female infants are yearly murdered by their parents, according to the statistics of resident missionaries, notwithstanding the contrary averments of Mr. Medhurst in his recent volume, The Foreigner in Far Cathay. For the most part the women go very little out of their filthy and comfortless houses; they herd in these with pigs and other animals; myriads of them are laboring for less than two cents per diem, and opium smoking has widely deadened their mental and moral powers.

All through the Turkish Empire, moreover, girls are never