The woman, whom he admitted had never in any way offended him, died two days afterwards from the effects of his treatment.

In many places, the women of the Chinese Empire are so miserable, that their sufferings in this life have suggested to them the hope of a future one, and, for want of a knowledge of Christianity, they have accepted the extravagance of Metempsychosis.

They have formed a sect called the "Abstinents," by obedience to whose rules they trust to secure the migration of their souls into another body, when they hope to have the happiness to return to life as men.

This hope supports them under their daily mortifications, and enables them to endure the troubles and hardships they have to suffer from the other sex, promising themselves, doubtless, ample compensation, should their husbands be transformed into women.

There is something truly sorrowful and pathetic in seeing the whole nature of woman thus perverted by a long continuance of ill-treatment, exaction, and tyranny of every kind. A nation composed of three hundred millions of people, about half of whom must be women, can never take a high rank amongst civilized nations whilst that half are persistently kept in a state of degradation.

The results of such a system are, if possible, more painfully evident in the men than in the women; their whole character being debased by the loss of the elevating influ

ence which woman was intended by her Creator to exercise over man.

There is not opportunity in this article to point out many other bad customs; but enough has surely been said to prove that a "life of etiquette," unless the rules are drawn from Christianity, can never, in any way, exalt the character of a people.

Their ceremonies and polite manners are merely the results of human law: they govern entirely by brute force, never appealing to the moral sense, which, indeed, they seem to want entirely. Their punishments are of the most terrible and cruel nature, showing that they lack pity and mercy for men as much as they lack justice and respect for women.

There is something frightful in the immorality which exists amongst the Chinese as a nation. They have been termed an orderly, respectable people; but any study of the works of Europeans upon the subject will prove that this order proceeds from physical causes, not from love of righteousness.

Infanticide is of every-day occurrence. Thousands of girls perish in the waters of the rivers, or in the jaws of beasts. Boys are saved, because they carry on the business of life, and sustain the parental worship; but, with a girl, there is never the slightest hesitation in murdering her, if inclination or convenience prompts, as women are not supposed to possess souls.

In short, we might as reasonably expect, that, if one

half of the sun were covered with a pall of black, we should still enjoy the full brightness, beauty, and bounteousness of earth, as to look for happy homes and good society, where womanhood, in its social, moral, and intellectual influences, is totally blotted out.

S

VII.-SHAKSPEARE'S SUNDAY BOOK.

(HAKSPEARE and his Bible! How lovingly Will Shakspeare must have read his Bible when he was a boy! And he must have continued to read it when he was a man; but the fountain of its truths seem to have been unsealed to him at an early age, judging from the manner in which he has wrought their divine wisdom into his dramatic writings.

Dr. Johnson, in his grand way, thus describes the scope of those writings:

"This, therefore, is the praise of Shakspeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him may here be cured of his delirious ecstasies by reading human sentiments in human language; by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions."

Dr. Johnson had a vast fund of learning, and talents

of great power; but his genius, in comparison with Shakspeare's, was as the north star to the moon: both draw their light from the sun; but the star is only a guide for the few travellers and voyagers, or for those who need its light for some particular knowledge, while the moon is queen of heaven to everybody, and brightens nature and gladdens the human heart with her nightlamp throughout the whole world.

*

A volume has lately been republished here, containing a collection of extracts from Shakspeare's plays, intended to show the moral and religious tendencies of this master of the drama. The attempt is not very well executed; but, every time that we are drawn to his wonderful genius, something beyond other men presents itself, something new and of real worth is discovered.

The familiarity with Scripture which pervades the writings of Shakspeare has never been sufficiently noted: it is the most remarkable characteristic of his dramatic works.

It should be remembered that King James's translation of the Bible did not appear till Shakspeare's youth had passed, and his poems had been written. It must therefore have been a love for the Word of God, which had made him so diligently search for it in the partial and rare translations to be obtained in his younger days.

If his works be compared with those of the dramatists

"Religious and Moral Sentences, culled from the works of Shakspeare," with an Introduction by Frederic D. Huntington, D.D.

of his time, his will shine in their delicacy, morality, and piety, with a lustre that could only have its pure and holy source in a believing mind and a God-fearing heart. And then remember that he left the stage in the very noonday of his fame; he broke his wand of power when his hand was the strongest to subdue men; and he buried his genius, that now enlightens the world, in the quiet shades of a humble village, before middle age had set the "signet sage" upon his brow.

Is it imaginative to suppose that the unworldliness of a Christian spirit urged him to leave the scenes of gayety, if not of dissipation, for "a life more sweet than that of painted pomp?" In our times, and especially in our land, where every man, from his childhood upwards, has the Holy Scriptures before him, where do we find an author of eminence from whom scriptural thoughts and scriptural words flow as they did from Shakspeare's pen, as we may read them now in those immortal productions of this great English poet? The volume to which allusion has been made contains over eight hundred quotations.

Here are a few of its sentences:

He that of greatest works is finisher

Oft does them by the weakest minister;

So Holy Writ in babes hath judgment shown,

When judges have been babes.

Henry V., i. 2; Isaiah, iii. 4.

With Cain, go wander through the shade of night,

And never show thy head by day nor light.

Richard II., v. 6; Genesis, iv. 14.