Watching and guidance they will doubtless all of them want; and most of all, Communities of women banded together under a Superior for devotion and for acts of mercy. The very first step of joining such a community may easily be taken in violation of the principle (if not of the letter) of the Fifth Commandment. It may be an act of will-worship deliberately committed by one who slights God’s Ordinance of the Family, and prefers ties and sympathies of her own creation to those with which it has pleased Him in His Providence to surround her. But supposing the community composed exclusively of those who have a moral right to join it (of those who have no ties, or none which they cannot perfectly satisfy while living in the comparative seclusion of a Sisterhood), the perils to which their life exposes them are not few, and all the more dangerous because they are subtle. First; there is a constant tendency to erect a false standard of spirituality in the mind, and to imagine a higher degree of perfection to attach to the life of a Sister than to that of an equally devoted Christian woman living in the world. This tendency culminates in the Roman phraseology “Religious,” as applied to the members of Monastic Orders, a phraseology which I for one earnestly deprecate, and greatly regret to see adopted by some of my clerical Brethren in speaking of these Communities. “Words,” says Bacon, “are like the Tartar’s arrows; they shoot backwards;” and if we allow ourselves to call the members of our Sisterhoods “Religious,” or to speak of them as being “in Religion,” we shall soon come to regard their vocation as more spiritual than that of the Christian wife and mother,—a notion most unspiritual and unscriptural in the mind of the writer of this Address. Possibly the life of a Sister may present fewer difficulties to the attainment of a high standard of sanctity than life (under its ordinary conditions) in Society; but even if this be granted, which must we rate higher, the faith and zeal which _evades_ difficulties, or the faith and zeal which _meets and triumphs over_ them? I believe it might be shown that many of the most eminent doctors of the Church, previously to the Reformation, have decided that life in the World may be altogether as spiritual, and exemplify a standard of holiness at least as high, as life in a Convent. Then, again, it must be remembered that the relations which the members of a religious Community contract are artificial. These Communities are a kind of hotbed for rearing devotional feeling and piety of a high caste. It is not at all necessary to deny that very beautiful forms of piety are often reared there, as very beautiful flowers are under glass. But we may reasonably expect the beauty of form to be somewhat compensated by want of vigour. And of course this is especially likely to be the case with Communities of Women. Without denying to the piety of Women very great and peculiar