During all this time, the mind of the affectionate mother-in-law was meditating a plan to promote the future happiness of her daughter. Past the period of marriage herself, she knew that Ruth might yet adorn, as well as obtain an accession of comfort from such a connection. If the young woman were satisfied with her obscurity, and content to provide a precarious subsistence for herself and her venerable relative by the labour of her hands, Naomi was superior to that selfishness which would rather have aimed to retain her in perpetual subserviency to her convenience, than seek to augment her joys, advance her interests, and raise her to her proper sphere of usefulness. Having made every possible sacrifice to her and her religion, she deemed it the part of maternal kindness to avail herself of the existing laws respecting matrimony, to connect her with the noble minded Boaz. This solicitude she took the first opportunity of expressing, and directed her to measures, which, if they appear extraordinary to us, might not have been unseemly or unusual at that period and in that country. A few years are sufficient to operate a complete revolution in existing customs; it cannot therefore be surprising, that the manners of another quarter of the globe, at the distance of more than thirty centuries, should essentially differ from our own. To judge of their propriety by our standard is manifestly absurd; and to make great allowances for the state of society is, in cases of extreme variation, obviously necessary. After all, the conduct of Naomi may not be capable of entire vindication; though we are certain it proceeded from a sentiment of pure affection, and was connected with important results in the order of Providence: it is, moreover, recorded without the slightest hint of disapprobation.