"Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." This is very high praise, but Grace Darling deserves it. Few women, if any, have done so good a deed as she. It was not for the sake of winning renown, praise, or reward. There were no witnesses of her act, excepting her aged father, and the poor creatures to whose help she had come. It would have been very different had it been a deed that could have been done before an admiring world. For instance, Joan of Arc was a noble girl, full of inspiration and courage; but her deeds were great as the world looks on greatness, and there was much of pomp and show about her achievements. But this girl went out on the angry waters in the grey light of an early morning, with the simple purpose in her heart of saving from drowning those whose lives were in jeopardy. She did not care whose lives they were. They might be only those of a few poor sailors or emigrants. It did not matter to Grace. They were human lives, and therefore precious. She must have had the purest motives in what she did, and in this she excelled many women who have been praised. Dear, indeed, she was to the hearts of her father and mother, and all who were more immediately concerned, and dear also to the world, which admired her heroic virtues. Another sermon which she preaches from this chapter is, that women should not be satisfied with less than the best. Even good actions and kind words are not enough; they must be the sincere expressions of good and pure motives. "Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised." There have been other illustrious women besides Grace Darling: some, whose beauty has been so great, that men have gone mad over it, and hearts have been broken, and homes made desolate by it. But when we come to search for any good which came of it, we cannot find it. Beauty was there, but not "the fear of the Lord." When these two are seen together, then indeed there is "A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command."