Never, then, let the sneer of the infidel, nor the scorn of the skeptic drive woman from compounding the spices to embalm her crucified Master, nor make her ashamed to be seen early at his sepulchre. Rather let her glory in the cross, and make the most of her high mission here to send its healing influences to every sick and sorrowing creature on this green earth. Why should any poor, perishing mortal be left in all the degradation of idolatry, when there is in our possession a power that would lift him to heights of bliss, temporal and eternal? Why should the world be left to its wailings and its woes, when Christianity diffused, in its benign spirit, would convert those woes into joys, those wailings into hallelujahs? How can woman, owing her all to the religion of the Bible, refrain from exerting her energies to place this word of life in the hands of every pilgrim over the deserts of time? And may she so breathe its spirit and feel its power, that it shall never again be thus written of her: "There came A stranger bright and beautiful With steps of grace, and eye of flame, And tone and look most sweetly blent To make her presence eloquent; Oh, then I looked for tears. She stood Before the prisoner of Calvary. I saw the piercing spear--the blood-- The gall--the writhe of agony. I saw his quivering lips in prayer, 'Father, forgive them'--all was there! I turned in bitterness of soul, And spake of Jesus. I had thought Her feelings would refuse control: For woman's heart I knew was fraught With gushing sympathies. She gazed A moment on it carelessly, Then coldly curl'd her lip, and praised The high priest's garment! Could it be That look was meant, dear Lord, for thee!" A few words on _Influence_. This is woman's power. That distinctively belongs to man, and is exercised by authority. Law and penalty grow out of it. It regulates actions, it punishes crime. Influence, on the other hand, awakens feeling, generates opinions, implants sentiments in the soul, silently yet emphatically; and thus it crushes vice, promotes virtue, and avoids the necessity of penal infliction. Now this is pre-eminently the potent lever in the hands of woman for regenerating and reforming the political and moral world. We may stand in awe, indeed, before the exhibition of _power_, whether physical or moral, but we are not won by them to the love of truth and goodness, while _influence_ steals in upon our hearts, gets hold of the springs of action, and leads us into its own ways. It is the _inflowing_ upon others from the nameless traits of character which constitute woman's idiosyncracy. Her heart is a great reservoir of love, the water-works of moral influence, from which go out ten thousand tubes, conveying off the ethereal essences of her nature, and diffusing them quietly over the secret chambers of man's inner being.