And then, without a pang, as I learn from the statement that the eye of Moses was undimmed, and his natural force unabated, God touched the great lawgiver's eyes and they closed; and his lungs, and they ceased; and his heart, and it stopped; and commanded, saying: "To the skies, thou immortal spirit!" And then one divine hand was put against the back of Moses, and the other hand against the pulseless breast and God laid him softly down on Mount Nebo, and then the lawgiver lifted in the Almighty's arms, was carried to the opening of a cave and placed in crypt, and one stroke of the divine hand smoothed the features into an everlasting calm, and a rock was rolled to the door, and the only obsequies at which God did all the offices of priest, and undertaker, and grave-digger, and mourner were ended. THE WORLD INDEBTED. Oh, was not Miriam, the sister of Moses, doing a good thing, an important thing, a glorious thing when she watched the boat woven of river plants and made water-tight with asphaltum, carrying its one passenger? Did she not put all the ages of time and of a coming eternity under obligation, when she defended her helpless brother from the perils aquatic, reptilian, and ravenous? She it was that brought that wonderful babe and his mother together so that he was reared to be the deliverer of his nation, when otherwise, if saved at all from the rushes of the Nile, he would have been only one more of the God-defying Pharaohs; for Princess Thermutis, of the bathing-house, would have inherited the crown of Egypt, and as she had no child of her own, this adopted child would have come to coronation. Had there been no Miriam there would have been no Moses. What a garland for faithful sisterhood! For how many a lawgiver, and how many a hero, and how many a deliverer, and how many a saint are the world and the Church indebted to a watchful, loving, faithful, godly sister? Come up out of the farm-houses, come up out of the inconspicuous homes! Come up from the banks of the Hudson, and the Penobscot, and the Savannah, and the Mobile, and the Mississippi, and all the other Niles of America, and let us see you, the Miriams who watched and protected the leaders in law and medicine and merchandise and art and agriculture and mechanics and religion! If I should ask all these physicians, and attorneys, and merchants, and ministers of religion and successful men of all professions and trades who are indebted to an elder sister for good influences, and perhaps for an education or a prosperous start, to rise, they would rise by the hundreds. God knows how many of our Greek lexicons and how much of our schooling was paid for by money that would otherwise have gone for the replenishing of a sister's wardrobe. While the brother sailed off for a resounding sphere, the sister watched him from the banks of self-denial. THE ELDER SISTER'S POWER.