If there is, beneath the stars, a figure of complete and perfect purity, it is a mother holding in her arms her child. The laws respecting women, given by commandment of Jehovah to the Jews, were born of barbarism, and in this day and age should be re- garded only with detestation and contempt. The twentieth and twenty-first verses of the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus show that the same punishment was not meted to men and women guilty of the same crime. The real explanation of what we find in the Old Testament degrading to woman, lies in the fact, that the overflow of Love's mysterious Nile--the sacred source of life--was, by its savage authors, deemed unclean. 114 _Question_. But what have you to say about the women of the Bible, mentioned by Mr. Talmage, and held up as examples for all time of all that is sweet and womanly? _Answer_. I believe that Esther is his principal heroine. Let us see who she was. According to the book of Esther, Ahasuerus who was king of Persia, or some such place, ordered Vashti his queen to show herself to the people and the princes, because she was "exceedingly fair "to look upon." For some reason--modesty per- haps--she refused to appear. And thereupon the king "sent letters into all his provinces and to every "people after their language, that every man should "bear rule in his own house;" it being feared that if it should become public that Vashti had disobeyed, all other wives might follow her example. The king also, for the purpose of impressing upon all women the necessity of obeying their husbands, issued a decree that "Vashti should come no more before "him," and that he would "give her royal estate "unto another." This was done that "all the "wives should give to their husbands honor, both to "great and small." After this, "the king appointed officers in all the 115 "provinces of his kingdom that they might gather "together all the fair young virgins," and bring them to his palace, put them in the custody of his chamberlain, and have them thoroughly washed. Then the king was to look over the lot and take each day the one that pleased him best until he found the one to put in the place of Vashti. A fellow by the name of Mordecai, living in that part of the country, hearing of the opportunity to sell a girl, brought Esther, his uncle's daughter,--she being an orphan, and very beautiful--to see whether she might not be the lucky one. The remainder of the second chapter of this book, I do not care to repeat. It is sufficient to say that Esther at last was chosen. The king at this time did not know that Esther was a Jewess. Mordecai her kinsman, however, discovered a plot to assassinate the king, and Esther told the king, and the two plotting gentlemen were hanged on a tree.