“Fail not! In the hour of testing, Christ is pledged to bring thee through In His arms securely resting There thou shalt thy strength renew.” We are also impressed with the influence woman has for good or evil. What we need as a nation is consecrated womanhood. When at last we come to calculate the forces that decide the destiny of nations, it will be found that the mightiest and grandest influence came from home, where the wife cheered up despondency and fatigue and sorrow by her own sympathy, and the mother trained her child for heaven, starting the little feet on the path to the celestial city, and the sisters, by their gentleness, refined the manners of the brother, and the daughters were diligent in their kindness to the aged, throwing wreaths of blessing on the road that led father and mother down the steep of years. God bless our homes. And may the home on earth be the vestibule of our home in heaven. CHAPTER II. Womanhood in the Patriarchal Age. SARAH THE BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS--HER FAITH TESTED--THE MISTAKE OF HER LIFE--HER LOVELY CHARACTER--REBEKAH--AN ORIENTAL WOOING--ELIEZER’S PRAYER--THE BRIDE’S ANSWER--MEETING ISAAC--A MOTHER’S LOVE FOR HER SON--JACOB’S FLIGHT--REBEKAH, THE BEAUTIFUL SHEPHERDESS--SEVEN YEARS’ SERVICE FOR HER--LABAN’S DECEPTION--LEAH, THE TENDER-EYED--HUMAN FAVORITES--DIVINELY HONORED--RACHEL’S TOMB THE FIRST MONUMENT TO HUMAN LOVE. From the prominence given to Eve in connection with the temptation and the overwhelming disasters which followed the loss of the Eden home in Paradise, we are surprised the Sacred historian passes over a period of about two thousand years without giving us any record of women. The names of good men are mentioned. Enoch walked before God for over three hundred years, and the walk was such a perfect one, and it pleased God so well, that He translated Enoch. Noah also “found grace in the eyes of the Lord,” and he was “a just man and perfect in his generations,” and “walked with God,” doubtless as Enoch had done. No doubt there were others who lived clean, pure lives. Of this number was Lamech, the father of Noah, for he was comforted in the birth of his son, saying, he “shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed.” Surely such men must have had good mothers to train them, and good wives for companions. But nothing is said about these women that walked in White Raiment in that dark and sinful age, when “all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth,” until Sarah, the fair wife of Abraham, is reached. We find this beautiful princess willing to leave her home and her people in the land of Ur of the Chaldees and journey for more than a thousand miles to the land of Canaan. However, this journey was not a continuous one, for a long stop was made at Haran, in Mesopotamia, perhaps half way between Ur and Palestine.