How tender and beautiful the lesson which this passage gives to the young as well as the old! Just as Isaac stands out in the older story in a light as glorious as Abraham in yonder sacrifice on Mount Moriah, so Jephthah’s daughter’s sacrifice must not be forgotten in the honor we pay her father. Sweet child of single-hearted consecration! God help her sisters and her followers to be as true. Oh, beloved, do not wait until desire shall fail and age chill the pulses of ardent youth, and the world fall away from you itself. But when the flowers are blooming, and the cup is brimming, and the heart beats high with earthly love and joy and hope, then it is so sweet, it is so wise, it is so rare, to pour all at His blessed feet, as Mary poured her ointment on His head, and some day to receive it back amid the bloom and peals of yonder land, where they that have forsaken friends and treasures, fond affections and brightest prospects for His dear sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall have the still richer joy of knowing that they have learned His spirit and understood His love. Following the story of Jephthah’s daughter and her heroic self-sacrifice, we next come to the touching scenes and incidents related in the life of Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi. This is, confessedly, one of the sweetest idyls ever written. As a singular example of virtue and piety in a rude age and among an idolatrous people; as one of the first fruits of the Gentile harvest gathered into the Church; as the heroine of a story of exquisite beauty and simplicity; as illustrating in her history the workings of Divine Providence, and the truth of the saying, “the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous;” for the many interesting revelations of ancient domestic and social customs which are associated with her story, Ruth has always held a foremost place among the Women in White Raiment. The story begins at Bethlehem, so dear to the Christian heart. A famine had occurred, and even the fertile plains of Bethlehem Ephratah (the fruitful) failed to give sufficient food to its inhabitants. On this account Elimelech, an Ephrathite, left his home with his wife and two sons and went to sojourn in the land of Moab, the hilly region south-east of the Dead Sea, where the descendants of Lot dwelt. Here Elimelech died, and Naomi, his wife, was left a widow with her two sons, Mahlon and Chilin. The young men, when grown, took them wives of the women of Moab. Probably this was another severe trial to Naomi, for she had doubtless warned them that it was contrary to God’s law that they should marry daughters of the heathen. Other strokes came quickly upon her, for her two sons died also. Naomi, notwithstanding her nationality, had won the respect and warmest attachment of her sons’ wives; and now, when death had desolated their homes and laid in the dust the strong men to whom they had clung, they only drew the closer to each other.