This sprightly, happy, beautiful Abigail at length married the selfish, churlish Nabal. When we look over society to-day, it is remarkable how many Abigails get married to Nabals. God-fearing women, tender and gentle in their sensibilities, high-minded and noble in their ideals, become tied in an indissoluble union with men for whom they can have no true affinity, even if they have not an unconquerable repugnance. In Abigail’s case this relationship was, in all probability, not of her choosing, but the product of the Oriental custom which compelled a girl to take her father’s choice in the matter of marriage. As a mere child she may have come into Nabal’s home, and become bound to him by an apparently inevitable fate. In other ways which involve equally little personal choice, compelled by the pressure of inexorable circumstances, misled by the deceitful tongue of flattery, her instinctive hesitancy overcome by the urgency of friends, a woman may still find herself in Abigail’s pitiful plight. To such a one there is but one advice--you must stay where you are. The dissimilarity in taste and temperament does not constitute a sufficient reason for leaving your husband to drift. You must believe that God has permitted you to enter on this awful heritage, partly because this fiery ordeal was required by your character, and partly that you might act as a counteractive influence. It may be that some day your opportunity will come, as it came to Abigail. In the meantime do not allow your purer nature to be bespotted or besmeared. You can always keep the soul clean and pure. Bide your time; and, amid the weltering waste of inky water, be like a pure fountain rising from the ocean depths. But if any young girl of good sense and earnest aspirations, who reads these lines, secretly knows that, if she had the chance, she would wed a carriage and pair, a good position, or broad acres, irrespective of character, let her remember that to enter the marriage bond with a man, deliberately and advisedly, for such a purpose, is a profanation of the Divine ideal, and can end only in one way. She will not raise him to her level, but she will sink to his.