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makes her intensely solicitous to have every thing done decently and in order. Unnecessary and unreasonable interruptions of her domestic employments are therefore to her real hardships, however thoughtlessly inflicted or however well-intentioned. Many people seem to think," says the author of the "Itinerant's Wife," "that the minister's family is a kind of common property of the society, and that he has no right to govern his own children as he judges to be best for them." Of course such people, knowing that the wife must of necessity bear a large share of the burden of both domestic government and domestic education, seek to establish the same despotism over her. This is a wrong. It is more. It is an outrage upon her rights and her responsibilities as a mother, such as no woman ought to submit to. Where is the layman's wife of ordinary intelligence and self-reliant spirit, united with a just sense of her own duty and responsibility, that would endure it? And why should the pastor's wife be subjected to such interference in what of all human rights and prerogatives are the most sacred and inviolable?

The minister's wife has a right also to her own personal friendships, intimate associations, and sympathies. Every woman has her own tastes, habits of thought and feeling-her social, moral, and religious affinities-inwrought by the great Master-builder of our common humanity, for wise and benificent purposes, for the promotion of personal and social happiness and of spiritual enjoyment and progress. These instincts are the sources of influence, the keys which, skillfully touched, evoke emotions and work reformations in mankind. Because of these subtle but distinctive characteristics, hearts that have been steeled against the impetuous utterances of a Boanerges have melted before the tenderness of an Apollos; and minds unmoved by the arguments of a Paul, have yielded readily to the terse plainness of a Peter. Hence the truth of the divine maxim, "How can two walk together except they be agreed?" Hence those wondrous friendships of record in both sacred and profane history that have outlived all adversity and all opposition, making self-denial the sweetest joy, and the heaviest toil an untold delight. The rational indulgence of these instincts is the common right of all, if not indeed the solemn duty of each. Yet too often is the demand made, in spirit if

not in the letter, of the preacher's wife, that she shall deny herself of the pure and holy delights of friendship and sympathy that spring spontaneously from similarity of natures, from reciprocity of views and feelings, intellectual, moral, or spiritual. How often is it that ninety-nine members of the Church take umbrage if she yields to this inward talisman and does not conceal that only in the one hundredth has she the congenial spirit with whom above the rest she can take sweet counsel and taste the pure pleasures of intimate friendship. It is a moral impossibility for her not to be in this particular a respecter of persons. She is but exercising one of the prerogatives of her nature, and instead of murmurings and complaints that one, or two, or more of her Christian sisters have more of her society, and are more in her confidence than others, there should be sincere gratification that the more delicate bonds of an intimate friendship, so often snapped by the necessities of the itinerancy, have been entwined around a new and worthy object. Nor should it be forgotten how frail and brief is her tenure of such a boon, and this should modify censure even were she too inconsiderate of others, and too devoted to those who meet her with responsive sympathy. It is enough if she be kind and courteous to all. The claims of the Church cannot justly go beyond this. She has the right to be the sole judge of her own intimacies and closer friendships.

The minister's wife is entitled to a kind and charitable interpretation of all her words and actions. Every person, and every woman especially, can claim this from all. But the pastor's wife is peculiarly entitled to it from God's people. Yet this undoubted right is not always conceded. There is a marked tendency to forget that the preacher's wife, after all, has the common imperfections and infirmities of fallen human nature. Mr. Eaton remarks that there is a class of persons among whom "it is more difficult for the minister's wife to give satisfaction than it is for the minister himself." "Her liberty in lawful things is invaded by these usurpers, and her heart lacerated by those who should comfort and support her." We know this to be true. If she is cheerful, her cheerfulness by some is misconstrued into levity; if she is sad, others denounce her as cold and uncongenial. If she is careful of the appearance of her children, their apparel, their habits, and es

pecially their associations, she is accused of pride, and of an assumption of superiority; if she lowers her standard of duty in these respects she is misrepresented in the opposite direction. If she from principle is a keeper at home, she is misinterpreted; if from a desire to conciliate she goes much abroad, the motive thereof is misconstrued. This picture, unhappily, is not overdrawn, although it is by no means a portrait of every Church or congregation: far from it. If there be any woman who should receive charitable judgment from Christian people, it is the preacher's wife. As we said at the commencement of this article, her position is most difficult and delicate. She has responsibilities without power, and duties which reach to the very verge of contradictory obligations. Her sense of duty points in so many directions at the same time, that she is often sadly perplexed how to act, her very anxiety often giving a seeming uncertainty to her movements as she staggers beneath the burden of having to satisfy the expectations of a many-minded Church membership. Say we not truly that it is her right to have all her actions judged in a spirit of Christian love and charity?

She has an undoubted claim also to the fervent prayers and active sympathies of the whole Church. Prayer should be made for her continually, with special reference to her endowment with those qualities of mind and heart which are peculiarly necessary for one in her prominent position. It is painfully true that those who account her the servant of the Church, in the same sense and almost in the same degree as her husband, fail to remember her as uniformly and specifically in their prayers as they do him. Such have no excuse for this forgetfulness of her. But whatever position be assigned to her in the Church, the preacher's wife needs special grace and wisdom, and should have ever with her the encouraging consciousness that her husband's people are earnestly praying for her; that

"When in secret, solemn prayer,

Their happy spirits find access;
When they're breathing all their care,

Sweetly at a throne of grace,"

they present her also before God and are prevailing on her behalf. To prayer for her should be added a tender and active

sympathy, manifested by those little courtesies grateful to every woman, especially to one in a responsible public posi tion, and by acts of kindness delicately performed. Let her feel that there is quite as much disposition to promote her happiness as to exact a round of duties from her, and the result will be an increased union and affection between the preacher's wife and the people of her husband's charge.

There is another point on which we think a mistake is made with respect to the duty of a preacher's wife, and by which her time and energies are taxed far beyond what is just to her husband and family. We refer to the practice of expecting and requiring the pastor's wife to be principal manager or directress of the numerous benevolent societies which, to the honor of the Church, exist in its various charges. This error has been glanced at in the preceding remarks, but it deserves special mention because unmerited censure has too often been cast upon the most excellent of women, who have not found it convenient or even practicable, consistently with their duty as Christian wives and mothers, to take this position when it has been assigned to them by their sisters in the Church. Every rule has its exceptions, and there may be cases where, to some considerable extent, a minister's wife may comply with this requirement, as when she has no family, and her husband's salary permits good and sufficient domestic help; or where her family are grown up, and no longer need a mother's constant watchfulness and arduous care. When circumstances thus favor her it may be very proper, may, indeed, become her duty, to bear her full share of such responsibilities. But only in such exceptional cases can we see any reason why the onerous burdens of such offices should be imposed upon her. These associations belong to the membership and not to the pastorate. They are lay and not clerical organizations. The labor and the honor of their management and direction, therefore, should devolve upon the wives of laymen: of trustees, or leaders, or stewards, or private members. And this for the obvious reason that, however much consideration and delicacy may be shown to the preacher's wife in the matter of trespassing upon her time and domestic occupations, her regard for her husband's acceptability and her own good name in the Church will lead her to make visits and perform other acts

which are not expected from other wives. These, let it be kindly remembered, are on her part acts of pure benevolence and Christian love, and are additional to those ministerial and pastoral duties for which her husband, and not she, is pecuniarily remunerated.

ART. IV. SCHLEIERMACHER, DE WETTE, AND HARMS.

[FROM HAGENBACH'S HISTORY OF THE CHURCH IN THE XVIII
AND XIX CENTURIES.]

SCHLEIERMACHER was born in Breslau, Nov. 21, 1768, and acquired his earlier education, secular as well as theological, at the Moravian Institutions of Niesky and Barby. And if somewhat later he left the brotherhood and continued his studies at Halle upon a different system, still, down to the end of life, he never ceased to acknowledge the beneficial influence of his early Moravian training. "Piety," says he, "was the maternal womb in whose holy obscurity my young life was nourished and prepared for the world to which it was still a stranger; in it my spirit breathed before it had found its sphere in science and the experience of life." While chaplain in the hospital in Berlin from 1796 to 1802, Schleiermacher fell into intimate relations with the brothers Schlegel and other bold spirits of the Romantic school, and to this period, in which his Platonic studies fall, belong his two early works, "The Discourses concerning Religion," and the "Monologues." We begin with the latter because they present us with a better view of the interior life of the man than could be given by any merely outward biography, and because they reveal him as he stood before his own consciousness and that of his cotemporaries.

While Goethe regards self-scrutiny and self-observation as something morbid, Schleiermacher asserts exactly the opposite, and seems to have Goethe in his mind when he says: "Whoever knows and sees only the outer manifestations of the spirit, instead of the life which moves concealed within; whoever,

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