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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by

GEORGE C. BALDWIN,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of New York.

JOHN J. REED, STEREOTYPER AND PRINTER, 16 Spruce Street, N. Y.

то

WOMAN;

AND

TO ALL THOSE WHO APPRECIATE HER TRUE POSITION

AND

WORLD-WIDE INFLUENCE,

This Volume

IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.

PREFACE.

TROY, N. Y., Feb. 10, 1855. REV. G. C. BALDWIN, D.D.

Dear Sir: The undersigned, who constitute the boards of Deacons and of Trustees in the Church and Society over which you are Pastor, having listened with pleasure and profit to your Lectures on Scripture Female Characters, and believing, that on account of the Biblical, Historical, and Practical instruction they embody, they are adapted to be extensively and permanently useful,--therefore, earnestly advise their publication in book-form.

Respectfully and affectionately your friends,

JOSEPH HASTINGS,
ABRAHAM NUMAN,
CURTIS WILBur,
JOHN B. FORD,

Gentlemen:

JUSTUS E. GREGORY,
CALVIN WARNER
FRANCIS WARRINER,
JAMES R. PRentice,

F. A. FALES,

GEO. R. DAVIS,

JAMES WAGER,
GEO. H, PHILIPS,
S. S. SARGEANT,

Confiding more in your judgment than in my own, I have resolved to publish the Lectures, to which you allude in such kind terms. It may be well to accompany them with the following prefatory remarks.

1. As to their title. It was the English Carlyle, I believe, who first employed the phrase "Representative

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Men," which our American Emerson has made the title of one of his best books. It occurred to me, that if there were in history, men who stand forth, not merely as representatives of ideas, but of classes of their fellow-men, it might be found that in the Bible record, there were women who could be appropriately viewed, not merely as historic personages, but as representatives of classes of their sex. With this thought before me, I have been delighted beyond expression, in my studies, by finding the full realization of the suggestion referred to. Is not Eve, as we have considered her, a representative of tempted and fallen females? Is not Sarah, of loving and deferential wives? Rebecca, of managing women? Jochebed, of faithful and devoted mothers? Miriam, of ancient prophetesses, and modern women, who never marry? Ruth, of young widows and daughters-in-law? Endor's Witch, of female spiritualists? Abigail, of that large class of superior women married to inferior men? Sheba's Queen, of wise women? Esther, of beauteous womanhood on the throne of royalty? Elizabeth, of believing wives? And the blessed Mary, the most highly honored of women ; is she not a type of maternal tenderness and devotion? In these facts I have found a justification of the title I have given my book.

2. Another object, collateral it is true, but important and desirable, as it has seemed to me, I have kept in view throughout. It was to present for the edification of youth, in families, Sabbath Schools, and Bible classes, the connections of Sacred History, from Eve, the wife of the first Adam, down to Mary, the mother of the second Adam. This I have attempted to do, by selecting one prominent female of a period, and grouping around her the chief in

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