Whose veins bound richer blood than Lady Blanch?"
What a magnificent portrait is here drawn of truly rounded, symmetrically developed Christian womanhood, and true ladyship is here pencilled in the diary of the departed. There are some women who win men toward them by their wonderful conversational powers. They can talk by the hour; but when you approach them on the question of finance, for the cause of Home or Foreign Missions, they are like the colored man who was a great talker and a lusty singer, but a very poor giver, and when the collection box was being passed around, he closed his eyes and kept on singing, "Roll, Gospel, roll;" when the deacon put the box under his nose, and said, "I say, Brother Sam, what are you gwine to give to make the Gospel roll around the world?" The distinction is very positively affirmed by Christ between those who will be at the last on his right hand, and those on his left, by the "inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto me." I remember once during the same year in which the circumstances we are now commenting on transpired, of calling upon a friend, a broker in Wall Street of this city, and after some general conversation about Christian work, he called me into his rear office and said:
"How are you getting along financially?"
"Well," I said, "I am able to keep my head above water."
"Ah!" he replied, "I have been watching you in your work, and want to make you a present of fifty dollars for your immediate wants."
I looked upon him with astonishment and exclaimed:
"How is it, my friend, you can be so kind to me, as I am a comparative stranger to you?"
"Well," he said, "I believe you are doing the Lord's work, and I feel that all the money belongs unto Him, and I am only his steward."
What is the ultimate design of Christ knocking at the door of the heart? Is it not that we may be like Him? He gave himself for us. Can we then withhold our alms to the poor? He may take His departure, and we may receive in our hearts the spirit of avariciousness and selfishness. I am sure if any of the ladies connected with the New York Bible Society will read the simple story of God's dealings with this missionary woman, their hearts will swell with great gratitude and gladness, to think that God enabled them to contribute of their substance to the poor and needy, through this humble worker in the master's vineyard. Let us ever remember that we are under peculiar obligations to God for all we have and all we so richly enjoy. Our true condition is one of absolute subserviency and absolute dependence. We are not our own, we are bought with a price, even the peace-speaking blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our hand must clothe the humble poor,