husband, and ten by which he was bound. Of the latter, three are referred to in Exodus

21:9, 10; the other seven include her settlement, medical treatment in case of sickness,

redemption from captivity, a respectable funeral, provision in his house so long as she

remained a widow and had not been paid her dowry, the support of her daughters till

they were married, and a provision that her sons should, besides receiving their portion

of the father's inheritance, also share in what had been settled upon her. The obligations

upon the wife were, that all her gains should belong to her husband, as also what came

to her after marriage by inheritance; that the husband should have the usufruct of her

dowry, and of any gains by it, provided he had the administration of it, in which case,

however, he was also responsible for any loss; and that he should be considered her

What the family life among the godly in Israel must have been, how elevated its tone,

how loving its converse, or how earnestly devoted its mothers and daughters, appears

sufficiently from the gospel story, from that in the book of Acts, and from notices in the

apostolic letters. Women, such as the Virgin -mother, or Elisabeth, or Anna, or those

who enjoyed the privilege of ministering to the Lord, or who, after His death, tended and

watched for His sacred body, could not have been quite solitary in Palestine; we find

their sisters in a Dorcas, a Lydia, a Phoebe, and those women of whom St. Paul speaks in

Philippians 4:3, and whose lives he sketches in his Epistles to Timothy and Titus. Wives

such as Priscilla, mothers such as that of Zebedee's children, or of Mark, or like St.

John's "elect lady," or as Lois and Eunice, must have kept the moral atmosphere pure

and sweet, and shed precious light on their homes and on society, corrupt to the core as

it was under the sway of heathenism. What and how they taught their households, and

that even under the most disadvantageous outward circumstances, we learn from the

history of Timothy. And although they were undoubtedly in that respect without many

of the opportunities which we enjoy, there was one sweet practice of family religion,

going beyond the prescribed prayers, which enabled them to teach their children from

tenderest years to intertwine the Word of God with their daily devotion and daily life.

For it was the custom to teach a child some verse of Holy Scripture beginning or ending

with precisely the same letters as its Hebrew name, and this birthday text or guardian-

promise the child was day by day to insert in its prayers. Such guardian words, familiar

to the mind from earliest years, endeared to the heart by tenderest recollections, would

remain with the youth in life's temptations, and come back amid the din of manhood's

battle. Assuredly, of Jewish children so reared, so trained, so taught, it might be rightly

said: "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in

heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven."