HE WOMEN of the Bible! Separated from us by scores of centuries, with language, customs, and manners utterly different from our own, and yet as dis tinct and real to our mental vision as the familiar friends of childhood, who can doubt that the pencil of inspiration sketched portraitures that thus appeal to the universal human heart? Brief and unadorned as they are, they present a more graphic picture of the life and character of their subjects, and interest us more in their behalf than whole volumes of biography filled with analysis, and eloquent with panegyric. It is delightful thus to go back into the dim and shadowy recesses of the past, and to ascertain how our sisters of that early age thought and felt and acted, with the certainty that we may rely on the authenticity of the record. We are admitted into the sanctuary of home; we become acquainted with the inmates of that hallowed spot in their everyday joys and sorrows; and finding them subject to the same passions as ourselves, the flood of time is rolled backward, bygone ages come up before us, and we feel that the human heart in all climes and ages knows the same necessities, and finds the same utterance. Foremost among the women of the Bible, in point of interest as of time, is Eve, daughter of God, and wife of the first man; the majestic mother of the human race. As we look back through the long vista of the ages, and behold her standing in the portal of the world's history, she seems to us like one of the unreal visions of mythology, rather than a living, breathing woman, who actually loved and joyed and sorrowed, as her daughters have done ever since the fall. But the few particulars concerning her given us in the sacred book are so lifelike, so true to nature, that they invest her with a wondrous reality, and bring her at once within the pale of human affection and sympathy. Adam, the first man, had been placed, immediately after his creation, in the garden of Eden, filled by the divine hand with every thing that could conduce to the gratification of his newly awakened senses. He was formed in the image of his Creator, splendidly endowed with physical and mental gifts, which qualified him to enjoy to the utmost all the advantages which the munificence of the Creator had |