The Cross to us is so associated with the adoration of the ages, so glorified by art, and music, and lofty thought, that we have ceased to realize what it was in actual fact such as no painter has ever dared to portray it; the Cross, not elevated as in sacred pictures, but huddled up with the jeering crowd; the Cross with its ribald blasphemies, its shameful nakedness, its coarse mockeries, its brutal long-drawn torture.

Do you think it cost the women of that day nothing to bear all this on their tender hearts?
Yet what was it that made men draw nearer and nearer, till the women who at first "stood afar off, beholding these things," we are told, at last "stood by the cross of Jesus"; and, when all men forsook Him and fled, placed themselves heart to heart with the Divine Love bearing the sins of the world and casting them into the abysmal depths of its own being, deeper even than the depths of man's sin?
What was it but their faithfulness to the Highest that they had known which made them endure the Cross, despising the shame?
And now, when at the end of the ages He once again calls us women to stand heart to heart with Him in a great redemptive purpose, shall we hang back?
Shall we not rather obey the Divine call, enduring the Cross, despising the shame, and, like those women of old, winning for ourselves, by faithfulness unto death, the joy of being made the messengers of a higher and risen life to the world?
God grant that the power of the Holy Ghost may overshadow us and enable us to make answer with her whom all generations have called blessed: "Behold the hand-maiden of the Lord!" FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 42: Late Head-Master of Harrow; now Metropolitan of India.] [Footnote 43: I would especially commend this modern order of knighthood to the prayers and support of women.

It is bravely fighting our battle for us and doing the public work among men.

As it attacks what is especially the sin of the moneyed classes, it is unpopular, men resenting its interference with what they call their private life, and it is always in peril for want of funds.

The White Cross league admits women associates for intercessory prayer--and what mother will not be thankful for that ?--for any work where women's aid is needed, and for raising funds for what is so emphatically our own cause.