they but know their strength," we are tempted to exclaim, when we see the hand of a child upon the mouth of some fiery courser; or behold the stately herd led on by their infant conductor. What then? a law is on them, stronger than their strength: a bond whose shackles will never be unbound, till summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, day and night, shall cease. The covenant attested at Ararat, is in perpetual accomplishment; and "the fear and the dread" of man, indicated in the creature of his use or luxury, is one of its most striking tokens.

Thus it is in the natural world, and there is something analogous to it in the world of morals. There is a secret, subtle, energizing influence; having a directive, impulsive, modifying power, which, if we track it to its source, emanates not from the strong, but from the weak. Man himself is the subject of a law, similar in its operations to that which secures to him dominion over the creatures; and this, under a great variety of modifications. What is that subtle force which has kept the great masses of mankind, in every age and in every clime, the subjects of a privileged few, weak and helpless when viewed in relation to the numerical strength of those so subjugated? Again, what is that latent power, which forces from men in all countries, submission to customs and observances, irksome perhaps, and of cost to themselves as individuals? Or, what is that empire which woman, the weaker, exercises over man, the stronger? On every side, we see a secret subtle influence permeating the affairs of men; latent in the world, and not always to be tracked even where its effects are most palpable, and most widely felt.

We speak of the influence of women; and it is

one modification of a law which has so wide a range. We are not surprised to find among the nations of Christendom, where woman is, by the teaching of the gospel, raised to a moral equality with man,-that her influence extends far beyond the narrow circle of home that it penetrates to the body politic; that it is felt (unavowedly but not the less really) in the grave assemblies of justice, in the halls of the Senator, in the decisions of the council-chamber, and on the foot-steps of the throne. But in countries where woman is oppressed and degraded, even there she has an empire; rights which are never disputed by her tyrannous lord, and an influence of which, whether consciously or not, he is himself the subject. If the oriental wife be not the counsellor of her husband, the oriental mother, at least, knows how to sway the affections of her son: and she who has the key to the primary springs of human action, may well be said to control their movements also.

Amid all the restrictions of Judaism, we have glimpses everywhere of the widely-extended influences of women: and in the story of the wise woman of Tekoah, we have one instance, in which this well-understood, though undefined power, was made to serve (as in the history of all nations it often has served) the ends of a crafty and designing politician.

Upon the establishment of the kingly rule over Israel, the principle of hereditary succession appears to have been universally recognized by the tribes, although the right of primogeniture bestowed by Jacob upon his fourth son Judah, as well as the transfer of the birthright from Esau to Jacob himself, afforded two remarkable instances to the

contrary. Notwithstanding the divine choice of David, as Saul's successor; a choice, which was so well attested that it formed the ground of that long persecution which he endured at the hands of his royal master; and notwithstanding the voluntary surrender of the succession by the generous and pious Jonathan to his friend and rival; a chief of the house of Benjamin continued for ten years to dispute the kingdom with David, and to maintain upon the throne of the ten tribes, the next heir of Saul. Nor would the supremacy of David, have been then generally recognized, had not a personal quarrel between Ishbosheth and Abner, and the consequent defection of the latter, put a stop to the civil wars which devastated Israel.

The law of hereditary succession received a second check, in the divine appointment of Solomon, while yet a child, to be the successor of his father in the kingdom. Many circumstances combined to render this nomination obnoxious to the people: Solomon's maternity; his extreme youth, and the grace, beauty, and popular manners of the legal heir, Absalom. It would seem, however, as though the latter had quenched whatever hopes the nation might have formed concerning him, when he scrupled not to stain his hands with a brother's blood; and fled in consequence, not to any of the sanctuaries of the land, for these afforded no refuge for pre-meditated murder; but to the dominions of his maternal grandfather, Talmai king of Geshur. Three years of exile, served to soften the memory of Absalom's crime, and to fill the heart of his too partial father with longing desires to bring back his banished one: an act, however, which was totally incompatible with OCTOBER, 1842.

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the laws of Israel; and which must have appeared, to one so well versed in judgment and justice as David was, utterly impracticable.

The politic Joab, whose loyalty and affection to his sovereign were not borne out by similar obedience and attachment to the law of God, was not slow to perceive the struggle between parental love and duty. He deemed, perhaps wisely, that the king's judgment would be proof against any remonstrances or solicitations on his part, or on that of the nation at large, in favor of Absalom's recal: but he knew the heart of the man David: that it was open to tenderness: that it was full of compassion. He had known him kindle with generous indignation, and melt with meekest contrition, when a prophet of God had opened through his feelings, a way for the arrows of conviction to pass to his own breast: and he resolved to employ a similar instrumentality, in order to bring about the prince's return. But the undertaking was too subtle and delicate for one more versed in the stratagems of war, than in the arts of persuasion. Joab therefore, "sent to Tekoah and fetched thence a wise woman, and said unto her, I pray thee feign thyself to be a mourner, and put on now mourning apparel, and anoint not thyself with oil, but be as a woman that had a long time mourned for the dead: and come to the king, and speak in this manner unto him so Joab put the words into her mouth."

This scheme for entrapping the king into an unconscious pledge for Absalom's recal, was sketched by Joab himself, but the filling up and execution were left to the able advocate whom he had selected. He bade the woman of Tekoah feign herself to be a widow, of whom the law of blood-revenge demanded

the sacrifice of her last and only son, because in the heat of angry contention he had slain his brother. With all the pathos of feeling, with all the eloquence of poetry, this woman pleaded before one who was both a poet and a father, exemption in her own case, from the rigour of this law; and obtained from him a hasty acquiescence in her petition. The cunning pleader, would not however be satisfied, until the king had confirmed by oath, what he had before promised on his royal word: and then, emboldened by her success, she at once disclosed the true nature of her mission, and in her own name, and in that of the people, craved a like mitigation of the Mosaic penal code in favor of the prince his son; enforcing her appeal with glances at the divine clemency, and enhancing her arguments by metaphors whose aptness and brilliancy must have served to dazzle, if not to convince, her willing auditor.

The king's penetration soon enabled him to discover that this plot for constraining him to issue the decree for Absalom's recal, could not have originated with the woman herself; and his knowledge of Joab's wishes on this head, led him to fix on him as the instigator of it. To David's inquiry, "Is not the hand of Joab with thee in all this?" the woman confessed, "Thy servant Joab he bade me, and he put all these words in the mouth of thine handmaid:" and then, with an adroitness, which showed that the reputation she had acquired for wisdom (or subtilty) was well earned; she turned even this admission to her advantage, as she had before those feelings of strong interest with which David had listened to the narrative of her fictitious sorrows.