Note 96 — THE KING AND HIS FOUR MINISTERS.

The want of children is doubtless felt more or less keenly by all the races of mankind, but the Hindú is taught to believe that he cannot attain ultimate salvation without leaving a son behind him. The Chinese who hold to their old religion have also a great horror of dying and leaving no male offspring to sacrifice to their manes, and to avoid such a calamity they adopt children when they have none of their own. Among most Asiatic peoples, indeed, a childless wife is generally but most unjustly despised, hence the thousand and one nostrums in which Hindú women vainly put faith in expectation of having their sterility removed. We have four notable instances in the Bible of women bearing famous sons after having been long sterile: Sarah, mother of Isaac, the Hebrew patriarch; Rachel, mother of Joseph, viceroy of Egypt; the wife of Manoah, mother of Samson, the Hercules of the Hebrews; and Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist.—After all, sterile wives may console themselves with the reflection that children are not always an unalloyed blessing!