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George Sumner Weaver
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Title: Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women
On the Various Duties of Life, Physical, Intellectual, And
Moral Development; Self-Culture, Improvement, Dress, Beauty,
Fashion, Employment, Education, The Home Relations, Their
Duties To Young Men, Marriage, Womanhood And Happiness.
Author: George Sumner Weaver
Release Date: March 14, 2007 [EBook #20819]
Language: English
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AIMS AND AIDS
FOR
Girls and Young Women,
ON THE
VARIOUS DUTIES OF LIFE,
INCLUDING
PHYSICAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT; SELF-CULTURE, IMPROVEMENT,
DRESS, BEAUTY, FASHION, EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION, THE HOME
RELATIONS, THEIR DUTIES TO YOUNG MEN, MARRIAGE,
WOMANHOOD AND HAPPINESS.
BY REV. G. S. WEAVER,
AUTHOR OF "HOPES AND HELPS," "MENTAL SCIENCE," "WAYS OF LIFE," ETC.
NEW YORK:
FOWLER AND WELLS, PUBLISHERS,
308 BROADWAY.
London: William Horsell, 492 Oxford Street.
BOSTON: } 1856. { PHILADELPHIA:
142 Washington-st.} { No. 231 Arch-street.
ENTERED, ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, IN THE YEAR 1855, BY
FOWLER AND WELLS,
IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED
STATES FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK.
DAVIES AND ROBERTS, STEREOTYPERS,
201 William Street, New York.
PREFACE.
My interest in woman and our common humanity is my only apology for
writing this book. I see multitudes of young women about me, whose
general training is so deficient in all that pertains to the best ideas
of life, and whose aims and efforts are so unworthy of their powers of
mind and heart, that I can not make peace with my own conscience without
doing something to elevate their aims and quicken their aspirations for
the good and pure in thought and life. Our female schools are but poor
apologies for the purposes of mind-culture and soul-development. The
idea of life they inspire is but a skeleton of custom-service and
fashion-worship. It is altogether subservient to what is, not what
should be. Society does little else than to teach its girls to be dolls
and drudges. The prevailing current of instruction and influence is
deplorably low. I feel confident that the best part of society is
longing for something better. To obtain it, each one has but to live
out, and express to the world his idea of a true life.
In regard to the book I may say, whatever it lacks it has the merit of
being in earnest. I hope those who see its deficiencies will make haste
to supply them in some form of instruction or encouragement to the class
the book addresses. Thinking fathers and mothers and teachers will not
complain of this humble effort to serve their daughters and pupils, but
will rather add more in a similar direction, and seek to complete what I
have endeavored to begin. While life is spared, I hope to work in this
field, that my own daughters, as well as those of others, may attain a
worthy womanhood.
G. S. W.
ST. LOUIS, 1855.
CONTENTS.
Lecture One.
GIRLHOOD.
Angels view Girlhood with Solicitude and Delight--Beauty no perpetual
Pledge of Safety--Nothing in Man or Things impels a Provident Regard for
it--Blossoming Womanhood an Object of Deep Interest and Pity--Girlhood's
first Work is to Form a Character--It should be _Pure_ and
_Energetic_--Woman only a Thing--Her Education progressing--Physical
Health should be Preserved--A Woman not Herself without Physical
Strength--Woman must be Independent, and Earn her own
Livelihood--Character must Embody Itself in an Outward Form to be of
Service to the World Page 9-21
Lecture Two.
BEAUTY.
God a Lover of Beauty--Every thing in the Universe Beautiful--The
Admirer of Beauty should Reverence its Author--The Love of Beauty
elevating in its Tendency--Its Abuses Fearful--Man a Part of Nature, and
God in all--Woman the most Perfect Type of Beauty--Youthful Woman
exposed to great Temptation--Beauty a Charming, but Dangerous Gift--The
most Beautiful should be the most Pious--Beauty of Person Worthless
without Loveliness of Character--"Strong-minded" Women not
Beautiful--Beauty the Nurse of Vanity--Value of Character depreciates
with Increase of Beauty when substituted for Moral Worth--Beauty only
Skin-deep--Beauty Two-fold: Inward and Outward--Inward Beauty shines
through--Beauty of Soul made Washington, Josephine, and Channing
glorious--Every Woman may be Beautiful--Cheerfulness, Agreeable Manners,
a Correct Taste, and Kindness should be Cultivated 22-40
Lecture Three.
DRESS.
Religion and Dress--Variety in Nature--Dress should not be
Injurious--Present Customs Unhealthy, Slovenly, and Immodest--A Subject
of Religious Consideration--Suicide _vs._ Providence--Foolish
Vanity--Taste an Element of Mind--Dress should be Symbolical--Woman
should Elevate her Aims--Appropriate Dress Admirable 41-57
Lecture Four.
FASHION.
Fashion made Superior to Health--Fashionable Religion--Unfashionable
Ministers--Votaries of Fashion Despise it--Fashionable Women
Short-lived--Mothers of Great Men Unfashionable--Woman's Greatness shown
in Offspring--Example of Women of Fashion--Apostrophe to Fashion--Appeal
to American Women--Nature in Freedom's Temple--Fashion is
Monotonous--Woman needs more Freedom 58-72
Lecture Five.
EDUCATION.
Life a School--Education a Work of Progress--Schools of Vice--Every
Circumstance a Teacher--Kinds of Education--Female Education--True
Womanly Ambition--Improve your Opportunities--Principles should be
Understood--Time Trifled Away--Some Excuses--Society Needs Woman's
Influence--Education as it is--Girls should have Something to Live For
73-87
Lecture Six.
PHYSICAL AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT.
Natural Position of Woman--Relations of Body and Mind--Sound Minds only
in Sound Bodies--To be Healthy is a Duty--Physical Laws
Obligatory--Penalties for Violation--Girls and their
Grandmothers--Causes of Difference--Physiological Studies Advised--Women
the "Weaker Vessel;" Why?--Intelligence and Beauty--Woman's Sound
Judgment--Woman's Mind not Powerless--Finished Educations--Education at
Home--Schools only Helps to Education--Woman's Thought Wanted 88-105
Lecture Seven.
MORAL AND SOCIAL CULTURE.
Woman Judges by Impressions--Mental Powers should Harmonize--Effects of
Different Culture--Male and Female Minds Differ--The Female Mind
Analyzed--Feminine Purity--Woman's Benevolence--The Sentiment of
Duty--Integrity in Woman--Cultivate Regard for Truth--Piety the Crown of
Moral Virtues--Cultivation of Piety Urged--Development of Social
Nature--Friendship and Love 106-121
Lecture Eight.
EMPLOYMENT.
Employment a Duty--Powers Developed by Labor--All Females are not
Women--Dependence Usually Ignoble--Adversity gives Strength--Girls
should have Trades--Self-reliance necessary to Women--Do Something and
Be Something--Riches no Excuse for Idleness--Employment gives Activity
and Strength--Labor considered Vulgar--Life is given for
Employment--Woman was Made for Usefulness 122-135
Lecture Nine.
HOME.
Maternal Love--Ideas of Future Home Universal--Heaven's Home
Perfected--Home the Garden of Virtue--Home Influence Permanent--Home is
Woman's World--Place does not constitute Home--Our Homes will be like
us--Home a Sensitive Place--Home Habits Second Nature 136-147
Lecture Ten.
THE RELATIONS AND DUTIES OF YOUNG WOMEN
TO YOUNG MEN.
The Primary Principles of Being--Life is full of Solemnities--Influence
of the Sexes--Influence depends on Culture--Men Reverence Female
Worth--Much Influence is directly Evil--Woman should demand
Morality--Errors of Society--The Sexes too much Separated--Equality of
Moral Standards--Female Encouragement and Counsel--Time Trifled, Worse
than Lost 148-160
Lecture Eleven.
MARRIAGE.
Unhappy Marriages--Marriage has its Laws--The Second Question in
Life--Be sure you are Right--For Better or for Worse--Know whom thou
Marriest--Marriage a Holy Institution--Marriage should be made a
Study--Marriage is not for Children--Early Marriages Inadvisable--What
are Early Marriages?--Influence of an Ignorant Wife--Woman the Hope of
the World--Married Life must be lived well--Love should rule all 161-176
Lecture Twelve.
RELIGIOUS DUTIES.
Our Father in Heaven--Moral Obligations and Religious Duties--Impiety of
Professed Christians--Deficiency of Religious Gratitude--Gratitude makes
Life Cheerful--Religion gives Joy to Life--Love, the Seed of
Religion--The Religion of Christ--Woman's Heart a Natural
Shrine--Religion fit for all Conditions--Love for the Unseen--Personal
Acquaintance not necessary for Love--The Idea of God Spontaneous--It is
the Unseen we Love--Life well lived is Glorious 177-191
Lecture Thirteen.
WOMANHOOD.
Woman not an Adornment only--Civilization Elevates Woman--Woman not what
She should be--Woman's Influence Over-rated--Force of Character
Necessary--The Virtue of True Womanhood--Passion is not always
Love--True Love is only for Worth--Good Behavior and
Deportment--Spiritual Harmony Desirable--Importance of
Self-control--What shall Woman do--Strive to be a True Woman 192-204
Lecture Fourteen.
HAPPINESS.
Happiness Desired--Fretful People--Motes in the Eye--We Were Made for
Happiness--Sorrow has Useful Lessons--Happiness a Duty--Despondency Is
Irreligious--Pleasure not always Happiness--The Misuse of the
World--Contentment necessary to Happiness--Happiness must be sought
aright--Truly seeking we shall Find--Our Success not always
Essential--Happiness often Found Unexpectedly--Happiness overcomes
Circumstances--A Tendency to Murmuring--God Rules over All--Health
necessary to Happiness--Disease is Sinful--God Loves a Happy
Soul--Happiness Possible to All 205-224
AIMS AND AIDS.
Lecture One.
GIRLHOOD.
Angels view Girlhood with Solicitude and Delight--Beauty no
perpetual Pledge of Safety--Nothing in Man or Things impels a
provident Regard for it--Blossoming Womanhood an Object of deep
Interest and Pity--Girlhood's first Work is to Form a Character--It
should be _Pure_ and _Energetic_--Woman only a Thing--Her Education
progressing--Physical Health should be Preserved--A Woman not
Herself Without Physical Strength--Woman must be Independent, and
Earn her own Livelihood--Character must Embody Itself In an Outward
Form to be of Service to the World.
If the angels look down upon earth and behold any natural object with
especial delight, it must be Girlhood. And yet if they are not gifted
with prophetic vision, they must tremble with fearful solicitude while
they gaze delighted. There is a fearfulness in the beauty of Girlhood
which mingles anxiety in the cup of admiration. No good being can look
upon it without casting a solicitous thought forward to its future, to
ask whether it will be well or ill with it. The beauty of Girlhood is no
perpetual pledge of its safety. Society has built no wall of protection
around it. It has no sure defense within itself. Its Maker has hung no
flaming sword turning every way above it to ward off danger. There is
nothing in the world of man and things which impels a provident regard
for it. Suns, winds, frosts, storms, time, diseases, and death pay no
deferential respect to it. Man respects it, bows to it, but while he
does it, it withers under his devotion, so little does he mingle wisdom
and care in his regard. Society professes to respect it, and so it does,
but it subjects it to so many untimely trials and injurious customs,
that that very respect is fearful. A young girl, fresh from childhood,
blossoming into a woman, rosy health in her veins, innocence in her
heart, caroling gaiety in her laugh, buoyant life in her step, the rich
glance of an opening soul in her eye, grace in her form with the casket
of mind richly jeweled, is indeed an object of beauty. He who can behold
it and not feel a benevolent interest in it, is an object of pity. He
who can live and not live in part for Girlhood, is devoid of the highest
order of feeling. He who can see it wither under unrighteous customs or
pass away by the blight of unholy abuses, and not drop a tear of
sympathy, is less than a generous man. He who sees its perilous position
and lifts not his warning voice, fails in a great duty. It is not enough
to admire Girlhood; it is not enough to do it graceful honors, make it
obsequious bows, strew its pathway with flattering compliments, and call
it by all beautiful names. Such outward expressions, unless most
judiciously made, are quite as likely to do it injury as direct abuse.
Girlhood is full of tenderness and weakness. The germs of its future
strength are its most perilous weaknesses now. Its mightiest energies
often kindle the fires of its ruin. Its most salient points of character
are often soonest invaded. Indeed, it can scarcely be said to have a
character. It is forming one, but knows not yet what it will be. Its
interior now is not exactly a chaos, but a beautiful disorder. The
elements of something grand are there, but they are not yet polished nor
put together, nor compactly cemented. This work is yet to be done. It is
the great work of Girlhood. It is the moral art to which it is to apply
all its ingenuity and energy. Girlhood is not all a holiday season; it
is more a working time, a study hour, an apprenticeship. True, it has
buoyant spirits, and should let them out with fresh good-will at proper
times. It has its playful moods, which should not only be indulged but
encouraged, but not wholly for the sake of the momentary enjoyment, but
rather to infuse the forming character largely with the element of
cheerfulness. A gloomy Girlhood is as odd and improper as it is
unnatural. And it is improper, not only because it is out of place and
wrong, but because it shades the character with a desponding hue.
Desponding is absolutely wrong in itself. It is a perversion of our
minds. To put on weeds when nobody is dead, to weep when it would be
more becoming and useful to laugh, to wear a face of woe when the
sunshine of gladness has the best right to preside in our sky, is all
wrong. It is absolutely wicked, because it casts a baneful influence
upon all with whom we associate, and prepares us to go through life like
a frowning cloud or a drooping willow, shading the circle of our
influence with melancholic gloom. No, better sing with the birds and
laugh with the babbling brooklets than be gloomy in Girlhood. Trials and
troubles of course will come. We must sometimes weep, and when we do, it
should be done with chastened spirits for real sorrow, that we may be
the calmer and happier when we recover from the shock of grief. Such
weeping is a gracious and healthy exercise. It does not check the true
joyousness of Girlhood's nature, nor cast any darkening line into the
future character. April suns are all the brighter for April showers. The
real sorrows ordinarily incident to Girlhood are not many; the real
causes for gloom are few; the most are imaginary. This is true of all
ages. Our _borrowed_ trouble is much more than that which comes as our
own in the legitimate course of our life. Trouble is the worst article
we can borrow. We have the least need for it, and it is a miserable dose
to take. Of all things which it does, Girlhood should not borrow
trouble. A heavy interest will have to be paid for it in the future; and
there is danger that it will make the soul absolutely bankrupt. If
borrowed trouble would go home when we told it to, and would never leave
a track behind, it would do less injury. But it will not. It is hard to
get rid of, and always leaves its dark trail on the most beautiful
feelings of the heart. If Girlhood is mindful of any thing, it should be
of the shadows that fall upon the heart. Whether they be of delusion,
disappointment, or sin, they are bad, and will make sad marks in the
character to be borne through life. Age can never forget its youth; nor
can one easily rub out dark lines traced in his character in its forming
state. If I could speak to Girlhood in its wide realm of beauty and
promise all over the world, I should say to it, that its first work is
to form a fitting character with which to pass through life and do the
great work of woman. There is much in starting right. A stumble in the
start often defeats the race, while a good strike at the onset often
wins the victory. There is no more alarming feature in the Girlhood of
our times than its apparent indifference to the great work before it.
Multitudes of girls are as thoughtless and giddy as the lambs that sport
on the lea. They seem scarcely to cast a prophetic glance before. They
live as though life was a theater, good for nothing but its acting. I
know there is much reason why girls do live so, why they are so heedless
of the grandeur that swells into eternal glory before them. I know they
have been taught by the customs of society, by the follies of their
elders, to regard themselves as the playthings of men, the ornaments of
society, rather than the helpers of themselves and their race, and the
solid substance of the social fabric. But it is time they had learned
better. They must soon know that they are made for a purpose as grand as
that which brought the Saviour of the world into being. They must soon
know that their powers were made for the highest order of usefulness and
excellency. They must soon know that if in Girlhood they regard
themselves as playthings and pets, in womanhood they will have to be
drudges or the cast-off dolls of their boyish husbands, or the
hangers-on to a society they would but can not be a part of. Is life a
preparation for eternity? so is Girlhood a preparation for womanhood. Do
effects follow their causes? so will Girlhood send its life and
character into womanhood. If a girl would be a good woman, she must
commence now. If she would be wise, she must not frolic away her early
life. If she would not feel the hand of oppression in age, she must lay
now the foundation of a noble independence which will make her
self-reliant, energetic, calm, and persistent in the pursuit of life's
great aim. Not only is a _pure_ character needed, chastity of thought
and feeling, but one of _energy_. It is grand to be pure of heart; it is
glorious to be virtuous, to be able to resist temptation and confound
all tempters. This, we confess, is one of the prime beauties of female
character. But this is not all that is needed. Life is more than a trial
of virtue, more a scene of temptation. It is a work. Christ resisted
temptation. But that was not all he had to do. That only showed him
ready for the great work before him. So woman has something more to do
than to beat back the tempter. If she can do this, she proves herself
made of the pure gold. She has a mission to engage in, a great work to
do. All women have. This work requires that they shall possess _energy_
as well as purity. They must have force of will to dare and to do. They
must dare to be and do that which is right; dare to face false customs;
dare to frown on fashion; dare to resist oppression; dare to assert
their rights; dare to be persecuted for righteousness' sake; dare to do
their own thinking and acting; dare to be above the silly pride and
foolish whims and prudish nonsense that enslave little minds. Woman is
now bound hand and foot by custom and law. She is only a thing. She is
not a conscious independent personality. She is not recognized as a
self-directing, responsible agent. She plays a second part. She is shut
out from all the higher aims and opportunities of life. Into no college
is she permitted to enter if she would cultivate her mind in the highest
walks of science and literature. At the feet of no learned professor may
she sit for wisdom. Every profession but the teacher's is barred against
her, and in that her services are considered not half at par. She can
not get more than half-pay for her labor. In law she is but a ninny; if
she is married she is less still, an absolute nonentity; her legal
existence is merged in that of her husband--the two become one, and he
is that one. Then in the every-day customs of life she is but a child.
She is not independent, free, energetic. The sun must not shine upon
her; she must not breathe the free air, nor bathe her limbs in the clear
stream, nor exercise in a healthful and profitable way. She must not go
away from her home without a protector; she must not step into the
street after nightfall without a watch; she must trail her dress in the
mud if others do; hang her bonnet behind her head if it is the fashion;
wear a bodiced waist tight as a vice if the milliner says so, and do and
submit to a thousand other things equally absurd and wrong. This is her
present position. To rise above this position and be what she is
capable of being, be strong in mind and purpose, be resolute in the
right, be herself untrammeled by custom or law, so far as any being can
be in a good society, it requires the culture of energy in the Girlhood
of this age. What was once regarded as a sufficient character for a
woman, is not enough now. Women are advancing as well as science,
mechanics, and men. Young women should remember this. Once it was
thought education enough if a woman could read and write a little. Now,
she must know a number of things more. The time is not far distant when
she must be educated as well as man. So it is in relation to character.
Very soon woman must possess energy, self-reliance, force of will and
thought, as well as love, or she will be wanting in the essential
elements of a noble womanhood. The woman and wife will be quite
different at the commencement of the next century from what they were at
the commencement of the last. Do the girls understand this? It must be
so. The edict has gone out and can not be withdrawn. Woman hails it with
joy. She wishes to improve with the advancing age. She would feel sad
and look antiquated if the car of progress left her behind. If a few
women of this age could be mesmerized and kept in the magnetic state
five hundred years, and then unlocked from the somnambulic fetters, how
would they compare with the women of that future age? They would be
women still, but in character as much antiquated as in custom. This is
to be looked for in the very nature of things. We know that woman's
education in the future is to be quite different from what it was in
the past. We know that the improvements in science and mechanics are
making rapid changes in the nature of the labor of life. Women are fast
entering into new fields of labor. Who knows but the sewing, cooking,
washing, and much else that woman now does, will in a great measure be
done by machinery? If so, woman will be left free to employ herself
elsewhere. There must be a change. It will probably be for the better.
The change will require the culture of new powers or forces in the
female character. Woman will rise, not fall. Her character must rise.
The young women ought to know it, and be preparing for it. Is the
Girlhood of to-day a fit preparation for the duties that will devolve
upon the women of the next generation? Parents ought to ask themselves
this question. And all young women should consider it well. The elements
of a true female character should be carefully studied. It would be well
if some strong hand should write out the moral philosophy of Girlhood as
a book for schools and academics as well as families, that every young
woman might have line upon line and precept upon precept, in the
formation of her character. All desire to possess a true character, but
all do not know how to acquire it.
A second duty devolves upon Girlhood. It is to preserve its physical
health and strength. The richest mind is of but little avail to the
world if locked up in a feeble, sickly body. The noblest character would
not half make its impression on the world if it was imprisoned in
weakness and barricaded with disease. A woman can not be herself unless
she possesses physical as well as mental and moral strength. Girlhood
has both beauty and strength. Why may they not be carried into
womanhood? Shall not the wife and mother retain the beauty and health of
the girl? Shall not the woman retain the physical integrity of the girl?
There is no good reason why she shall not. Health and strength were made
to be life-lasting, or nearly so. So beauty is a rich gift of the Divine
Artist given for life. Why should we dissipate it in an hour? It is
ungrateful, impious to do it. We ought to prize and retain it as a
divine benefaction. God could as well have made Girlhood ugly as
beautiful. His wisdom and love chose to make it a model of grace and
elegance. Has he laid a necessity upon woman's nature that this beauty
shall last but an hour? Far from it. On the other hand, he has made
every provision for its preservation. Why, then, is it not preserved?
Simply because Girlhood is not instructed in the science of health or
life. And this is not so much the fault of young women as it is of
parents and society. We study astronomy in all our schools, but where is
a class instructed in the economy of health? True, some go through a
text-book on physiology, but how meager is the instruction there gleaned
relative to the preservation of health, and how few ever think of
putting into practice what they do get! When physiologists say that pure
air, much exercise, comfortable and airy dress, frequent bathing,
sufficient sleep, a plain, simple diet, and regular habits, with a
peaceful and active mind, are essential to health, how many young women
heed the instruction? Now of what avail will a good character be without
health to apply its forces to the work of life? Of what avail is a good
boiler and a high pressure of steam to the engineer if his engine is all
out of order, so that it has neither strength nor freedom to work? So it
is with a good character in a fragile, broken-down body. If there was
any other way to use the forces of a good character than through the
medium of a physical engine, health would not be a matter of so much
importance; but as there is not, it is clear that for all the active,
benevolent, and useful purposes of this life, health is about as
important as character. Neither is of much utility alone. A boiler
pressed full of steam would be useless without an engine to use and
apply its forces, and the engine would be as useless without the boiler.
Why, then, is Girlhood so prodigal of its health and strength? Why does
it imprison itself in close, hot rooms? Why live on a diet that no brute
could bear? Why confine every limb and muscle of its body? Why engirdle
its waist in warmth and cordage, and expose its feet to every storm and
frost, to mud and snow? It is useless to talk, and preach, and write
about the value of a good character unless we couple it with an equally
earnest lesson about the value of health. It is useless for Girlhood to
be anxious about its moral character unless it is equally anxious about
its physical character. If we have no right to cultivate a bad
character, we have no right to abuse the only means by which a good
character can be of use to the world. If we have no moral right to set
a bad example before our fellow-men, we have no right to weaken and
disease a good physical organization. And it would be difficult to show
the reasoning at fault, should we conclude that we have no more moral
right to be sick than we have to sin. But we hope to say more on this
subject before our work is done.
Still another duty presses upon Girlhood. It relates to a livelihood, to
the practical work of pushing its way through life. Woman must eat,
wear, be sheltered, educated, protected, warmed, and amused, as much as
any other human being. She can not be thus supplied except by charity or
her own labor. It is degrading to accept of all life's necessities at
the hand of charity. No woman possessed of a genuine womanly character
will do it. The character would forbid that she should do it. She must
then be independent, or as much so as any are. She must have some
livelihood. She must not only have a good character and good health, but
an ability to do something for herself and others. Both character and
health would be of little avail if she was a shiftless, homeless,
useless know-nothing in relation to all the great activities of life, by
which we secure the necessaries and comforts of our existence. It is
through useful industry and labor that the rarest beauties and forces of
character shine. Men show themselves great and good in their professions
and callings. The man whose hands are taught no skill, who is trained to
no profession, is a ninny, or nearly so. Why is not a woman who is
equally useless? Characters must have some way to embody themselves in
an outward form to be of service to the world. The best way is in
devotion to some useful calling or profession, by which our powers may
be called upon for their best efforts in a direction that shall promise
a full reward for ourselves and a good surplus for our fellow-men.
Lecture Two.
BEAUTY.
God a Lover of Beauty--Every thing in the Universe Beautiful--The
Admirer of Beauty should Reverence its Author--The Love of Beauty
elevating in its Tendency--Its Abuses Fearful--Man a Part of Nature,
and God in all--Woman the most Perfect Type of Beauty--Youthful
Woman exposed to great Temptation--Beauty a Charming, but Dangerous
Gift--The most Beautiful should be the most Pious--Beauty of Person
Worthless without Loveliness of Character--"Strong-minded" Women not
Beautiful--Beauty the Nurse of Vanity--Value of Character
depreciates with Increase of Beauty when substituted for Moral
Worth--Beauty only Skin-deep--Beauty Two-fold: Inward and
Outward--Inward Beauty shines through--Beauty of Soul made
Washington, Josephine, and Channing glorious--Every Woman may be
Beautiful--Cheerfulness, Agreeable Manners, a Correct Taste, and
Kindness should be Cultivated.
We doubt not that God is a lover of Beauty. We speak reverently. He
fashioned the worlds in Beauty, when there was no eye to behold them but
his own. All along the wild old forest he has carved the forms of
Beauty. Every cliff, and mountain, and tree is a statue of Beauty. Every
leaf, and stem, and vine, and flower is a form of Beauty. Every hill,
and dale, and landscape is a picture of Beauty. Every cloud, and
mist-wreath, and vapor-vail is a shadowy reflection of Beauty. Every
spring and rivulet, lakelet, river, and ocean, is a glassy mirror of
Beauty. Every diamond, and rock, and pebbly beach is a mine of Beauty.
Every sun, and planet, and star is a blazing face of Beauty. All along
the aisles of earth, all over the arches of heaven, all through the
expanses of the universe, are scattered in rich and infinite profusion
the life-gems of Beauty. All natural motion is Beauty in action. The
winds, the waves, the clouds, the trees, the birds, the animals, all
move beautifully; and beautifully do the joyous light-words of the skies
dance their eternal cotillion of glory. From the mote that plays its
little frolic in the sunbeam, to the world that blazes along the
sapphire spaces of the firmament, are visible the ever-varying features
of the enrapturing spirit of Beauty. All this great realm of dazzling
and bewildering beauty was made by God. What shall we say then, is he
not a lover of Beauty? Is it irreverence thus to speak? No; but rather
reverence. What reverent soul does not love to look at God in his works?
Go out in the still morning, when the golden gates of day are turning
slowly back to let the morning king come in with a great crown of rosy
light streaking half around the heavens, on his brow; or at noon, when
the whole firmament and the joyous earth are bathed in a golden flood,
soft, and warm, and life-inspiring; or at evening, when even the zephyrs
are folding up their wings with the little birds, and the trees, and the
fields, and the smiling mountain tops are bidding a sweet good-night to
their heavenly king as encurtained in diamond glory he sinks to rest; or
at night, when the stars come out to keep their vigils over the sleeping
earth; go out at such times, and what heart is not bewildered with the
sense of Beauty that steals over it like a divine charm? and through
that beauty is not carried up to God the beautiful and bountiful author
of it all? God hath made every thing beautiful in its time. I envy not
him who is undevout in the presence of so much Beauty. How easily can
the devout spirit go through nature up to nature's God. Who loves nature
should love God. Who admires Beauty should reverence its Author. Natural
beauty inspires piety in a good heart. To commune with nature
intelligently is to commune with God. Who ever loves a flower, a bird, a
landscape view, a rainbow, a star, the blue sky, should love God. God is
in them all. He is in the aisles of the forest, the waves of the deep,
the solitudes of the mountain, and the fragrance of the green fields.
Beauty is of divine origin, and we should admire, ay, and love it too.
It should fill us with sweet thoughts of God, with worshipful emotions,
with reverent aspirings. The love of Beauty we should cultivate within
us as a gift of the good Father, and a shrine at which we may worship
him acceptably. He has not given us this delicate sense of Beauty to be
neglected. It is our duty to preserve it well and cultivate it
diligently. None of us love Beauty too much, if our love is enlightened
and devout. He who has no love of Beauty in his soul is a great way from
God, and very near the earth, the animal. The love of Beauty is refining
and elevating in its tendency. Yet it is too often indulged without a
thought of God or a reverent emotion. It is a love which may be united
with earthly desires, or with heavenly aspirations. It may lead us
downward or upward, according to the use we make of it. It may pander to
pride and vanity, lust and appetite, or inspire to virtue, religion, and
inward life. It is a love which should be brought within the sphere of
moral government as much as the passions of our lower nature. It is a
love, too, which perhaps leads as many astray, corrupts as many lives,
degrades as many natures, as almost any feeling we possess. Its abuses
are fearful in their character and wide in their influence. It is a
power of mind lovely to behold, and even when degraded it is like a
diamond in the dust. So far as the love of natural things is concerned,
there is but little danger of abuse. Nature is always lovely, and always
to be admired. She always reminds us of God and our duty; always teaches
us our own littleness and frailty, and works upon all our passions a
calming subduing influence.
But we may pass from Beauty in nature to Beauty in man. Strictly
speaking, man is a part of nature; but by common usage we often speak of
nature as distinct from both God and man. Really, man is a part of
nature, and God is in it all. Take God away from his works, and where
would they be? They would vanish like a body deprived of its soul. Take
God out of a flower, and it would wither and vanish in an instant. Take
God out of a sun or star, and they would go out as a candle in the wind.
Take God out of any thing--a tree, an animal, a man--and it would cease
to be. So take God out of nature, and there would be no nature. Not that
nature is God, but that there is no nature without God. God is in all
things; he pervades, sustains, and moves all things. The laws of nature,
of which we often speak, are the arteries and veins which God has made,
along which he pours through the great body of his universe the spirit
of his infinite being. Man, then, as a part of this nature, is pervaded
by God. And here, as elsewhere, he has shown his presence in the
surprising Beauty in which he has made his creatures. Yes, man is
beautiful; the natural man, undeformed by abuses, is an object of
Beauty. We speak of man in the generic sense, as including women also.
Woman, by common consent, we regard as the most perfect type of Beauty
on earth. To her we ascribe the highest charms belonging to this
wonderful element so profusely mingled in all God's works. Her form is
molded and finished in exquisite delicacy of perfection. The earth gives
us no form more perfect, no features more symmetrical, no style more
chaste, no movements more graceful, no finish more complete; so that our
artists ever have and ever will regard the woman-form of humanity as the
most perfect earthly type of Beauty. This form is most perfect and
symmetrical in the youth of womanhood; so that youthful woman is earth's
queen of Beauty. This is true, not only by the common consent of
mankind, but also by the strictest rules of scientific criticism.
This being an admitted fact, woman, and especially youthful woman, is
laid under strong obligations and exposed to great temptations. Beauty
has wonderful charms, and hence it is a dangerous gift. We did not make
ourselves physically beautiful. Another hand than ours molded our forms,
tinged our faces with the vermilion of life, colored our hair and eyes,
bleached our teeth and touched our bodies with that exquisite finish
which we call Beauty. Another being than ourselves gave us that
mysterious power of mind by which we discern and are charmed by Beauty.
Then if Beauty hath charms, if it is a possession which we value, we are
under peculiar obligations to its Giver. "Every good and perfect gift
cometh down from the Father of lights." This is one. A charming gift
conferred for pleasure and profit. Who possesses it should be grateful.
Who revels in its charms should be reverent in praise, pure in heart,
holy in life, devout in demeanor, beautiful in character. She who is
most beautiful should be most moved to a pious character and a useful
life. She whose dwelling God hath wrought into the rich fullness of
Beauty almost divine, who is spread over with a profusion of charms
which no eye can behold without ecstasy, is ungrateful and mean in
spirit if she returns not to God the "Beauty of holiness" in her life.
Beauty will not only win for her admiring eyes, but it will win her
favor; it will draw _hearts_ toward her; it will awaken tender and
agreeable feelings in her behalf; it will disarm the stranger of the
peculiar prejudices he often has toward those he knows not; it will pave
the way to esteem; it will weave the links to friendship's chain; it
will throw an air of agreeableness into the manners of all who approach
her. All this her Beauty will do for her before she puts forth a single
effort of her own to win the esteem and love of her fellows. All this is
the direct, immediate, and agreeable result of a gift from her Father in
heaven. How, than, should she feel toward that Father? With what noble
gifts of gratitude and love should she seek to repay Him for this rich
inheritance of Beauty! How useful, how lovely in spirit should she be!
how thankful, how pious, how virtuous, how rich in inward charms! These
are what God asks in return. Think of it, young women, as it really is.
See God clothing your forms with Beauty, rich and ravishing in its
charms; see that Beauty winning for you flowery paths of life, softening
all hearts that approach you, making it easy, ay, almost a necessity,
for them to love and esteem you; think how much you prize it, and how
pleasant it is to your friends; and then think what God asks in return
for this lovely gift. It is that you should be beautiful inwardly as He
has made you outwardly; that you should be grateful, dutiful, merciful,
pure in heart and life, meek, loving, useful, and pious. Does He ask
more than what is reasonable? Can you do less than to love Him for the
rich endowments he has bestowed upon you, less than to obey his
commands, imitate his character, seek instruction from his Son, and be
kind and good to his children?
How can you look upon your own forms or see your features in a mirror,
without thinking of Him who made you thus? How can you look upon any
thing beautiful, or contemplate the sense of Beauty within you, without
reverent feelings toward God the Giver of all?
What does your Beauty avail you unless you are beautiful in spirit,
lovely in character, useful in life? Ah, it is only a mockery, calling
reproaches upon you from all the good, and the reproof of Heaven for
your ingratitude! One of the most unpleasant, if we may not say hateful,
objects in the world, is a cold, vain, heartless, beautiful woman.
I said that Beauty is a dangerous gift. It is even so. Like wealth, it
has ruined its thousands. Thousands of the most beautiful women are
destitute of common sense and common humanity. No gift from Heaven is so
general and so widely abused by woman as the gift of Beauty. In about
mine cases in ten it makes her silly, senseless, thoughtless, giddy,
vain, proud, frivolous, selfish, low, and mean. I think I have seen more
girls spoiled by Beauty than by any other one thing. "She is beautiful,
and she knows it," is as much as to say she is spoiled. A beautiful girl
is very likely to believe she was made to be looked at; and so she sets
herself up for a show at every window, in every door, on every corner of
the street, in every company at which opportunity offers for an
exhibition of herself. And believing and acting thus, she soon becomes
good for nothing else; and when she comes to be a middle-aged woman she
is that weakest, most sickening of all human things--a faded Beauty.
It has long since passed into a proverb, that homely women are good,
that plain women have strong common sense. An eminent writer asks, "Who
ever saw a handsome talented woman?" There is among us a class of
"strong-minded women," brave of heart and deep of soul, high of purpose
and pure of life, who are stirring the country from heart to
circumference by the sterling powers of womanhood which they possess,
and there is not "a beauty" among them. There is a large class of female
writers in every enlightened country, over the productions of whose
genius the world hangs delighted, but there is not "a beauty" wields the
magic pen. There are women engaged in great enterprises of benevolence
and piety, reformers, missionaries, teachers who labor and live for the
causes in which they are engaged, but scarcely a beauty can be found
among them all. But why? Is Beauty uncongenial to talent and worth? By
no means. But Beauty is a dangerous gift, and few beautiful women ever
seek to develop their minds--ever seek to be any thing more than they
are. Worth is _made_, not _given_; Beauty is _given_, not _made_. Women
who have no Beauty make worth. Those who have Beauty are satisfied with
that, and seldom make for themselves much worth. The world has paid
court to Beauty, and Beauty has foolishly become satisfied with itself,
and been willing to be wooed and petted till it has become the weakest
of all weak things. I heard of a man of brilliant talents who is said to
have been ruined by the possession of a beautiful head, adorned with a
beautiful covering of hair. He was a minister of the Gospel, and
entered upon his sacred office with a bright promise of usefulness. He
was so much enamored of his own head, that when he walked the street he
carried his hat in his hand much of the way, apparently to wipe his
forehead, or in seeming thoughtfulness, yet all the while to show his
pretty head to the people he met. This weakness soon permeated his whole
character, and rendered it vain, imbecile, trifling, and ignoble. In a
little while he died a ministerial death--and died of nothing but a
beautiful head. God had richly endowed him with brilliant qualities of
mind and great beauty of person, and he returned only vanity and
weakness for these gifts. Oh, how weak is man! Die of Beauty! Die a
moral death, or live a useless, foolish life because he is wickedly vain
of God's gifts! Beauty is full often the nurse of vanity, and vanity is
the bane of womanhood. I am sorry to say it, and more sorry because it
is so. It is a pity that so lovely a gift from the Hand Divine should be
so wickedly perverted. Beauty ought to inspire rather than weaken its
possessor, ought to elevate rather than depress her. And it would, if
woman-life was rightly appreciated, if the woman-soul was rightly
taught, and the woman-heart of humanity rightly awakened to its grand
capacities and duties. Woman is not alone to blame for this strange and
wicked fire kindled on the altar of Beauty. Man is as guilty as she. He
has praised Beauty and foolishly smiled upon it. He has chosen it for
his companion. He has passed by worth in search of Beauty. So he has
helped women to be vain and trifling. He has not sought to ennoble her
heart so much as to weaken it with flatteries. And he together with her
has suffered as a consequence. Man and woman rise and fall together.
What injures or benefits one does the same to the other.
Take fifty of the most beautiful young ladies that any town affords, and
put them in one company. You would of course have the belles of the
town. What would they talk about? What would they think about? What
would they do? They are as richly endowed with mind as any other fifty
girls in town, but how would they show it? Only in an exhibition of
their personal beauty. You know, young women, that common sense would
have to play "hide-and-seek" in that company. You know that follies and
trifles, fooleries, fashions, foibles, and failings, would occupy their
whole minds. Then let fifty of the young men with whom they are in the
habit of associating enter into their company, and what an exhibition of
Beauty and display would follow! Not one of them would try so much to
show her good sense as her pretty face. Let good sense sit back and look
on, and methinks it would be not a little disgusted.
Take fifty of the plainest young women from the same circles in our
town, and place them under similar circumstances, and, if I mistake not,
their behavior would be much more genteel and becoming, their
conversation much more interesting and intelligent, and their feelings
much more refined and noble. Am I wrong in this supposition? If I am
wrong, I have read woman-life to a poor purpose.
I have often seen sisters, one of whom was plain and the other handsome,
and almost invariably I have found the plain one more sensible and kind,
less vain and frivolous. Indeed, I have generally found value of
character to depreciate with increase of Beauty.
Why is it so? Is Beauty connected with less natural endowments of mind,
less kindness of heart? By no means. Is Beauty an evil in itself
considered? By no means. Is it morally corrupting? Not of itself. The
fault is with those who possess it. They abuse the lovely gift. They
attempt to make it answer in the place of good sense. They weigh it
against goodness of heart, and find it woefully wanting. They substitute
it for moral worth, put it in the place of refinement of manners, try to
make it win for them the esteem and love which can be given only to a
cultivated and noble spirit. And for all these purposes it utterly
fails. Besides this abuse of it, they usually become vain, proud, silly,
and frivolous. It need not be so, but it generally is so. I have often
noticed that people are not generally so vain of their own attainments
as they are of the gifts of God. A beautiful woman is more vain of her
beauty than she is of her personal attainments. A talented man is more
likely to be vain of his natural talents than of the culture he has
given them. A rich singer is more likely to be vain of his voice than of
what he has done to train it. So it is generally; we are more apt to be
vain of what God does for us than of what we do for ourselves. It is so
with the possessor of personal Beauty, and hence beautiful women are so
tempted to vanity and a neglect of all useful culture of mind and heart.
They think their Beauty will carry them through the world, and they need
not strive for worth of character; they may neglect the ordinary means
of culture and improvement, forgetting that a good heart, a true life, a
cultivated mind, and a noble soul can have no possible substitutes;
forgetting that Beauty will soon fade, that nothing makes old age
beautiful but worth, and that another life succeeds this that Beauty of
body can not enter, and in which Beauty of soul is honored and cherished
as of eternal worth.
These facts have long since taught sensible men to beware of beautiful
women--to sound them carefully before they give them their confidence.
Beauty is shallow--only skin-deep; fleeting--only for a few years'
reign; dangerous--tempting to vanity and lightness of mind;
deceitful--dazzling often to bewilder; weak--reigning only to ruin;
gross--leading often to sensual pleasure. And yet we say it need not be
so. Beauty is lovely, and ought to be innocently possessed. It has
charms which ought to be used for good purposes. It is a delightful
gift, which ought to be received with gratitude and worn with grace and
meekness. It should always minister to inward Beauty. Every woman of
beautiful form and features should cultivate a beautiful mind and heart.
Beauty is two-fold. It is inward and outward. We have been speaking of
outward Beauty. We would now dwell upon inward Beauty--Beauty of spirit,
soul, mind, heart, life. There is a Beauty which perishes not. It is
such as the angels wear. It forms the whitewashed robes of the saints.
It wreathes the countenance of every doer of good. It adorns every
_honest_ face. It shines in the _virtuous_ life. It molds the hands of
_charity_. It sweetens the voice of sympathy. It sparkles on the brow of
wisdom. It flashes in the eye of love. It breathes in the spirit of
piety. It is the Beauty of the heaven of heavens--the Beauty of God and
his Son--the Beauty of "eternal life," "incorruptible, undefiled, and
that fadeth not away." It is not a meteor flashing to deceive; not a
glow-worm, shining to fade; not a glitter, leading to bewilder; not a
charm, working to tempt. No. It is positive, real, lovely, delightful,
glorious, and eternal. It is the life of goodness, the spirit of love,
the brilliance of virtue. It is that which may grow by the hand of
culture in every human soul. It is the flower of the spirit which
blossoms on the tree of life. Every soul may plant and nurture it in its
own garden, in its own Eden. It is Eden renewed--Paradise regained.
Every one may have an Eden--a garden of Eden in his own soul. That is
where the first garden was. It is where the second must be. And that
second when complete will be heaven. This is the capacity for Beauty
that God has given to the human soul, and this the Beauty placed within
the reach of us all. We may all be beautiful. Though our forms may be
uncomely and our features not the prettiest, our spirits may be
beautiful. And this inward beauty always shines through. A beautiful
heart will flash out in the eye. A lovely soul will glow in the face. A
sweet spirit will tune the voice and wreathe the countenance in charms.
Oh, there is a power in interior Beauty that melts the hardest hearts! I
see it in a mother's love; I see it in a sister's tenderness; I see it
in the widow's mite of charity; in the wife's bosom of burning
truthfulness; in the devotion of the saint; in the strong purpose, the
noble resolve, the dauntless ambition for good. I see it in the
affectionate home, the congenial companionship, in the trusting heart of
friendship, and most of all in the Christian spirit and life. How this
beauty wins us, charms us, ravishes our souls. Our hardness all melts
before it. Could Washington come here, and we all stand up in his
presence, how we should forget the Beauty or ugliness of our forms, and
all be moved by the grand and eternal Beauty of his spirit! Could
Josephine, the empress of the French, stand in our presence, how the
plumes of our vanity would come down and the lightness of our frivolity
depart before the charms of her wisdom and virtue! Could the matchless
Mrs. Hemans rise before us in her peerless Beauty of soul, how little
should we prize the fleeting Beauty of these mortal bodies, and how
ashamed should we be of our foolish pride and thoughtlessness! Could we
invite before us the departed Channing, Mayo, Weare, and gaze for one
little moment at the effulgence of virtue and goodness that made them
the charmed centers of their wide circles of influence and usefulness,
how mean should we feel that we ever thought so much of our pretty forms
and faces, and so little of that Beauty which is a fadeless power and a
glorious life in the soul! It was not Beauty of person that made these
men and women so glorious in their day, and so grand in the memories of
the generations that follow them. It was Beauty of soul. So all about us
we have men and women who are living charms in their families and in
their circles of associations; but it is not their Beauty of person that
makes them so. It is another Beauty, inward, living, powerful, which
charges their wisdom, sweetens their actions with love, and tempers
their lives with piety. Oh, how lovely it makes them! We gaze upon them
with reverence. We never once think of their outward Beauty. No, it
would be sacrilege to do so. They have a higher Beauty. We see it
playing on their faces; we feel it in the charm of their presence, and
hear it in the music of their voices. It is the Beauty of virtue,
wisdom, goodness, magnanimity, meekness, piety. There is a cultured
finish in their actions, a refined sweetness in their manners, a
chastened delicacy and power in their lives which give them their
Beauty.
This is the Beauty, young women, to which I would invite your admiring
attention. Now, in the May-morning of your lives, you should search for
the flowery wreaths of spiritual Beauty. If God has arrayed your persons
in the elegance of rich proportions and lively colorings, be thankful,
and make this outward Beauty the symbol of one more rich, lasting, and
priceless within which you will seek to adorn your minds. If your forms
and features are not attractive, then be thoughtful that you may
cultivate your minds, enrich your hearts, beautify your spirits, make
useful your lives without the temptations of an alluring outward
loveliness. Beautiful or not beautiful, it matters little so the mind be
cultivated, the heart subdued, and the life right. Nothing is more
important to young women than that they should early learn to
distinguish between outward and inward attractions, to place a proper
estimate upon each. The true woman-beauty is inward; that which makes
the woman attractive, lovely, useful, esteemed, loved, and happy, and is
deeper than the color on her cheeks or the form of her person. It is in
her mind, and is attainable by her own exertions. Every woman may be
beautiful. Every young woman may shine, attract, and be admired and
loved. She has only to be lovely in spirit and life, to be good and
useful, cheerful and agreeable.
_Cheerfulness_ is a Beauty which every body admires. A cheerful spirit
is a continual feast. It smiles its way through life. It wins crowns for
its possessor. It makes and gives happiness. All sunshine and flowers is
a cheerful heart. It shines in perpetual spring. Its birds are ever
singing, and its joys ever new. Every young woman may cultivate a
cheerful spirit, and throw its charm around her associates. _Agreeable
manners_ is another Beauty of spirit which charms every body. It is the
product of a kind heart and a refined taste. We can not describe it,
though we all know what it is. It is one of the charming graces of
cultivated womanhood. All who will, may possess it. But they can not do
it without effort, culture, and constant watchfulness over the impulses
and habits. To possess agreeableness of manners they must have a
_correct taste_. This is an inward Beauty of rare loveliness. It grows
out of a good judgment and an informed mind. Ignorance and awkwardness
are usually found together. Every young woman may inform her mind,
enrich her judgment, and thus correct and discipline her taste. She may
read; she may think; she may act; she may imitate the good and wise; she
may restrain her folly; curb her impulses; subdue her passions; awaken
good aspirations, and thus by persevering effort she may acquire a
correct taste.
Then she may cultivate _kindness of heart_. She may seek to do good to
all, to feel for their sufferings, pity their weakness, assuage their
griefs, assist them in their trials, and breath everywhere the spirit of
a kind heart.
Thus she may make herself beautiful in spirit. And she may rest assured
that that Beauty will win her laurels of life and joy. It will soon
become apparent to all with whom she associates. It will come out and
sit like a queen on her person. It will speak in all her words and
actions. She will move amid enchantment. No deformity of body can
conceal a beautiful spirit. It will shine through an ugly face, a
shriveled form, a bad complexion. Nothing made of clay can hide it. No
beauty of person can conceal deformity of spirit. A bad temper will look
hateful in the prettiest face. A hollow heart will sound its dirge of
woe through the most perfectly organized form. Peering through all
outward Beauty is seen the hateful demon of a bad heart. Shining
through all bodily deformity are always visible the angel faces of the
virtues that cluster in a beautiful spirit. All wise young women will
rest not till they possess the Beauty of spirit.
Lecture Three.
DRESS.
Religion and Dress--Variety in Nature--Dress should not be
Injurious--Present Customs Unhealthy, Slovenly, and Immodest--A
Subject of Religious Consideration--Suicide _vs._
Providence--Foolish Vanity--Taste an Element of Mind--Dress should
be Symbolical--Woman should Elevate her Aims--Appropriate Dress
Admirable.
Comfort, taste, and religion agree that _Dress_ is one of the
proprieties of civilized and Christian life. If religion reaches a part,
it does the whole of life. If it should direct us anywhere, it should in
the matter of Dress. There are few things upon which people are more
liable to err, and about which there is more wrong feeling than this.
Many religious sects have seen this, and have attempted to bring the
matter of Dress wholly under the ban of ecclesiastical direction. In
this they were partly right and partly in error. They were right in
believing that religion should extend a fostering and restraining care
over the subject of Dress; but wrong in believing that it should Dress
all in the same manner. Our Quaker brethren, the Friends, than whom no
purer and better people have ever lived--noble followers of the lowly
Prince of Peace--the truest _friends_ that humanity has ever found
since the days of the Apostles, or that Jesus has ever had in the
earth--the world-renowned speakers of the sweet, plain language which
hath the charm of divinity within it, and in which love always chooses
to express its tender emotions--adopted the idea that religion should
extend its sway over the subject of Dress. In this they did well; but,
in my humble opinion, erred in putting the shears into the hands of
sectarianism to cut every man's Dress by exactly the same pattern, and
to choose it all from the same grand web of drab. It is sectarianism,
and not religion, which would Dress every man alike. That is making
Dress the badge of the order. Any thing put on outwardly to tell the
world to what sect you belong is an evidence of sectarianism, and not of
religion. The Quaker wears the sign of his sect all over his body. The
drunkard wears his on his face. The Catholic wears his in his beads and
cross. If God had designed that all men should dress in one color,
methinks he would have made them all of one complexion; and not only so,
but would have colored nature in that peculiar hue--would have clothed
all the forests, fields, flowers, birds, and skies in that color, and
have fitted every man's taste to enjoy it.
If He had designed every man to cut his Dress in one form, after one
model, I see not why he did not fashion nature after that pattern, and
make that peculiar curve, and cast the grand leading ones in all his
works, and fit the universal taste to that form. But, on the contrary,
nature is robed in every variety of color and form; the human taste is
equally diversified, and the forms and complexions of men are not less
various.
It is clear to my mind that we may reason from this, that men not only
may, but should dress in different forms and colors and after differing
styles. What is pleasing to some men's taste is and ever will be
displeasing to others. Taste is an inherent quality in our minds. We
naturally possess tastes peculiar to ourselves, and no amount of culture
can make these differing tastes agreeably harmonious. Some tastes revel
in the gay, others in the grave, others in the changing. Some delight in
high colors, others in subdued; some in diversity, others in sameness.
There is nothing irreligious in this difference in taste. Each one is
equally gratified in God's beautiful and diversified works. The grave
and golden clouds, the dark and rosy tints of the sunset sky, the
gorgeous rainbow and the modest Aurora, the flashing flower and the
lowly heather, the towering pine and the creeping vine, the rich green
field of summer and the calm gray forest of winter, the thousand million
forms of the hill-and-dale landscape, and the equally diversified colors
and forms of birds and beasts, confer the richest feasts of pleasure
upon every variety of natural taste.
Looking thus upon the panoramic field of God's works, we must conclude
that he has taken especial care to gratify the varying tastes of his
creatures. And more than this; we must conclude that He himself has an
infinite taste, which finds an infinite pleasure in making and viewing
this magnificent universe of flashing splendor and somber sweetness,
this field on field, system beyond system, far off where human eye can
never reach, all shining and moving in an infinite variety of forms,
colors and movements. Moreover, we can not but feel that God is a lover
of Dress. He has put on robes of beauty and glory upon all his works.
Every flower is dressed in richness; every field blushes beneath a
mantle of beauty; every star is vailed in brightness; every bird is
clothed in the habiliments of the most exquisite taste. The cattle upon
the thousand hills are dressed by the Hand Divine. Who, studying God in
his works, can doubt that he will smile upon the evidence of correct
taste manifested by his children in clothing the forms he has made them?
Who can doubt that Dress is a matter properly coming within purview of
religion? Religion is what we learn of God. It is human imitation of the
Divinity. "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect."
Now what I mean by Dress coming under the direction of religion is, that
our manners and style of Dress shall not interfere with the principles
of true religion, shall not injure the body, corrupt the heart, debase
the mind of the individual; shall not degrade society, nor work any evil
influence in it, but, on the contrary, shall do good both to the
individual and society. Now let us ask whether our present modes of
Dress are thus brought under the direction of religious principles?
First: Do our modes of Dress injure our bodies? In this, young women,
you may be judges. Are your forms permitted to expand as God designed
them? Are your organs and limbs and muscles permitted their full and
proper play? Is your blood in no way impeded in its life-mission through
your bodies? Are you protected from the winter's cold, from wind and wet
at all points, as you should be? Can you breathe freely and easily the
proper amount of air to oxygenate your blood and give you health and
strength? If so, what mean the languid faces, the sallow countenances,
the pale cheeks, the wasp-like forms, the rounded shoulders, the bent
spines, the feeble lungs, the short breathings, the cold feet, the
hampered step, the neuralgic pains, the hysteric nervousness, the weak
sides, the frailty, weakness, and painfulness so prevalent among women?
What mean the head-aches, and liver-complaints, and consumptions, and
neuralgias, and the troublesome ailments of your sex from which scarcely
a woman of you is free? Those strings which bind so closely your chests,
do they not impede your breathing, and thus weaken your lungs and
corrupt your systems? Those dresses hooked so closely that every seam in
them gapes as in agony, giving you so much the appearance of convicts in
strait jackets, are they not in the way when you want to breathe a full
breath, and do they permit the exercise of all the muscles that strive
for life within them? That enormous weight of skirts that you hang over
portions of your bodies that should be choicely protected instead of
burdened, how they hang down like so many dead weights on your vitality,
weakening and diseasing the most delicate economy of your fearfully and
wonderfully made systems! and how your whole frames are taxed every day
of your lives with this wrongly placed and worse than useless burden.
This alone is enough to bring premature disease and death to any
ordinary woman. The law of health demands that the extremities of our
bodies should be kept warm and well protected, while the parts
containing our vital economy should be only comfortably clothed and left
free to the most natural and easy action, well ventilated or exposed to
the ingress and egress of the atmosphere, without any local pressures or
means for unnatural warmth. Only think of wearing a thick, heavy girdle
of many pounds' weight around the whole zone of the abdominal region--a
sort of engirdling poultice, heating and pressing like a girdle of hot
lava, day after day and year after year! Is it a wonder that you have so
many weaknesses and pains and saddening afflictions upon you? And then
your feet treading these cold pavements, this damp earth, these frozen
or wet walks, in slippers and silk or cotton stockings! The very part of
your bodies of all others you should keep most warm and dry, you expose
to every wind and frost, water-pool and snow-storm, in the year; sit
through the whole winter with them on cold floors, where every
door-crack and floor-crack is breathing in upon them cold, damp breaths
from cellars or streets while perhaps your heads are hot in a dry stove
air, and your lungs are breathing an atmosphere so hot and close that it
has scarcely a breath of life in it, and all the while you say you are
comfortably dressed!
And then, to make the matter still worse, you trail your bedrabbled
dress into all the mud and water and tobacco filth on the yard's width
you occupy in walking, exhibiting the strangest spectacle of civilized
humanity that can well be imagined, a woman claiming good sense,
sweeping the streets all about her to make cold and wet her already
almost bare feet and ankles!
Nor is this all. These damp winter winds bathe many a bare arm, kiss
wantonly many an unprotected neck, and visit rudely many a bosom only
veiled with a gossamer gauze. To say nothing of such an exposure to
every lewd eye that roves the street, and the unwomanly impudence it
offers to every modest gaze, it is a hazardous, wicked, criminal
exposure of health, and a total neglect of all the ends and uses of
Dress. And then, to crown all, you go out in all weathers with your
heads exposed to the fiercest blasts, all unbonneted; for Webster says a
bonnet is a _covering_ for the head; but few are the women's heads we
have seen covered this season--and then wonder why you should have such
terrible colds, such troublesome coughs, such griping pleurisies, such
burning fevers, and so many ailments!
Now, I ask again, and you shall be judges, young women, if your modes of
Dress do not injure your bodies? Do they answer the ends of Dress? Any
one who has given the subject a moment's judicious consideration must
see that there has been and still is a fearful departure from the real
uses of Dress. The primary object of Dress is to clothe and make
comfortable the body, so that it may be the peaceful and happy
dwelling-place of the spirit in its earthly pilgrimage. But filling it
with disease is not making it comfortable. Hampering it in fetters is
not making it comfortable.
I have referred to a few of the most prominent evils of our present mode
of female Dress. Now, let me ask, if our women would dress warmly and
securely from wind and wet, yet not in too close confinement, their feet
and limbs; if they would shorten their skirts so they would swing clear
of wet, mud, filth, and passing obstacles; diminish their number and
dimensions, so that their weight would not be burdensome, and suspend
them from the shoulders, instead of girting them around the abdominal
and spinal regions; would give their chests a free and easy play; would
cover their heads, arms, and necks whenever exposed to cold and damp
weather or night air, and would always seek to be clothed easily and
comfortably, giving always a sufficiently free circulation of air
between their dresses and bodies, to carry off the constant exhalations
going out from every living body; if they would thus dress, would they
not be far more healthy, happy, and useful? Would the roses not return
to their cheeks, the full, swelling beauties of woman's strength to
their forms?
This subject has weighty moral and religious considerations connected
with it. Have we any moral right thus to abuse our bodies, thus to
commit a snail-working suicide? What matters it, so far as the guilt is
concerned, whether we kill ourselves in a minute or a year, a year or an
age? We have more suicides among us than we sometimes imagine. The
young miss goes out in a cold night, with bare arms and head and neck,
and wafer-like slippers on her feet, with her waist engirded in cords
and whalebones, and her load of burdensome skirts, and dances in high
glee two thirds of the night; then, with a vail on her head and her
under-garments not yet dry from the recent perspiration, she goes to her
cold chamber and bed, to get a troubled sleep, and awaken in a fever
which carries her to her grave. Then round her mutilated body gather her
mourning friends to bid it a long farewell and hear her minister talk of
the inscrutable ways of God's providence. Call it by what name _you_
will, to _me_ it is suicide. Another, by daily exposures in wet and cold
and change of climate in the common woman-dress, takes cold after cold,
till a consumption fastens upon her lungs and she slowly passes away.
Another circle of mourners weep, and another minister talks of the
inscrutable ways of God; but to me it is still another case of suicide.
Another passes through the common lot of girlhood, with the common
succession of colds and coughs, fevers and pains; in due time marries,
with her chest cramped into half its proper dimensions, her lungs small
and weak, her female economy all diseased and weakened by the abuses of
dress and exposure. At length the period of maternity approaches. Too
weak to sustain its labors and burdens, she dies amid them. Friends come
weeping again, and the minister condoles them with the sad old story of
God's inscrutable ways. But to me it is not inscrutable. It is another
case of suicide. Could the grave-yards all over the country speak, they
would utter fearful tales of this suicidal abuse of Dress.
The second question is, Do our ideas of Dress corrupt our hearts? One
may almost worship at the shrine of Dress. Many are the young ladies
whose thoughts rise no higher than the dress they wear and the bonnet
that decks their heads. If they can be hung over with gewgaws and
tinselry, if plumes shall tremble on their heads, silks shall rustle
about them, and jewels shine wherever they go, to catch every eye and
bewilder every passer-by, they fancy they are in the upper-ten of
womanhood. Vain! The peacock, whose little heart is one beating pulse of
vanity, is not half so vain as they. Giddy, trifling, empty, vapid,
cold, moonshine women, whose souls can perch on a plume, and whose only
ambition is to be a traveling advertisement for the men and women who
traffic in what they wear, are many who flaunt in satins and glitter in
diamonds. How many such there are we would not say. But I doubt not,
that not a little like them are many who are otherwise women. They love
Dress; love it inordinately; love it when they ought to love something
worthier; and spend their time, and thoughts, and mind, and heart, and
money on what they shall wear. The fashion-plate is their profoundest
study. The science of dressing is the only one they care to know. The
cut of a collar is a matter of sublime importance. How much of this
foolish vanity there is in the world! How many otherwise good women does
it spoil! And now the question with every young woman should be, How do
I feel about my dress? Is it a matter too bright in my eye--a subject
too important in my mind? Am I vain of my dress? Does it corrupt my
heart, take my attention from virtue, from mental improvement, from the
graces of a good life, from religion, from my Saviour, and my God? Do I
devote thoughts to Dress that ought to be given to the great problems of
duty, life, womanhood, to the development and culture of my powers of
heart and mind; to science, conversation, language, and the objects of
living? Why am I? Why do I live? To what end? Is there a great object in
my being? Have I any thing to do in its attainments? Does my love of
Dress interfere with the true objects of woman-life? This is the
questioning mind which every young woman should possess. Now let me ask,
Does not your love of Dress lead you from the great ends of woman-life?
Are you not taken captives by the glitter of Dress? sold bond-slaves to
your bonnets and shoes?
Oh, what a fearful waste of time and talent is given to the frivolity
and vanity of dress! what a sacrifice of soul and body, principle and
life, is made upon its altar!
What multitudes of young women waste all that is precious in life on the
finified fooleries of the toilet. How the soul of womanhood is dwarfed
and shriveled by such trifles, kept away from the great fields of active
thought and love by the gewgaws she hangs on her bonnet! How light must
be that thing which will float on the sea of passion--a bubble, a
feather, a puff-ball! And yet multitudes of women float there, live
there, and call it life. Poor things! Scum on the surface! But there is
a truth, young women; woman was made for a higher purpose, a nobler
use, a grander destiny. Her powers are rich and strong; her genius bold
and daring. She may walk the fields of thought, achieve the victories of
mind, spread around her the testimonials of her worth, and make herself
known and felt as man's co-worker and equal in whatsoever exalts mind,
embellishes life, or sanctifies humanity.
But notwithstanding Dress has fascinated so many thousands, and led them
down the paths of vanity and frivolity, it is still a means of culture,
an instrumentality in the hands of virtue, an evidence of civilization.
It addresses itself to the taste, and affords opportunity for its
improvement. Taste is an element of mind. It is the spring-source of the
fine arts, of all the embellishments of life, of poetry, and all that
pertains to elegant literature. It is the grand refiner of life.
Whatsoever cultivates the taste, develops properly its activities, and
refines and elevates its pleasures, does a good office for man. And this
is just the proper office of Dress. It is true that Dress has a mission,
a good one, a moral one, ay, a religious one. It is a refiner, a
cultivator, a subduer of coarseness, barbarity, rudeness. Pity the soul
that has no taste for Dress. The Dress of a man speaks out his soul. In
other words, a man is known by his Dress; not by its richness, not by
its conformity to fashion, but by its neatness, appropriateness,
harmony, and the way he carries it. A clown will carry a king's dress
clownishly; and a true king will carry a clown's dress kingishly. It is
not the Dress that makes the man, but the man that makes the Dress.
Every state of society is manifest in its Dress. The savage is fond of
gewgaws, glitter, paint, feathers, colors, mere show, with little or no
reference to utility or taste. The barbarian approaches one step nearer
the true standard. He exhibits a faint idea of utility and taste; he
subdues and blends colors, puts ornaments into use, and varies his Dress
a little to suit circumstances. The civilized man shows more taste, less
ambition for glowing colors, a greater skill in making, a better idea of
fitness and propriety. The enlightened man is more grave in the
character of his Dress, wears less ornaments, admits none save where it
combines utility and taste, is chaste, subdued, harmonious, classical in
every thing that pertains to Dress. We can not yet lay full claims to an
enlightened Dress. Our female Dress is a half barbaric costume--a rude
mixture of ornament and utility, in which ornament greatly predominates.
Our soldier's Dress, very appropriately, retains all the elements of
savagism--high colors, sharp contrasts, profuseness of ornament. This is
as it should be. But every enlightened man should regret that our female
Dress is not more grave, classical, chaste, subdued, and appropriate,
combining taste and utility, refinement and strength. A woman in full
street Dress, with her profusion of ornaments, her flounces and
fly-about gewgaws, is a very poor representation of good sense,
refinement, and cultured, classic taste. If our artists should carve and
paint their master-pieces in such taste, we should pronounce it
barbarism at once.
I would gladly pursue this theme, and trace the office of Dress in all
its operations as a reforming and refining agent, and show how to
improve our tastes, correct our judgments, and utilize and at the same
time beautify our dresses. But time will not permit. I will only say in
addition, that the love of Dress, when properly used, is noble; when
abused, is evil; when wisely directed, it combines utility and beauty;
when abused, it possesses neither.
But the idea which I am most anxious to impress upon the minds of young
women, is the symbolic use of Dress, is the fact that they have _minds_
to dress as well as bodies. Our outward Dress should be symbolic of an
inward Dress. While we toil to robe in beauty these perishing bodies, we
should labor more industriously to adorn those immortal qualities which
shall wear their adornments when a new heaven and a new earth shall
succeed to those that now are. This is the point at which young women
err more than elsewhere. They labor to dress the body, and sadly neglect
the soul. O what a fearful dearth of soul-dress, of mental adornment, of
interior beauty there is among young women! Scarcely can one in ten of
them speak their mother-tongue correctly, converse intelligibly ten
minutes upon any subject of common interest, write a simple business or
friendly letter correctly, or comprehend the simplest natural sciences.
What do they know of mechanics, science, literature, government,
theology, history, reform--the great questions that stir the world of
mind? How little, how little! There are some noble exceptions to this
remark, I know. But we must not disguise the fact, that there is a
fearful want of mental culture among young woman. They give forty
thoughts to dressing their bodies to one for their minds; they spend
forty dollars for bonnets, shoes, and clothes to one for books,
instruction, and improvement; they give forty hours to toilet to one to
solid study and serious reflection; they put forty adornments upon their
persons to one upon their minds. How sad the thought! Compare a
well-dressed body with a well-dressed mind. Compare a taste for dress
with a taste for knowledge, culture, virtue, and piety. Dress up an
ignorant young woman in the "height of fashion;" put on plumes and
flowers, diamonds and gewgaws; paint her face and girt up her waist, and
I ask you if this side of a painted feathered savage you can find any
thing more unpleasant to behold. And yet just such young women we meet
by the hundred every day on the street and in all our public places. It
is awful to think of. Why is it so? It is only because woman is regarded
as a doll to be dressed--a plaything to be petted--a house ornament to
exhibit--a thing to be used and kept from crying with a sugar-plum show.
She must learn that she has a great soul, a great mission, a great duty,
and a great power, before she will break away from the bonds of the
toilet and be herself. Woman by nature is no more a toilet puppet than
man. Her mental and moral duties are equal to his. Her powers of mind
and heart are equal to his. Her field of labor it is wide as his. Her
time is as precious as his. It is as important that her soul should grow
as his. She has as much need of knowledge, wisdom, courage, strength of
mind and purpose, as much need of all the powers and beauties of a
cultured soul, as he. Why should she not adorn her mind, develop her
powers, live to a high purpose, act well a noble part, do and be
according to her capacity? Let young women elevate their aims; give less
time to the toilet, more to study, duty, and active employment; regard
themselves as something more than dolls, as something intelligent,
useful, to be improved, to grow wise and great. Let them dress their
minds in wisdom, adorn their hearts with virtue, clothe their souls with
strength, with the majesty of noble purposes and high resolutions, and
they will soon be something more than automatons on which the milliner
and mantua-maker hang their wares.
I have written plainly rather than flatteringly, and I have done so
because I believe the time has fully come when woman should be a woman,
and not a mere gaudy appendage to man; when her soul should wake up from
its long lethargy and put on the habiliments of wisdom and usefulness;
when she should live to a grander purpose than she has done, and should
make her power felt more sensibly in the morality and religion, business
and bosom, of the world. I am not a disregarder of the beauties and
proprieties of Dress. On the contrary, I admire appropriate Dress. It
speaks out the man or woman. But I would have everybody feel that the
man makes the Dress. Almost any thing looks well on a noble woman. The
plainest Dress becomes agreeable when worn by a person of grand purpose
and good-doing life. Real life when unadorned is most adorned. Noble
womanhood is always beautiful. The world always has and always will
admire it. The richest Dress is always worn on the soul. The adornments
that will not perish, and that all men most admire, shine from the heart
through this life. God has made it our highest, holiest duty to dress
the soul he has given us. It is wicked to waste it in frivolity. It is a
beautiful, undying, precious thing. If every young woman would think of
her soul when she looks in the glass, would hear the cry of her naked
mind when she dallies away her precious hours at her toilet, would
listen to the sad moaning of her hollow heart, as it wails through her
idle, useless life, something would be done for the elevation of
womanhood. I hope I address those who appreciate my words and my
feelings. Above almost every thing else do I desire woman's elevation in
the moral and intellectual scale of life. You may not see the mental or
moral nakedness of the mass of our young women as I do; you may not hear
the pleading voice of religion as I do; but I trust you do see your need
of higher purposes in life, and more active usefulness; I trust you do
see that you have souls to dress and hearts to adorn, and will attend to
this, your highest duty.
Lecture Four.
FASHION.
Fashion made Superior to Health--Fashionable Religion--Unfashionable
Ministers--Votaries of Fashion Despise it--Fashionable Women
Short-lived--Mothers of Great Men Unfashionable--Woman's Greatness
shown in Offspring--Example of Women of Fashion--Apostrophe to
Fashion--Appeal to American Women--Nature in Freedom's
Temple--Fashion Is Monotonous--Woman needs more Freedom.
Woman is accused of being the dupe of Fashion. Her fashionable follies
are paraded in every public print; her dry-goods propensities are talked
of in every circle where she is not truly respected, and in many where
she is; her Parisian proclivities are made the butt of very general
ridicule, and the dignity of her character is not a little lowered by
her too great intimacy with fashion plates and dandy shops. Though,
perhaps, man is as much to blame for this as woman--for she seeks to
please him, and courts his smiles more than the smiles of all the gods
of Fashion--still she must bear her part of the blame--I ought to say
guilt--of this terrible and reckless folly.
It is a great fault with American woman, that they worship so blindly at
the shrine of Fashion. They sacrifice taste and comfort, time and money,
health and happiness, character and life, on this graceless and godless
altar, What shopping--what trimming--what sewing and stuffing and
padding--what bowing and scraping--what simpering and oiling and
scenting--what cooking and spicing and preserving--what eating and
sipping and drinking--what wasting and lying and cheating--what
gossiping, slandering, and abusing--what forging, straining, and
overreaching--what miserable time-serving and eye-serving at the expense
of all that is pure and noble in the human heart and life, are resorted
to keep pace with the changing moods of Fashion! What is there in our
highly civilized life that escapes the palsying touch of Fashion?
_Dress_, what is it? Fashion from head to foot. No matter if it outrages
all physiology, puts hands around the lungs, gauze on the feet, and
hangs multitudinous skirts upon the most vital and yielding portions of
the female system. What of all that? Fashion is superior to health and
life. What if it shrivel a woman into a mummy, and fade her into a
ghost, and plant in her vitals the never-dying worm of consumption! What
is beauty and physical womanhood to Fashion? Who would not rather fade
at twenty-five, and die at thirty, than to be out of the Fashion?
_Food_, what is it good for if it is not in Fashion? If it is not
greased and peppered, shortened and raised, concentrated and almost
distilled, and then taken at hours of _ton_, and in wholesale
quantities, of what avail is it? Better have the dyspepsia than eat
coarse bread! What woman would not rather have a nervous debility than
dispense with hot coffee and strong tea? Then, to refuse roast beef and
baked ham would be very ungenteel! A bilious attack would be much more
fashionable. It would be unwomanly not to have an animal die every time
she was hungry, so that her life might pick the bones of death. It is
very poetical to realize that life flowers on the sepulcher of death.
_Friendship_, its links must be forged on Fashion's anvil, or it is good
for nothing. How shocking to be friendly with an unfashionable lady! It
will never do. How soon one would lose caste! No matter if her mind is a
treasury of gems, and her heart a flower-garden of love, and her life a
hymn of grace and praise, it will not do to walk on the streets with
her, or intimate to anybody that you know her. No, one's intimate friend
must be _à la mode_. Better bow to the shadow of a belle's wing than
rest in the bosom of a "strong-minded" woman's love.
And _Love_, too, that must be fashionable. It would be unpardonable to
love a plain man whom Fashion could not seduce, whose sense of right
dictated his life, a man who does not walk perpendicular in a standing
collar, and sport a watch-fob, and twirl a cane. And then to marry him
would be death. He would be just as likely to sit down in the kitchen as
in the parlor; and might get hold of the wood-saw as often as the
guitar; and very likely he would have the baby right up in his arms and
feed it and rock it to sleep. A man who will make himself useful about
his own home is so exceedingly unfashionable; that it will never do for
a lady to marry him. She would lose caste at once.
_Religion_, too, must be fashionable to be of any worth. What is a
church out of Fashion? Who goes there? God never will hear a prayer in
such a church, nor pardon a penitent, nor give grace to a striving soul.
That antiquated pulpit! Those plain old pews! That queer-looking
gallery! Oh, yes; the pews are very comfortable; the singing sounds most
admirably; the preaching is God's unvarnished truth quickened by divine
love and mercy. Oh, how it would melt one's soul if it was only in a
fashionable church. And then the minister. He is such a plain man, and
says such plain things; he is all the time talking about such every-day
matters, and makes one feel so ashamed because he seems to know just
what we have all been doing and thinking about. Instead of preaching
about Babylon and Belshazzar, and pouring out his eloquence upon the
antediluvians and the glorious company in heaven, he aims every word
right at us, and gets so earnest about our daily sins that he really
makes one's heart ache. It is unpleasant to listen to such a minister
unless one can really forget the world and go with him into his
spiritual idea of life. Then he does not try to please the ladies
enough. He talks to them just as plainly as to the men. He is always
wanting to have them do something that is not pleasant, go to see some
poor person, teach some ragged little urchins, give up some fashionable
way of life, read some book on duty or some homily on fashionable sins.
True, he is a very kind man, the kindest man in all the parish all
admit. He never speaks an unpleasant word to any body; it is said he
spends half his salary for the poor, and visits them a great deal, and
spends much of his time in trying to reform the wicked and dissolute.
The common kind of people think he is a great man, and they flock to
hear him, and love him strangely. But fashionable people do not go there
much, and he gets a poor living. One may know that by his poor dress and
small house. So it is; religion must be done up in fashionable order, or
it is soon out of date in the market. The minister must be a ladies'
man, or the saloon will be more thronged than the church. And to be a
ladies' man it is understood that he must be a fashionable man, a
conformist, a pliant, time-serving, honey-mouthed, smile-faced,
glove-handed, eel-natured kind of a creature, as ready to smile on a sin
as a virtue; whose rebukes are so sugared that they are as agreeable to
take as homeopathic pills. There are multitudes of churches that have
more fashion in them than religion, and enough of worshipers and
ministers who think more of the mode than the matter of worship.
Literature must have on it the brand of Fashion, and even education must
receive the crown stamp of this graceless monarch, or be rejected by the
world and receive no diploma at its hands. It is true that the rule of
Fashion is almost omnific. To be out of Fashion is to be a mark for the
cold finger of scorn from its votaries, and set up as a target for the
shafts of their ridicule. So true is this, that it has become a common
saying, that "one may as well be out of the world as out of the
Fashion!" Yet what is Fashion, what does it amount to? Is one really
more respected, more beloved, more received into the arms of the good,
more caressed by the worthy, for being fashionable? We think not. The
best and most beloved men and women that have ever lived have been far
from the votaries of Fashion. They have lived with little thought and
little conformity to the demands of this prince of weak minds. They have
rather asked what was right, what was best, than what was fashionable.
Conformity to Fashion tends rather to disgust than respect. Deep down in
the hearts of all people there is a sense of the hollowness of Fashion,
and a just loathing of its pretension and show. Even its votaries
secretly despise it, and obey its dictates only because they think they
must. They know its baseness better than we can tell them. True, they do
not fully realize its sinfulness nor wholly appreciate its evils. But
its hollowness and falseness they feel at times most keenly. Else why
their perpetual unrest, their longing, dissatisfied condition of mind?
Oh, if we could pull off the false glitter that lays like a gorgeous
mantle over the fashionable world, we should see such an aching void,
such a palpitating heart of woe, as would make the very stones cry out
for sympathy. Look at a fashionable woman--one woman, a poor, weak
mortal, apprenticed to earth to learn the work of the skies, pupiled
here to be schooled in the great lessons of beauty and goodness written
on all the outward universe and taught by the constant voice of God in
the soul in its best experiences; see such a woman fretting herself
well-nigh to death in chasing the butterfly delusions of Fashion,
seeing them fade in her hands as fast as she grasps them, starving her
soul and dwarfing her mind in the pursuit of such phantoms, enfeebling
her body, irritating her nerves, breaking down her constitution, fading
in early womanhood, and dying ere her years are half lived; what object
is more sorrowful and has higher claims upon our pity? We think it sad
when a woman is thus crushed by neglect or abuse, by the hand of
poverty, by hard toil, or the harder fate of a consuming death at the
hands of a false or brutal companion. But really, why is it sadder than
to die by inches on the guillotine of Fashion? The results are the same
in either case. Abused women generally outlive fashionable ones. Crushed
and care-worn women see the pampered daughters of Fashion wither and die
around them, and wonder why death in kindness does not come to take them
away instead. The reason is plain: Fashion kills more women than toil
and sorrow. Obedience to Fashion is a greater transgression of the laws
of woman's nature, a greater injury to her physical and mental
constitution, than the hardships of poverty and neglect. The slave-woman
at her tasks will live and grow old and see two or three generations of
her mistresses fade and pass away. The washerwoman, with scarce a ray of
hope to cheer her in her toils, will live to see her fashionable sisters
all die around her. The kitchen-maid is hearty and strong, when her lady
has to be nursed like a sick baby. It is a sad truth, that
Fashion-pampered women are almost worthless for all the great ends of
human life. They have but little force of character; they have still
less power of moral will, and quite as little physical energy. They live
for no great purpose in life; they accomplish no worthy ends. They are
only doll-forms in the hands of milliners and servants, to be dressed
and fed to order. They dress nobody; they feed nobody; they instruct
nobody; they bless nobody, and save nobody. They write no books; they
set no rich examples of virtue and womanly life. If they rear children,
servants and nurses do it all, save to conceive and give them birth. And
when reared what are they? What do they even amount to, but weaker
scions of the old stock? Who ever heard of a fashionable woman's child
exhibiting any virtue or power of mind for which it became eminent? Read
the biographies of our great and good men and women. Not one of them had
a fashionable mother. They nearly all sprung from plain, strong-minded
women, who had about as little to do with Fashion as with the changing
clouds. I have given considerable attention to this fact. It is worthy
of the deepest thoughtfulness. Oh, it is a solemn fact that we descend
into our children, in our weakness or strength, in our meanness or
majesty, as we have lived. And what a lean, meagre, moonshine
inheritance does a fashionable mother convey to her offspring! I confess
that to me there is something grand in being the mother of a noble son
or daughter, of a strong and virtuous family of children. If there is a
just human pride, it may live in such a mother's heart. The mothers of
Washington, Adams, and Channing; of Josephine, Hemans, and Stowe, stand
higher in my mind than any kings or queens that ever lived. The proof
of their greatness was in their children. Such sublime inheritances
could not have been given if they had not been possessed. Such grandeur
of mind, such greatness of heart, such majesty of soul, such royal
worth, are everlasting honors to their noble mothers. And I doubt not
but when the vail of flesh is taken from such women, their true
greatness will be visible. By the side of such how will stand the
fashionable mother? In that upper world, souls will rate according to
their real worth, according to the gold that is in them. Oh, if vigorous
health, great virtues, a large heart, and capacious powers of mind are
to be coveted for any thing, it is that they may descend into our
children, and reappear in them, to adorn and bless themselves, us, and
the world, and be a glory unto God in earth and heaven. I had rather
sire a noble son or daughter than win a thousand victories as brilliant
as Napoleon's proudest or sit on the throne of earth's greatest kingdom.
To me there is something so grand in virtue, so priceless and deathless,
so celestial in the powers of a great and good human soul, that to give
existence to one is the cause of a deeper joy and a richer gratitude
than is otherwise granted to mortals here below.
In this light, how stands the tawdry foolery of Fashion? and what place
does the fashionable woman take?
Then the _example_ of a fashionable woman, how low, how vulgar! With her
the cut of a collar, the depth of a flounce, the style of a ribbon, is
of more importance than the strength of a virtue, the form of a mind, or
the style of a life. She consults the fashion-plate oftener than her
Bible; she visits the dry-goods shop and the milliner oftener than the
church. She speaks of Fashion oftener than of virtue, and follows it
closer than she does her Saviour. She can see squalid misery and
low-bred vice without a blush or a twinge of the heart; but a plume out
of Fashion, or a table set in old style, would shock her into a hysteric
fit. Her example! What is it but a breath of poison to the young? I had
as soon have vice stalking bawdily in the presence of my children, as
the graceless form of Fashion. Vice would look haggard and mean at first
sight, but Fashion would be gilded into an attractive delusion. Oh,
Fashion! how thou art dwarfing the intellect and eating out the heart of
our people! Genius is dying on thy luxurious altar. And what a
sacrifice! Talent is withering into weakness in thy voluptuous gaze!
Virtue gives up the ghost at thy smile. Our youth are chasing after thee
as a wanton in disguise. Our young women are the victims of thine
all-greedy lust. And still thou art not satisfied, but, like the
devouring grave, criest for more. Where shall we get the strong women of
the next generation--the women who will live for principle--whose
commanding virtues shall be a tower of strength--whose wisdom shall be a
poem of prophecy, and whose love a hymn of praise? Who will be the
mothers of genius and wisdom, of the manhood and womanhood that shall
redeem mankind? Oh, not from thee, all-degenerating Fashion! shall we
get them. Thy reign is the blast of womanly virtue and manly strength.
Thou art the precursor of destruction. Thou dost intoxicate, bewilder,
and make mad the nations whom thou wouldst destroy. Thou dost lead to
dazzle and delude to ruin. Avaunt, thou grand sycophant of the
nineteenth century, thou vile usurper of the people's throne!
Oh, American women, be exhorted to flee from the sorceress whose
enchantments are binding you in the silken chains of an ignoble
effeminacy. Your weakness weakens our nation and sends a destructive
palsy down into succeeding generations. Your loss of strength is
humanity's loss. How can there be individual identity where Fashion
rules? how individual taste, individual opinion, individual virtue and
character? How can there be genius and talent where Fashion molds the
will and cuts the life to a pattern? How can there be wisdom where
Fashion dictates the mode of thought and the form of utterance? How can
there be greatness where Fashion shapes the growth and prescribes its
bounds? There is nothing in our country so paralyzing to the growth of
mind and the progress of righteous principles as the easy and general
conquest of Fashion over our people. If it were only in matters of dress
and equipage, of outward adornment, that it bore sway, it would not be
so ruinous. But it goes into every department of thought and life, into
opinions, principles, religion. It shapes the creed, prescribes the form
of worship, and puts its excommunicating ban upon all heresy. It enters
the sweet retreat of home and poisons its love and life. It sets up its
proud form in the sanctuary and dishonors worship with its cold
formality. Everywhere it is a godless tyrant. To develop our strength
of body and mind we want freedom. Genius expands its wings in freedom's
airs. Health blooms in freedom's prairie-fields. Wisdom grows in the
hermit-cells of individual thought where no binding chains of custom
cramp the mental powers. Love is always truest and sweetest and noblest
where it is freest. Nature is freedom's temple. No forming shears of
Fashion cuts her patterns. She grows every leaf, and opens every flower,
and solemnizes every bird-marriage, and utters every hymn of praise in
the truthful and innate spontaneity of her universal soul. So humanity
should be free; not free to sin with impunity, but free to dress
according to its own individual taste and comfort; free to live in homes
arranged without respect to Fashion, but agreeable to the wants and
interests of their members; free to eat and swear and act as seemeth
good in each one's mental sight; free to think and speak on all the
great subjects of human interest; to believe and worship by the light of
reason and the inspiration of conscience without fear of the guillotine
of public opinion established by Fashion. The greatest want of our
country is this freedom. We now do every thing so much by rule, that the
rule crams the soul out of every thing done. The rule is always of
Fashion's make. We love and marry, educate and worship, by rule. I would
not recommend an abjuration of all rules. Rules are good so far as they
are just and founded on universal principles. But arbitrary,
time-serving rules are evil. In matters of dress I would have every
woman consult her own taste, form, complexion, comfort, character, and
person. In doing this she may develop her mind, cultivate her taste, and
gratify a reasonable desire to please others. Instead of every one's
dressing alike as Fashion dictates, let each one consult her convenience
and circumstances, and dress as best becomes her ideas of a suitable
wardrobe for herself. If one chooses to wear a dress very long, let her
do it; another to have her dress Bloomerized, let her do it. If one
prefers a close bonnet, another an open; one thin shoes, another thick
boots; one a flowing robe, another a tight dress; one a high-necked,
another a low-necked dress, one a belted, another a bodiced waist, let
it be as each one shall prefer. In a word, let each woman dress herself
and her household as her judgment, skill, and taste shall dictate,
without everlastingly consulting the last fashion-plate. It would be
better that every one was dressed differently from all others, than as
now, all rigged up to order by the last nuncio from Paris. In nature,
variety spreads a curious interest over all her vestiture. In the human
world, Fashion clothes all in a tiresome sameness. To say the least, a
very great improvement might be made by a little more freedom and
courage, and exercise of individual judgment and taste. As it is,
individualism is laid on the shelf, and all are swallowed up in a
fashionable generalization. So in matters of household arrangement, in
the general character and style of equipage, in food, culinary affairs,
social etiquette, and all that pertains to the outward life, to health,
to labor, to individual interests, I would have more freedom, ease, and
flexibility, would see more of individual judgment and peculiarity, more
marks of personal character and affirmative force of will and opinion.
As it is, there is a tedious monotony in all these things. Our houses
are all made and furnished too nearly alike; and so of all our affairs.
A fashionable sameness, somber and dull, spreads over our whole outward
life.
Then, in opinions of men and things, of politics and social relations,
in education, literature, art, in morality and religion, there should be
more freedom, more conformity to individual judgment, more thinking for
self and less by proxy, more personal and less party influence. There is
a terrible tyranny over us in these things. We are cast in the stiff
mold of Fashion. We have our fashionable forms of thought, and seem
afraid to break them. We have our formulas and creeds, and they bind us.
If there were more freedom there would be less error and atheism. Our
minds are all different. No two think exactly alike, or look exactly
alike, or feel exactly alike. Then why should we not be free and use our
own reason for our own purposes and give others the same privilege? Why
be such slavish conformists, and brand as traitors or heretics all who
differ from our party or church?
I would awaken young women to these things. They have their individual
interests, both temporal and eternal. They have their characters and
life-connections to form. They have great and stirring interests to hold
in their hands. They have examples to set and lives to live And they
have a mighty influence to exert in their day both upon the present and
coming generations, both upon this and the future world. The subject of
this essay is one of inexpressible interest to them. Woman is too much
in chains. She wants more freedom. And she will never have it till she
takes it herself. She should covet and seek a higher life. She should
claim her full equality with her brother, man, and strive to show
herself worthy. In woman and her life are wrapped up some of the
greatest interests and issues of humanity. O that each individual woman
could feel it, and live as realizing the solemn fact!
Lecture Five.
EDUCATION.
Life a School--Education a Work of Progress--Schools of Vice--Every
Circumstance a Teacher--Kinds of Education--Female Education--True
Womanly Ambition--Improve your Opportunities--Principles should be
Understood--Time Trifled Away--Some Excuses--Society Needs Woman's
Influence--Education as it is--Girls should have Something to Live
For.
"Life is real, life is earnest." To make life grand is the end of
living. God has a great purpose in every human soul; that purpose is its
_truthful education_. Life is God's school. He is its great
superintendent; his Son is prime instructor. The world is His primary
school-house, or, rather, our primary school-house built by him. Here we
learn the alphabet of things; and learn to spell and read a little from
the great book of God. Here we sit in our places and learn our first
lessons; stand in our classes and recite them. Here we get ready for
that college which God has built for us on the spiritual Mount Zion. In
this lower school we prepare for the department above. Our position in
that department must be determined by our dutifulness and progress in
this. Oh, solemn thought! We must be measured by our merit; we must
stand in our lot; "every man in his own order." The deeds done in the
body shall tell upon the life of the spirit. What we make for ourselves
now, shall be ours in the college-hall above. Wisdom gained in life
shall not be lost in death. It will live a halo of brightness, a crown
of glory, when "death, the last enemy, shall be destroyed." God did not
ask us whether we would come into this primary school or not; whether we
would take this lower-world life. Neither will He ask us whether we will
go into the higher department; whether we will take the upper-world
life. He gave the one; he will give the other. But the _use_ we make of
these lives He has put not a little into our own hands. What will be in
these lives He has left not a little with us. Our standings we are to
choose to a certain extent. Our characters are the workmanship of our
own hands. Our worth is of our own making. Our _Education_ is a personal
matter. God has given us minds, a school, a study-room, teachers, all
the books of nature, experience, revelation, reason, duty, affection,
and now commands us to _educate_ ourselves, promising to be with us and
assist us as our kind Superintendent in this grand work of life.
Education, strictly speaking, covers the whole area of life. It is the
word which means all God asks of us, all we owe to him, the world, and
ourselves--that great word which expresses the sum total of human duty.
Nor is it confined to this present period of life. To educate is the
work of Heaven. Time and eternity are the school periods of
intelligence. Reason may have an eternal growth. Conscience may widen
its powers and deepen its sanctities in heaven. Affection may grow in
beauty and fervor through immortal ages. Mind may expand and intensify
through eternity. To educate is to develop mind; to expand its
capacities; to strengthen its energies; to deepen its affections; to
elevate its aspirations; to sharpen its perceptions; to quicken its
actions; to intensify its emotions; to harmonize its powers; to empower
its will, and magnify its sweep of action.
Education is a work of progress. It begins in life and has no end. Death
does not terminate it. We learn the elements of things below. Above we
shall study their essences. We progress in proportion to our own
efforts. Education may be good or bad, right or wrong. Reason may grow
strong in error, may revel in falsities. The will may be mighty for
evil. The heart may grow in vice, and the passions expand in misrule.
The mind may be educated into terrible confusion, so that its passions
will clash in battle array, and its powers war with each other like
exterminating demons. The din of mental warfare and the clash of
spiritual arms are heard in almost every soul. Terrible conflicts are
within us. And whole fields of slaughtered virtues are swept over by
their death-dealing siroccos. Like nations of the earth our mental
powers are grouped together, and group confronts group like embattled
armies, sending their hissing arrows of fiery death into each other's
ranks. Power strikes at power, like single combatants on the field of
strife. Such is the awful sight seen by God in many a human soul. And
such to a greater or less extent is what He sees in each one of us; so
direful are the results of bad Education.
Few of us have been educated altogether aright. We have gained much
mental strength in wicked conflict. Our passions have expanded in
lawless riot. Our mental arms have grown strong in corrupting labors.
Our energies have been made vigorous in vicious employments. Our feet
have been made active in the dance of folly and the race of mammon. We
have risen to power in the service of a tyrant master. We have done the
bidding of sin, and made our soldiers broad to bear its Atlas burdens.
But Education has made us mighty in evil. Giants in vice stalk about us
daily who were sweet and beautiful in their babyhood as ever smiled in a
mother's face. On every hand we meet with the graduates of some school
of vice, in whom the powers of darkness are mighty for evil. Some come
out from the dark holes of intemperance; some from the luxurious saloons
of gambling; some from the gilded halls of fashion; some from those dark
places where virtue dies a bleeding sacrifice to sensuality. These are
the schools in which the mighty in wickedness are educated. And then we
have lesser schools all about us in which the young take lessons in
vice: schools on the street, schools at home, schools at the toilet,
schools in pleasure circles, schools in the market and counting-room,
where they take lessons in deception, slander, folly, anger, backbiting,
sensuality, and vice. Our schools for Education in evil are numerous,
and their teachers are legion. I believe much more in evil Education
than in innate depravity. The little cherubs that come into our arms
right from the hands of Deity are innocent and pure. The skies above us
and the flowers around us are not purer and sweeter than they. Their
little souls are immaculate. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." I can
not believe in depraved babyhood; but I must believe in depraved youth
and manhood. All about me are the sinful wrecks of once pure souls. It
is wrong Education that has made them the sad, pitiable things they are.
Oh, what wretched contortions of God's beautiful handiwork have men made
of themselves! Of all the things that God has made, the human soul is
most perfect and beautiful. The flower and trees and fields are
beautiful. The flashing aurora, the golden clouds, the sapphire sky, are
beautiful. The circling planets, the blazing sun, the starry canopy, are
beautiful. But what are they compared to a human soul? What is an
ephemeral flower or an age-lasting star compared with glorious reason,
with eternal love, with deathless benevolence, and conscience? What were
the material universe with all its sublime grandeur and awe-inspiring
magnificence with no soul to gaze upon it? And yet perfect and beautiful
as were our souls when God gave them to us, what unsightly, miserable,
demoniac things we have made of them! It is evil Education that has done
it all. We have trained our minds in wrong schools. We have educated our
powers at the feet of evil teachers. We have taken lessons in the
science of wickedness. We have followed bad examples and copied corrupt
manners. And we still do so. These things have made us what we are.
Our Education is not all got in our organized schools. Our hired
teachers and printed books are not all that act on our powers to develop
them. Life is one grand school, and its every circumstance a teacher.
Society pours in its influences upon us like the thousand streams that
flood the ocean. Scholastic men and women may speak of book Education;
it is mine to speak of life Education. Life is my field and my theme;
that great common arena where men and women do battle with the forces
about them.
We are educating all the time, and the question with us should be, How
do we educate ourselves? What manner of men and women do we make of
ourselves? The great question of life is an educational one. We all get
an Education; but the _kind_ is the point for us to determine. Some are
educated in vice, some in folly, some in selfishness, some in deception,
some in sensuality, some in nothing in particular and every thing in
general, some in goodness, some in truth and right, some in theology,
and some in religion. Our kinds of Education are legion. We can not live
without being educated some way. Every day gives us many lessons in
life. Every thought leaves its impression on the mind. Every feeling
weaves a garment for the spirit. Every passion plows a furrow into the
soul. All is motion in that mysterious, wonder-working house in which we
ourselves live--the mind.
Every hour of life has solemn, fearful results. The question should hang
all the time written in blazing capitals in the firmament of each soul,
"How am I educating?" It is wicked to let the crazy world educate us as
it will. It is awfully hazardous to yield ourselves up, as most people
do, to the circumstances of society about us. It is a fearful risk to
plunge into the stream of popular custom and float on like a dead sponge
drinking in its turbid water. Most people are like mocking-birds and
monkeys, repeating all they hear and mimicking all they see. Our duty
is to educate ourselves as we should.
Having hinted these general principles of Education, we may now address
ourselves especially to young women, and apply them to their life. The
daily life-education of the mass of young women is not what it should
be. It is much like the life-education of the mass of young men. It is
the Education of circumstances, custom, society, etc. Young women live,
think, and act just as society dictates. They wear what fashion says
shall be worn; they say what etiquette say is proper; they do what
custom dictates; their ideas of gracefulness, propriety, and life are
molded in the common mint of popular sentiment. They float on the stream
of society mere automatons in the great hand of the world. They do not
direct their own Education as though they had any object in life. They
seem to lay helpless in the hands of the world, the pets or playthings
of the day. These remarks are not very inapplicable to young men also.
There is a great body of young men who float on the stream of life with
no self-direction. Ask one of them what he lives for, and he will tell
you, "to chew tobacco, swear, be a man;" and his idea of being a man is
to be able to do these things with grace and dignity. To ask any one of
the mass of young women what she lives for, and if you can get her to
say it out, she will tell you, "to get married." Now it is certainly
right to get married, and to live with this object in view. But there is
a grand educational preparation needed for this. And this preparation is
the very thing most neglected. Every young woman should have some noble
purpose in life, some grand aim, grand in its character. She should, in
the first place, know what she is, what powers she possesses, what
influences are to go out from her, what position in life she was
designed to fill, what duties are resting upon her, what is she capable
of being, what fields of profit and pleasure are open to her, how much
joy and satisfaction she may find in a true life of womanly activity.
When she has duly considered these things, she should then form the high
purpose of being a true woman, and of making every circumstance bend to
her will for the accomplishment of this noble purpose. There is no
higher thing beneath the bending heavens than a true woman. There is no
nobler attainment this side of the spirit-land than lofty womanhood.
There is no purer ambition than that which craves this crown for her
mortal brow. To be a genuine woman, full of womanly instincts and power,
possessing the intuitive genius of her penetrating soul and the subduing
authority of her gentle, yet resolute will, is to be a peer of earth's
highest intelligence. All young women have this noble prize before them.
They may all put on the glorious crown of womanhood. They may make their
lives grand in womanly virtue. There is in every woman-child the seed of
womanhood. She may water and nourish that seed till it shall blossom in
her soul and make her spiritually beautiful. Woman has a power, a
woman-power, something peculiarly her own in her moral influences,
which, when duly developed, makes her queen over a wide realm of spirit.
This she can not exert only as her powers are cultivated. It is
cultivated woman that wields the scepter of authority among men.
Wherever cultivated woman dwells, there is refinement, intellectual and
moral power, life in its highest form. To be a cultivated woman, one
must commence early and make this the grand aim of her life. Whether she
work or play, travel or remain at home, converse with friends or study
books, gaze at flowers or toil in the kitchen, visit the pleasure party
or the sanctuary of God, she should keep her object before her mind and
tax all her powers for its attainment. She must learn to make the most
of opportunities. One fault with our young women is, that opportunities
avail them but little. They see much and perceive but little, talk much
and think but little, hear much and learn but little, read much and
acquire but little.
I suppose almost every young woman has seen many steamboats, yet it may
be doubtful whether one understands the mechanical principle by which
they are propelled and directed. They have seen the flowers and
vegetation, birds and beasts, of our region of country, and yet they
doubtless are about as ignorant of them as of the products of the torrid
zone. They live under our form of government, yet how many know wherein
it differs from other governments! They have heard or read of almost
every science, yet how little acquainted are they with the commonest
principles of science! They have all had their countenances
daguerreotyped, yet who knows how it is done? They all wear silk,
cotton, linen, yet who knows the history of either one of these articles
of apparel? They have bodies "fearfully and wonderfully made," yet how
little they know of their structure, laws, and uses! They have minds,
beautiful and immortal gifts of divine wisdom and goodness, yet how
little attention have they given to learn their principles of action!
All around them are little worlds of every-day things upon which they
have never bestowed a passing thought, things which are full of
interest; yet the common habit of seeing much and thinking little has
led them into this same superficial habit. It is like the young man of
whom I was told a few days since, who had traveled all over the world,
rode on every sea and ocean, and visited every principal seaport, and
yet knew nothing of any of them. It is a sad fault with us all, and
especially with women--we don't _think_ enough. The mass of young women
trifle a great portion of their life away on the smallest imaginable
things. They chatter like birds and gabble like geese, without the
trouble of _thinking_. The things they see and hear every day awaken no
consecutive thought. The stars shine above them, and they call them
pretty things, but never ask the astronomic story of their magnificence.
The world beats its great march of life around them, but they seek not
to know the rich lessons of human activity therein. I know that society
does not hold out so great inducements for woman to think and educate
herself as it ought. I know woman is oppressed with legal and customic
disabilities. I know she is shut out from many fields of activity and
industry for which she is eminently fitted by her natural endowments. I
know that her labor is not half rewarded, that her ambition is cramped
into a narrow field. I know that by custom and law she is the slave of
man, who holds her person, children, and property in his custody. I know
that men think they must be silly and simpering in woman's presence,
because they suppose she can appreciate and enjoy nothing higher. I know
that many men have an awful horror of "strong-minded women," really
educated women. I know that any thing beyond housewifery or parlor
gracefulness by many is considered unwomanly; yet woman may overcome all
the obstacles in her way if she will educate herself to _think_, and
think soundly and forcibly. She must be her own deliverer from these
barbaric customs and laws, and her own _thought_ must be the instrument
of delivery. Let women everywhere become solid thinkers so far as their
capacities will admit, instead of triflers; let their life-education be
deep, useful, and practical, instead of superficial and theoretical; let
them be as well acquainted with the principles of society as they are
with those of fashion; let them be as much interested in human progress
as they are in dress and gossip; let them take into their hands the keys
of knowledge and unlock the storehouses of practical wisdom all about
them, and go in and lay hold of the treasures, and human society would
soon blossom as the rose. The great thing needed now by our society is
more woman-influence--more woman-thought, character, and power. Our
female Education is too superficial, trifling, babyish. Our girls are
not half developed. Our young women do not exhibit one half their real
strength and beauty. Their minds are robbed of much of their natural
vigor. They are dwarfed by their delicate nutriment.
As soon as a little girl begins to be a young lady she must be shut up
in the house; talked to as though she did not know much; read novels; be
dressed up; go to parties; have suitors; take lessons in music; have a
dancing master; visit the theater; go a term or two to the young ladies'
seminary to practice calisthenics; study Botany without seeing a flower,
Astronomy without looking at a star or planet, Geology without stepping
into the dirt or putting her hand upon a rock; write a half-dozen
compositions on friendship, mother, and home; daub a little in
water-paints; receive a diploma, and then set up for matrimony. This is
female Education--without an object, without ambition, without point or
force, without strength, depth, or breadth. It is simply a little
outside polish. It does not teach how to _think_; it does not develop
mind; it does not confer power; it does not form character; it does not
fix the will, direct the life, establish opinion, deepen sentiment, or
do any thing to make a true woman.
Our young women want a more vigorous, practical, and useful Education,
one that shall develop strength, character and resolution; one that
shall give growth to the mind, power to the will, and efficiency to the
life; one that shall enable any woman to be independent, true to
herself, to entertain and maintain her own opinions, to get her own
living, to mark out her own course in life, to count one in any position
she may choose to occupy, to be all that may belong to a free,
independent, accountable, intelligent creature. They want to be educated
so they will know their own powers, understand their own duties, and
comprehend the value of life too well to waste it on trifles. They want
to be able to _know_ the world in which they move, to take an active
part in all life's duties, to converse intelligently upon all ordinary
subjects, and make a useful figure in the circles in which they move.
Woman's powers are eminently practical. She has a strong judgment, a
rich store of practical good sense, an ample fund of tact, skill,
shrewdness, inventiveness, and management. Women are the best managers
in the world so far as they have had experience and a field of action.
Not one whit behind are they in every department of life to which they
have had access.
Now if our girls were reared to the practical duties of life, trained to
some great and good end, taught to live for something, have some grand
and noble purpose in life, and live to that purpose, how much richer in
all that embellishes life and magnifies humanity would be our world!
Our boys have something to live for. Each one says, "I'll be this or
that; I'll do so and so when I'm a man. The world must know that I live.
I must hew out my way, make me a mark, tell a story that my fellows
shall hear." And so each one educates himself into his purpose. But how
is it with our girls? What do they live for? What do they expect to be
and do when they are women? They have powers equal to the boys--can play
as well, run as fast, learn as readily, manage as skillfully, perceive
as quickly, are as dutiful, useful, and efficient. Why should the boys
grow up with a great and good purpose before them, while the girls grow
up for nothing? See what a woman has to do, and what mighty springs of
action and influence she holds in her hands. She sits on a throne of
power at the very fountain of life. She is goddess of all the springs
and little rivulets of humanity. She makes men and trains them. As
mother, wife, and friend she wields a triune scepter of vast power. She
rears the twigs that grow into the oaks of the world. She may bend them
at her will. If woman was rightly educated, who could tell what a race
of men would grow up to people the coming ages? How can the woman-mind,
undeveloped, untrained, uninspired with great aims, grand and brave
resolutions and actions, impress the minds of the generation to come
with strength, power, activity, intellectual and moral vigor? It can
not. Oh, it is a burning shame that our women are not educated to a
greater vigor of body and mind! They should be strong in will thought,
action, love, resolution. They should be stout-hearted, high-souled,
brave-purposed, yet always womanly. If the world were mine, and I could
educate but one sex, it should be the girls. I could make a greater and
better world of the next generation by educating the girls of this. It
is not half so important that our legislators be wise, as that our
mothers be so. It is not half so important that our men be brave, as
that our women be so. Strengthen the women-heart, and you strengthen the
world. Give me a nation of noble women, and I will give you a noble
nation. Cultivate the woman-mind if you would cultivate the race.
Lecture Six.
PHYSICAL AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT.
Natural Position of Woman--Relations of Body and Mind--Sound Minds
only in Sound Bodies--To be Healthy is a Duty--Physical Laws
Obligatory--Penalties for Violation--Girls and their
Grandmothers--Causes of Difference--Physiological Studies
Advised--Women the 'Weaker Vessel;' Why?--Intelligence and
Beauty--Woman's Sound Judgment--Woman's Mind not Powerless--Finished
Educations--Education at Home--Schools only Helps to
Education--Woman's Thought Wanted.
We have treated the subject of education in its widest and most general
sense. We propose now to treat the same general subject more definitely
in relation to _Physical and Intellectual Development_.
Such is the natural position of woman in human society, that the welfare
and progress of that society depends in no small degree upon her
culture. She presides over the fountains of life, all life--both male
and female. She impregnates every human being with the qualities of her
soul. She images herself in all men's being. Into the very woof of
existence she weaves the shreds of her own being. Woman's soul colors,
forms, molds, modifies, endows the soul of humanity. It is so. It must
be so. The infant-mind sleeps in the mother-mind till all its powers are
set and their tendencies established. The child-being is subject to
every mood of mind and state of body which exists in the mother-being.
Then the early twig is nurtured and the early blossom unfolded on
woman's bosom. Woman performs the first work of culture, imparts the
first ideas, awakens the first thoughts, aspirations, and emotions,
stirs the first tides of feeling, and wields the first scepter in the
minds of all men. In a secondary sense, she is the maker of all men.
This being the primary fact of human existence, her education is the
first work in human progress. To cultivate her is to cultivate the race.
To elevate and dignify her is to elevate and dignify the world. As she
goes up she bears every thing human with her. Depress her, and the world
sinks. If you would ennoble and dignify the world, do this for its
women, and the work is done. If you legislate for the world, legislate
for woman. If you would educate the world, educate woman. If you would
give freedom to the world, give it to woman. If you would redeem the
world, redeem woman. The world lies in her arms. She nurtures it on her
bosom; she rocks it in her cradle; she breathes into it the breath of
its mental life. Above her it can not rise. She is the fountain, and the
stream rises not above it. What woman is in any nation or age, the
people of that nation or age will be. Noble women give nobility to the
sphere of action and influence in which they move. Genius, worth, mental
and moral power, owe more to woman than to all things else. If I wished
to bless the world, I should bless woman. If I wished to sweeten a
stream, I should mingle the sweet in its fountain. If I wished to make
an oak strong, I would put water and nourishment at its roots. If I
wished to rear me a noble horse, I should take care that its mother
possessed the strength and qualities I wished in the animal. It is clear
to my mind, if we would do a good thing for mankind, we must do it for
woman. Woman should be unshackled, her soul set free, her ambition
awakened, her nobility developed, her strength nurtured, her mind
educated, her normal sense quickened, her consciences sanctified, her
affections taught to wind their tendrils about all that is noble.
Such being the natural position of woman, we hold it as a self-evident
truth, that she should be educated deeply, thoroughly, solidly; that the
first work of every reformer, every philanthropist, every statesman,
every Christian, is to help and urge onward the education of woman.
I. The dwelling-place of the human mind, the instrument of its actions
in its world-sphere, is the body. Between the mind and body there is an
intimate, mysterious, and wonderful relation. They act and react upon
each other. The condition of each one affects the condition of the
other: a diseased body tends to produce a diseased condition of mind; a
disturbed mind wears upon the body; a nervous hot-blooded body is a
constant irritation and flame to the mind; a passionate, restless mind
gives no peace to the body.
Thus they act and react upon each other in all their multiform
movements, conditions, and activities. No action or condition of the one
is negative to the other. The state of the body, then, is important to
the mind, to its free and easy action, to its natural growth and ready
culture. This is a fact criminally overlooked by the great mass of
mankind, and especially by women. It is overlooked by many teachers, and
in our general system of mental education.
To train the body is our first care. To develop its strength, to secure
and preserve proper tone, to make it harmonious, active, and beautiful,
to plant in its vitality the roses of health and sow in its blood the
seeds of enduring life and activity, is our first and imperious duty. To
neglect the body is to neglect the mind. To abuse the body is to abuse
the mind. To enervate, irritate, or corrupt the body is to produce a
like effect upon the mind. To beat, bruise, and shatter the house in
which we live is to do violence to the dweller therein. Every pain in
the body, every weakness, every injury done to it, does a harm to the
mind. In ordinary life we do not receive this as true; yet in all severe
cases we know it is so. But there can be no doubt that it is true the
world over and life through. The mind is our principal care. And we are
to nurture our bodies as the present instrument of mental action. If the
instrument is shattered and diseased, the action of the mind will be
correspondingly imperfect and weak. The body is the instrument on which
the mind makes the music of life; and if we would have that music
harmonious and sweet, we must have a good instrument and keep it in good
tune. The wonderful genius of Ole Bull, whose strains seem almost
divine, and full of the mysterious and infinite depths of meaning that
belong to music in its highest power, could never make the notes of woe
or joy dance at his will like things of life, from the strings of a
broke and rickety instrument. He must have an instrument alive in every
nerve, sound in every limb, perfect in every part, sensitive to the
touch of the sounding bow, before his genius can revel in the melody of
music and charm the souls of others in the ecstasies of musical delight.
So it is with our bodies. They must be perfect in all their wonderfully
and fearfully made parts before the minds which use them can make
harmonious the music of life. This is no idle dream. It is the language
of philosophy, the utterings of experience, the voice of reason. A
sickly body will never do well the biddings of the mind.
It is so; it must be so; virtue can never be all she may be and ought to
be, in a sickly and fevered body. Reason can never wield her grandest
scepter of power on a shattered and trembling throne. Love can never be
that pure, constant, heavenly flame which is a proper symbol of divine
affection in a bosom racked with pain or oppressed with weakness. The
divine energies of humanity can never urge the soul to a realization of
its highest ideals of excellency in a frame overcome with disease,
relaxed with dissipation, or oppressed with unnatural burdens. Yes, the
body must be sound, healthy, perfect, to realize the highest mental
states of which we are capable. Feeble and sickly is the best culture we
can give to a mind locked in a feeble and tormented body. No proposition
is clearer then, than that we should nurture, cherish, and invigorate
our bodies with the most watchful care and rigid and healthful
discipline. It is wicked to neglect or abuse them. We violate the most
sacred principles of duty when we harm the dwelling-places of our souls.
To carelessly expose ourselves to any physical danger, to engage in any
species of dissipation or intemperance, to ruthlessly waste in any way
the physical energies which God has given us, to recklessly weaken,
sicken, mar, or injure our bodies is as much a sin as to violate the
commands of the Decalogue, or deny in practice the principles of the
moral law. God will not hold such an offender guiltless. The visitation
of His retribution is and will be upon such transgressors. It is our
duty to be healthy, to obey the physical laws of our being, to possess
sound and active bodies. Every pain, fever, sickness, is a retributive
evidence of a violation of these laws; and for every such violation we
not only suffer physical evil, but we suffer mentally, morally,
socially, and spiritually. We belittle ourselves in the sight of God and
men, bemean ourselves in the presence of the moral law, and stay more or
less our progress in the great educational work of life. If we would be
eminently pious, benevolent, and good, we must be healthy. If we would
be endowed with wisdom, virtue, and love, we must be healthy. If we
would win men's deepest confidence and God's highest approval, we must
be healthy. If we would develop most vigorously all our powers of mind
and heart, and give the richest possible culture to our souls, we must
be sound in body. If we would impart the greatest possible intellectual
and moral vigor to the generation to come, we must obey the laws of
health. If we would progress most rapidly in the divine life, and win
the brightest laurels for our spiritual brows, we must cultivate well
our physical powers. Life's attainments and heaven's joys are not a
little affected by our physical conditions. We are of those who believe
that we have no right to abuse our bodies, no right to be the puny,
feeble, sickly things the most of us are; no right to carry about
consuming disease and cankering maladies that eat out our joys and waste
our powers. We have no right to make our bodies pestiferous hospitals to
bear about the seeds of disease, weakness, and misery. Our physical
education is the very first thing to be attended to. In childhood and
youth it is a matter of great moment. Every child should be thoroughly
instructed in his physical duties, and every youth should make himself
wise in all matters pertaining to life and health. I deem this subject
of vast importance to young women. Their usefulness and happiness depend
in no small degree upon it. Their progress in the arts of life, their
influence on the generations to come, their degree of culture and power,
depend much upon their obedience to the laws of health. If they would be
the women they ought to be, noble, high-minded, matronly women,
impressed with a lofty sense of their duty and high and generous
conceptions of womanhood, it is imperatively important that they
cultivate judiciously the greatest possible strength and activity of
body. What a sickly womanhood grows up in a nervous, feeble, neuralgic,
splenetic female body!
How is it with our young women? Are they vigorous and healthy? Can they
eat well, sleep well, work well, walk well, bear well the changes of
climate, endure heat and cold, toil and fatigue, trial and study? Are
their forms full of life and health, their muscles full of strength and
activity, their chests well expanded, their lungs full and free, their
hearts large and strong, sending out the currents of life ladened with
their stores of well-formed nutriment? Ah, would it were so! But we know
it is not. Our young women are sickly house-plants, that a chill wind
will shake or an untimely frost nip and wither. They are pet-birds, with
no strength of wing to bear life's long, brave flight. Colds and coughs,
aches and pains, weaknesses and diseases innumerable prey upon them.
They faint at the sight of a spider and scream at the far-off hiss of a
serpent. They are full of weaknesses and pains that wear out life and
enervate all their mental and spiritual powers. The women of our day
grow old in their youth. They often have all the marks of fifty years of
age at twenty-five--decayed teeth, sallow skins, sunken cheeks, wrinkled
faces, nervous debility, and a whole crowd of female ailments. Our
grandmothers at sixty years were stouter and more capable of endurance
than our young women at twenty-five. Why is it so? Simply because our
girls and their mothers have neglected to cultivate their physical
powers. They have been shut up in tight rooms, bound up in bandages, fed
on sweetmeats and spices, doctored with poisons, dressed in whalebones
and death-cords, petted like house-plants, steeped in tea and coffee,
till they are nothing but bundles of shattered nerves and diseased
muscles. There may be noble exceptions, but this is the general rule.
Our men and women are all too weak and sickly. But we know that our men
are by far the most healthy. And well it may be so. Our boys are turned
out to stretch their limbs and try their muscles, while the girls are
compelled to look at them through the windows. It is a burning shame to
imprison all the little girls in the country, to shut them in from the
fresh air and the life-giving sun, from the green fields and the flowing
water-brooks, from the woods and hills where health is breathing in
every gale and strength is made at every bounding step. All the girls
should wear good, tight boots, loose, flowing short-dresses, open
sun-bonnets, and then run, and shout, and laugh in natural out-of-doors
glee. They should sleep in cool, well-ventilated rooms; eat simple,
coarse, plain food; exercise much in health-giving work and play; drink
pure, cold water, and bathe in it daily; be taught to practice
temperate, prudent, and regular habits; learn the laws of health and how
to obey them, the physiology of their own bodies, and what is demanded
for health and strength. Such a course of early physical training will
impart beauty, vivacity, cheerfulness, amiability, strength of mind,
warmth of heart, and moral stability, more surely and rapidly than can
otherwise be done. Girls thus trained will possess a higher and nobler
womanhood, exert a wider and deeper influence in their families and
spheres, impart firmer bodies and richer minds to their children than
those who are rocked through girlhood in luxury and dress and shut up
in confined air and more confined dresses. We are pampering our women to
death. We are killing them with tenderness, not with enlightened moral
and affectionate tenderness, but with the tenderness of folly, fashion,
luxury, idleness, with the tenderness of vicious habits of life.
My advice to all young women is, that they learn the laws of health and
strength as soon as possible, and obey them to the very best of their
ability; that they study the physiology of their own systems, and know
how fearfully and wonderfully they are made, and what conditions of life
are necessary to the fullest and most perfect physical development; that
they live with the resolute determination that they will be well, and
that not a pain or weakness shall be felt without tracing it immediately
to its real cause and applying the proper remedy at once; that health
shall be deemed a condition of happiness and its maintenance a religious
duty; that sickness shall be considered a sin and pain, a just
chastisement of God for it. When our young women are thus physically
trained, they will be prepared to bless the world as it never has been
blessed; they will usher in a period of moral and intellectual grandeur
such as the world has never witnessed; they will exert a strong
woman-influence in every sphere of thought and action which will be at
once refining, ennobling, and redeeming; they will so establish correct
habits of living, so sanctify the altars of home, so adorn the walks of
social life, that the very heart of the great body of society will throb
anew with fresh impulse of life and send out its currents of health and
strength to the remotest parts.
II. With such a physical preparation, we are ready for intellectual
action, for the education of mind.
Woman has not had a fair chance for the culture of her mind. She has
been continually anathematized and tormented with the idea that she is
the "weaker vessel." Her father, her brother, and her husband have
always told her that her mind was weak and small, and that it could not
comprehend great things nor do great works. Sometimes her mother and
sister are joined in this wholesale slander of the female mind. When a
little girl she has been paralyzed with the thought of her inferiority.
All through her youth it has been a dead weight on her mental activity.
Through her life it has ever muffled the harp of her heart and weighed
down the wings of her aspirations. It has been an incubus of
discouragement in all intellectual pursuits. How could woman be any
thing with the whole world against her? with even those she loved best,
and in whose judgment she most confided, all the time reminding her of
her mental weakness and inferiority? And as it has been, so it is. Woman
is still believed intellectually inferior to man, by ninety-nine one
hundredths of mankind. Poor, weak, silly, drunken, half-idiotic men,
whose wives have to support them, will tell you in conscious pride of
sex of woman's weakness of mind. I have heard little Lilliputian men,
whose minds were as small as a baby's rattle-box, always harping on this
worn-out string of woman's weakness of mind. It is an idea not peculiar
to enlightened people. The savages believe it, and many of them believe
that she is only a pretty beast without a soul that is given to man to
bear his burdens. Among savage, barbarous, and half-civilized people,
woman's inferiority is never questioned. The idea is entertained in its
bald usurpation and black injustice without a questioning thought. Among
us it is covered over a little with cotton beauty and rolled up in
sugar-plum sweetness so the woman will bear it a little better. Our
women are tickled with the idea that they are the _beauty_. Our public
speakers, lecturers, papers, speak of the audiences of _intelligence_
and _beauty_, meaning by _intelligence_ the men and by _beauty_ the
women; a deep insult to the woman-mind.
I freely admit that the mass of men in our country do possess more
intelligence than the women; but the reason is not because of woman's
inferiority, but because of her oppression and want of opportunity. She
has not had half a chance. She has been shut out from almost every field
of intellectual labor, barred from every position of trust and profit,
laughed at by baby men and silly women if she attempted to devote her
life to intellectual pursuits, opposed with the most barbarous legal
disabilities and the still more barbarous incubus of public opinion. Yet
notwithstanding all this oppression and want of opportunity, she has
shown a quickness of perception, an intuitive acumen, a sharpness of
forecast and solidity of judgment that among nearly all married men has
made her opinion a matter of great importance. Few are the married men
that are willing to risk a disrespect of their wives' judgment in any
important matter. An eminent lawyer of Virginia once told me that but
twice in his married life had he acted counter to his wife's advice, and
in both instances his judgment failed and hers was right. Many men have
found their wives' intuitive judgment so correct that they dare not
resist it, as though it were the utterings of an oracle. It is well
known that such men as Bonaparte and Jackson have relied with great
confidence upon their wives' opinions. So universal is this opinion
among men, that all our best moralists and most sage philosophers advise
all married men to consult their wives on all important matters, and to
be very cautious about resisting the settled convictions of woman, not
as a matter of courtesy or policy, but because of the accurate
perceptions and sound judgments of woman's mind.
This is not all fustian for the flattery of women; it is the deliberate
conviction of our best and wisest minds. And yet a great majority of
these same minds can not get rid of the idea that woman's intellect is
inferior.
Though the mass of women of all countries have been intellectually
undeveloped, we have instances enough to show that the woman-mind is as
powerful, close-sighted, and active as man's. Women have ruled the
mightiest nations, mastered the abstruse sciences, led vigorous armies
to victory, written powerful books, made vigorous and brilliant
achievements in eloquence, commanded vessels, conducted complicated
commercial relations, edited influential journals and papers, sat in
chairs of learning and done every thing necessary to show that the
female mind is not wanting in power. Yet if the female mind were weaker,
it is not an argument against its education. Mind should be educated,
whether little or much, weak or strong. And woman's natural position is
such, that all the mind she has should be developed and richly
cultivated.
We talk much about female education; we have female schools and
colleges; and one might think, to read of them, that we educated the
female mind. But it is a sad mistake. The greater part of our female
seminaries and colleges are mere shams. They do not develop mind. They
do not train its muscles to hard work; they do not discipline its nerves
to close application and vigorous research; they do not harden its hands
to the toil of thinking, nor strengthen its arms to battle with the
intricacies of science nor the problems of metaphysics. They are mere
gilding shops, whitewashing establishments, paint factories, where girls
are polished to order with the etiquette of boarding-school finish.
We send our girls to these schools to be educated; but educated for
what? Why, nothing in particular; but to be educated because it is
fashionable; to go home and sit in the parlor _educated ladies_; to talk
about novels and poetry with the gentlemen that come in; to go into
ecstasies over some boy's _last_; to set up for a professional husband.
It is to go _over_, not _through_, some of the sciences, but do it
because it is fashionable; recite and write and go through all the forms
of school training, just because it sounds well and will give a lady
social position, not literary standing or scientific character,
intellectual influence, or dignity of thought and life; and go through
it all and graduate with diploma in hand at fourteen or sixteen years of
age. Here again women are cheated with a bauble. Little girls are told
that they are educated at this tender age, and to prove it are referred
to their diplomas, announcing to the world that they have been through a
regular course of study at such an institution. Only think of it--a
finished education at sixteen! Why, the majority of our young men can
not get ready for college till they are twenty or twenty-five. There
they spend four years in hard study and the most vigorous mental
discipline, delving in the deep mines of science and untombing the rich
archives of history and human thought; then study three years the
masters of their professions. And even then they are but boys in thought
and action, and must meet the hard discipline of active life before we
award to them intellectual manhood. We compare these educated girls with
these educated young men, and wonder at the weakness of the female mind!
The girls went to school because it was fashionable; the boys at the
call of an honorable ambition. The girls studied to appear well in
society; the boys to tread life's highway with honor and win laurels
from the hand of the world in the duties of useful professions. The
girls were stimulated by nothing that was great and noble in action; the
boys were fired by all that can stir up human ambition. True, the innate
glory of cultivated minds was before them both, but that alone in our
present sensuous life has seldom been found a sufficient stimulus to
vigorous intellectual discipline. I should be glad to see a class of our
strongest young women go through Dartmouth, Yale, and Cambridge colleges
with the same preparation and stimulants that our young men possess. If
I mistake not, they would graduate with honors, and be heard from in the
high field of intellectual life.
But as this can not be at present, our young women must make the best of
the opportunities they have. What education they do get should be
thorough, practical, and from proper motives. They must fill woman's
place, and they ought to prepare for it as thoroughly as possible. They
have an intellectual life to live and intellectual duties to perform.
How poorly they will live that life and perform those duties without a
preparation. Many young women can not attend school and enjoy the common
routine of mental discipline; but they may read and study at home; they
may cultivate their minds by the fireside; in the lecture-room, in the
church, and in the intellectual circle. The midnight hour may impart
strength to their minds, and the morning dawn may find them storing them
with useful knowledge. The world is full of good books, and from them
they may glean invaluable treasures. Every young woman spends time
enough in idle gossip and foolish flirtation to educate herself well.
Schools are not necessary--they are only helps to education. Many great
minds have been educated without them. To educate is to learn to think.
The way to learn to think is to practice thinking; "Practice makes
perfect." The archer practices with his bow; the artist with his brush
or chisel; the writer with his pen; the mechanic with his tool; the
lawyer with his brief. So the student should practice with his
mind--practice thinking, reasoning, investigating, analyzing, comparing,
and illustrating. This is the practice our young female minds want. They
do not think enough. They do not dig for thought, search for ideas,
investigate for truth. They are too light, frivolous, and giddy. They
will run by a great thought to trifle with a silly whim. They will leave
a rich intellectual lecture for a giddy party. They will turn away from
a mental feast to enjoy an idle gossip; I mean too many of them will.
How beautiful, how truly captivating, is an intellectual woman! We have
many such among us, and their number is increasing. The female mind is
awakening from its long slumber. In ten years we shall have many more.
Our present female education will soon be too superficial. These surface
students will soon be left in the shade. Woman is hearing the voice of
God which commands her to use well her talents. Soon He will call for
them, and she must answer for their use. It is an omen of good that
woman is rising and putting on her strength. She has a rich mind, and I
am glad that she is becoming aware of it.
Young women, heed the voice which asks you to educate. If you heed it
not, you may look meagre and antiquated by-and-by. In that "good time
coming" how sad a thing will be an uneducated woman, one whose mind is
barren of thought! You are to live, or ought to live, through two
generations. If you live only for to-day, you will be minus to-morrow.
If you live for to-morrow, you will be bright lights in your day and
generation. There is a work for you to do. You must sanctify the thought
of the world. Our men are too worldly and sensual in their
intellectuality. You are to redeem their minds from this baseness. We
want more pure thought, more sanctified mind, more looking upward toward
goodness, heaven, and God. And with your assistance we may be redeemed
from this downward tendency. I have often said it: the world wants more
woman's thought. It is too masculine, hard, inflexible. Our men think
too much by rules of logic. Educated women would be more intuitive,
spontaneous, religious. You may remedy this evil. Much responsibility
rests upon the young women of to-day. Let them know it, and lay aside
their folly and lightness and put on the garments of wisdom and truth.
Lecture Seven.
MORAL AND SOCIAL CULTURE.
Woman Judges by Impressions--Mental Powers should Harmonize--Effects
of Different Culture--Male and Female Minds Differ--The Female Mind
Analyzed--Feminine Purity--Woman's Benevolence--The Sentiment of
Duty--Integrity in Woman--Cultivate Regard for Truth--Piety the
Crown of Moral Virtues--Cultivation of Piety Urged--Development of
Social Nature--Friendship and Love.
Few subjects can be more interesting to high-minded young women than
those which are the theme of this Lecture--MORAL and SOCIAL Culture.
Concerning the moral and social deportment of women's nature there can
be no difference of opinion. I am happy in knowing that although men
differ about woman's intellectual capacities, they agree in ascribing to
her the highest order of moral and social qualities. All admit that
woman is the morality and religion, the love and sociality, of humanity.
In these developments of human attainments, she is the queen without a
peer. These are at present woman's peculiar fields of power. Society has
measurably shut her out from the intellectual arena of life. But if it
has cut short her operations in this, it has extended them in the field
of social life. Wide and grand are her opportunities here. Man is not so
deficient in gallantry as he is in generosity and judgment. In what man
has oppressed woman, it is more the fault of his head than his heart; it
is more a weakness of conscience than of affection. He is prouder of his
judgment than he ought to be. His judgment often fails because it is not
sanctified by conscience. His intellect is often deceived because its
vision is not extended and widened by a deep affection and a broad
benevolence. In this, woman has the advantage of him in the present
relations of the sexes. Her moral sense consecrates her intellect, and
her heart quickens it, thus making her judgment more intuitive and
ready, more comprehensive and sure. She _feels_ that a thing is so; he
_reasons_ that it is so. She judges by _impression_ when facts are
stated; he by _logic_. Her impressions she can not always explain,
because her intellect has not been sufficiently cultivated; his logic
often fails him, because it is not sufficiently imbued with the moral
element. The light of the conscience and the heart does not shine upon
it with sufficient strength. This we understand to be the present
difference between the male and female mind. It is more than a
difference in growth and culture, in inherent constitution. We do not
believe that the relation between the different departments of the human
mind naturally differ in men and women; that is, we do not believe that
man is more intelligent and less moral, and women more moral and less
intellectual. A perfect male mind is an equal strength of the several
departments of mind; that is, an equal strength of the intellectual,
moral, social, and energetic portions of the mind, a balance among its
several powers. The same is true of the female mind.
So far as this relation of the parts is concerned, it is the same in the
perfect male and female mind. In just so much as this relation is
changed, is the judgment corrupted and the mental strength impaired. In
the present male mind this relation is changed by giving the greater
cultivation to the intellect, and less to the moral sense and the heart.
So his judgment is impaired and the moral dignity of his soul debased.
He is a less man than he ought to be; is deformed in his mental growth,
like a tree grown in a shady place where the light could reach it from
only one quarter. He has less power of mind than he would have with the
same amount of cultivation properly and equally distributed among the
several departments of his mind. Strength lies in balance of power. Our
men are not too intellectual, but too intellectual for their moral and
affectionate strength. They are like an apple grown on all one side, or
a horse with disproportioned body, or any animal with some of its limbs
too short for the rest. Mentally they are deformed and lame by their
one-sided culture. In the present female mind there is a disproportion
in another direction. In this the intellect has been neglected, while
the moral and social mind has had a better degree of cultivation. Thus
our women have been mentally deformed and weakened. They are less woman
than they ought to have been. Their characters and judgments have lacked
harmony, and their lives have been marked by the same deficiencies.
Their minds are one-sided, and marked with sad irregularities. They are
not too moral and affectionate, but are not sufficiently intellectual.
The same amount of culture which they have received would have conferred
more beauty and dignity to the character and life had it been more
general, or equally applied to the several powers of mind. Sound
judgment, pure life, dignity of character are the results of a balance
of power and culture in the several departments of mind. This difference
in the culture of the male and female mind has made a breach between the
sexes. The present male mind can not comprehend the female, nor the
female the male. Instead of growing up in similarity and harmony, they
have grown up into wide differences.
Our present men and women are not in harmony with each other. There are
cultivated antagonisms of mind between them. They can not see, feel, nor
think alike. Their lives are impregnated with a different spirit. And
this is one of the primary and fruitful sources of unhappiness in the
marriage relation. Men and women are so different in their cultivation
that they are not in their natural harmony. Our men are not natural men,
nor our women natural women. The nature of each is warped by culture,
and warped in different directions.
The male and female mind are not alike by nature, by any means. There is
a wide difference between them; but the difference is in the nature,
texture, and quality of the mind, and not in the relation of parts. The
female mind has an inherent constitution peculiar to itself that makes
it female; so with the male. This difference is beyond the fathoming
line of human thought. We know it exists, but wherefore and how we know
not. It is the secret of the Divine Constructor of mentality. In our
mental structure we are to seek for harmony, a consistent rhythmic
development of parts. The opportunities offered to woman for the
cultivation of her moral and religious nature are eminently favorable.
If her intellectual opportunities are not so good, her moral and
religious are better. She is not so pressed with temptation. The world
does not bear with such an Atlas burden on her conscience. The almighty
dollar does not eclipse so large a field of her mental vision. Material
pursuits do not check so much her spiritual progress. God is nearer to
her heart, more in her thoughts, sweeter in her soul, brighter in her
visions, because she is less compassed about by the snares of vice and
the hostile pursuits of the false and flattering world. It is a blessed
thing for humanity that woman is more religious and morally upright;
because man is too irreverent and base. He lacks the sanctity of high
morality and the consecration of religion. I speak of man in the mass.
Woman is the conservation of morality and religion. Her moral worth
holds man in some restraint and preserves his ways from becoming
inhumanly corrupt. Mighty is the power of woman in this respect. Every
virtue in woman's heart has its influence on the world. Some men feel
it. A brother, husband, friend, or son is touched by its sunshine. Its
mild beneficence is not lost. A virtuous woman in the seclusion of her
home, breathing the sweet influence of virtue into the hearts and lives
of its beloved ones, is an evangel of goodness to the world. She is one
of the pillars of the eternal kingdom of right. She is a star shining in
the moral firmament. She is a princess administering at the fountains of
life. Every prayer she breathes is answered to a greater or less extent
in the hearts and lives of those she loves. Her piety is an altar-fire
where religion acquires strength to go out on its merciful mission. We
can not over-estimate the utility and power of woman's moral and
religious character. The world would go to ruin without it. With all our
ministers and churches, and bibles and sermons, man would be a prodigal
without the restraint of woman's virtue and the consecration of her
religion. Woman first lays her hand on our young powers. She plants the
first seeds. She makes the first impressions; and all along through life
she scatters the good seed of the kingdom, and sprinkles the dews of her
piety. But woman does not do enough. Her power is not yet equal to its
need. Her virtue is not mighty enough. Her religion comes short in its
work. Look out and see the world--a grand Pandora's box of wickedness--a
great battle-field of clashing passions and warring interests--a
far-spread scene of sensualism and selfishness, in which woman herself
acts a conspicuous part. Look at society--the rich eating up the poor;
the poor stabbing at the rich; fashion playing in the halls of gilded
sensualism; folly dancing to the tune of ignorant mirth; intemperance
gloating over its roast beef, or whisky-jug, brandy punch, champagne
bottle, bearing thousands upon thousands down to the grave of ignominy,
sensualism, and drunkenness. Is there not a need of more vigorous virtue
in woman? Is there not a call for a more active religion, a more
powerful impulse in behalf of morality? Who shall heed this cry of
wicked, wasting humanity, if young woman does not? To youthful woman we
must look for a powerful leader in the cause of morality and religion.
The girls of to-day are to be greatly instrumental in giving a moral
complexion to the society of to-morrow. It is important that they should
fix high this standard of virtue. They ought to lay well their
foundations of religion. They ought early to baptize their souls in the
consecrated waters of truth and right.
I. The first element in their moral character which they should seek to
establish firmly is _purity_. A pure heart is the fountain of life. "The
pure in heart shall see God." Not only is purity of life needed to make
a young woman beautiful and useful, but purity in thought, feeling,
emotion, and motive. All within us that lies open to the gaze of God
should be pure. A young woman should be in heart what she seems to be in
life. Her words should correspond with her thoughts. The smile of her
face should be the smile of her heart. The light of her eye should be
the light of her soul. She should abhor deception; she should loathe
intrigue; she should have a deep disgust of duplicity. Her life should
be the outspoken language of her mind, the eloquent poem of her soul
speaking in rhythmic beauties the intrinsic merit of inward purity.
Purity antecedes all spiritual attainments and progress. It is the first
and fundamental virtue in a good character; it is the letter A in the
moral alphabet; it is the first step in the spiritual life; it is the
Alpha of the eternal state of soul which has no Omega. Whatever may be
our mental attainments or social qualities, we are nothing without
purity; only "tinkling cymbals." Our love is stained, our benevolence
corrupted, our piety a pretense which God will not accept. An impure
young woman is an awful sight. She outrages all just ideas of womankind,
all proper conceptions of spiritual beauty. To have evil imaginings,
corrupt longings, or deceitful propensities ought to startle any young
woman. To feel a disposition to sensuality, a craving for the glitter of
a worldly life, or a selfish ambition for unmerited distinction is
dangerous in the extreme. It is the exuding of impure waters from the
heart. Who feels such utterings within should beware. They are the
whisperings of an evil spirit, the temptations to sin and crime. If I
could speak to all the young women in the world, I would strive to utter
the intrinsic beauties and essential qualities of purity; I would seek
to illustrate it as the fountain of all that is great and good, all that
is spiritually grand and redeeming. There is no virtue, no spiritual
life, no moral beauty, no glory of soul, nor dignity of character
without purity.
To be pure is to be truthful, child-hearted, innocent of criminal desire
or thought, averse to wrong, in love with right, in harmony with
whatsoever is beautiful, good, and true. This state of the soul is
subject to cultivation. It may be made strong and active. By personal
effort, by constant watchfulness and striving, every young woman may be
pure; but she need not expect to be without. She must watch, and strive,
and pray if she would be pure. If she does not, she will become corrupt
before she is aware of it. The world will send into her heart its putrid
streams of influence to corrupt and debase it.
The second virtue she should cultivate is _benevolence_. Queen of
virtues, lovely star in the crown of life, bright and glorious image of
Him who is love, how beautiful is it in woman's heart! A woman without
benevolence is not a woman; she is only a deformed personality of
womanhood. In every heart there are many tendencies to selfishness, but
the spirit of benevolence counteracts them all. A hollow, cold,
graceless, ungodly thing is a heart without benevolence. In a world like
this, where we are all so needy and dependent, where our interests are
so interlocked, where our lives and hearts overlap each other, and often
grow together, we can not live without a good degree of benevolence. Our
true earth-life is a benevolent one. Our highest interests are in the
path of benevolence. We do most for ourselves when we do most for
others. "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Good deeds double
in the doing, and the larger half comes back to the doer. The most
benevolent soul lives nearest to God. A large heart of charity is a
noble thing. Selfishness is the root of evil; benevolence is its cure.
In no heart is benevolence more beautiful than in youthful woman's. In
no heart is selfishness more ugly. To do good is noble; to be good is
nobler. This should be the aim of all young women. The poor and needy
should occupy a large place in their hearts. The sick and suffering
should move upon their sympathies. The sinful and criminal should awaken
their deepest pity. The oppressed and down-trodden should find a large
place in their compassion. How blessed is woman on errands of mercy! How
sweet are her soothing words to the disconsolate! How consoling her
tears of sympathy to the mourning! How fresh her spirit of hope to the
discouraged! How soft her hand to the sick! How balmy the breath of her
love to the oppressed! Woman appears in one of her loveliest aspects
when she appears as the practical follower of Him who "went about doing
good." The young woman who does these works of practical benevolence is
educating her moral powers in the school of earnest and glorious life.
She is laying the foundations for a noble and useful womanhood. She is
planting the seeds of a charity that will grow to bless and save the
suffering of our fellow-men. In no other way can she so successfully
cultivate the virtue of benevolence. It is not enough that she pity the
sorrows of the poor and suffering. Her hand must be taught to heed the
pleadings of her pitying heart. What she feels, she must do. What she
wishes, she must make an effort to accomplish. What she prays for, she
must strive to attain. Everybody predicts a beautiful life from a
good-doing young woman.
Active and cheerful should be every young woman's efforts for the
needy. Thus will she make to herself a large heart of benevolence, and
draw around her a large circle of admiring and worthy friends.
The third virtue which the young woman should cultivate is _integrity,
or the sentiment of duty_. A German philosopher has poetically and
truthfully said, "The two most beautiful things in the universe are the
starry heavens above our heads and the sentiment of duty in the human
soul." Few objects are richer for the contemplation of a truly
high-minded man than a young woman who lives, acts, speaks, and exerts
her powers from an enlightened conviction of duty; in whose soul the
voice of duty is the voice of God. In such women there is a mighty force
of moral power. Though they may be gentle as the lamb, or retiring and
modest in their demeanor, there is in them what commands respect, what
enforces esteem. They are the strong women. The sun is not truer to his
course than they to theirs. They are reliable as the everlasting rocks.
Every day finds in them the same beautiful, steady, moral firmness. Men
look to them with a confidence that knows no doubt. They are fearless
and brave; they have but to know their duty to be ready to engage in it.
Though men laugh or sneer, though the world frown or threaten, they will
do it. There is no bravado in them; it is the simple power of integrity.
They are true to what to them seems right. Such spirits are often the
mildest and meekest we have. They are sweet as the flower, while they
are firm as the rock. We know them by their lives. They are consistent,
simple-hearted, uniform, and truthful. The word on the tongue is the
exact speech of the heart. The expression they wear is the spirit they
bear. Their parlor demeanor is their kitchen and closet manner. Their
courtesy abroad is their politeness at home. Their confiding converse is
such as the world may hear and respect them the more for it. Such are
the women of integrity. Men love to trust their fortunes in their hands.
The good love to gather around them for the blessing of their smiles;
they strew their pathway with moral light. They bless without effort;
they teach sentiments of duty and honesty in every act of their lives.
Such is the rectitude of character which every young woman should
cultivate. Nothing will more surely secure confidence and esteem. There
is especial need of such cultivation, for young women are doubted in
many respects more generally than any other class of people. Most people
seldom think of believing many things they hear from the lips of young
women, so little is genuine integrity cultivated among them. I am sorry
to make such a remark. I wish truth did not compel it.
I would that young women would cultivate the strictest regard for truth
in all things; in small as well as in important matters. Exaggeration or
false coloring is as much a violation of integrity as a direct
falsehood. Equivocation is often falsehood. Deception in all forms is
opposed to integrity. Mock manners, pretended emotions, affectation,
policy plans to secure attention and respect are all sheer falsehoods,
and in the end injure her who is guilty of them. Respect and affection
are the out-growth of confidence. She who secures the firmest
confidence will secure the most respect and love. No love is lasting but
that which rests in confidence. Confidence can only be secured by
integrity. The young woman with a high sense of duty will always secure
confidence, and having this, she will secure respect, affection, and
influence.
The fourth virtue of inestimable value which the young woman should
cultivate is _piety_. This may be regarded as the crown of all moral
virtues. It is that which sanctifies the rest. It is a heavenly sun in
the moral firmament, shedding a divine luster through the soul--a balmy,
hallowing light, sweeter than earth can give. Piety is the meek-eyed
maid of heaven, that holds her sister Faith in one hand and Hope in the
other, and looks upward with a confiding smile, saying, "My treasure is
above." Of all the influences wrought in the human soul, the work of
piety is the most harmonizing and divine. It subdues the flesh and the
world, and calls down Heaven to bless the happy pietist. It is the
constant, ever-speaking voice of the Father uttering in sublime and
beautiful impressions the holy eloquence of his everlasting love. It is
the communing ground of the mortal child with the immortal Parent. In
the mind of youthful woman it is as beautiful as it can be anywhere. And
when she consecrates all her powers by the laying on of its heavenly
hands, and sanctifies all her feelings by its hallowed influences, she
exhibits a view of beauty--of physical, moral, and spiritual beauty--not
elsewhere surpassed on earth. A deep, pervading, all-controlling piety
is the highest attainment of man on earth. It is that reverent, humble,
grateful, affectionate, and virtuous purity of spirit in which the human
and divine meet and embrace each other. It is the spiritual crown which
men put on when they go into the kingdom of heaven. This is what we urge
as the last and finishing excellency of the youthful female character.
The cultivation of this is what we press as conferring mortal perfection
of character, or as great perfection as frail, sinful creatures can put
on below "the mansions of the skies."
We urge it as the best and highest duty of every young woman--a duty she
owes to herself, her fellows, and her God--a duty as full of joys as the
heavens are of stars, and when performed, reflecting matchless grace
upon her soul. We do not urge it through fear of hell or hope of heaven;
we do not urge it from motives of policy; we urge it for its own
intrinsic worth; for the blessedness of being pious; for the excellency
and worth of character and life it confers. No character is complete
till it is swayed and elevated by genuine piety. No heart is fully happy
till it is imbued with the spirit of piety. No life is all it may and
should be till its motives are baptized in the waters of piety. No soul
is saved till it is transformed by the gracious spirit of this daughter
of the skies. This divine grace of the soul should be sought by every
young woman, and cultivated with the most assiduous care, for without it
she is destitute of the highest beauty and divinest charm and power of
womanhood.
II. Thus cultured and growing morally, the young woman should not forget
to develop her social nature by the hand of prudent culture. She is made
to love; not only to love one being, but all her fellows. Around kindred
spirits should be linked the chain of friendship, and this chain should
be kept bright by gentle and confiding usage. Nothing is more proper
than that young women should learn how to choose friends wisely.
Friendship and love are blind impulses. They need a guardian and guide.
Discretion should be that guide. It is natural for us to love what is
lovely; but as to what is lovely we often differ. What is lovely to one
is not always lovely to another. But there are qualities of mind and
heart that are intrinsically lovely, and about which there can be no
difference of opinion. What is virtuous, good, amiable, high-minded,
generous, self-sacrificing and pure, we all admire. What goes to make a
perfect character, a moralist, a Christian, a wise man or woman, is
agreeable to us all. Now this is what we should love. This is what we
should seek in our friends. It is not a beautiful person, or bland and
polite manners, or any thing that belongs to the exterior being that we
should love. It is inward worth and beauty--loveliness of spirit. Around
the soul should be woven the cords of friendship and love. The outward
is deceitful and perishing. The inward is true and lasting. Our
affections should be taught to fix themselves on the inward. Where we
see inward beauty, there we should fix the seal of our friendship. And
our affections should be taught to conform to this rule. No matter how
attractive the outward person, if inward attractions, such as worth,
wisdom, weight of character are wanting, we should not be moved to love.
The one grand rule is to let worth of mind, beauty of soul, fix our
affections in the social intercourse of life. Young women can not be too
particular in obeying this rule. Their moral and spiritual life, their
value in the world, their well-being and happiness depend upon it. If
their affections are not brought to act wisely, to cling to the good and
the true of soul, they will yield them untold misery. If they love the
good, the high of soul and large of heart, they will be happy,
inexpressibly happy in the action of their affections.
Lecture Eight.
EMPLOYMENT.
Employment a Duty--Powers Developed by Labor--All Females are not
Women--Dependence usually Ignoble--Adversity gives Strength--Girls
should have Trades--Self-reliance necessary to Women--Do Something
and Be Something--Riches no Excuse for Idleness--Employment gives
Activity and Strength--Labor considered Vulgar--Life is given for
Employment--Woman was Made for Usefulness.
I take it that men and women were made for business, for activity, for
employment. Activity is the life of us all. To do and to bear is the
duty of life. We know that Employment makes the man in a very great
measure. A man with no Employment, nothing to do, is scarcely a man. The
secret of making men is to put them to work, and keep them at it. It is
not study, not instruction, not careful moral training, not good
parents, nor good society that makes men. These are means; but back of
these lies the grand molding influence of men's life. It is Employment.
A man's business does more to make him than every thing else. It hardens
his muscles, strengthens his body, quickens his blood, sharpens his
mind, corrects his judgment, wakes up his inventive genius, puts his
wits to work, starts him on the race of life, arouses his ambition,
makes him feel that he is a man and must fill a man's shoes, do a man's
work, bear a man's part in life, and show himself a man in that part. No
man feels himself a man who is not doing a man's business. A man without
Employment is not a man. He does not prove by his works that he is a
man. He can not act a man's part. A hundred and fifty pounds of bone and
muscle is not a man. A good cranium full of brains is not a man. The
bone and muscle and brain must know how to act a man's part, do a man's
work, think a man's thoughts, mark out a man's path, and bear a man's
weight of character and duty before they constitute a man. A man is a
body and soul in action. A statue if well dressed may _appear_ to be a
man; so may a human being. But to _be_ a man and _appear_ to be are two
very different things. Human beings _grow_; men are _made_. The being
that grows to the stature of a man is not a man till he is made one. The
grand instrumentality of man-making is Employment. The world has long
since learned that men can not be made without Employment. Hence it sets
its boys to work--gives them trades, callings, professions--puts the
instruments of man-making into their hands and tells them to work out
their manhood. And the most of them do it somehow; not always very well.
The men who fail to make themselves a respectable manhood are the boys
who are put to no business, the young men who have nothing to do, the
male beings that have no Employment. We have them about us--walking
nuisances--pestilential gas-bags--fetid air-bubbles, who burst and are
gone. Our men of wealth and character, of worth and power, have been
early bound to some useful Employment. Many of them were unfortunate
orphan boys, whom want compelled to work for bread--the children of
penury and lowly birth. In their early boyhood they buckled on the armor
of labor, took upon their little shoulders heavy burdens, assumed
responsibilities, met fierce circumstances, contended with sharp
opposition, chose the ruggedest paths of Employment because they yielded
the best remuneration, and braved the storms of toil till they won great
victories for themselves and stood before the world in the beauty and
majesty of noble manhood. This is the way men are made. There is no
other way. Their powers are developed in the field of Employment.
Men are not born; they are made. Genius, worth, power of mind are more
made than born. Genius born may grovel in the dust; genius made will
mount to the skies. Our great and good men that stand along the paths of
history bright and shining lights are witnesses of these truths. They
stand there as everlasting pleaders for Employment. Now what is true of
men in this respect is equally true of women. If Employment is the
instrumentality in making men, it is equally so in making women. A human
female is not a woman till she makes herself so. There is something
noble, glorious, in a woman. She is the impersonation of spiritual
beauty. But all females are not women. There are scores of them who are
only female humanities; and scores more who are only _ladies_. A lady
and a woman are two very different things. One is made at the hands of
fashion; the other is the handiwork of God through the instrumentality
of useful Employment. A lady is a parlor ornament, a walking
show-gallery, a mistress of tongue-tied etiquette. A woman is a
consecrated intelligence--a love baptized--a hand employed in the work
of good. To be a woman requires exertion and prudence. Women are not
born; neither do they grow up of themselves; they are made. Their
virtues blossom in the garden of industry. Their fruits ripen on the
boughs of toil. Their treasures grow on the tree of labor. A woman with
nothing to do can not develop a truthful womanhood. A woman with no
Employment for her hands or mind can be only the shadow of a woman. What
is noble in her will doff its nobility. What is strong will become weak,
and she will soon be an imbecile dependent on some one else.
A dependent life is an ignoble one, unless compelled by misfortune; just
as ignoble in woman as in man. No woman of health and sound mind should
allow herself to be or feel dependent on any body for her living. The
sick are always dependent, though they have wealth at their command. But
the well should never be dependent. To eat and wear the fruits of
another's labor, tends to degradation. To feel that one is shining in
borrowed plumes and eating the bread of dependence, is degrading to a
noble mind. A noble mind will not willingly do it. The want of
Employment, and the dependence of many women, have ruined their
characters and made them little else than nuisances to their fellow-men.
Thousands of women have no Employment, and live through life in a state
of abject dependence. What are they, what can they be, under such
circumstances? It requires Employment to develop men, why should not it
to develop women? Dependent men are ninnies, why should not dependent
women be? Where is the difference between the male and female mind, that
one should be expected to be noble and magnanimous under circumstances
which would be ruinous to the other? We know that a young man thrown
upon his own resources is more likely to be a great, good man than when
cradled upon the lap of luxury or fortune. Why is it? Simply because he
seeks Employment and depends upon himself for what he is to be and do.
He leans not on another, and hence grows strong by standing alone. Plant
an acorn in the crevice of a barren rock, and it will strike down its
roots and send them out in search of fastening places till it will
surround the rock with a net of clinging fibers; and as the winds grow
fiercer and the storms howl wilder, the oak will strike deeper and wider
its anchoring roots. It will brace itself to meet the emergencies of its
life. It will nerve its energies to stand its ground. It will gather
vigor from every storm, resolution from every wind, strength from every
defiant bolt from heaven.
So it is with man. Place him on his feet in a hard place, where the suns
of life strike hotly upon him, and the storms blow fiercely, where he
must stand by his own strength or fall, and he will grow into strength
by the very pressure of adverse circumstances. Every blow of his own
will give it strength; every effort of his mind will give it vigor;
every trial of his character will knit firmer its binding fibers. This
is equally true of woman. Her character is formed and her power
developed in a similar way. A woman can no more be a true woman than a
man can be a true man without Employment and self-reliance. I would have
every boy and girl in the whole country taught to make their own living
at some useful Employment; to mark out for themselves a sphere of action
and then fill that sphere; to be useful in some honorable pursuit. I
would not put the boys to trades and professions to make them great and
good, and fold up the girls' hands and lay them away in the drawer or
shut them up in the parlor. I would not make the boys self-reliant and
vigorous by generous Employment, and the girls weak, puny, and dependent
by idleness or folly. I would not give the boys opportunities to develop
their powers and become noble men, and deprive the girls of all these
glorious privileges. I would not open a thousand avenues to distinction,
wealth, and worth to the boys and comparatively none to the girls. I
would not send the boys out into the field of life bravely to earn their
own living, and grow strong in doing it, and the girls out to beg their
living of the boys, and grow weak and worthless in their dependent
beggary. I like the girls too well to have them thus mistreated. I would
give them just as good a chance as the boys have. They should not be
degraded with half-pay, and only two or three ways to get a living, just
because they were made to be women. They should not be shut out from a
thousand avenues of distinction and usefulness, for they are richly
endowed, just because they are made to be women. They should not be made
to feel that it is degrading to be a woman, to feel, as a man expressed
it to me the other day, that "women are such good-for-nothing
creatures." I love noble, "strong-minded," and strong-hearted women. I
wish we had more of them. I know of no way to make them but to give our
girls more active Employment. Every girl should have a trade, a
business, a profession, or some honorable and useful way of gaining a
livelihood--some Employment in which her powers of body and mind may be
amply developed. If she has not, she will be dependent upon somebody,
and her dependence will degrade her; and her want of Employment will
keep her a half-developed specimen of humanity.
If I had half-a-dozen boys, and should let them grow up in play around
my house and on the streets, in visiting, gossiping, dressing, riding,
dancing, asking nothing of them only to bring me my slippers, or some
occasional act of kindness now and then, my neighbors would all cry out
against me, declaring that I was spoiling my boys. They would denounce
my course as absolute unkindness to the boys; would declare that they
never would be any thing with such a miserable training. And yet my
neighbors treat their girls in just this way. Now if it will spoil the
boys, why will it not spoil the girls? If it is unkindness to the boys,
why is it not unkindness to the girls? If boys can not be any thing with
such a training, how can the girls be?
If the present generation of boys should be reared just as we are
rearing our girls, what a puny race of men we should have with which to
commence the next century! Men complain that women are such weak,
good-for-nothing creatures that they are only fit to be wives and
mothers. Now it seems to me that no woman is fit to be a wife and mother
until she is a strong, self-reliant woman, both bodily and mentally. I
take it that the more vigorous a woman's body and mind are, the better
she is qualified to fulfill the duties of wife and mother.
I take it that the more self-reliant and independent a woman is, the
better she is qualified to be a helpmate for her husband, and a wise and
judicious counselor for her children. I take it that dignity of
character, power of action, resolute will, commanding judgment, steady
temper of mind, strong inward resources, are as essential in a good wife
and mother as in a good husband and father. In a word, I take it that
all that is noble, dignified, useful, and beautiful in character and
life, is as essential in women as in men. If so, then why not give woman
opportunities such as are necessary to develop her powers and form her
character? Those opportunities can not be given without Employment. We
can not make men without Employment; how can we expect to make women?
How can a woman who has no aim in life, who lives to no purpose, who has
nothing to accomplish, whose hands are idle, whose mind has nothing on
which to fix its energies--who, in a word, spends a listless, trifling
life--how can such a woman possess weight of character, force of mind,
or mental worth? When God calls for her stewardship, how can she answer
with any honor to herself? When she comes to see her soul disrobed of
mortality, how naked and undeveloped it will look!
It appears to me that every young woman should aim to be something and
do something. Her powers of mind and body should be applied to a good
end. Her hands should be set to some useful employment and made skillful
in it. It matters not so much what it is, as how she perseveres in it.
Great men are made in all trades and professions. So may great women be.
Woman may rightfully employ her powers wherever she may do it most
successfully to herself and her fellows. If our young women feel that
they can sell tape and pins, set type or make shoes, keep books or
manage a telegraph office; if they can keep a bakery or a dry-goods
store, direct a Daguerreian gallery, or do any thing else that is right
and proper to be done, let them not hesitate to do it. Let them
accomplish themselves in the art or business that to them seems most
agreeable, and set up for themselves. They will be a thousand times more
happy and useful than in leading listless and thriftless lives. The kind
of Employment is not a matter of so much importance as the fact of being
employed. Our boys choose their occupations; so should our girls. But
they should always choose to do something that is useful. Our homes are
full of necessary and useful employments. Our girls should engage in
them with zeal.
No matter if they are rich. They need Employment just as much. A rich
young man is not excused from business--from acting nobly his part in
life, and doing something worthy of a man. And if he excuses himself he
will only be despised by the community in which he lives. We all
understand that a young man has got a part to act in useful life,
whether he is rich or poor. Why should it not be so with a young woman?
Why should we excuse her on account of her riches? Why should she excuse
herself? Idleness is the ruin of her body and mind; Employment will give
both activity and strength. She will be wiser, better, happier by being
employed in something that will benefit herself and the world. We have a
strange theory about our young women that are well to do in the world.
We think that they must be great babies, and be fed, and clothed, and
housed, and posted about in carriages, waited upon and petted as though
they were made for nothing else. It is horridly vulgar for such young
women to work. It would be a violation of propriety for them to be
useful. They would lose caste if they should engage in any useful
employment. So they must be useless appendages, hung about the body of
humanity to torment themselves and as many others as they can. What a
torment it must be to them to lead such aimless lives, studying all the
while for some new way to kill time! How many women there are over whose
heads time drags heavily! They have nothing to do. The dull round of
society is irksome. They have stood at the toilet till every thing there
is fatiguing. They have talked over and over their little round of
fashionable nonsense. They are weary of their monotonous, inactive,
inglorious life. Thousands are the women in easy circumstances who feel
thus. They would be glad to lift up their hands and do something, but
the chains of custom and fashion are upon them. A false social position
has made them timid and fearful. I know that many noble women are weary
of such a life. They are tired of being dolls. They would be glad to be
women and fill the places of useful, energetic, resolute women.
The position of dependence in which society places its wealthy and easy
circumstanced women is directly calculated to destroy their
self-reliance and force of character. They are attended by servants
wherever they go, who do what they ought to do, and often think what
they ought to think. The woman who always asks her servant to do what
she may do herself, soon becomes dependent upon and loses a good portion
of herself in her servant. If my servant eats my dinner for me, he gets
the benefit and I lose it. If my servant takes my morning bath from me,
he gets the benefit and I lose it. If he takes my morning walk for me,
he receives what I lose. So if he takes my Employment, does what I may
and ought to do myself for my own good, he receives the benefit while I
lose it. Thus it is that this system of servitude in all its forms tends
to degrade the party to whom the service is done. To have done for us
what it is best we should do ourselves always injures us. If we have
duties to perform, and hire or command another to perform them, we rob
ourselves of one of the richest blessings that can come to a mortal
being--the consciousness of having performed a duty and the improvement
gained by its performance. Thousands of women in our country are greatly
injured by the presence of their servants. Servants do for them what
they ought to do for themselves. They acquire the habit of dependence,
and it soon degenerates them into petty tyrants. If I had but two
lessons to impress upon the young women of my generation, the first
should be that a useful Employment is the primary means of developing a
true womanhood.
I know there is an antipathy to labor among a large class of women; I
know that women as well as men seek to avoid care and responsibility; I
know that useful Employments are looked upon as hard necessities, to be
avoided if possible. But still I know that Employment--daily, constant,
responsible Employment--is the stepping-stone to mental and moral worth,
to usefulness and happiness. I do not contend for degrading toil, but
for honorable, mind-developing, soul-redeeming, heart-adorning
Employment. Both men and women are made better by useful Employment.
Life is given for Employment; our powers are made for activity. If God
had intended that any of us should be idle, he would have built houses,
made clothes, cooked victuals, formed characters, accumulated knowledge,
and had every thing that we need both for mind and body ready made at
our hands. But not so. He has made all that is grand in life, that is
glorious in thought, depend upon our own exertions. This is as true of
women as of men. Then the idler is a leech on himself--his own
despoiler. An idle woman is as base a thing as an idle man. She was made
for usefulness. A drone in any hive is a base bee--a nuisance, a leech,
a moth.
I know young women have refined ideas of delicacy; sometimes imagine it
is vulgar to be useful; that delicate hands are evidences of ladyship.
They ought to know that a delicate hand is an evidence of a shallow
brain; that a soft hand is an evidence of a soft head. Ladyship and
womanhood are two things. A soft hand and a faint heart may make one,
but not the other. Womanhood is put on by industry in the pursuit of
good. It is made in the field of noble Employment.
I seek to elevate woman. I look to her elevation as the elevation of the
race. I see in her powers capable of great actions and a sublime life;
but I see no way in which those powers can be developed and that life
lived but in active and useful Employment. Woman ought to stand by man's
side in all that is great and good in thought and action. The history of
every country should have as much to record of woman as of man; but this
can never be until woman's field of Employment is extended. She must go
out and work. She must do her own business, execute her own intentions,
act nobly her part in life wherever she can be the best rewarded for her
industry and judgment. I would not make woman unwomanly, but would crown
her with all the grace and dignity of true female worth. I look to
useful Employment as the best and only means of securing this end.
Idleness will not make any woman womanly. Ignorance of business and the
world will not. In the pursuit of their own elevation let them learn how
to be true to themselves and their duties, and we shall soon have a
generation of women such as the world has never seen--of strong, brave,
accomplished, and useful women whom history will record as the
benefactors of their race.
Lecture Nine.
HOME.
Maternal Love--Ideas of Future Home Universal--Heaven's Home
Perfected--Home the Garden of Virtue--Home Influence Permanent--Home
is Woman's World--Place does not constitute Home--Our Homes will be
like us--Home a Sensitive Place--Home Habits Second Nature.
My theme is _Home_. If my essay could be as good as my subject it would
be worthy of devoutest attention. I believe that there are three things
of universal interest among men--_Mother_, _Home_, _and Heaven_. In all
ages and countries mother has been a sacred word. It has laid on the
heart of childhood like a dew-drop on the rose, sweetening and
refreshing it. A man loves to think of his mother; of her watchful care,
her tender vigils, her holy charity, her forgiving goodness, her
matchless and marvelous love.
What a great refreshing fountain of life is a mother's love! We all turn
to it as the heart's common resting-place. We love to think of our
mothers. They loved us with such a deep devotion; did, and sacrificed,
and suffered so much for us; were so unselfish and ready to forgive, so
vividly alive to our interests, and felt their beings so intertwined
with ours that we feel that we must love them. It is the last and
lowest ingratitude of a human heart not to love its mother. God made the
mother. Such love is Heaven's work. Not in angels' hearts beats a
sweeter, deeper, richer feeling. Mother is another name for consecrated
love. Not all the theologians in the world could convince me that the
natural mother-heart is not holy. I have seen too deeply into my own
mother's soul; I have felt too much of the fire of her deathless love; I
have witnessed too many evidences of its immaculate purity to believe it
inherently depraved. I have always felt that it was a slander against
our own mother to believe the mother-heart naturally corrupt. Yes, all
the mother is holy. God loves the mother for what she is. She is a
reflection of himself. The gates of his everlasting Home will never
close against a mother. Though she may be wicked in other respects, in
her maternal heart lives a germ of the tree of life which can never
wholly die. What love sometimes beams in a wicked mother's heart! All
mothers are alike. The wise and the foolish, the idiotic and
philosophic, the rich and poor, the cultivated and barbaric, are all the
same in love; the same beautiful, tender, forgiving spirit of devoted
affection dwells in all. Oh, see the mother as she gazes fondly upon her
child; as she feeds him from her breast; as she watches by his sick
couch; as she counsels him to virtue and goodness; as she weeps over his
waywardness and toils for his happiness!
All the arching glory of the moral world bows in reverence before the
mother's love. This is the radiant center, the focus of human
affection. And this is the central sun of _Home_! Home has no permanent
force, no abiding stability without a mother's love. Take mother out of
Home, and the Home is gone. She is the regulator, the main-spring, the
center around which all else revolves. How rich is every Home that has
in it a true mother! If there were no other attraction in this sacred
spot, no other charm, the mother's presence would make it dear and
glorious. While a mother lives, Home will be a blessed place. Then
_heaven_ is another word of universal use and power. In every human soul
there lies an idea of heaven; dim and shadowy sometimes, bright and
glorious at others; but yet everywhere present. The Arab wanderers, the
wild men of the forest, the jabbering Ajetas, the South Sea Islanders,
the wall-girt Chinamen, the sable Ethiopians, the cultured Christians,
all cherish the thought of heaven--another home, a final resting-place
from all that wearies or troubles. It seems as though God in goodness
had implanted this thought in all creatures' minds as the germ of
eternal life, to cheer and support them in the shadowy hours of earth
and time. Yes, the thought and hope of heaven is universal. Many men
cherish ideas of hell, the very opposite of heaven; but this does not
interfere with their own hope of heaven. All men hope for heaven for
themselves. Hell is always for somebody else, if they are so unfortunate
as to be tormented with so fearful and saddening a thought. And this
thought of heaven, this universal impression of a better land, a
spirit-bower, so comforting, so elevating, so inspiring, grows naturally
out of our primary conceptions of Home. We all love Home--Home that is
a Home--and this love enlarged by the imagination, pictured in
perfection by the quick hand of Faith, consecrated by natural religion,
is our idea of heaven. Heaven is Home perfected, the consummation of the
heart's love of Home. In our ideas of heaven we gather our loved ones
about us just as we do in our Homes. What would heaven be to us without
our mother, our brothers and sisters, the dear home-companions of our
hearts? It would not be heaven because it would not be Home. The heart
could not rest there. It would fly away on the quick wings of its love
to the dear absent ones. A heaven half filled would not be a heaven. A
heaven with broken families would be heaven with broken hearts.
Every heart would pine in sadness in the loss of some of its dear
ones--some of its Home souls. Home-love is the germ of heaven-love. God
plants in Homes the seeds that shall bear fruit in heaven. Thus we see
that _Mother_, _Home_, and _Heaven_--these three words of such universal
interest and power--are associated and related words. They convey a
blessed trinity of ideas meeting in one associated glow of spiritual
beauty. They belong together and can not be separated. They are parts of
the same golden whole. Home, in all well-constituted minds, is always
associated with moral and social excellence. The higher men rise in the
scale of being, the more important and interesting is Home. The Arab or
forest man may care little for his Home, but, the Christian man of
cultured heart and developed mind will love his Home, and generally
love it in proportion to his moral worth. He knows it is the
planting-ground of every seed of morality--the garden of virtue, and the
nursery of religion. He knows that souls immortal are here trained for
the skies; that private worth and public character are made in its
sacred retreat. To love Home with a deep and abiding interest, with a
view to its elevating influence, is to love truth and right, heaven and
God. I envy not the soul that loves not Home. There is moral safety and
force in this love. Many a man who is an ornament to his family and a
blessing to the world would have gone to ruin had it not been for the
love he bore his Home and its inmates. A weakness of the home-love is
often the cause of moral ruin. Many a man of strong impulses and
impetuous character has braved hardships, faced dangers, resisted
temptations which would have been too powerful for him had it not been
for his strong love of Home. A strong love of Home in any man's heart is
a triple wall of brass around his moral nature--an impregnable bulwark
against the assaults of moral evil. No labor is too great for the strong
lovers of Home to accomplish. See them on ocean's billowy bosom; on
mountains of ice and snow; on fields of bloody strife; on burning
deserts; in trackless forests; amid disease, danger, and death, braving
every foe to life and peace, and all to fill their homes with comfort
and joy. In every proper sense in which Home can be considered, it is a
powerful stimulant to noble action and a high and pure morality. So
valuable is the love of Home, that every man should cherish it as the
apple of his eye. As he values his own moral worth, as he prizes his
country, the peace and happiness of the world; yea, more: as he values
the immortal interests of men, he should cherish and cultivate a strong
and abiding love of Home.
I take it that it affects our whole lives; ay, that it runs over the
grave, sweeps by death, and affects our future condition. Then is not
the idea of Home important? Shall we look thoughtlessly upon these
nurseries of immortal fruits? Shall we pollute and degrade the Homes in
which we dwell? Shall we send out from them unholy influences to corrupt
the world? These Home questions are the most important ones we can
raise. Their decision is to affect us more than any decision by the
supreme authority of our country. Not all the judges in the world ever
decide questions half so important and pregnant with solemn results as
those we are left to decide in our own Homes. Hence I would present the
subject of Home to young women as one in which they are as deeply
interested as they can be in any subject. It is expected that every
young woman will preside over the destinies and interests of a Home. In
some way her interests, through her whole earth-life, will be connected
with Home. Woman's nature and tastes fit her in a peculiar manner to be
the presiding genius of Home. However widely may be extended the
rightful sphere of woman's operations, the mass of women will find
employment and usefulness in the embossmment of their families.
Home will always be woman's world. She will be queen over its rich and
far-stretching realms. In the studios of Home she will carve the
statuary of her moral heroism, and picture the spiritual beauty of her
faith and love. Home is her kingdom, and she will always reign over it.
Though she may go out to do great deeds of goodness in the world, though
she may speak from forums, teach from college chairs, write books, fill
offices of trust and profit, go on missions of truth, peace, and mercy
among her fellows, she will still love best of all places the
sequestered scene of Home. I would not, either by law, or custom, or
public opinion, confine woman's powers to the routine of domestic
duties. I would open the whole world to her, and tell her to find
employment, usefulness, and happiness wherever she can; but in so doing
I should feel that not a Home would be desolated; not a woman would
become less a lover and blesser of Home. On the contrary, woman would
love her Home all the more, and make it all the purer and nobler. She
would choose its sweet vocations, not from the stern dictation of
society, but from her soul's choice. Every family must have a Home; and
every Home must have a head, a heart, a guardian. Woman is nobly fitted
to fill this responsible post of honor and trust; but let her do it from
choice. Do not compel her to do it. Woman does not like compulsion. It
is not human to like compulsion. Give to woman the same freedom you do
to man. Open the whole width of the field of life to her, and she will
choose with avidity her own appropriate place. She has a strong sense
of propriety and a good judgment in the choice of her sphere of
activity.
Every young woman should early form in her mind an ideal of a _true
Home_. It should not be the ideal of a _place_, but of the _character_
of Home. Place does not constitute Home. Many a gilded palace and sea of
luxury is not a Home. Many a flower-girt dwelling and splendid scansion
lacks all the essentials of Home. A hovel is often more a Home than a
palace. If the spirit of the congenial friendship link not the hearts of
the inmates of a dwelling it is not a Home. If love reign not there; if
charity spread not her downy mantle over all; if peace prevail not; if
contentment be not a meek and merry dweller therein; if virtue rear not
her beautiful children, and religion come not in her white robe of
gentleness to lay her hand in benediction on every head, the Home is not
complete. We are all in the habit of building for ourselves ideal homes.
But they are generally made up of outward things--a house, a garden, a
carriage, and the ornaments and appendages of luxury. And if in our
lives we do not realize our ideals, we make ourselves miserable and our
friends miserable. Half the women in our country are unhappy because
their Homes are not so luxurious as they wish.
Somebody has more ornament and style about their Homes than they, and so
they worry their souls to death about it. This is one of the most
fruitful sources of disquiet in nearly all our Homes. Our women want
more show, fashion, luxury, outward ornament than they can afford, or
than is necessary to their happiness. All around us there is a great sea
of disquiet from this one cause. We forget that Homes are not made up of
material things. It is not a fine house, rich furniture, a luxurious
table, a flowery garden, and a superb carriage that make a Home. A
world-wide distance from this is a true Home. Our ideal Homes should be
heart-homes, in which virtues live, and love-flowers bloom, and peace
offerings are daily brought to its altar. Our ideal Homes should be such
as we can and will make in our own lives. We should not expect Homes
better and happier than we are. Our Homes will be sure to be much like
us. If we are good, kind, and happy, our Homes will be likely to be. If
we are craving, selfish, discontented, our Homes will be. If all the
wealth in the world were laid at our feet and lavished on our Homes, we
should not be happier unless our hearts are better. Wealth, luxury,
ornament bring care, anxiety, and a craving for more, which render them
nearly valueless unless the heart is filled with virtue and contentment.
If I could moderate the material desires of the young women I address,
and elevate their spiritual longings in relation to their future Homes,
I should do a good service to them and their families. The grand idea of
Home is a quiet, secluded spot, where loving hearts dwell, set apart and
dedicated to _improvement_--to intellectual and moral improvement. It is
not a formal school of staid solemnity and rigid discipline, where
virtue is made a task and progress a sharp necessity, but a free and
easy exercise of all our spiritual limbs, in which obedience is a
pleasure, discipline a joy, improvement a self-wrought delight. All the
duties and labors of Home, when rightly understood, are so many means of
improvement. Even the trials of Home (for every Home must have its
trials, and severe ones, too) are so many rounds in the ladder of
spiritual progress, if we but make them so.
One idea concerning Home should be deeply impressed on our minds. Of all
places in the world, Home is the most delicate and sensitive. Its
springs of action are subtle and secret. Its chords move with a breath.
Its fires are kindled with a spark. Its flowers are bruised with the
least rudeness. The influence of our homes strikes so directly on our
hearts that they make sharp impressions. In our intercourse with the
world we are barricaded, and the arrows let fly at our hearts are warded
off; but not so with us at Home. Here our hearts wear no covering, no
armor. Every arrow strikes them; every cold wind blows full upon them;
every storm beats against them. What in the world we would pass by in
sport, in our Homes will wound us to the quick. Very little can we bear
at Home. Home is a sensitive place. If we would have it a true Home, we
must guard well our words and actions. We must be honest and kind,
constant and true, to the very extent of our capacity. All little
occasions of offense and misapprehension should be avoided. Little
things make up the web of our life at Home. Little things make us happy,
and little things make us miserable. A word, a hint, a look has power to
transport us with joy or sting us with anguish. If we would make our
Homes what they should be, we must attend faithfully to the little
things which make them so.
Our life abroad is but a reflex of what it is at Home. We make ourselves
in a great manner at Home. This is especially true of woman. The woman
who is rude, coarse, and vulgar at home, can not be expected to be
amiable, chaste, and refined in the world. Her Home habits will stick to
her. She can not shake them off. They are woven into the web of her
life. Her Home language will be first on her tongue. Her Home by-words
will come out to mortify her just when she wants most to hide them in
her heart. Her Home vulgarities will show their hideous forms to shock
her most when she wants to appear her best. Her Home coarseness will
appear most when she is in the most refined circles, and appearing there
will abash her more than elsewhere. All her Home habits will follow her.
They have become a sort of second nature to her.
Every young woman should feel that just what she is at Home she will
appear abroad. If she attempts to appear otherwise, everybody will soon
see through the attempt. We can not cheat the world long about our real
characters. The thickest and most opaque mask we can put on will soon
become transparent. This fact we should believe without a doubt.
Deception most often deceives itself. The deceiver is the most deceived.
The liar is often the only one cheated. The young woman who pretends to
what she is not, believes her pretense is not understood. Other people
laugh in their sleeves at her foolish pretension. If young women were
what they ought to be at Home, they would never have to put on a mask
when they go into company. How uncomfortable it must be to have to cover
up the Home character the moment we appear in the world! Nothing should
be said or done at Home that would make us appear in a bad light in the
world. If this one rule is constantly kept, how pleasant will be our
Homes, how proper our habits, how beautiful our lives! How easy and
graceful will become our Home manners, how elegant and appropriate our
Home language, how pure and lovely our Home characters! Home excellences
are the ones we should covet. Home morality and religion are the best.
Home love and worth only are real and lasting. Home virtue is for the
skies. A Home woman of worth is the most beautiful and lovely woman in
the world. A Home character is the one that will stand the scrutiny of
the All-Seeing Eye. If these were the last words I had to say to young
women, I would say, Be at Home what you would be abroad; what you ought
to be everywhere; what all good people would have you; what God requires
you to be.
Lecture Ten.
THE RELATIONS AND DUTIES OF YOUNG WOMEN TO YOUNG MEN.
The Primary Principles of Being--Life is full of
Solemnities--Influence of the Sexes--Influence depends on
Culture--Men Reverence Female Worth--Much Influence is directly
Evil--Woman should demand Morality--Errors of Society--The Sexes too
much Separated--Equality of Moral Standards--Female Encouragement
and Counsel--Time Trifled, worse than Lost.
I feel that we have a subject before us of solemn and weighty
importance. It relates to some of the dearest interests of our
earth-life, gathers within itself some of the holiest affections of our
hearts, and places before the bars of our consciences some of the most
serious questions of practical morality and religion. Man and woman are
a related pair. God has made them so. The relation they bear to each
other is a divine one. It takes hold of the heart of life. It spans our
whole manhood. It enters into our hopes, aims, and prospects. It holds
its scepter over our business, our amusements, our philosophy, and
religion. Its sphere is larger than we at first imagine. The relation is
deeper and broader than we have yet comprehended. It lies in the very
being of every man and every woman. There is in humanity two grand
primary and universal principles of being--the masculine and feminine.
They bear such a relation to each other that the one is essential to the
action of the other. They mutually electrify and empower each other. It
is in this mysterious relation that Infinite Wisdom has laid the springs
of animate being. If any one mystery of our existence is deeper than any
other, it is that which lies in the solemn depths of this relation. We
ought to approach it wrapt in reverential awe and wonder. We look out on
the earth in its brilliant beauty and teeming activity, and up to the
heavens in their gorgeous glory and magnificent movements, and are
oppressed with profound astonishment at what we behold. Yet all this we
can in a measure comprehend. At least the secondary causes of the
physical universe are clear to our minds. We can measure them with the
line of mathematics; we can weigh them in the balance of reason. But
when we turn in upon ourselves we meet a universe ten thousand times
more wonderful and glorious, yet wrapt in the deep mystery of spiritual
being. It is practical irreverence not to look upon our relations with
religious respect. Of all these relations, the one between man and woman
takes the most direct held of our practical life and enters most largely
into the details of our purposes and thoughts. Men and women live in and
for each other more than for any thing else. The fact stands out on the
face of human society. We must take the fact as we find it. We did not
make human nature; hence we have no right to complain of it. Our
business is to comprehend it so far as possible and seek to keep it in
the path of its design and destiny. Our morality and religion should be
adapted to our nature. They should meet the every-day wants of men.
The philosopher, the moralist, and the minister should aim at practical
utility in all their labors, and men and women should study carefully
the great book of every-day life. The relation of men and women to each
other is one of the most important lessons in that book. If we would be
wise, useful, or happy, we must understand at least the _duties_ growing
out of this relation. If we would bless mankind or please God, we must
fulfill these duties. I have but little faith in any philosophy or
religion that would shun the walks of practical life. We have too much
ethereal philosophy and spasmodic religion. Men reason profoundly about
etherealities, and go into ecstasies about glory and joy to come. This
may be all well enough, but I submit whether it would not be better to
reason how to live well the life that now is, and how to sanctify it
with the redeeming presence of the spirit of the lowly Jesus. Our chief
concern is with this life. If we make it right, no harm can come to us
in the future life. To me our present life is full of holy solemnities.
Its most interesting relations are holy, and the duties that grow out of
them are to be performed with religious sincerity and joy. To me God is
in our present life, walking with us daily and entreating us to walk
with him. I see His arrangement in the relation of man and woman. I feel
his benediction in the joy and blessed influence that arise from this
relation. I can not consider it or enjoy it in any other than a
religious sense. Nor can I conceive of any true religion in the heart of
him who practically sinks this relation to a level with sensualism or
folly. I hear almost daily from the lips of professedly religious men
and women, language and thoughts on this subject which bespeak a carnal
heart and an unsanctified mind. They treat the relation with levity.
They make it a practical joke. They look at it through carnal eyes, and
listen to its language with carnal ears. Their whole conception and
practical understanding of it is sensuous. I have but little confidence
in their religion. It is only an emotion of the heart. It has never
sanctified the conscience nor consecrated the life.
With these introductory remarks let us observe in the first place, that
the most potent influence that bears on our earth-life grows out of this
relation. This is a fact standing out boldly on the face of life. And
this influence is more powerful in refined and cultured life than in
savage and primitive existence. As individuals, nations, and races
advance in the arts, principles, and culture of civilization, the
influence of the sexes becomes more general and irresistible. So far as
a people advance morally, religiously, and spiritually, this influence
becomes more direct, constant, and powerful. The truest men and the
truest women we have are most under each other's influence. They bow
most reverently in each other's presence and entertain the highest
opinions of each other. Their feelings toward each other are most pure
and truthful. One of the most intellectual, religious, and refined women
that it has been my privilege to meet in life's sequestered vale, while
speaking in a private conversation, made this significant remark: "Next
to my God do I adore man, for he is God's best image." She was a
matronly woman about sixty years of age, who had tasted life's full cup
and been blessed by its richest and most profound experiences, and who
said of her religion: "For twenty-five years it has been my meat and my
drink." It is a joy and a blessing never to be forgotten to have known
such a woman. The best men I have ever known, considered both in
relation to their spiritual experiences and their influence in life,
have joyfully and reverently expressed their feelings of profound
respect and sacred affection for woman, confessing that, under God, she
had wrought in them a mission of redeeming love. So frequent have been
similar expressions both from men and women in the highest spiritual and
practical walks in life, and so clear and strong has been their
experience, that it can not be doubted that the influence of man and
woman upon each other is potent and penetrating in proportion to their
degree of refinement and spiritual culture. The tendency of moral
training and religious discipline are to strengthen and elevate this
influence.
Woman improves in man's view as her nature is cultivated and her soul
blessed with sanctifying influences. Man grows in woman's sight as his
mind is developed and his heart subdued. They mutually exert a higher
and deeper influence over each other by their progress in things good
and true. If I am correct in this, it presents us with a strong
inducement to develop our best powers and live our best lives, that our
mental joys may be most deep and holy and our lives most pure and happy.
And here I may present the subject directly to young women. If they
would secure the deepest respect and holiest friendship of the young men
with whom they associate, they must themselves be refined, elevated, and
noble in their characters and lives. If they would exert their best
influence upon young men, and benefit them most by their association
with them, they must be truthful and high of soul.
All young men bow before female worth. Their evil thoughts forsake them;
their wicked habits flee away from them for the time being. Let a
depraved man _feel_ that he stands in the presence of pure, cultivated
womanhood, around which is wrapped the mantle of Jesus, and through
which breathes the spirit of his holy religion, and he will be ashamed
of himself, and long to be sufficiently pure and elevated to commune in
sacred friendship with her spirit. Oh, if young women could only realize
the moral powers which they could gather up within themselves, and wield
over their male associates in all the walks of life, by a proper
development of their minds and hearts, and a truthful submission to the
principles of moral right, how different would they be, and how changed
would be the face of young society! That young women do wield a mighty
influence over young men we admit; but it is not so great nor so good as
it should be. Much of it is directly evil. It is trifling, deceitful,
volatile, changeable, and not unfrequently carnal. It is often low,
worldly, irreverent, base. I am sorry to say it, but young women rebuke
but very little the evil doings of their male associates. They chide not
the waywardness of young men as they ought. They smile upon them in
their villainy. They court the society of young men they have every
reason to believe are corrupt. They will meet without a shudder or
disapproving frown, in the ball-room and the private circle, men whom
they know would glory in being the instrument of the moral ruin of any
woman. Young women who claim to be good, and who would not for a fortune
be guilty of a moral impropriety, often wreathe the villain's way in
smiles.
Young men in "high life" can smoke and chew, drink and swear, in woman's
presence, and she turns not away in disgust nor rebukes them with a cut
of their acquaintance. There are a large class of young women who only
ask that the young men shall behave tolerably well in their presence,
asking not what they do behind their backs. They may carouse, blaspheme,
get drunk, and do what wickedness they please among themselves; if they
only keep straight in the ladies' presence, it is all that is asked. Now
there is by far too much of this low state of morality among young
women. I say among young women, because if their moral feelings were
what they should be, they would not associate with such young men. They
would not enroll them on their list of friends. They would not know
their names; would not recognize them when they met. I have no
confidence in the moral sense of young women who will acknowledge such
associates. The very first duty which women owe to young men is to
demand of them a higher standard of morality. I say _demand_. They
should peremptorily demand it. Young women should erect the standard for
young men which young men have erected for them. Young men who have any
respect for themselves will not associate with women that chew, and
smoke, and swear, and get drunk--those whose morals are low and base.
They spurn such associates from them. Let young women do the same. Let
them say to the young men, "You shall not do the things you prohibit us
from doing; you shall not, behind our backs, do things you would despise
us for doing; you shall not bring into our society characters from which
you know every honest and pure woman ought to recoil as she would from a
basilisk; you shall not breathe into our faces the pestiferous breath of
the drunkard, nor burden our ears with the hateful sound of the
blasphemer; you must be what you would have us, or you must be out of
our society." Let young women talk thus and act thus, and true young men
will respect them all the more. No woman is respected more for smiling
on the villain. He himself despises her for it. The truth is, our
society is corrupt on this subject. _Men_ are permitted to do with
impunity what would blast a woman's reputation for life. A man may be
coarse, vulgar, and wicked, and society admits him to all its
privileges, and good women will meet him on terms of equality. Society
can never be what it should be till the same standard of morality and
propriety is established for men and women. It is woman's duty to
establish such a standard--a duty she owes to man. She does man an act
of injustice when she accepts him as an associate at the sacrifice of
her moral dignity. It is her duty to rebuke his evil course. It is
kindness to him to do it.
Young women can not do a bad man a greater evil than to associate with
him on terms of moral equality. All young women should show by their
words and actions that they have a deep and holy respect for moral
worth; that they will demand it in their associates. Such a course would
inspire a greater respect for them in the minds of young men, and give a
higher tone to the moral feelings of our youth.
It is a well-settled conviction of my mind that society separates too
much its male and female youth. In our schools our boys and girls are
separated. Almost the entire course of education is pursued in sexual
isolation. The girls are taught that it is not pretty to be with the
boys, and the boys that is not manly to be with the girls; and yet both
are anxious for each other's society. In this unnatural and unhappy
state, their imaginations are left to fill up the void made by the
separation. Imagination seldom does such work well. I believe it is the
grand corrupter of youth. The brother and sister should grow up together
in the same family, be educated at the same school, engage in the same
sports, and, so far as practical, in the same labors. Their joys and
sorrows, tastes and aims, should be mutual so far as possible. The same
moral lessons, the same moral obligations and duties should bear upon
them. The moral standard for the girl should be the moral standard for
the boy, and he should be made to feel that the moment he falls below it
he is unworthy, and must not expect her confidence and society. It is a
sad error that the youth of our towns and country are separated in so
many of the most important duties of life. They are permitted to come
together only for sport and nonsense. Their study and work are separate.
Hence the good influence which they ought to have upon each other is in
a great measure lost. They are unacquainted with each other. They know
not each other's natures. They have but little interest in each other's
business and duties. They meet only to cajole and deceive each other.
They wear masks in each other's presence. For this state of things no
one in particular is to blame, but every one in general. It is the fault
of society. Now it seems to me to be a duty of every young woman to seek
to correct this state of things, by acquainting herself as far as
possible with the interests and business of young men that she may seek
to benefit them by her approval of what is right and condemnation of
what is wrong.
If woman was more intimately acquainted with the life, duty, hopes, and
aims of man, with his business, his education, his sharp encounters, his
trials and temptations, she could be of much more service to him
intellectually, morally, and socially. I do not believe in the present
isolation of woman from man's business, ambition, and hope. Woman might
be a perpetual inspiration to man to act nobly his part in the theater
of life if she knew that part and was more deeply interested in it. And
here is just where young women can be of great service to young men. In
nearly all young men there is more or less of noble ambition, of
praiseworthy aim for an active and useful life. Some wish to fill posts
of honor and trust in their country's service; some would win respect
and honor in some of the learned professions; some would seek esteem and
competency in the schools of art; some would lay the foundations of a
noble life in mechanism; some in agriculture; some in commerce. The
avocations are many, but the spirit, the aim, the ambition is one. In
these avocations young men expect to make their fortunes, win their
fame, work out their good, and do their life-work. If young women had
their hearts in these things, saw the true end of life, and would enter
into the young man's plans and hopes, they might cheer and animate,
encourage and empower, thousands of young men who otherwise will make
grand failures of life. How little encouragement, how little counsel and
cheer do young men now get from their young female associates! What
young woman enters heartily into the best aims and highest hopes of the
young man with whom she associates?
What young woman watches with anxious and benevolent solicitude the
young men about her, in relation to their success and progress in the
vocations and pursuits to which their lives are wedded, and from which
their fortunes, characters, and spiritual good are in no small degree to
be made? Our young women are too childish and trifling in their
thoughts and intercourse with young men. They seek to dissipate rather
than benefit them; or, if they do not seek it, their intercourse tends
to dissipation. It should not be so. All of woman's influence should
tend to elevate man. He is bad enough, do all she can for him. The hours
she spends with him should be for his inspiration; to make him more
active in the pursuit of whatever is noble in life or good in spirit.
Every hour trifled away with young men is an hour worse than lost. It
injures both parties. Woman exerts a great influence over man. She
should see to it that that influence is good. She should encourage him
in all his intellectual pursuits, throw the whole weight of her
influence upon his moral nature, resolutely demand a good life at his
hands, and electrify his laudable purposes with the strength of her
holiest prayer. She may be to him an angel of redeeming mercy. She may
magnetize his soul with strength. She may gird him with the armor of
religion and make him a soldier of the Cross, braver than Cæsar and
mightier than Napoleon. But to do it she must herself be strong in the
right. She must be panoplied in the armor of spiritual warfare. She must
be a true woman, girded and crowned with the royalty of noble womanhood.
Being this, she must ask her brother to wear the royal badge of
high-toned manhood. Let young women learn how men are made; how, by
industry, labor, prudence, perseverance in the common vocations of life,
and by a strict adherence to rectitude and goodness they grow to be
useful and great, and then they may become ministers of good to the
rising manhood of our country.
I have great hopes in young woman. The destinies of the generations to
come are not a little in her hands. In the stirring times that are
before us she must act a noble part. Her pen, her voice, her power will
move upon the world. Every young woman will do something in this
movement. Let her determine to do her part well; to be a true woman; to
lead a true life; to exert a true influence on mankind in the fear of
God and the love of man.
Lecture Eleven.
MARRIAGE.
Unhappy Marriages--Marriage has its Laws--The Second Question in
Life--Be sure you are Right--For Better or for Worse--Know whom thou
Marriest--Marriage a Holy Institution--Marriage should be made a
Study--Marriage is not for Children--Early Marriages
Inadvisable--What are Early Marriages?--Influence of an Ignorant
Wife--Woman the Hope of the World--Married Life must be lived
well--Love should rule all.
Our present theme for our young female friends is Marriage. In treating
it we feel impressed with its solemn and practical importance. Talk of
Marriage as we will, it is a serious and stern reality. It takes us by
the hand and leads us into the great temple of life where duties stand
ministering around the solemn altar, and the baptism of love is followed
by the quick discipline of trial. Young, single existence is but the
vestibule of real life, where anticipation weaves a golden web, bearing
but a faint resemblance to the web of actual life. The youthful
imagination is apt to dress the institution of Marriage in too many
garlands, and to consider it full of ethereal joys and paradisaical
blessedness such as can exist only in the chambers of an untaught fancy.
That the natural fruitage of true Marriage is peace and blessedness is a
pleasing fact which we can not contemplate but with delight, and for
which we can not be too grateful. But it must always be understood that
the joys of marriage are natural, and such as grow out of the
performance of duty and a life of truthfulness. They are conditioned
upon obedience to the matrimonial laws. It is not all the married that
are happy. If you would find misery double-distilled, you may find it in
awful and ruinous abundance among the married who entered their real
life in the whirl of enthusiastic delight. There is every possible
degree of anguish in the married life, from the unbreathed unrest of the
thinly clouded soul to the terrible grief that breaks out in loud
denunciations and open and disgusting conflict. And could you draw back
the vail that hides the privacies of this life, and see the black waves
of distrust and the deep waters of disquietude that cast up mire and
dirt continually, which roll and heave in constant commotion out of the
world's sight in the seclusion of the Marriage relation, you might doubt
that the institution was ordained in mercy, and question its utility.
Like every other good, it must be rightly used or it turns to evil. The
good of good things is mostly in their use. Life is good if rightly
used, but oh, how bad when wholly abused! So with Marriage. The best
things become instruments of the direst evil when wrested from their
true use.
The first lesson to learn in relation to Marriage is, that its fruits of
peace and joy hang on the boughs of obedience to its regulations,
conformity to its laws. Who would be happy in the married life must
enter into it well and live it righteously. It has laws to be obeyed,
regulations to be observed, principles to be submitted to, without
which it has no joys, no elysian fields of bliss and blessedness, no
buds and flowers of virtue and happiness.
It will never do to go blindly into a state of such intimate relations.
Here soul meets with soul face to face. Propensities, passions, desires,
inclinations, aspirations, capacities, powers, stand up side by side and
press against each other, either to please or fret and chafe each other.
Tastes, dispositions, feelings, either join in sweet, according
friendship, or rankle in disagreeable contact. Marriage is a union,
intimate, strong-bound, and vitally active. The union is a compound or a
mixture; it is natural, congenial, pleasing, or it is forced,
inharmonious, and revolting. Which it shall be we are to determine
before we enter it. We are not to shut our eyes to reason and common
sense, and marry whoever offers. Young women who do so may live to
repent it. If there is any period in a woman's whole life when her
sharpest eye, her keenest apprehension, her soundest judgment, and her
most religious seriousness are needed, it is when she proposes to
herself the question, "Shall I accept in marriage the hand that is
offered me?" It is the second greatest question of her life. It is the
question, the answer of which is to wring briny tears out of her heart
or baptize it in the waters of refreshing sympathy.
I once knew a merchant who used to say that "Goods well bought were half
sold." The idea is equally good when applied to the subject of Marriage.
A Marriage well entered is a life half lived. It is hard to make a
profit on badly bought goods. So it is hard to live a good and happy
life in Marriage bonds that bind and gall the heart that wears them. I
used to be a farmer, and I then learned that a balky horse would often
work well in an easy harness, while a good horse would be tricky and
stubborn in a collar that chafed. So I have often seen bad people who
lived very happily in the married life, so far as their personal
relations were concerned, while good people chafed and grieved in sad
matrimonial inharmony. Half the victory is in starting the battle right.
A man of more good sense than refinement once said, "Be sure you are
right, then go ahead." It is the utterance of wisdom, and is as
applicable to the subject before us as any other. "Be sure you are
right." We are not only to be right, but we are to know it. There is to
be no guess-work about it--no wish-work or hope-work about it. It is to
be knowledge-work. Applied to the subject in hand, young women are to
know that they are right in their Marriage alliances; are to know that
they have bargained with men after their own heart. They are not to
guess they are going to get pretty good husbands, nor hope they are, nor
to believe they are from what personal friends have said.
They are not to rely upon common report, nor the opinion of friends, nor
a fashionable acquaintance, but upon a personal knowledge of the
individual's life and character. How can another know what you want in a
companion? You alone know your own heart. If you do not know it you are
not fit to be married. No one else can tell what fills you with pleasing
and grateful emotions. You only know when the spring of true affection
is touched by the hand of a congenial spirit. It is for you to _know_
who asks your hand, who has your heart, who links his life with yours.
If you _know_ the man who can make true answer to your soul's true love,
whose soul is all kindred with yours, whose life answers to your ideal
of manly demeanor, you know who would make you a good husband. But if
you only fancy that he is right, or guess, or believe, or hope, from a
little social interchange of words and looks, you have but a poor
foundation on which to build hopes of future happiness. A young man and
a dear friend once said to me, "I am going to take her for better or for
worse." The remark ran over me like a chill breath of winter. I
shuddered at the thought. "For better or for worse." All in doubt. Going
to marry, yet not _sure_ he was right. The lady he spoke of was a noble
young woman, intellectual, cultivated, pious, accustomed to his sphere
of life. They were going to marry in uncertainty. Both were of fine
families; both excellent young people. To the world it looked like a
desirable match. To them it was going to be "for better or for worse."
They married. The woman stayed in his home one year and left it,
declaring he was a good man and a faultless husband, but not after her
heart. She stayed away one year and came back; lived with him one year
more and died. Sad tale. It proved for the worse, and all because they
did not _know_ each other; if they had they would not have married. I
once heard of a woman who married a man to get rid of him. It is a
dangerous riddance. Equally dangerous is it to marry a man to find him
out. "_Know_ whom thou _marriest_," is the voice of wisdom. Yes, the
question of Marriage is one of solemn import. It is a life-question. It
is a final settlement of a great demand of our nature. It is the
decision of the heart's earthly weal or woe. It is our social life or
death. It is planting the seeds for the moral harvest of life. It is the
adjustment of a great religious question, the submission to a solemn
ordinance of God. Yes, Marriage is a divine institution. It is not of
earthly origin, though it is often prostituted to earthly uses. It is a
God-made arrangement for human development and happiness, and woe be to
him who defiles it with sensuous abuses. It is before the Church, before
any of the solemn ordinances of God's house, the primal decree of the
Father for his human children. To degrade or abuse the Marriage covenant
is blasphemy, irreverence, sacrilegious wickedness. If one would enter
the portals of the church bowed in reverence to God, much more should he
thus enter the sanctuary of Marriage. If he should sit reverently at the
table of the Lord's Supper, much more should he sit thus in the bower of
the hymeneal life. If he should bow his head in solemn meekness in the
baptismal rite, much more should he bend lowly in this relation. If he
should kneel in pious prayer before the throne of grace, so he should
humble himself before God at the life-union altar. There is no more
serious step in life, none more important, and none that should be more
religiously taken.
In this view of the subject, what a sad picture does the world present!
How trifling, giddy, thoughtless! Among the multitudes who marry, how
few marry in the light of wisdom and under the sanction of religion!
Worldliness moves a great multitude in the formation of this union.
Profit, gain, standing! These are mighty things. Principle, virtue,
religion, happiness, must be sacrificed on the altar of worldly
ambition. Woman becomes a base creature by thus pandering to earthly
ends. Then worse than this, still greater multitudes are prompted to
this union by sensuous desires--base animalism. Oh, to what a sink of
iniquity, what a pool of pollution, what a stagnant pit of moral
rottenness is the Marriage relation sunk by the unhallowed and unbridled
sensuality of thousands who enter it! If there is any place in the world
where the voice of God should be heard ringing in pealing thunder-tones
the commands of virtue and religion, it is in the seclusion of the
Marriage relation. Men, and women, too, ought to look to Marriage with a
profounder respect and a higher purpose. It is a holy institution. To
degrade it is wicked and brings the most bitter unhappiness. If I should
induce a single young woman to look more reverently upon the life-union,
to regard it in its moral and religious aspects, and determine to enter
it under the sanctions of true religion, and demand a like state of mind
in her companion, that they might live to be blessings to each other, I
should feel richly remunerated for my labor. I treat this subject now
and have at former times with a view to elevate the minds of youth in
relation to it.
It is in vain to try to make the world moral and religious while the
great institutions of social life are corrupted and corrupting. At the
very bottom of adult life lies the institution of Marriage. To reform
the world we must begin with this. If we can get men and women well
married, the work of reform is half done; life is half lived. It is next
to impossible to make good and happy an ill-assorted pair. They work
against each other almost in spite of themselves. They are like a
steamboat with its wheels playing in opposite directions. They make a
great noise and a terrible jarring, and put forth desperate efforts, but
no forward motion is produced.
It would be well if we had more judicious books on Marriage, designed
for youth. One on the Philosophy of Marriage; one on the Duties of
Marriage; one on the Religion of Marriage; or all these subjects treated
in one book might be very profitable; and if such a book were designed
for high schools, academies, and colleges, and made a study, as is moral
science and natural religion, it might be made eminently useful. There
is a science of Marriage. It should be developed and made a study. Some
strong mind and pure heart, baptized in the spirit of divine truth and
love, should write it out. I know the youth of our country would receive
it gladly and study it with great profit. What is most wanted is thought
and enlightenment on the subject. Thought is the grand lever of reform.
This thing of thinking is what makes men great and good. It is the grand
plowshare that turns up the old soil of error and despotism and reveals
the hidden treasures of truth. Get people to thinking and they will be
likely to think themselves right in the end. We want thought on the
subject of Marriage--calm, consecutive, serious thought. Nothing else
will do. We have passion, zeal, impulse, imagination; but we lack
thought. Thought is the helm of passion, the ballast of imagination, the
compass of impulse. Let youth think on the subject as they ought, and
they will marry well.
I remarked that the institution of Marriage was at the bottom of adult
life. This is a truth, and it is a thought for the girls. Marriage was
never designed for children. It is for men and women. It is good for men
and women; but it does not follow from this that it is good for
children. It would not be good even if children knew how to marry
wisely. They are both physically and mentally incapacitated for so
solemn and important a relation. They are immature in body and mind, in
heart and head. Their judgments are unsound. Their affections are not to
be trusted. They are children in every sense of the word, and can only
make children's work of married life. The wisest and best in early adult
life can be none too well prepared for the great duties of married
life--how can children be prepared? It is impossible. One of the
greatest evils of our time is the too prevalent custom of entering early
into the Marriage relations. Children make bad selections of companions.
In nine cases out of ten they choose differently from what they would a
few years later. They have no fixed characters. They do not know what
their opinions will be. Their tastes are not formed. Their aims in life
are undetermined. What they were made for and what they live for they
have scarcely asked. The arguments against early Marriages are many. I
have not time to enumerate them or to show their force. I have never
heard of but one argument in favor of early marriages. That is founded
in the false idea of marrying in mutual ignorance of each other. It is
said the characters of the parties are more pliable in early youth, so
that they will assimilate to each other the more readily. But if they
are not already assimilated they ought not to marry. If each has got to
give up his character to live in peace, it is a proof that they are
wrongly matched. Those really fitted for each other find their happiness
in the harmony of each other's characters. Their two characters blend
together like concordant sounds, or two streams of running water. The
secret of true Marriage is in mutuality of character, harmony of
sentiment and action, congeniality of spirit. Without this unity there
can be no true Marriage; no real happiness or utility in the married
life.
In all true Marriages the twain become one; one in feeling, aim, and
spirit, one in reason, sentiment, and love. And when this does not exist
before Marriage, it can not reasonably be looked for after. That this
harmony shall be perfect we can not expect, because there are no perfect
characters in this world, and no two persons at perfect unity in spirit.
But unless there is a general harmony there should be no Marriage. Now,
how can children know whether this harmony exists, when their own
characters are unformed, their powers undeveloped? But it may be asked,
what we call an early Marriage? About this there may be a difference of
opinion. What some would call early, others would call late. Our ideas
on this point should be founded in physiological and mental science.
There is a true test by which to settle this question. That test is
found in the human constitution. Any Marriage is early that is
consummated before adult womanhood is attained--womanhood of mind,
heart, soul, and character. Any Marriage before eighteen years of age is
a very early Marriage; before twenty it is early. As a general rule,
between twenty and twenty-five it is timely, though with many it is
early at twenty-two, and some never get old enough to marry. A mind
untaught, a heart undisciplined, a spirit unsubdued, in a civilized
community, is not fit to be married. Such a character is never old
enough.
Above all things, before Marriage, there should be time enough for a
generous education; for a wise preparation for practical life. No young
woman can be educated in any practical and general sense before
twenty-two, no matter what may be her opportunities. Life ought to be
understood; its practical aspects should be fairly and wisely
contemplated; its principal duties should be well weighed; its trials,
temptations, and besetments should be considered; all that must be done
and borne should be the subject of thoughtful meditation before a woman
should dare to set her foot upon the hallowed ground of matrimony. No
child is capable of considering such grave subjects. An adult mind is
scarcely equal to the task. When I say young women should have time to
be educated, I mean all young women. It is true, all will not be
educated in our schools, but all must have some sort of an education;
they must have some experience, observation, contact with men and
things, a knowledge of life; must learn to rely upon themselves, and
learn moral duty and what the world expects of a wife. The early married
must also necessarily be married in ignorance; and as a general rule we
may say, who marries in ignorance will remain in ignorance. An ignorant
wife! Poor thing! How sad the spectacle! What can she do with life? She
will make an ignorant mother and rear ignorant children, and exert an
ignorant influence all through her life. She will perpetuate the
absurdities of ignorant people. She will do the work of ignorance with
her husband and family. Still worse is a neighborhood of ignorant wives.
A State of ignorant wives would bring barbarism again. And how could it
be otherwise, if all girls should marry in their girlhood? It is the
girls that live to womanhood before they marry that redeem and polish
society. Those who marry in girlhood are drawbacks on society. They are
dead weights holding back the wheels of progress. There are but few
truly educated and influential women in the country who married before
they were twenty-five--many of them not till after. They are now the
pride and glory of their husbands, of the communities and States in
which they live. I hold that a noble and influential woman is an honor
to the country and a pillar of civil and religious liberty. Every such
woman is a central sun radiating intellectual and moral light,
diffusing strength and life to all about her. The hope of the
country--ay, of the world--is in its women; I may say its wives. Now and
then a wife will develop and educate herself after she is married, if
she is fortunate enough to get a husband who will encourage and help her
in the work, even if she is married young; but the great mass will
remain in _statu quo_. If they marry ignorant they will remain ignorant.
I can not press too strongly this point of preparation for Marriage.
There is more depends upon it than we at first imagine. Every wife is to
be the center of a family. Boys and girls, men and women, are to go out
from her to live in the world. Scan it closely and you will find that
the world will be modeled very much after its wives. If we have great
and good men, great and good institutions, States and countries, it is
because we have great and good wives. A wife will be happy just about in
proportion to the amount of good she does. That amount of good will
depend very much upon the education of her girlhood; so that view it in
whatever light we will, a woman's life, usefulness, and happiness depend
in no small degree upon the length and character of her girlhood. If she
remains unmarried till she is twenty-three or twenty-five, and develops
and cultivates herself as she ought, she will be almost sure to make a
good and useful woman, an ornament and an inspiration to the circle in
which she moves. If she marries at sixteen or eighteen she will be very
likely to make just what she is--an immature, unfinished specimen of
humanity; nothing more, nothing less.
One point more I would dwell upon a moment. It is this: The married
life, though entered never so well, and with all proper preparation,
must be lived well or it will not be useful or happy. Married life will
not go itself, or if it does it will not keep the track. It will turn
off at every switch, and fly off at every turn or impediment. It needs a
couple of good conductors who understand the engineering of life. Good
watch must be kept for breakers ahead. The fires must be kept up by a
constant addition of the fuel of affection. The boilers must be kept
full and the machinery in order, and all hands at their posts, else
there will be a smashing up, or life will go hobbling or jolting along,
wearing and tearing, breaking and bruising, leaving some heads and
hearts to get well the best way they can. It requires skill, prudence,
and judgment to lead this life well, and these must be tempered with
forbearance, charity, and integrity. Individual rights, opinions, and
feelings must be respected; individual duties must be faithfully
performed; the proprieties of courtesy and kindness must be most
strictly observed; violations of politeness and affection must be
prohibited; ebullitions of temper must be considered as sad and
lamentable improprieties, to be mourned over but always quickly and
readily forgiven; the motto of each should be, "I will _be_, _do_, and
_bear_ all I can and ask as little as possible." A constant and perfect
agreement in opinion and feeling between the parties must never be
expected. The rule should be, that they will agree just so far as
possible without a violation of the individual conscience, and when they
can not agree further they should agree to disagree, with mutual respect
for each other's opinions and mutual esteem and love for each other.
Neither one should attempt or wish to set up a petty and matrimonial
tyranny over the other. Each should think, feel, and act in kindly
independence; and each should encourage the other in independent thought
and action with a view to individual culture and mutual benefit. But
below all thought and back of all action there should be a strong,
earnest, two-fold principle of benevolence and affection. Come what may,
love should rule over all. This should pervade and magnetize the whole
life. Love should utter its melodious tones and breathe its sweet spirit
in every department of the united life. This is the life that should be
determined upon before Marriage, this the life that the parties should
mark out for themselves in all its detail, before they enter into the
Marriage covenant; and this the life when lived that is blessed and
blissful beyond expression.
I said in the outset of this discourse that the young are apt to hang
too many garlands about the married life. This is so as this life is
generally lived. But if it is wisely entered and truthfully lived, it is
more beautiful and happy than any have imagined. It is the true life
which God has designed for his children, replete with joy, delightful,
improving, and satisfactory in the highest possible earthly degree. It
is the hallowed home of virtue, peace, and bliss. It is the antechamber
of heaven, the visiting place of angels, the communing ground of kindred
spirits. Let all young women who would reap such joys and be thus
blessed and happy, learn to live the true life, and be prepared to weave
for their brows the true wife's perennial crown of goodness.
Lecture Twelve.
RELIGIOUS DUTIES.
Our Father In Heaven--Moral Obligations and Religious
Duties--Impiety of Professed Christians--Deficiency of Religious
Gratitude--Gratitude makes Life Cheerful--Religion gives Joy to
Life--Love, the Seed of Religion--The Religion of Christ--Woman's
Heart a Natural Shrine--Religion fit for all Conditions--Love for
the Unseen--Personal Acquaintance not necessary for Love--The Idea
of God Spontaneous--It is the Unseen we Love--Life well lived is
Glorious.
We propose a few thoughts in the present Lecture to young women upon
their _Religious Duties_. The theme is a rich one. Any consideration of
our relations and duties to the great Father of all, the Lord Almighty,
the primal source of being and blessing, is replete with moral grandeur.
God is a great and glorious word, expressive of all infinities, all
perfections, all glories, word of all words, in power and grandeur above
all. It should inspire us with reverence. The thought of that
incomprehensible Being, which we mean by this word, should ever impress
us with moral solemnity. And when we associate with this majestic Being
the idea of Father, clothe him in a Father's love, fill him with a
Father's care and benignity, he appears to us infinitely lovely and
attractive as well as infinitely great and good. It is no common thought
that gives to the universe of spiritual creatures a Father, that binds
them all in one family with God as the head, that mingles in the great
cup of universal existence of which countless millions of sentient
beings are daily partaking, the sweetness of a father's goodness; that
sees that goodness in the shining sun and falling shower, in the starry
firmament and the little flower, in the sweep of worlds and the drop of
dew, in the waving grain and the bubbling spring, in the changing
seasons and the still, calm moments as they fly, in the great race of
men, and in the individual members thereof. We often say "Our Father in
Heaven," but we seldom think of the majesty of the expression, nor the
glorious beauty of the thought it conveys. God's grandeur is as much in
his love as his power, as much in his goodness as his wisdom. He is as
sublime in his Fatherhood as in his supremacy. The ocean of his
tenderness is as deep as the mountain of his holiness is high. God, in
his character, sweeps over the infinite spaces of principle and gathers
in the infinite perfections of all characteristics of good. It is to
such a Being that we owe our existence and all that makes it blessed and
blissful. When we think of the earth as our present home, so wisely
arranged, so beautifully adorned, and of heaven as our final and
immortal scene of growing joy and blessedness; when we think of our own
wonderful powers of mind and heart, and the objects of love and thought
about us upon which to exercise them, progressive, immortal, Godlike in
their nature; when, added to these, we think of the Bible with its
blessed and elevating relations, its love of truth, its mines of
wisdom, its moral sanctions, and, more than all, its Divine Redeemer,
our Pattern Friend, Brother, and Saviour, we can not well fail to be
impressed with the infinite excellency of Him from whom we have received
such rich benefactions.
And when we think that all this is done for us of his own unpurchased
love, our obligations to our Divine Father become clear to our moral
perceptions. We then see that we have religious duties to perform,
duties which press upon us at all seasons and places, duties which we
must perform, or stand before the great white throne of Eternal Love
convicted of deep and dark ingratitude. We have received every thing,
and have the promise of every thing, and have given nothing. We have
been loved with an infinite affection, and have the promise of its
everlasting continuance, and yet many of us have not returned the poor
affections of our feeble finite hearts. We have been over-arched with
the firmament of immortal goodness all our lives long, and have the
promise that it shall span us forever, and yet we have drank in but
little of its life and light. We have fed on the bounties of a benignant
Providence and have scarcely returned an emotion of genuine
thoughtfulness. Here we are; God is all the time doing for us; and we
are thoughtless of his favors and indifferent to his holy friendship. He
strives to impress us with his greatness, but we scarcely seem to
recognize the entreaties of his love or the munificence of his bountiful
hand. Through His love he pleads in the earnest eloquence of a divine
life and a perfect heart for us to bow in love at the feet of Jesus;
but even those of us who profess to do so are cold in our love and weak
in our resolutions. The world has stolen away our hearts. Evil
associates have corrupted our good manners, and we are irreverent,
sensuous, even in the house of God. To illustrate our impiety: suppose
you, by some accident, had been cast away on some lone island,
barrenness reigned around you; cold winds beat against you; alone and
desolate you stood exposed to every element without and a prey to every
want within. The sea in its wild fury roared around you. No living being
heard your cries; no heart beat in sympathy with yours. Now, suppose in
your distress a good spirit of the island should speak to you, out of a
cell or cloud, and ask your wants; and should lead you into a beautiful
temple, and tell you it was yours; should feed and clothe you; should
surround you with beauty and comfort, furnish you with friends, and make
every thing delightful so far as another could do for you, what kind of
feelings ought you to entertain toward the good spirit? If you should
forget him in your enjoyments, should abuse his gifts, should make him
the subject of jest and sport, and blaspheme his name, would you not, in
your thoughtful moments, despise yourself for your ingratitude? And yet
this good spirit, in the supposed case, would not do for you a tithe
your heavenly Father is doing for you every day; for life, and breath,
and powers, all natural as well as spiritual things, we receive at his
hand.
Few things are more base than an ungrateful spirit. If we do a favor
either to a friend or stranger, and get no response of gratitude, we
feel that something is wrong in his heart. Ingratitude we name among the
most hateful feelings that ever darken the fallen heart of humanity. It
is the parent of innumerable vices. It is a cold, Satanic mood of mind,
suggestive of numberless forms of evil. And yet, unless I greatly
mistake, there is much ingratitude in all our hearts. We eat, and forget
the Hand that feeds us. We wear, and heed not the Adorner of our
persons. We admire our bodies, and offer not an emotion of praise to the
grand Architect of the universe and its beauty. We rejoice in our
strength and comeliness, scarcely thinking that we owe it all to the
Divine love. We delight in our domestic relations and affections, and
often grow eloquent in praise of the sweet emotions of delicious joy
which rise within us, half forgetting that they are all gifts from the
gracious Divinity.
We grow proud in the might of our minds, and vain of our works, bloating
often to the bursting point, claiming all the glory to ourselves,
awarding little or none to God. This is lamentably true to an alarming
extent. It is true of youth as well as manhood. Though youth is brimful
of good impulses and quick affections, it is sadly deficient in
religious gratitude. It is right that young people should enjoy the good
things of life and the world, should make merry with each other, and
even be gay amid the profusion of natural gaiety about them, but in
doing so they need not and should not be unmindful of their good Father
in heaven. First in their affections, highest in their joyful adoration
should He stand. God is a parent. In this light should He be regarded.
To be grateful to a parent for favors received does not interfere with
the natural buoyancy of the heart. To love a parent does not make less
active and cheerful the love we bear others, nor gloom our lives with
one single cloud. The young woman who loves her father with an earnest
affection, will not love any body else less, but more. The young man who
loves his mother with his whole soul, who at all times and places, amid
all pleasures and amusements, retains her image in his heart of hearts,
and turns to her ever as the refreshing fountain of his sweetest joy, is
none the less capable of loving all his fellow-men. On the contrary, the
love he bears his mother will be the seed from which will grow a grand
tree of love, the branches and freshness of which will fill his whole
heart and beautify his whole life. If a young man loves his mother
truly, he is safe for a good life. In the end his love will conquer all
and bear off the crown of victory. So of a young woman. This love of
parents is among the healthiest and noblest feelings of the heart. It
seems to be the germinating point of both affection and virtue. It is
both a guard against evil and an inspiration to good. It is more than
simple love, such as we bear others. It is mingled with gratitude. And
as we grow older, gratitude becomes the stronger feeling. And as
gratitude assumes the supremacy, the feeling becomes sweeter and holier.
It assumes a religious nature. It is baptized at the fountain of
religion. And instead of glooming life, it because it is the power of
love. "God is love." It is simple as the story of love in the human
heart. "The wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein." All can
easily learn how to love God. Ask the Saviour, and he will say, "Love thy
Father." This is the burden of the glorious sermon of His life. If we
love the Father, it must be in Christ. He has shown us the Father.
Through no other name under heaven is the Father given. By no other can
we come to the Father, for no other has shown him. Christ is the only
way open. How simple, how beautiful--"Love thy Father, and thou shalt be
saved"--saved from darkness and sin!
Christ is the same as God speaking to us; it is God through Christ
saying, "Love me, and thou shalt be blest." It is as though a good
father said to his child, "Love me, and thou shalt be a good and happy
child." The child that loves the Father will obey the Father's voice of
wisdom, and be good as he is great. Love of the parent is the seed of
virtue. Love of God is the seed of religion. It is full of gratitude,
humility, meekness; it is self-sacrificing, forbearing, merciful;
burdened with the sweet spirit of forgiveness. The love of God is the
central love sending out its influence through the whole heart and life.
Who loves God is saved from hatred, impiety, from all intentional wrong.
His heart is made the receptacle of a principle of eternal love, and
hence of "eternal life." 'This love molds and modifies the character;
checks the impulses; sways the passions; subdues enmity; elevates the
affections; gives the ruling loves to truth, to heaven, makes it more
cheerful and bright. It sweetens the whole heart and sheds a moral and
affectionate influence through the whole mind.
Similar to this love of parents, and growing out of it, should be our
love to God. Him we should regard as our parent. As such we should
always think of Him. In all our works, and walks, and joys He should be
present in our minds as our Father. Sweet shall be our thoughts of Him.
Cheerfully should we meditate upon His wonderful works and ways. Gladly
should our hearts praise Him and our souls commune with him. His
commands should inspire us with holy delight. All our life should be
made radiant with the inspiring thoughts of our Father. His matchless
love and marvelous wisdom should make us feel like little children,
happily yet adoringly and gratefully receiving the gifts of parental
goodness. With such a love as this growing in our hearts and shining in
our lives, how good and happy must we be! And yet this is religion. Love
thy Father in heaven, is the full command. All else grows out of this.
We can not love our fellows unless we love our Father. This is the sum
of all Christ's teachings. He gave us the Father. "Show us the Father,
and it sufficeth us." Before Christ, the Father was not known. God had
only partially revealed himself. The glory of the full revelation was
reserved for the immortal and immaculate Son. To know or love the Father
is eternal life. This is the religion of the Saviour--this the religion
of redemption. Salvation is in it. It is the power of God to God; gives
its sanction to virtue; adorns the mind with the graces of godliness;
sweetens the heart with amenities of goodness, and dignifies the soul
with a spiritual assimilation to the Father. Man thus becomes a
spiritual child of God. He is by a nature a natural child, and he is
thus by grace or love made a spiritual child. Under the power of this
love the world assumes a new aspect; it becomes a secondary object, good
in its place, but only a means of spiritual improvement. Life becomes
sublime in its great ends and eternal results. The soul of man becomes,
at least in prospect, a glorious and eternal thing, often darkened by
error and polluted by sin, but the object of God's love and care and the
Redeemer's solicitude, progressively unfolding its powers and putting on
its beauties under the sunshine of the All-seeing eye. And the race of
men become the children of the great and loving Father, whose care and
smiles no figures shall number, no ages wear out. This is the religion
we believe the Saviour inculcated among men, which was the power of God
unto salvation, the central and all-powerful idea of which is love. This
is the religion in which thousands are this day rejoicing and living
lives which are the brightest ornaments of humanity. And this is the
religion which we offer to our youthful friends as the only cure for
sin-sick humanity--the only safe guide through life--the only hope and
strength of youth, manhood, and old age. We have not a separate religion
for youth, nor a distinct religious life for them to live different from
the old. It is the beauty of true religion, as of true love, that it
lasts through all seasons. It is to grow by, live by, and die by; and,
what is more, to rise through endless ages by. We understand this to be
an eternal religion. Who becomes truly religious here, learns so much of
heaven, walks so far in the celestial road. A truthful, religious life
is the first step _in_ heaven, not _to_ heaven. Christ calls it the
kingdom of heaven. Without the principles of religious love no woman's
character is perfect, or so perfect as it may be. However learned,
refined, or cultured she may be by art and society, if her soul is not
baptized in this religious love, this love of the Father, she lacks the
most essential beauty of spiritual womanhood. If she is not grateful to
God, not in love with his glorious perfections, she is yet low and
worldly. Her soul is bound in the chains of sense. It is this religion
which adds the finishing touch of excellency to woman's character. It is
this which makes her divine. In her best estate she is only earthly till
this has wrought its redeeming work within her. To be blessed as she may
be to make her life good and spiritually grand, she should begin early
this devotion to the Father. Her heart should in early youth turn its
face to its God and look up in sweet and grateful adoration. Woman's
heart is the natural shrine of religion; and this shrine should be
dedicated while she is young. In cheerful confidence she should give her
soul to her Father in heaven. The earlier she does it, the truer and
happier will be her life. It is a sad mistake that religion is
depressing and saddening to youth. "It is the soul's calm sunshine and
the heartfelt joy." It is good for youth as for old age--as good to
rejoice as to mourn by. It is as much for sunshine as for shade. He who
has the most of it is the lightest-hearted man.
It is as fitting for the marriage altar as for the burial scene. It is
calculated as much to elevate and gladden the cheerful heart as to
relieve and bless the sorrowful one. Woman in all her relations has an
especial need of religion to sustain her. Her pathway is beset with
trials. She loves and must love her friends. These, one after another,
are separated from her by the customs or accidents of society, or the
stern hand of death; sickness and misfortune must come upon her. Her
soul is sensitive, and she feels keenly the severing of love's dearest
ties. Nowhere else can she find a balm for her aching heart but in the
bosom of the Father. If her heart is spiritualized by a holy religious
love, there will come to her ministering spirits in the hopes and joys
of religion which will bring relief.
Oh, if I could impress on the young female mind the importance of this
subject, I should do the world a benefit we could not estimate. Think of
a woman all through life shedding about her the genial influence of true
religion. From early youth to latest age she is an evangel of peace and
love. Her steps are marked with deeds of charity; her life is radiant
with goodness. She loves her Father, and, loving him, she loves his
children; and, loving them, both her and her heart grow large and her
soul strong and beautiful. Her life is a song of praise. Men love to do
her secret homage, and in many a heart she is surnamed "angel."
Why should any woman think to live without religion? Oh, how sad is her
life without it--how dark her death! It is only in religious love that
the future becomes bright, and hope changes to cheerful faith. I have
presented woman's religious duty in a simple form of love to God. I have
not time to speak of its detail, nor the means of cultivating this love
and growing in the Divine grace; these are given in the sublime yet
simple words of Jesus of Nazareth. To him I refer you for light to guide
you.
I wish to speak a little of an objection that often comes up to the view
of the subject I have taken. It is this: "How can we love a being we
have not seen? a Father we have not known? a God we can not comprehend?"
The objection is a strong one in many minds, and for such I will show
how it looks to me.
Our daily experience tells us that we can love beings we have never
seen. I doubt not that every American loves Washington. His name is dear
to us all. His character and life are our boast and admiration. Not more
should we love him if we had seen him and known him well. It is his
_character_ that we have and not his person. His character is as clear
and glorious to us as it was to his compeers. It thrills us as
delightfully and moves upon us as powerfully as it did upon them. It is
a glory hung around the name of America to which the world looks with a
reverent and admiring joy. To tell me that I can not love Washington
would be to rob me of the highest pride I feel in my country. I love
him for what he was in the day of his earthly glory, the man of all
majesty, the pride of all nations. I love him for what he did, for the
life of spotless virtue and magnificent wisdom and goodness. He lived
for the good of his country and the world. I love him for the tall angel
of light that he now is, and the celestial richness of the glory that
streams from his brow. I know I love him, and no philosophy or
skepticism can cheat me out of that love.
I could name a hundred characters that have lived in the past and now
live in heaven that I know I love in the same way. I love them as really
as I do my personal friends, and love them in proportion to the
greatness and goodness I see in them. I may say the same of many living
men and women. Speaking from my own experience, I should say that I can
love goodness, worth, all that is lovable in character as well as in a
being that I have not seen as one that I have. I have known of people
who have an earthly father living that they have never seen, and whom
they love with a deep and rich fervency of affection. I have known of
children whom poverty or accident has separated in infancy from their
mother, and who cherished for that unknown, far-off maternal friend a
sacred and deathless love. They have meditated hours, days, and weeks on
the sad separation and the sweet, holy bosom from which they drew the
breath of life. In well-formed minds this love grows up with their
growth and strengthens with their strength. The idea of parentage
awakens love in the heart. The relation is so near and dear it can not
be otherwise in good and cultured minds. Then we can love a father whom
we have not seen. We all know that the idea of God is a spontaneity in
the human mind. Though God may be incomprehensible and his ways past
finding out, he is still so much within and around us that we can not
keep the thoughts of him out of our minds. We know, too, that thousands
do love Him with a deathless love who can comprehend him no better than
we. We may infer from this that we can love Him also.
But when we think of His character, its infinite loveliness, its
unfathomable depth of love, and wisdom, and holiness, it seems to me
that the impossibility is in not loving him. How can we help loving him?
Add to this that He is our Father, out of the depth of whose being we
were born, and that he loves us with an unspeakable and eternal love,
and the attraction to love him becomes still stronger. Then think how
much He has done for us; how he has given us our parents and friends,
and all the dear and delightful objects of life, thought, and hope; and
more than this, has given us Jesus, and with him the glorious Gospel,
revealing an immortal life and a glorious inheritance beyond the Jordan
of death. These benefactions of His love make his character appear
infinitely attractive, so that the wonder would seem to be that any
should fail to love him.
It seems clear that the Father may be none the less loved on account of
his being unseen. We are constituted to love things unseen. And if we
scan it closely we shall find that we really love nothing else.
Character worth, virtue, goodness, love, wisdom, knowledge, science,
philosophy, religion, are all unseen. So the charm about a person that
makes us love him is unseen. Indeed, it is the unseen we love, and
nothing else. We are spiritual beings, and made for spiritual exercises.
Our nature is exactly adapted to the love and worship of an unseen God.
When we do not do it we are acting contrary to our nature. We deny
ourselves as well as God when we do not love and adore him. Is it proper
for youth to do so? By no means. All youth, and especially young women,
should feel that so long as they neglect their religious duties they
neglect the most important concerns of their eternal existence. They are
not ephemeral, but eternal creatures. Their relation to God and each
other are eternal ones. They are on the sea of being--turn back they can
not. God is above and around them, and always will be. The sooner they
love Him, the better it will be for them. To love Him is spiritual life;
to love him not is death.
It is a glorious thing to live life well. They can not do it without
religion. Woman is scarcely woman unless the great principle of love
guides her. That principle, directed toward God and man, is the sum
total of the Christian religion. Let every young woman so direct it that
her whole life may be radiant with the light and deeds of love.
Lecture Thirteen.
WOMANHOOD.
Woman not an Adornment only--Civilization Elevates Woman--Woman not
what She should be--Woman's Influence Over-rated--Force of Character
Necessary--The Virtue of True Womanhood--Passion is not always
Love--True Love is only for Worth--Good Behavior and
Deportment--Spiritual Harmony Desirable--Importance of
Self-control--What shall Woman do--Strive to be a True Woman.
What is womanhood? Is there any more important question for young women
to consider than this? It should be the highest ambition of every young
woman to possess a true womanhood. Earth presents no higher object of
attainment. To be a woman, in the truest and highest sense of the word,
is to be the best thing beneath the skies. To be a woman is something
more than to live eighteen or twenty years; something more than to grow
to the physical stature of women; something more than to wear flounces,
exhibit dry-goods, sport jewelry, catch the gaze of lewd-eyed men;
something more than to be a belle, a wife, or a mother. Put all these
qualifications together, and they do but little toward making a true
woman. A true woman exists independent of outward attachments. It is not
wealth, or beauty of person, or connection, or station, or power of
mind, or literary attainments, or variety and richness of outward
accomplishments, that make the woman. These often adorn womanhood as the
ivy adorns the oak. But they should never be mistaken for the thing they
adorn. This is the grand error of womankind. They take the shadow for
the substance--the glitter for the gold--the heraldry and trappings of
the world for the priceless essence of womanly worth which exists within
the mind. Here is where almost the whole world has erred. Woman has been
regarded as an adornment. Because God has conferred upon her the charm
of a beauty not elsewhere found in earth, the world has vainly imagined
she was made to glory in its exhibition. Hence woman is too often a
vain, idle, useless thing. She stoops to be the plaything of man, the
idol of his vanity, the victim of his lust. In stooping, she lays off
her womanhood to pander to the low aims of a sensual life. In every
country and in all ages woman has been thus abased. The history of the
world is all darkened by the awful shadow of woman's debasement. While
man has admired and loved her, he has degraded her. Savage and civilized
man are not very dissimilar in this respect. They both woo, cajole, and
flatter woman to oppress and degrade her. They both load her with
honeyed titles and flattering compliments, as though to sweeten with
sugar-plum nonsense her bitter pressure of wrongs. It is the consent of
all historians that woman has been elevated in proportion as knowledge
and virtue have advanced among mankind. No one can read the history of
the world without seeing that woman is upward bound. No one can look at
woman's present estate, her devotion to vanity, her meagre knowledge,
her narrow culture, her circumscribed sphere of action, her monotonous
and aimless life, without feeling that she has many long steps yet to
take before she will attain to her true position, her full womanhood. I
would not intimate that man's love for woman is not sincere, nor that he
designs any harm to her. Nor would I intimate that woman purposely
stoops to degrade herself. The Indian loves his dusky maid with a deep
sincerity of heart; but that love does not prevent him from acquiescing
in the common custom of his people, and making her his drudge, and
regarding her as his inferior and his life-bound slave. So the civilized
man loves his wife with an ardency of devotion he feels for no other
object; but that does not prevent him from subjecting her to the common
lot of woman, or from believing it right that woman should be deprived
by custom and law of that culture, those stimulants, and privileges, and
rights which belong to her as an accountable being. Civilized men do not
demand that their women shall be trained to the highest culture--shall
be taught in the deepest wisdom--shall live for the broadest and
grandest purposes. No; they think it is enough if their women can have a
little smattering of knowledge so as to appear well in the drawing-room
parlor. Wisdom is for men. Man alone may draw from the _deep_ wells of
knowledge. Why have civilized men closed all their colleges and
universities against women? Why have they shut almost every avenue to
public usefulness, to honorable distinction, to virtuous endeavor,
against woman? Why have they deprived her of power, and compelled her to
submit to man in all the relations of life? It is not for the want of a
sincere love for her. No; it is rather for a want of an enlightened view
of what woman should be. Men, as well as women, have failed to
comprehend the true idea of womanhood. Both have been satisfied with too
little in woman. They have borne with the narrowness of woman's culture
and the aimlessness of her life, believing it all right. It is a fact--a
glaring, solemn, humiliating fact--that woman is not what she should be.
She is weak, thoughtless, heartless, compared with what she should be.
Look at the world. Woman is said to be mistress of her home. The mother
is called the maker of her children's characters. Is it so? See the
drunkards, tipplers, tobacco-mongers, libertines, gamblers, swearers,
brawlers, robbers, murderers. There is a great army of them. They all
constitute a large share of the men and some of the women of our world.
Where are the mothers who will acknowledge that they made the characters
of these people? Where are the mothers who teach their boys to chew, and
smoke, and swear? to drink, and brawl, and fight? to do those deeds of
darkness which the sun refuses to shine upon? Somebody has taught them
these things. If their mothers did not, who did? If their mothers had
been wise and forcible, as they should have been, would the children
have been so easily led astray? If women had that influence which some
attribute to them, would these things be so? If they had the influence
they ought to have, would they be so? Talk as we will about woman's
influence, it is not what it should be. We all know that if woman ruled
the world, she would have less low, drunken, rowdy, sensual men. It has
long been a hollow compliment which man has paid to woman to tell her
that she rules the world. But no man believes it when he says it. Every
woman should spurn the compliment as slanderous. Woman would rule the
world better if it was under her control. Why are so many young men
reckless, drunken, profane, and lawless? It is not because young women
would have them so. Far from it. Their female associates do not hold
half the control over them that they ought.
Young women ought to hold a steady moral sway over their male
associates, so strong as to prevent them from becoming such lawless
rowdies. Why do they not? Because they do not possess sufficient _force_
of character. They have not sufficient resolution and energy of purpose.
Their virtue is not vigorous. Their moral wills are not resolute. Their
influence is not armed with executive power. Their goodness is not felt
as an earnest force of benevolent purpose. Their moral convictions are
not regarded as solemn resolves to be true to God and duty, come what
may. Their opinions are not esteemed as the utterances of wisdom. Their
love is not accepted as the strong purpose of a devout soul to be true
to its highest ideas of affectionate life. In no particular do they make
impressions of strong moral force. They do not exert the deep,
resistless influence of full-grown womanhood. The great lack of young
women is a lack of _power_. They do not make themselves felt. They need
more force of character. It is not enough that they are _pure_. They
must be virtuous; that is, they must possess that virtue which wins
laurels in the face of temptation; which is backed by a mighty force of
moral principle; which frowns on evil with a rebuking authority; which
will not compromise its dignity, nor barter its prerogatives for the
gold or fame of the world, the very frown of which would annihilate him
who would attempt to seduce it; which claims as its right such virtue in
its associates. There is a virtue which commands respect; which awes by
its dignity and strength; a virtue exhibited in such commanding strength
of moral purpose as silences every vile wish to degrade it; a virtue
that knows why it hates evil, why it loves right, why it cleaves to
principle as to life; a virtue more mighty in its potency than any other
force--which gives a sublime grandeur to the soul in which it dwells and
the life it inspires. This is the virtue that belongs to womanhood. It
is the virtue every young woman should possess. It is not enough to have
an easy kind of virtue which more than half courts temptation; which is
pure more from a fear of society's rebuke than a love of right; which
rebukes sin so faintly that the sinner feels encouraged to proceed;
which smiles on small offenses, and kindly fondles the pet evils of
society out of which in the end grow the monsters. This is the virtue of
too many women. They would not have a drunkard for a husband, but they
would drink a glass of wine with a fast young man. They would not use
profane language, but they are not shocked by its incipient language,
and love the society of men whom they know are as profane as Lucifer out
of their presence. They would not be dishonest, but they will use a
thousand deceitful words and ways, and countenance the society of men
known as hawkers, sharpers, and deceivers. They would not be
irreligious, but they smile upon the most irreligious men, and even show
that they love to be wooed by them. They would not be licentious, but
they have no stunning rebuke for licentious men, and will even admit
them on parol into their society. This is the virtue of too many
women--a virtue scarcely worthy the name--really no virtue at all--a
milk-and-water substitute--a hypocritical, hollow pretension to virtue
as unwomanly as it is disgraceful. This is not the virtue of true
womanhood. Do young women propose for themselves the strong virtue of
womanhood, which is an impregnable fortress of righteous principle? If
not, they should do it. It should be their first work to conceive the
idea of such a virtuous principle as an indwelling life, and when
conceived it should be sought as the richest wealth, as the grandest
human attainment--as that alone which confers upon woman a divine grace.
Nor is it enough that young women _love_ well. To be on fire of an
adulterous love or a blind passion, which is little better, is one
thing; and to love righteously, nobly, steadily, is another thing. Woman
naturally has great strength of affection. She loves by an irresistible
impulse. But that love is not worthy unless it be directed to worthy
objects and swayed by high moral principles. The love of a woman should
be as the love of an angel. It should swell in her bosom as a great tide
of moral life, binding her to beauty of soul, worth of character,
excellency of life. She should not waste her love on unworthy objects,
on impure and lecherous men or women. Her love, to be truly womanly,
must not be a love of person or outward charms, so much as a love of
principle, a love of magnanimity, integrity, wisdom, affection, piety; a
love of whatever may magnify and adorn a human soul. It is unwomanly to
waste the high energies of her love on the material charms of an elegant
person, or the brilliant accomplishments of cultured manners, unless
they are united with true worth of character. The love of womanhood is
the love of worth, the love of mental harmony and spiritual powers.
True, woman may pity corruption, may sympathize with all manner of
offenders; may give the force of her compassion to the erring and
unrighteous; so she may admire genius, culture, the beauty of person,
and the charms of manner; but her love is only for real worth, for that
which is enduring and Godlike. She may find pleasure in many things and
persons that she must not, can not love. Love is too precious to be
wasted on any thing but its legitimate objects, wealth of mind and worth
of character.
Nor yet is it enough that young women _behave_ well. Something more is
needed than a correct outward life. Many behave well who have but
little worth of character. They behave well because it is best for their
social standing because society loves good behavior and pays it the
compliment of respect. It is well to behave well. There is no true life
without becoming behavior. We have all praise for good behavior. It
should be one great object in every young woman's life to study for a
becoming and womanly behavior. Her manners should be agreeable; her
conversation should be chaste and proper; her deportment should be
dignified and easy; her regard for propriety and fitness in all she says
and does should be made manifest; and in all respects her behavior
should be such as becomes womanhood. But while we recommend this as of
very great importance, we say it is not enough. Good behavior must
spring from a good heart. If it is studied as an outside fitness, a
cloak, or a fashionable attire, it will not answer the purpose for which
it is intended. A purely outside life is a sham, and sooner or later
defeats itself. There is no concealing a bad heart. It may be done for a
little while, but it can not be kept concealed. Like murder, it will
out. So a heart that is not particularly bad, but only lacks true
principle, will soon expose its hollowness. Its want of moral power will
be felt. But even if it would not expose itself, it would be infinitely
best to imbue it with righteous principle. For itself, for its own
happiness, it must be good.
Genuine good behavior springs from an inward harmony of character which
blends all inward essences of good. It does not come from any one, nor
a few great virtues. It is the mingled result of all. Young women, then,
must not be satisfied with possessing a few good traits of character.
They must strive for all; for it is only in the possession of all that
inward harmony can be enjoyed. The beauty of woman's life grows out of
this harmony. A mind jarred by inward discord can never ultimate a good
life. This discord will show itself in the life. Spiritual harmony is
the great attainment all should have in view. In this lies the charm of
womanhood. Out from this goes the sweet influences of the outward life.
The divine grace of womanly propriety is the fruit that grows from this
combination of all excellences.
To attain this, the first thing is self-control. How few women have any
thing like a respectable amount of self-control. The great majority are
nervous, excitable, fidgety. They frighten at a spider, laugh at a silly
joke, love at first sight, go into spasms at disappointment, cry about
trifles, have a fit of admiration at the sight of a pretty dress, have
as many moods in a day as the wind, and in all respects exhibit every
indication of the most disorderly, uncontrolled mind. Talk about harmony
in such a character! We may as well look for wisdom in the house of
folly. No mental habit is worse than that of giving the reins to our
impulses. They are sure to lead us into difficulty. There is scarcely a
more disgusting sight than a woman, well endowed, all given up to the
sway of her impulses. Trust her! Why, you may as well trust the wind.
Love her! You may as well fix your affections on the vanishing rainbow.
Hope for good at her hands! As well hope for stability among the clouds.
A useless, dangerous, troublesome, miserable thing is a woman of
impulse. And yet there are thousands of them. They keep themselves and
the world in a grand effervescence. If there is any evil to be avoided,
it is this. If there is any virtue to be sought, it is self-control. And
yet it is difficult of attainment in our order of society. Women are so
shut up from healthy air and exercise, so excluded from ennobling
avocations, so hemmed in by conventional rules, so compelled to have
waiters, assistants, beaux, somebody to lead them, advise them, do for
them, think for them--are so annoyed by petty cares and trifling
vexations, and so subjected to abuses, both of a private and public
nature, that self-control is a virtue harder of attainment than almost
any other. Yet none is needed more than this. And it must be attained,
or the glory of womanhood can never be put on. If the struggle is hard,
the victory will be all the grander. Let no young woman give up in
despair. The power is in her if she will but use it. She may be the
queen of her own soul if she will. All depends upon the force of her
will.
Young women have much to hope for, and the world much to hope for at
their hands. A better idea of womanhood is growing up in the minds of
men. Woman's wrong, difficulties, and trials are being felt. Her
aimless, hopeless life is being mourned over. The evils from a false
society preying upon all womankind are being felt; and almost every
woman is beginning to feel the approaching indications of a better time
coming. Women are asking, "What shall we do? We wish not to be idle. We
feel too much shut out from useful avocations. We feel too little
opportunity to work out for ourselves such characters as we know we
ought to possess. We must, we will do something for our own elevation."
Let every young woman determine to do something for the honor and
elevation of her sex. At least let her determine that she will possess
and always wear about her as her richest possession a true womanhood.
This is the most that she can do. Above all, let her not throw obstacles
in the way of her sisters, who are striving nobly to be useful, but
rather help them with the weight of her encouragement and counsel. Let
her determine that for herself she will do her own thinking; that she
will form her own opinions from her own investigations; that she will
persist in holding the highest principles of womanly morality and the
virtuous attainments which constitute a true womanhood. When she has
done this, let her call to her aid all the force of character she can
command to enable her to persist in being a woman of the true stamp. In
every class of society the young women should awake to their duty. They
have a great work to do. It is not enough that they should be what their
mothers were. They must be more. The spirit of the times calls on woman
for a higher order of character and life. Will young women heed the
call? Will they emancipate themselves from the fetters of custom and
fashion, and come up a glorious company to the possession of a vigorous,
virtuous, noble womanhood--a womanhood that shall shed new light upon
the world, and point the way to a divine life? We wait to hear the
answer in the coming order of women.
Lecture Fourteen.
HAPPINESS.
Happiness Desired--Fretful People--Motes in the Eye--We were Made
for Happiness--Sorrow has Useful Lessons--Happiness a
Duty--Despondency is Irreligious--Pleasure not always Happiness--The
Misuse of the World--Contentment necessary to Happiness--Happiness
must be sought aright--Truly seeking we shall Find--Our Success not
always Essential--Happiness often Found Unexpectedly--Happiness
overcomes Circumstances--A Tendency to Murmuring--God Rules over
All--Health necessary to Happiness--Disease is Sinful--God Loves a
Happy Soul--Happiness Possible to All.
It is commonly believed that men are happy or unhappy according to
circumstances. But this may well be questioned; for multitudes are
intensely miserable under circumstances highly favorable to happiness.
The high-born, the wealthy, the distinguished, and even the good, are
often unhappy. Many very excellent persons, whose lives are honorable
and whose characters are noble, pass numberless hours of sadness and
weariness of heart. The fault is not with their circumstances, nor yet
with their general characters, but with themselves, that they are
miserable. They have failed to adopt the true philosophy of life. They
wait for Happiness to come instead of going to work and making it; and
while they wait they torment themselves with borrowed troubles, with
fears, forebodings, morbid fancies and moody spirits, till they are all
unfitted for Happiness under any circumstances. Sometimes they cherish
unchaste ambition, covet some fancies or real good which they do not
deserve and could not enjoy if it were theirs, wealth they have not
earned, honors they have not won, attentions they have not merited, love
which their selfishness only craves. Sometimes they undervalue the good
they do possess; throw away the pearls in hand for some beyond their
reach, and often less valuable; trample the flowers about them under
their feet; long for some never seen, but only heard or read of; and
forget present duties and joys in future and far-off visions. Sometimes
they shade the present with every cloud of the past, and although
surrounded by a thousand inviting duties and pleasures, revel in sad
memories with a kind of morbid relish for the stimulus of their
miseries. Sometimes, forgetting the past and present, they live in the
future, not in its probable realities, but in its most improbable
visions and unreal creations, now of good and then of evil, wholly
unfitting their minds for real life and enjoyments. These morbid and
improper states of mind are too prevalent among young women. They excite
that nervous irritability which is so productive of pining regrets and
fretful complaints. They make that large class of fretters who enjoy no
peace themselves, nor permit others to about them. In the domestic
circle they fret their life away. Every thing goes wrong with them
because they make it so. The smallest annoyances chafe them as though
they were unbearable aggravations. Their business and duties trouble
them as though such things were not good. Pleasure they never seem to
know because they never get ready to enjoy it. Even the common movements
of Providence are all wrong with them. The weather is never as it should
be. The seasons roll on badly. The sun is never properly tempered. The
climate is always charged with a multitude of vices. The winds are
everlastingly perverse, either too high or too low, blowing dust in
everybody's face, or not fanning them as they should. The earth is ever
out of humor, too dry or too wet, too muddy or dusty. And the people are
just about like it. Something is wrong all the time, and the wrong is
always just about them. Their home is the worst of anybody's; their
street and their neighborhood is the most unpleasant to be found; nobody
else has so bad servants and so many annoyances as they. Their lot is
harder than falls to common mortals; they have to work harder and always
did; have less and always expect to. They have seen more trouble than
other folks know any thing about. They are never so well as their
neighbors, and they always charge all their unhappiness upon those
nearest connected with them, never dreaming that they are themselves the
authors of it all. Such people are to be pitied. Of all the people in
the world they deserve most our compassion. They are good people in many
respects, very benevolent, very conscientious, very pious, but, withal,
very annoying to themselves and others. As a general rule, their
goodness makes them more difficult to cure of their evil. They can not
be led to see that they are at fault. Knowing their virtues they can
not see their faults. They do not perhaps over-estimate their virtues,
but fail to see what they lack, and what they lack they charge upon
others, often upon those who love them best. They see others' actions
through the shadow of their own fretful and gloomy spirits. Hence it is
that they see their own faults as existing in those about them, as a
defect in the eye produces the appearance of a corresponding defect in
every object toward which it is turned. This defect in character is more
generally the result of vicious or improper habits of mind, than any
constitutional idiosyncrasy. It is the result of the indulgence of
gloomy thoughts, morbid fancies, inordinate ambition, habitual
melancholy, a complaining, fault-finding disposition. It is generally
early acquired, not in childhood, but in youth. Childhood is too
buoyant, fresh, and free for such indulgences. Early youth--when its
passions are developing, when the soul's bubbling springs are opening
fresh and warm, when young hopes put out, to be blighted with a shade,
young loves come to be disappointed with a frown, young desires aspire
to be saddened with the first failure--is the season when the seeds of
disquiet and unhappiness are sown in the soul. And in the most gifted
and sensitive souls these seeds are oftenest sown. Those of highly
poetic temperaments, of delicate and almost divine psychology, in whom
some little constitutional unbalance existed at the beginning of life,
and whose judgments developed slower than their passions, are often
those who drink the bitterest waters of life. Beautiful souls, sitting
in the shadow of self-gathered clouds! We pity and love them. We never
see one without longing to bless it. Oh, could they but know how
unbecoming such powers and virtues are, such gloominess and disquiet,
they would rouse themselves to the glories of a morning life, and,
shaking the dews of the night from their wings, would soar aloft in the
sunshine of wisdom and love. Having tasted the bitter waters of sorrow,
they may appreciate, perhaps all the better, the sweet nectar of life
which ought to flow from all our states of mind and outward actions. We
were not made for sorrow, but for joy. Our souls were not so delicately
wrought to be wasted in fear and melancholy. Our minds were not so
gifted to spend themselves on clouds and in darkness. Our hearts were
not so firmly strung to wail notes of grief and woe. This beautiful
world, so ever fresh and new about us, was not designed to imprison
self-convicted souls away from its sunshine and flowers. The bending
heavens arching so grandly over us, so studded with sparkling
joy-lights, and animated with the eternal cotillion of the skies,
invites to no such irreverent repining. Creation's wide field of
animated existence inspires no such moodiness and fretfulness of spirit.
It is all wrong; it is absolutely sinful. We have no moral right to make
ourselves or others so unhappy. We were made for happiness as well as
holiness. All life's duties and experiences, when properly understood,
are the steps that lead to the temple of eternal good. Disappointments
and crosses may come, but let them come; they bring their lessons of
wisdom. Failures may crush our hopes and stop us on life's way; but we
may gather up and go on again rejoicing in what we have learned. Toils
may demand our time and energies; let us give them; labor creates
strength and imparts knowledge. Others may use our earnings, and require
our care and support; let it be so: "It is more blessed to give than to
receive."
Our friends may die and leave our hearts and homes desolate for a time;
we can not prevent it, nor would it be best if we could. Sorrow has its
useful lessons when it is legitimate, and death is the gate that opens
out of earth toward the house "eternal in the heavens." If we lose them,
heaven gains them. If we mourn, they rejoice. If we hang our harps on
the willows, they tune theirs in the eternal orchestra above, rejoicing
that we shall soon be with them. Shall we not drown our sorrow in the
flood of light let through the rent vail of the skies which Jesus
entered, and, to cure our loneliness, gather to us other friends to walk
life's way, knowing that every step brings us nearer the departed, and
their sweet, eternal home, which death never enters, and where partings
are never known? We may still love the departed. They are ours as ever,
and we are theirs. The ties that unite us are not broken. They are too
strong for death's stroke. They are made for the joys of eternal
friendship. Other friendships on earth will not disturb these bonds that
link with dear ones on high. Nor will our duties below interfere with
the sacredness of our relations with them. They wish not to see us in
sorrow. They doubtless sympathize with us; and could we hear their sweet
voices, they would tell us to dry our tears, and bind ourselves to other
friends, and joyfully perform all duties on earth till our time to
ascend shall come.
Every lesson of life, wisely read, tells us that we should be happy;
that we should seek to be happy from principle, not simply from impulse;
that we should make Happiness a great object in life; that our duties,
our varied relations to our fellows as friends, as lovers, as
companions, as parents, as children; our avocations, our labors,
sacrifices, hopes, trials, struggles, should administer to our
Happiness. And it is our business to see that they do. Is it a duty to
be good? It is just as much a duty to be happy, to train our minds to
pleasant moods, and our hearts to cheerful feelings. There is no duty
more sanctioned by every moral obligation than the duty to be happy. We
have no moral right to make others miserable, or to permit them to
remain so when we can help it. No more right have we to torment our own
souls, or to permit habitual sadness and despondency to weigh down our
spirits. It is well for every young person to seek true moral light upon
this subject; and especially for young women, for their peculiarly
sensitive and affectionate nature, their confined habits and
employments, their cares multiplying as they grow older, and their
body-wearying and soul-trying experiences and labors demand the very
best philosophy and religion of life; and more so as the men with whom
their lots will be likely to be cast appreciate so little the trials and
experiences of woman's life. They ought to start out resolutely
determined to be happy, to seek the good of every thing. This should be
the first precept in their moral mode, the first article in their creed,
the first resolution demanded by their religion. We have no confidence
in a gloomy religion. Human souls were never made to do penance, to
lacerate and torment themselves in worship or duty. Every truth in the
theology of the Bible beams with a glory that ought to illuminate our
minds with a light almost divine. Every principle of "the glorious
Gospel of the blessed God" is benignant and smiling with the love of the
Father, and ought to animate our souls with the joy of a steady
blessedness. Every duty demanded by the Christian religion is but the
requirement of perfect love, and should quicken our consciences to the
most lively satisfaction. To be desponding and gloomy is indeed
irreligious. Hearty joy is the fruit of religion. Swelling gladness is
the praise-note of the truly Christian spirit. There are no possessions
like religious possessions to fill the soul with true enjoyment. And
what are they? They are, first: a mind in harmony with the works and
ways of God, which sees the Father in the daily movements of the spheres
and the providential arrangements of the world; in the blossoming life
of spring, and the withered death of winter; in the dear relations of
domestic life, and the more showy fraternities of nations; in birth, and
life, and death; in every provision for happiness found in the wide
range of the physical and spiritual universe; secondly, a conscience
void of offense toward God and man; in love with right, bound to
righteous principle in a wedlock that knows no breaking; devout, honest,
kind, because it is right and Godlike so to be; which rules the mind and
life with a gentle but powerful sway, leading where angels walk in every
pure and honest word and work; and thirdly, a heart swelling with love
to God and man; an earnest, warm, good-willing heart, lighting its face
with sunshine, and softening its hand with tenderness; a heart that can
melt in others' woes, and glow in others' joys, pure and chaste, subdued
and calm. Such a mind, such a conscience, such a heart afford true
religious enjoyments. The more one has of such possessions, the happier
he must be. With such a mind, the true philosophy of life is clear--it
is that we were made to be happy in righteousness and truth, and should
bend all our energies to guard our hearts from every fretful and
desponding feeling, and make every experience in life bless and make us
happy. Oh, young woman! set your heart on Happiness; not on pleasure
that floats on the surface of life, but on that inward peace that dwells
in the soul devoted to all good. The things about us are designed to
administer to our Happiness, and we should _use_ them for this purpose.
The world we live in is for our use. Food, raiment, money, wealth are
for use. They are adapted to good ends in life. They help us to comfort,
convenience, beauty, and knowledge. Wisely used, they serve us well; but
abused, they sting us with many poisoned darts. The most of us make
ourselves miserable by a misuse of the world. We fret our souls
well-nigh to death about dress, food, houses, lands, goods, wealth. We
live for these things, as though serving them could give us Happiness.
We are ambitious of gains and gold, as though these could answer the
soul's great wants, as though these could think and love, admire and
worship. We chase the illusive glitter of fashion as though it was a
crown of glory, and could impart dignity and peace to its wearer. We
hunt after pleasure as though it could be found by searching. Pleasure
comes of itself. It must never be wooed. She is a coy maid, and ever
eludes her flattering followers. She will come and abide with us when we
use wisely the world and its good things. But we must put things to
their true use, else pleasure will keep away. Oh, how much might we
enjoy life if we would put things to their true use! When the sun
shines, we must love it and think of its treasures of wealth to the
world. When the cloud rises, we must admire its somber glory, for it is
big with blessings. The morning must be accepted as a rosy blessing, the
evening as a quiet prelude to repose; the day as an opportunity for
achievements worthy of us, and the night for refreshing rest and
recruit.
Our friends we must prize and appreciate while we are with them. It is a
shame not to know how much we love our friends, and how good they are
till they die. We must seize with joy all our opportunities; our duties
we must perform with pleasure; our sacrifices we must make cheerfully,
knowing that he who sacrifices most is noblest; we must forgive with an
understanding of the glory of forgiveness, and use the blessings we
have, realizing how great are small blessings when properly accepted. I
have known men sit to a table comfortably spread with wholesome food and
make themselves and all with them miserable because it lacked something
their pampered palate craved. A true man will _enjoy_ a crust of bread,
and if he has nothing more, count it a God-send that may save his life.
I have seen women embroil a comfortable home with constant disquiet
because it was not so grand as their vanity desired; and others never
tire in their complaints against a very good house because it was
destitute of a convenience or two that some other house had. I have seen
young women completely miserable because some article of dress did not
harmonize with the last fashioned plait, or some of their surroundings
were not quite so beautiful or agreeable as those of some wealthier
friend. Forgetting to use what they had to administer to their
Happiness, they tormented their souls because they had not something
else. All these repinings and complaints come from unchaste spirits.
Wisdom dwells not in such souls. The little we have we should enjoy, and
if we need or wish more we should labor cheerfully to obtain it, and
rejoice in our labor and hope. We should seek to draw Happiness from
every little incident in life, from every thing we have, and every thing
by which we are surrounded. This is the secret of much Happiness. I
believe all desire to be happy. It seems to be the one great wish of the
human soul in which all the others center. But desire is not enough. We
must seek the Happiness we wish; seek it in the wisdom which opens
life's mysteries plainly to our view; which reveals our present and
eternal relations, and points out the ways of pleasantness and peace.
Would we know the _truth_, the gemmy walks of knowledge, the flowery
bowers of inward and joyous life, the teachings of nature, revelation,
the Son and the Father? We must seek, else how shall we find them? These
things do not come of themselves. Our minds do not develop truth as the
forest develops leaves or the prairie flowers, without effort. Truth is
without, and must be sought. Would we find the path of _duty_? We must
seek it in earnest effort to find and enjoy. And we must seek it with a
full determination to enjoy it when so found. We may seek gold, honor,
worldly pleasures, and not enjoy them when we find them, because we do
not seek them in the right spirit, with an enlightened view of their
uses and a determination to enjoy them in those uses. So we may seek
Gospel riches, divine light, the instructions of the Word, and find much
for which we seek, and be but little benefited because we have not
resolved to be guided by the light we find and blessed by its divine
spirit. If we would be happy, then, we must _seek_ to be happy, not
without the use of proper and ordained means--not without a thorough
consecration of our souls to the good of what we seek, but with a
resolute will and determination in the use of all proper means to mold
our spirits into the best and happiest moods.
We must seek Happiness in the ways in which it is to be found, in study,
duty, labor, improving pleasure, with a constant inward effort to find
it, to make it out of what we find. We must seek it in domestic and
business life; in the relations we hold to our fellow-men; in the
opportunities for discipline, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, resistance of
temptation; in the changes and vicissitudes of life; in nature,
revelation, ourselves, and God. If we thus seek, we shall find. This is
the promise, and thousands have realized it. It is not a promise for the
future world only, but for this also. We have the promise of this world
as well as that which is to come. We need not wait for the golden gate
to open to be as happy as our capacity will admit. We may be happy here.
Happiness is not hid away beyond our search, nor laid above our reach,
nor reserved for the spirit-world. We may enjoy this life and its holy
relations. Our hearts, our homes, our lives may all glow with Happiness
on earth. The means for it are all in our hands. The opportunities are
daily open to us. In the dear amenities of home and its dulcet loves; in
the elevating pleasures of society; in the instructing pursuits of
science, duty, and daily life; in the cultivation of every personal
virtue and every Gospel grace, we may enjoy in this life a sweet
antepast of heaven. Only put forth the effort in the right way and the
happy result will be ours.
But we must not be too dictatorial as to how we enjoy life. We must not
be too positive as to the manner in which we must find Happiness. We
must not determine that it must come in just the way we wish, or else we
will be miserable in the grief of disappointment. It is not for man
wholly to direct his steps. Sometimes what he thinks for his good, turns
out ill; and what he thinks a great evil, develops a great blessing in
disguise. It is folly, almost madness, to be miserable because things
are not as we would have them, or because we are disappointed in our
plans. Many of our plans must be defeated. A multitude of little hopes
must every day be crushed, and now and then a great one. Besides, the
success of our plans is not always essential to our best interests or
our Happiness. Sometimes success is our misery. Our plans are often our
idols, to worship which is false and wrong. It is not in this, or that,
or the other peculiar mode of life, nor in any particular class of
outward circumstances; nor in any definite kind of labor, or duty, or
pleasure, that we must look positively for Happiness; nor yet in any
chosen place or society, or surroundings, or under any particular class
of influences. If we do, we shall be disappointed; for it is not in our
power to have things just our way, or to control our outward or
associational life just as we would. We live amid a multitude of
influences we can not altogether control. Nor is it best we should. Our
vanity, or ignorance, or selfishness might do us great spiritual injury.
We might soon become like spoiled children, or nerveless drones, or
pampered aristocrats. What we are to control is ourselves, our minds.
We must seek Happiness in the right state of mind, in the legitimate
labors, duties, and pleasures of life, and then we shall find what we
seek; yet we may often find it under very different circumstances from
what we expected. We may look for it in one pursuit and find it in
another; and sometimes where we expect the least we shall find the most;
and where we look for the most we shall find the least. "The first shall
be last and the last first." We are short-sighted, and fail to see the
end of things. There is not a little of the misery of life comes from
this disposition to have things our own way, as though we could not be
happy under any circumstances only just those we have framed to suit our
minds. Circumstances are not half so essential to our Happiness as most
people imagine. A cabin is often the theater of more true Happiness than
a palace. The dunghill as often enthrones the true philosophy of life as
the seats which kings occupy. Women in humble circumstances often
possess richer minds, sweeter hearts, a nobler and profounder peace than
those of magnificent surroundings. The disposition to make the best of
life is what we want to make us happy. Those who are so willful and
seemingly perverse about their outward circumstances, are often
intensely affected by the merest trifles. A little thing shadows their
life for days. The want of some little convenience, some personal
gratification, some outward form or ornament, will blight a day's joy.
They can often bear a great calamity better than a small disappointment,
because they nerve themselves to meet the former, and yield to the
latter without an effort to resist. Mole-hills are magnified into
mountains, and in the shadow of these mountains they sit down and weep.
The very things they ought to have sometimes come unasked, and because
they are not ready for them, they will not enjoy them, but rather make
them the causes of misery. There is a disposition also in such minds to
multiply their troubles as well as magnify them. They make troubles of
many things which should really be regarded as privileges, opportunities
for self-sacrifice, for culture, for improving effort. They make
troubles of the ordinary allotments of life, its duties, charities,
changes, unavoidable accidents, reverses, and experiences. All this can
be considered in no other light than morally wrong, for these common
allotments and experiences were beyond all question ordained by Infinite
Wisdom as a most healthy discipline for both the body and mind of man.
All such complaining is ingratitude, practical impiety.
Nearly all people have their secret repinings, their unexpressed
disquietude, because things are not as they would have them; because
they do not possess some fancied good, or do experience some fancied
misfortune. There is a tendency in all our minds to such inward
murmurings. And this is wrong, and when we indulge in it, it is wicked.
We ought not to make idols of our plans. We ought not to have too great
attachments to our own ideas of what we must have, to be happy. If we
do, we shall be very miserable, while we believe we are very good. The
trouble is, we are too selfish, too unyielding in our arrangements for
life's best good. Because we can not find Happiness in our own way, we
will not accept it in any way, and so make ourselves miserable. I have
known many very excellent people very unhappy from a kind of stubborn
adherence to their settled convictions of just what they must have, how
they must live, and what they must do to be happy. They lose sight of
the fact that God rules above them, and a thousand influences work
around them, partly, at least, beyond their control. They have not
determined to accept life cheerfully in whatever form it may come, and
seek for good--the "soul's calm sunshine and heartfelt joy"--under all
circumstances, believing that all things work together for good to those
who truly seek a divine life.
He who seeks a divine life and its pleasantness and peace in the right
spirit, humble, earnest, loving, and cheerful, full of faith and hope,
will realize that all things work together for his good. He may engage
in life's duties and pleasures in the fullest confidence of this. Even
his trials and disappointments will discipline his mind for noblest joys
in store. They will work out good for his soul, which he will bear with
him in life, and through the gate of death, as his crown and treasure
above.
Thus far in the pursuit of this subject I have not considered Happiness
as possible to a cold, selfish, worldly heart. One's aims must be good,
or he can not expect inward peace. The Bible promises no peace to the
wicked while he remains wicked. I am not authorized to promise any
except to the righteous. Our hopes of Happiness for this world and the
future must be founded in inward righteousness.
Now it really seems to me that nothing is more wanted among young women
than a sound philosophy of life, one that they can live by and be happy
in. Their duties and trials are to be great. Their influences are to
strike into the hearts of the whole world. The generations to come are
to be born of them. It is folly for them to expect to be happy by mere
impulse. They must seek the Happiness of principle. They must make
Happiness an object, and seek it with the use of all right means.
One consideration more is worthy of a moment's notice. It relates to
health, both bodily and spiritual. One essential of health is
cheerfulness of spirits. The weaknesses and diseases among females is
most fearful. Only here and there is a healthy woman. And we attribute
it in part to the great unrest and unspoken melancholy brooding in the
great woman-soul of the world. Few, perhaps, fully realize the fearful
truth of this remark. Many a beautiful woman is pining under a gloom she
seldom expresses, and not more than half understands. Woman's confined
life and nerve-distracting habits predispose her to revery, meditation,
and morbid habits of mind and feeling. These shade her soul with gloom
which slowly but surely sinks the tone of her health and shatters her
constitution. Many a young woman plants the seeds of consumption in
some early sorrow, and many more sink the tone of their health to a low
degree by desponding reveries and half-despairing longings for something
they have but half conceived in their own minds, and put forth no
efforts to obtain. It is a burning shame to our nation and age that our
women are so impotent and sickly. We believe the best medicine for them
would be one that would set them all into a hearty laugh, taken once an
hour through the day. They need more sprightly activity, more
exhilaration of mind and body, more sunshine and bird-song, more
exuberant freshness of life and Happiness. Every gloomy thought is a tax
on health. Every desponding hour extracts a year's vitality from the
system. A melancholy spirit is like a humor in the blood, breeding a
perpetual disease. Doubts and fears are like chills and fevers, which
shake and shatter the vital economy to its center. No unhappy woman can
enjoy perfect health. The most vigorous constitutions will quail and
sink under the weight of a desponding mind. Health! what is all the
world without it? Who would sacrifice it for every earthly good? Then
let young women beware how they tamper with it by giving way to or
cherishing gloomy moods of mind. Seek to be peaceful, cheerful, happy,
if you would be well.
Their despondency of mind is equally destructive of spiritual health. It
unbalances all the mental powers, gives a morbid activity to some, and a
kind of reversed action to others. No gloomy spirit is beautiful or
harmonious. We may pity it, but we can not admire it--scarcely love it.
In God's sight its sadness is an imperfection--in many instances it is
sinfulness. The piety of such a mind is of a questionable character, and
its virtue is liable to be tinctured with selfishness or other evils.
Its judgment is improved. God loves a cheerful spirit, a happy soul. It
is not only a duty we owe to ourselves, but to God, to be happy. Our
efforts to subdue every desponding tendency in our minds should be as
great and as constant as to master our selfish passions or animal
desires. I fully believe we have the power to be happy if we will, or,
at least, the most of us have. Some unfortunate minds are
constitutionally down in the mouth. Poor things! They suffer a great
hereditary evil. They are too hopeless, from a defect in the structure
of their minds; but these are few and far between. The rule is, that we
may be happy if we will. None of the common allotments and evils in life
are absolute barriers in our way. A resolute will and steady purpose,
with a proper time, will overcome all. Then buckle on the armor of life,
oh, young woman, and rouse your spirit to its best efforts to lead a
cheerful and useful life. Let no misfortune weigh you down, but rise
above all, and great will be your reward.
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WORKS ON PHRENOLOGY.
AMERICAN PHRENOLOGICAL JOURNAL. A Repository of Science, Literature, and
General Intelligence; Devoted to Phrenology, Physiology, Education,
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COMBE'S LECTURE ON PHRENOLOGY. By George Combe. With Notes, an Essay on
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CONSTITUTION OF MAN, CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO EXTERNAL OBJECTS. By
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