[Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer errors, including punctuation, havebeen corrected. All other inconsistencies have been left as they were inthe original. ]

AIMS AND AIDSFORGirls and Young Women, ON THE

VARIOUS DUTIES OF LIFE, INCLUDING

PHYSICAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT; SELF-CULTURE, IMPROVEMENT, DRESS, BEAUTY, FASHION, EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION, THE HOMERELATIONS, 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 forwriting this book. I see multitudes of young women about me, whosegeneral training is so deficient in all that pertains to the best ideasof life, and whose aims and efforts are so unworthy of their powers ofmind and heart, that I can not make peace with my own conscience withoutdoing something to elevate their aims and quicken their aspirations forthe good and pure in thought and life. Our female schools are but poorapologies for the purposes of mind-culture and soul-development. Theidea of life they inspire is but a skeleton of custom-service andfashion-worship. It is altogether subservient to what is, not whatshould be. Society does little else than to teach its girls to be dollsand drudges. The prevailing current of instruction and influence isdeplorably low. I feel confident that the best part of society islonging for something better. To obtain it, each one has but to liveout, 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 ofbeing in earnest. I hope those who see its deficiencies will make hasteto supply them in some form of instruction or encouragement to the classthe book addresses. Thinking fathers and mothers and teachers will notcomplain of this humble effort to serve their daughters and pupils, butwill rather add more in a similar direction, and seek to complete what Ihave endeavored to begin. While life is spared, I hope to work in thisfield, that my own daughters, as well as those of others, may attain aworthy womanhood. 

 G. S. W. ST. LOUIS, 1855. 

CONTENTS. 

Lecture One. 

GIRLHOOD. 

Angels view Girlhood with Solicitude and Delight--Beauty no perpetualPledge of Safety--Nothing in Man or Things impels a Provident Regard forit--Blossoming Womanhood an Object of Deep Interest and Pity--Girlhood'sfirst Work is to Form a Character--It should be _Pure_ and_Energetic_--Woman only a Thing--Her Education progressing--PhysicalHealth should be Preserved--A Woman not Herself without PhysicalStrength--Woman must be Independent, and Earn her ownLivelihood--Character must Embody Itself in an Outward Form to be ofService to the World Page 9-21

Lecture Two. 

BEAUTY. 

God a Lover of Beauty--Every thing in the Universe Beautiful--TheAdmirer of Beauty should Reverence its Author--The Love of Beautyelevating in its Tendency--Its Abuses Fearful--Man a Part of Nature, andGod in all--Woman the most Perfect Type of Beauty--Youthful Womanexposed to great Temptation--Beauty a Charming, but Dangerous Gift--Themost Beautiful should be the most Pious--Beauty of Person Worthlesswithout Loveliness of Character--"Strong-minded" Women notBeautiful--Beauty the Nurse of Vanity--Value of Character depreciateswith Increase of Beauty when substituted for Moral Worth--Beauty onlySkin-deep--Beauty Two-fold: Inward and Outward--Inward Beauty shinesthrough--Beauty of Soul made Washington, Josephine, and Channingglorious--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 beInjurious--Present Customs Unhealthy, Slovenly, and Immodest--A Subjectof Religious Consideration--Suicide _vs. _ Providence--FoolishVanity--Taste an Element of Mind--Dress should be Symbolical--Womanshould Elevate her Aims--Appropriate Dress Admirable 41-57

Lecture Four. 

FASHION. 

Fashion made Superior to Health--Fashionable Religion--UnfashionableMinisters--Votaries of Fashion Despise it--Fashionable WomenShort-lived--Mothers of Great Men Unfashionable--Woman's Greatness shownin Offspring--Example of Women of Fashion--Apostrophe to Fashion--Appealto American Women--Nature in Freedom's Temple--Fashion isMonotonous--Woman needs more Freedom 58-72

Lecture Five. 

EDUCATION. 

Life a School--Education a Work of Progress--Schools of Vice--EveryCircumstance a Teacher--Kinds of Education--Female Education--TrueWomanly Ambition--Improve your Opportunities--Principles should beUnderstood--Time Trifled Away--Some Excuses--Society Needs Woman'sInfluence--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 onlyin Sound Bodies--To be Healthy is a Duty--Physical LawsObligatory--Penalties for Violation--Girls and theirGrandmothers--Causes of Difference--Physiological Studies Advised--Womenthe "Weaker Vessel;" Why?--Intelligence and Beauty--Woman's SoundJudgment--Woman's Mind not Powerless--Finished Educations--Education atHome--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 ofDifferent Culture--Male and Female Minds Differ--The Female MindAnalyzed--Feminine Purity--Woman's Benevolence--The Sentiment ofDuty--Integrity in Woman--Cultivate Regard for Truth--Piety the Crown ofMoral Virtues--Cultivation of Piety Urged--Development of SocialNature--Friendship and Love 106-121

Lecture Eight. 

EMPLOYMENT. 

Employment a Duty--Powers Developed by Labor--All Females are notWomen--Dependence Usually Ignoble--Adversity gives Strength--Girlsshould have Trades--Self-reliance necessary to Women--Do Something andBe Something--Riches no Excuse for Idleness--Employment gives Activityand Strength--Labor considered Vulgar--Life is given forEmployment--Woman was Made for Usefulness 122-135

Lecture Nine. 

HOME. 

Maternal Love--Ideas of Future Home Universal--Heaven's HomePerfected--Home the Garden of Virtue--Home Influence Permanent--Home isWoman's World--Place does not constitute Home--Our Homes will be likeus--Home a Sensitive Place--Home Habits Second Nature 136-147

Lecture Ten. 

THE RELATIONS AND DUTIES OF YOUNG WOMENTO YOUNG MEN. 

The Primary Principles of Being--Life is full of Solemnities--Influenceof the Sexes--Influence depends on Culture--Men Reverence FemaleWorth--Much Influence is directly Evil--Woman should demandMorality--Errors of Society--The Sexes too much Separated--Equality ofMoral Standards--Female Encouragement and Counsel--Time Trifled, Worsethan Lost 148-160

Lecture Eleven. 

MARRIAGE. 

Unhappy Marriages--Marriage has its Laws--The Second Question inLife--Be sure you are Right--For Better or for Worse--Know whom thouMarriest--Marriage a Holy Institution--Marriage should be made aStudy--Marriage is not for Children--Early Marriages Inadvisable--Whatare Early Marriages?--Influence of an Ignorant Wife--Woman the Hope ofthe 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 ofProfessed Christians--Deficiency of Religious Gratitude--Gratitude makesLife Cheerful--Religion gives Joy to Life--Love, the Seed ofReligion--The Religion of Christ--Woman's Heart a NaturalShrine--Religion fit for all Conditions--Love for the Unseen--PersonalAcquaintance not necessary for Love--The Idea of God Spontaneous--It isthe Unseen we Love--Life well lived is Glorious 177-191

Lecture Thirteen. 

WOMANHOOD. 

Woman not an Adornment only--Civilization Elevates Woman--Woman not whatShe should be--Woman's Influence Over-rated--Force of CharacterNecessary--The Virtue of True Womanhood--Passion is not alwaysLove--True Love is only for Worth--Good Behavior andDeportment--Spiritual Harmony Desirable--Importance ofSelf-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 forHappiness--Sorrow has Useful Lessons--Happiness a Duty--Despondency IsIrreligious--Pleasure not always Happiness--The Misuse of theWorld--Contentment necessary to Happiness--Happiness must be soughtaright--Truly seeking we shall Find--Our Success not alwaysEssential--Happiness often Found Unexpectedly--Happiness overcomesCircumstances--A Tendency to Murmuring--God Rules over All--Healthnecessary to Happiness--Disease is Sinful--God Loves a HappySoul--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 withespecial delight, it must be Girlhood. And yet if they are not giftedwith prophetic vision, they must tremble with fearful solicitude whilethey gaze delighted. There is a fearfulness in the beauty of Girlhoodwhich mingles anxiety in the cup of admiration. No good being can lookupon it without casting a solicitous thought forward to its future, toask whether it will be well or ill with it. The beauty of Girlhood is noperpetual pledge of its safety. Society has built no wall of protectionaround it. It has no sure defense within itself. Its Maker has hung noflaming sword turning every way above it to ward off danger. There isnothing in the world of man and things which impels a provident regardfor it. Suns, winds, frosts, storms, time, diseases, and death pay nodeferential respect to it. Man respects it, bows to it, but while hedoes it, it withers under his devotion, so little does he mingle wisdomand 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 herheart, caroling gaiety in her laugh, buoyant life in her step, the richglance of an opening soul in her eye, grace in her form with the casketof mind richly jeweled, is indeed an object of beauty. He who can beholdit and not feel a benevolent interest in it, is an object of pity. Hewho can live and not live in part for Girlhood, is devoid of the highestorder of feeling. He who can see it wither under unrighteous customs orpass away by the blight of unholy abuses, and not drop a tear ofsympathy, is less than a generous man. He who sees its perilous positionand lifts not his warning voice, fails in a great duty. It is not enoughto admire Girlhood; it is not enough to do it graceful honors, make itobsequious bows, strew its pathway with flattering compliments, and callit by all beautiful names. Such outward expressions, unless mostjudiciously made, are quite as likely to do it injury as direct abuse. Girlhood is full of tenderness and weakness. The germs of its futurestrength are its most perilous weaknesses now. Its mightiest energiesoften kindle the fires of its ruin. Its most salient points of characterare often soonest invaded. Indeed, it can scarcely be said to have acharacter. It is forming one, but knows not yet what it will be. Itsinterior now is not exactly a chaos, but a beautiful disorder. Theelements of something grand are there, but they are not yet polished norput together, nor compactly cemented. This work is yet to be done. It isthe great work of Girlhood. It is the moral art to which it is to applyall its ingenuity and energy. Girlhood is not all a holiday season; itis more a working time, a study hour, an apprenticeship. True, it hasbuoyant spirits, and should let them out with fresh good-will at propertimes. It has its playful moods, which should not only be indulged butencouraged, but not wholly for the sake of the momentary enjoyment, butrather to infuse the forming character largely with the element ofcheerfulness. A gloomy Girlhood is as odd and improper as it isunnatural. And it is improper, not only because it is out of place andwrong, but because it shades the character with a desponding hue. Desponding is absolutely wrong in itself. It is a perversion of ourminds. To put on weeds when nobody is dead, to weep when it would bemore becoming and useful to laugh, to wear a face of woe when thesunshine of gladness has the best right to preside in our sky, is allwrong. It is absolutely wicked, because it casts a baneful influenceupon all with whom we associate, and prepares us to go through life likea frowning cloud or a drooping willow, shading the circle of ourinfluence with melancholic gloom. No, better sing with the birds andlaugh with the babbling brooklets than be gloomy in Girlhood. Trials andtroubles of course will come. We must sometimes weep, and when we do, itshould be done with chastened spirits for real sorrow, that we may bethe calmer and happier when we recover from the shock of grief. Suchweeping is a gracious and healthy exercise. It does not check the truejoyousness of Girlhood's nature, nor cast any darkening line into thefuture character. April suns are all the brighter for April showers. Thereal sorrows ordinarily incident to Girlhood are not many; the realcauses for gloom are few; the most are imaginary. This is true of allages. Our _borrowed_ trouble is much more than that which comes as ourown in the legitimate course of our life. Trouble is the worst articlewe can borrow. We have the least need for it, and it is a miserable doseto take. Of all things which it does, Girlhood should not borrowtrouble. A heavy interest will have to be paid for it in the future; andthere is danger that it will make the soul absolutely bankrupt. Ifborrowed trouble would go home when we told it to, and would never leavea track behind, it would do less injury. But it will not. It is hard toget rid of, and always leaves its dark trail on the most beautifulfeelings of the heart. If Girlhood is mindful of any thing, it should beof the shadows that fall upon the heart. Whether they be of delusion, disappointment, or sin, they are bad, and will make sad marks in thecharacter to be borne through life. Age can never forget its youth; norcan one easily rub out dark lines traced in his character in its formingstate. If I could speak to Girlhood in its wide realm of beauty andpromise all over the world, I should say to it, that its first work isto form a fitting character with which to pass through life and do thegreat work of woman. There is much in starting right. A stumble in thestart often defeats the race, while a good strike at the onset oftenwins the victory. There is no more alarming feature in the Girlhood ofour times than its apparent indifference to the great work before it. Multitudes of girls are as thoughtless and giddy as the lambs that sporton the lea. They seem scarcely to cast a prophetic glance before. Theylive as though life was a theater, good for nothing but its acting. Iknow there is much reason why girls do live so, why they are so heedlessof the grandeur that swells into eternal glory before them. I know theyhave been taught by the customs of society, by the follies of theirelders, to regard themselves as the playthings of men, the ornaments ofsociety, rather than the helpers of themselves and their race, and thesolid substance of the social fabric. But it is time they had learnedbetter. They must soon know that they are made for a purpose as grand asthat which brought the Saviour of the world into being. They must soonknow that their powers were made for the highest order of usefulness andexcellency. They must soon know that if in Girlhood they regardthemselves as playthings and pets, in womanhood they will have to bedrudges or the cast-off dolls of their boyish husbands, or thehangers-on to a society they would but can not be a part of. Is life apreparation for eternity? so is Girlhood a preparation for womanhood. Doeffects follow their causes? so will Girlhood send its life andcharacter into womanhood. If a girl would be a good woman, she mustcommence now. If she would be wise, she must not frolic away her earlylife. If she would not feel the hand of oppression in age, she must laynow the foundation of a noble independence which will make herself-reliant, energetic, calm, and persistent in the pursuit of life'sgreat aim. Not only is a _pure_ character needed, chastity of thoughtand feeling, but one of _energy_. It is grand to be pure of heart; it isglorious to be virtuous, to be able to resist temptation and confoundall tempters. This, we confess, is one of the prime beauties of femalecharacter. But this is not all that is needed. Life is more than a trialof virtue, more a scene of temptation. It is a work. Christ resistedtemptation. But that was not all he had to do. That only showed himready for the great work before him. So woman has something more to dothan to beat back the tempter. If she can do this, she proves herselfmade of the pure gold. She has a mission to engage in, a great work todo. 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. Theymust 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 asserttheir rights; dare to be persecuted for righteousness' sake; dare to dotheir own thinking and acting; dare to be above the silly pride andfoolish whims and prudish nonsense that enslave little minds. Woman isnow bound hand and foot by custom and law. She is only a thing. She isnot a conscious independent personality. She is not recognized as aself-directing, responsible agent. She plays a second part. She is shutout from all the higher aims and opportunities of life. Into no collegeis she permitted to enter if she would cultivate her mind in the highestwalks of science and literature. At the feet of no learned professor mayshe sit for wisdom. Every profession but the teacher's is barred againsther, and in that her services are considered not half at par. She cannot get more than half-pay for her labor. In law she is but a ninny; ifshe is married she is less still, an absolute nonentity; her legalexistence is merged in that of her husband--the two become one, and heis 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 uponher; she must not breathe the free air, nor bathe her limbs in the clearstream, nor exercise in a healthful and profitable way. She must not goaway from her home without a protector; she must not step into thestreet after nightfall without a watch; she must trail her dress in themud 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 andsubmit to a thousand other things equally absurd and wrong. This is herpresent position. To rise above this position and be what she iscapable of being, be strong in mind and purpose, be resolute in theright, be herself untrammeled by custom or law, so far as any being canbe in a good society, it requires the culture of energy in the Girlhoodof this age. What was once regarded as a sufficient character for awoman, is not enough now. Women are advancing as well as science, mechanics, and men. Young women should remember this. Once it wasthought 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 whenshe 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 andthought, as well as love, or she will be wanting in the essentialelements of a noble womanhood. The woman and wife will be quitedifferent at the commencement of the next century from what they were atthe commencement of the last. Do the girls understand this? It must beso. The edict has gone out and can not be withdrawn. Woman hails it withjoy. She wishes to improve with the advancing age. She would feel sadand look antiquated if the car of progress left her behind. If a fewwomen of this age could be mesmerized and kept in the magnetic statefive hundred years, and then unlocked from the somnambulic fetters, howwould they compare with the women of that future age? They would bewomen still, but in character as much antiquated as in custom. This isto be looked for in the very nature of things. We know that woman'seducation in the future is to be quite different from what it was inthe past. We know that the improvements in science and mechanics aremaking rapid changes in the nature of the labor of life. Women are fastentering into new fields of labor. Who knows but the sewing, cooking, washing, and much else that woman now does, will in a great measure bedone by machinery? If so, woman will be left free to employ herselfelsewhere. There must be a change. It will probably be for the better. The change will require the culture of new powers or forces in thefemale character. Woman will rise, not fall. Her character must rise. The young women ought to know it, and be preparing for it. Is theGirlhood of to-day a fit preparation for the duties that will devolveupon the women of the next generation? Parents ought to ask themselvesthis question. And all young women should consider it well. The elementsof a true female character should be carefully studied. It would be wellif some strong hand should write out the moral philosophy of Girlhood asa book for schools and academics as well as families, that every youngwoman might have line upon line and precept upon precept, in theformation of her character. All desire to possess a true character, butall do not know how to acquire it. 

A second duty devolves upon Girlhood. It is to preserve its physicalhealth and strength. The richest mind is of but little avail to theworld if locked up in a feeble, sickly body. The noblest character wouldnot half make its impression on the world if it was imprisoned inweakness and barricaded with disease. A woman can not be herself unlessshe possesses physical as well as mental and moral strength. Girlhoodhas both beauty and strength. Why may they not be carried intowomanhood? Shall not the wife and mother retain the beauty and health ofthe 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 madeto be life-lasting, or nearly so. So beauty is a rich gift of the DivineArtist given for life. Why should we dissipate it in an hour? It isungrateful, impious to do it. We ought to prize and retain it as adivine benefaction. God could as well have made Girlhood ugly asbeautiful. His wisdom and love chose to make it a model of grace andelegance. Has he laid a necessity upon woman's nature that this beautyshall last but an hour? Far from it. On the other hand, he has madeevery provision for its preservation. Why, then, is it not preserved?Simply because Girlhood is not instructed in the science of health orlife. And this is not so much the fault of young women as it is ofparents and society. We study astronomy in all our schools, but where isa class instructed in the economy of health? True, some go through atext-book on physiology, but how meager is the instruction there gleanedrelative to the preservation of health, and how few ever think ofputting into practice what they do get! When physiologists say that pureair, much exercise, comfortable and airy dress, frequent bathing, sufficient sleep, a plain, simple diet, and regular habits, with apeaceful and active mind, are essential to health, how many young womenheed the instruction? Now of what avail will a good character be withouthealth to apply its forces to the work of life? Of what avail is a goodboiler and a high pressure of steam to the engineer if his engine is allout of order, so that it has neither strength nor freedom to work? So itis with a good character in a fragile, broken-down body. If there wasany other way to use the forces of a good character than through themedium of a physical engine, health would not be a matter of so muchimportance; but as there is not, it is clear that for all the active, benevolent, and useful purposes of this life, health is about asimportant as character. Neither is of much utility alone. A boilerpressed full of steam would be useless without an engine to use andapply its forces, and the engine would be as useless without the boiler. Why, then, is Girlhood so prodigal of its health and strength? Why doesit imprison itself in close, hot rooms? Why live on a diet that no brutecould bear? Why confine every limb and muscle of its body? Why engirdleits waist in warmth and cordage, and expose its feet to every storm andfrost, to mud and snow? It is useless to talk, and preach, and writeabout the value of a good character unless we couple it with an equallyearnest lesson about the value of health. It is useless for Girlhood tobe anxious about its moral character unless it is equally anxious aboutits physical character. If we have no right to cultivate a badcharacter, we have no right to abuse the only means by which a goodcharacter can be of use to the world. If we have no moral right to seta bad example before our fellow-men, we have no right to weaken anddisease a good physical organization. And it would be difficult to showthe reasoning at fault, should we conclude that we have no more moralright to be sick than we have to sin. But we hope to say more on thissubject before our work is done. 

Still another duty presses upon Girlhood. It relates to a livelihood, tothe practical work of pushing its way through life. Woman must eat, wear, be sheltered, educated, protected, warmed, and amused, as much asany other human being. She can not be thus supplied except by charity orher own labor. It is degrading to accept of all life's necessities atthe hand of charity. No woman possessed of a genuine womanly characterwill do it. The character would forbid that she should do it. She mustthen be independent, or as much so as any are. She must have somelivelihood. She must not only have a good character and good health, butan ability to do something for herself and others. Both character andhealth would be of little avail if she was a shiftless, homeless, useless know-nothing in relation to all the great activities of life, bywhich we secure the necessaries and comforts of our existence. It isthrough useful industry and labor that the rarest beauties and forces ofcharacter shine. Men show themselves great and good in their professionsand callings. The man whose hands are taught no skill, who is trained tono profession, is a ninny, or nearly so. Why is not a woman who isequally useless? Characters must have some way to embody themselves inan outward form to be of service to the world. The best way is indevotion to some useful calling or profession, by which our powers maybe called upon for their best efforts in a direction that shall promisea 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. Hefashioned the worlds in Beauty, when there was no eye to behold them buthis own. All along the wild old forest he has carved the forms ofBeauty. Every cliff, and mountain, and tree is a statue of Beauty. Everyleaf, and stem, and vine, and flower is a form of Beauty. Every hill, and dale, and landscape is a picture of Beauty. Every cloud, andmist-wreath, and vapor-vail is a shadowy reflection of Beauty. Everyspring and rivulet, lakelet, river, and ocean, is a glassy mirror ofBeauty. 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 alongthe aisles of earth, all over the arches of heaven, all through theexpanses of the universe, are scattered in rich and infinite profusionthe life-gems of Beauty. All natural motion is Beauty in action. Thewinds, the waves, the clouds, the trees, the birds, the animals, allmove beautifully; and beautifully do the joyous light-words of the skiesdance their eternal cotillion of glory. From the mote that plays itslittle frolic in the sunbeam, to the world that blazes along thesapphire spaces of the firmament, are visible the ever-varying featuresof the enrapturing spirit of Beauty. All this great realm of dazzlingand bewildering beauty was made by God. What shall we say then, is henot a lover of Beauty? Is it irreverence thus to speak? No; but ratherreverence. 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 turningslowly back to let the morning king come in with a great crown of rosylight streaking half around the heavens, on his brow; or at noon, whenthe whole firmament and the joyous earth are bathed in a golden flood, soft, and warm, and life-inspiring; or at evening, when even the zephyrsare folding up their wings with the little birds, and the trees, and thefields, and the smiling mountain tops are bidding a sweet good-night totheir heavenly king as encurtained in diamond glory he sinks to rest; orat night, when the stars come out to keep their vigils over the sleepingearth; go out at such times, and what heart is not bewildered with thesense of Beauty that steals over it like a divine charm? and throughthat beauty is not carried up to God the beautiful and bountiful authorof it all? God hath made every thing beautiful in its time. I envy nothim who is undevout in the presence of so much Beauty. How easily canthe devout spirit go through nature up to nature's God. Who loves natureshould love God. Who admires Beauty should reverence its Author. Naturalbeauty inspires piety in a good heart. To commune with natureintelligently is to commune with God. Who ever loves a flower, a bird, alandscape view, a rainbow, a star, the blue sky, should love God. God isin 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 withinus as a gift of the good Father, and a shrine at which we may worshiphim acceptably. He has not given us this delicate sense of Beauty to beneglected. It is our duty to preserve it well and cultivate itdiligently. None of us love Beauty too much, if our love is enlightenedand devout. He who has no love of Beauty in his soul is a great way fromGod, and very near the earth, the animal. The love of Beauty is refiningand elevating in its tendency. Yet it is too often indulged without athought of God or a reverent emotion. It is a love which may be unitedwith earthly desires, or with heavenly aspirations. It may lead usdownward or upward, according to the use we make of it. It may pander topride and vanity, lust and appetite, or inspire to virtue, religion, andinward life. It is a love which should be brought within the sphere ofmoral government as much as the passions of our lower nature. It is alove, too, which perhaps leads as many astray, corrupts as many lives, degrades as many natures, as almost any feeling we possess. Its abusesare fearful in their character and wide in their influence. It is apower of mind lovely to behold, and even when degraded it is like adiamond 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 alwaysto be admired. She always reminds us of God and our duty; always teachesus our own littleness and frailty, and works upon all our passions acalming subduing influence. 

But we may pass from Beauty in nature to Beauty in man. Strictlyspeaking, man is a part of nature; but by common usage we often speak ofnature as distinct from both God and man. Really, man is a part ofnature, and God is in it all. Take God away from his works, and wherewould they be? They would vanish like a body deprived of its soul. TakeGod out of a flower, and it would wither and vanish in an instant. TakeGod 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 ceaseto be. So take God out of nature, and there would be no nature. Not thatnature is God, but that there is no nature without God. God is in allthings; 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 spiritof his infinite being. Man, then, as a part of this nature, is pervadedby God. And here, as elsewhere, he has shown his presence in thesurprising Beauty in which he has made his creatures. Yes, man isbeautiful; the natural man, undeformed by abuses, is an object ofBeauty. We speak of man in the generic sense, as including women also. 

Woman, by common consent, we regard as the most perfect type of Beautyon earth. To her we ascribe the highest charms belonging to thiswonderful element so profusely mingled in all God's works. Her form ismolded and finished in exquisite delicacy of perfection. The earth givesus no form more perfect, no features more symmetrical, no style morechaste, no movements more graceful, no finish more complete; so that ourartists ever have and ever will regard the woman-form of humanity as themost perfect earthly type of Beauty. This form is most perfect andsymmetrical in the youth of womanhood; so that youthful woman is earth'squeen of Beauty. This is true, not only by the common consent ofmankind, but also by the strictest rules of scientific criticism. 

This being an admitted fact, woman, and especially youthful woman, islaid under strong obligations and exposed to great temptations. Beautyhas wonderful charms, and hence it is a dangerous gift. We did not makeourselves 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 finishwhich we call Beauty. Another being than ourselves gave us thatmysterious 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 areunder peculiar obligations to its Giver. "Every good and perfect giftcometh down from the Father of lights. " This is one. A charming giftconferred 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 ismost beautiful should be most moved to a pious character and a usefullife. She whose dwelling God hath wrought into the rich fullness ofBeauty almost divine, who is spread over with a profusion of charmswhich no eye can behold without ecstasy, is ungrateful and mean inspirit 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 herfavor; it will draw _hearts_ toward her; it will awaken tender andagreeable feelings in her behalf; it will disarm the stranger of thepeculiar prejudices he often has toward those he knows not; it will pavethe way to esteem; it will weave the links to friendship's chain; itwill throw an air of agreeableness into the manners of all who approachher. All this her Beauty will do for her before she puts forth a singleeffort of her own to win the esteem and love of her fellows. All this isthe direct, immediate, and agreeable result of a gift from her Father inheaven. How, than, should she feel toward that Father? With what noblegifts of gratitude and love should she seek to repay Him for this richinheritance of Beauty! How useful, how lovely in spirit should she be!how thankful, how pious, how virtuous, how rich in inward charms! Theseare 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 itscharms; see that Beauty winning for you flowery paths of life, softeningall 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 howpleasant it is to your friends; and then think what God asks in returnfor this lovely gift. It is that you should be beautiful inwardly as Hehas made you outwardly; that you should be grateful, dutiful, merciful, pure in heart and life, meek, loving, useful, and pious. Does He askmore than what is reasonable? Can you do less than to love Him for therich endowments he has bestowed upon you, less than to obey hiscommands, imitate his character, seek instruction from his Son, and bekind 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 anything beautiful, or contemplate the sense of Beauty within you, withoutreverent 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, callingreproaches upon you from all the good, and the reproof of Heaven foryour 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, ithas ruined its thousands. Thousands of the most beautiful women aredestitute of common sense and common humanity. No gift from Heaven is sogeneral and so widely abused by woman as the gift of Beauty. In aboutmine cases in ten it makes her silly, senseless, thoughtless, giddy, vain, proud, frivolous, selfish, low, and mean. I think I have seen moregirls 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 girlis very likely to believe she was made to be looked at; and so she setsherself up for a show at every window, in every door, on every corner ofthe street, in every company at which opportunity offers for anexhibition of herself. And believing and acting thus, she soon becomesgood for nothing else; and when she comes to be a middle-aged woman sheis 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, "Whoever saw a handsome talented woman?" There is among us a class of"strong-minded women, " brave of heart and deep of soul, high of purposeand pure of life, who are stirring the country from heart tocircumference by the sterling powers of womanhood which they possess, and there is not "a beauty" among them. There is a large class of femalewriters in every enlightened country, over the productions of whosegenius the world hangs delighted, but there is not "a beauty" wields themagic pen. There are women engaged in great enterprises of benevolenceand piety, reformers, missionaries, teachers who labor and live for thecauses in which they are engaged, but scarcely a beauty can be foundamong them all. But why? Is Beauty uncongenial to talent and worth? Byno means. But Beauty is a dangerous gift, and few beautiful women everseek to develop their minds--ever seek to be any thing more than theyare. Worth is _made_, not _given_; Beauty is _given_, not _made_. Womenwho have no Beauty make worth. Those who have Beauty are satisfied withthat, and seldom make for themselves much worth. The world has paidcourt to Beauty, and Beauty has foolishly become satisfied with itself, and been willing to be wooed and petted till it has become the weakestof all weak things. I heard of a man of brilliant talents who is said tohave been ruined by the possession of a beautiful head, adorned with abeautiful covering of hair. He was a minister of the Gospel, andentered upon his sacred office with a bright promise of usefulness. Hewas so much enamored of his own head, that when he walked the street hecarried his hat in his hand much of the way, apparently to wipe hisforehead, or in seeming thoughtfulness, yet all the while to show hispretty head to the people he met. This weakness soon permeated his wholecharacter, and rendered it vain, imbecile, trifling, and ignoble. In alittle while he died a ministerial death--and died of nothing but abeautiful head. God had richly endowed him with brilliant qualities ofmind and great beauty of person, and he returned only vanity andweakness for these gifts. Oh, how weak is man! Die of Beauty! Die amoral death, or live a useless, foolish life because he is wickedly vainof God's gifts! Beauty is full often the nurse of vanity, and vanity isthe bane of womanhood. I am sorry to say it, and more sorry because itis so. It is a pity that so lovely a gift from the Hand Divine should beso wickedly perverted. Beauty ought to inspire rather than weaken itspossessor, ought to elevate rather than depress her. And it would, ifwoman-life was rightly appreciated, if the woman-soul was rightlytaught, and the woman-heart of humanity rightly awakened to its grandcapacities and duties. Woman is not alone to blame for this strange andwicked fire kindled on the altar of Beauty. Man is as guilty as she. Hehas praised Beauty and foolishly smiled upon it. He has chosen it forhis companion. He has passed by worth in search of Beauty. So he hashelped women to be vain and trifling. He has not sought to ennoble herheart so much as to weaken it with flatteries. And he together with herhas 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, andput them in one company. You would of course have the belles of thetown. What would they talk about? What would they think about? Whatwould they do? They are as richly endowed with mind as any other fiftygirls in town, but how would they show it? Only in an exhibition oftheir personal beauty. You know, young women, that common sense wouldhave to play "hide-and-seek" in that company. You know that follies andtrifles, fooleries, fashions, foibles, and failings, would occupy theirwhole minds. Then let fifty of the young men with whom they are in thehabit of associating enter into their company, and what an exhibition ofBeauty and display would follow! Not one of them would try so much toshow her good sense as her pretty face. Let good sense sit back and lookon, and methinks it would be not a little disgusted. 

Take fifty of the plainest young women from the same circles in ourtown, and place them under similar circumstances, and, if I mistake not, their behavior would be much more genteel and becoming, theirconversation much more interesting and intelligent, and their feelingsmuch more refined and noble. Am I wrong in this supposition? If I amwrong, 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 ofcharacter 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 itselfconsidered? By no means. Is it morally corrupting? Not of itself. Thefault is with those who possess it. They abuse the lovely gift. Theyattempt to make it answer in the place of good sense. They weigh itagainst goodness of heart, and find it woefully wanting. They substituteit for moral worth, put it in the place of refinement of manners, try tomake it win for them the esteem and love which can be given only to acultivated and noble spirit. And for all these purposes it utterlyfails. 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 oftennoticed that people are not generally so vain of their own attainmentsas they are of the gifts of God. A beautiful woman is more vain of herbeauty than she is of her personal attainments. A talented man is morelikely to be vain of his natural talents than of the culture he hasgiven them. A rich singer is more likely to be vain of his voice than ofwhat he has done to train it. So it is generally; we are more apt to bevain of what God does for us than of what we do for ourselves. It is sowith the possessor of personal Beauty, and hence beautiful women are sotempted 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 neednot strive for worth of character; they may neglect the ordinary meansof culture and improvement, forgetting that a good heart, a true life, acultivated mind, and a noble soul can have no possible substitutes;forgetting that Beauty will soon fade, that nothing makes old agebeautiful but worth, and that another life succeeds this that Beauty ofbody can not enter, and in which Beauty of soul is honored and cherishedas of eternal worth. 

These facts have long since taught sensible men to beware of beautifulwomen--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 beso. Beauty is lovely, and ought to be innocently possessed. It hascharms which ought to be used for good purposes. It is a delightfulgift, which ought to be received with gratitude and worn with grace andmeekness. It should always minister to inward Beauty. Every woman ofbeautiful form and features should cultivate a beautiful mind and heart. 

Beauty is two-fold. It is inward and outward. We have been speaking ofoutward Beauty. We would now dwell upon inward Beauty--Beauty of spirit, soul, mind, heart, life. There is a Beauty which perishes not. It issuch 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 ofwisdom. It flashes in the eye of love. It breathes in the spirit ofpiety. It is the Beauty of the heaven of heavens--the Beauty of God andhis Son--the Beauty of "eternal life, " "incorruptible, undefiled, andthat fadeth not away. " It is not a meteor flashing to deceive; not aglow-worm, shining to fade; not a glitter, leading to bewilder; not acharm, 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 ofculture in every human soul. It is the flower of the spirit whichblossoms on the tree of life. Every soul may plant and nurture it in itsown 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 iswhere the first garden was. It is where the second must be. And thatsecond when complete will be heaven. This is the capacity for Beautythat God has given to the human soul, and this the Beauty placed withinthe reach of us all. We may all be beautiful. Though our forms may beuncomely and our features not the prettiest, our spirits may bebeautiful. And this inward beauty always shines through. A beautifulheart will flash out in the eye. A lovely soul will glow in the face. Asweet spirit will tune the voice and wreathe the countenance in charms. Oh, there is a power in interior Beauty that melts the hardest hearts! Isee it in a mother's love; I see it in a sister's tenderness; I see itin the widow's mite of charity; in the wife's bosom of burningtruthfulness; in the devotion of the saint; in the strong purpose, thenoble resolve, the dauntless ambition for good. I see it in theaffectionate home, the congenial companionship, in the trusting heart offriendship, and most of all in the Christian spirit and life. How thisbeauty wins us, charms us, ravishes our souls. Our hardness all meltsbefore it. Could Washington come here, and we all stand up in hispresence, how we should forget the Beauty or ugliness of our forms, andall be moved by the grand and eternal Beauty of his spirit! CouldJosephine, the empress of the French, stand in our presence, how theplumes of our vanity would come down and the lightness of our frivolitydepart before the charms of her wisdom and virtue! Could the matchlessMrs. Hemans rise before us in her peerless Beauty of soul, how littleshould we prize the fleeting Beauty of these mortal bodies, and howashamed should we be of our foolish pride and thoughtlessness! Could weinvite before us the departed Channing, Mayo, Weare, and gaze for onelittle moment at the effulgence of virtue and goodness that made themthe charmed centers of their wide circles of influence and usefulness, how mean should we feel that we ever thought so much of our pretty formsand faces, and so little of that Beauty which is a fadeless power and aglorious life in the soul! It was not Beauty of person that made thesemen and women so glorious in their day, and so grand in the memories ofthe generations that follow them. It was Beauty of soul. So all about uswe have men and women who are living charms in their families and intheir circles of associations; but it is not their Beauty of person thatmakes them so. It is another Beauty, inward, living, powerful, whichcharges their wisdom, sweetens their actions with love, and temperstheir lives with piety. Oh, how lovely it makes them! We gaze upon themwith reverence. We never once think of their outward Beauty. No, itwould be sacrilege to do so. They have a higher Beauty. We see itplaying on their faces; we feel it in the charm of their presence, andhear it in the music of their voices. It is the Beauty of virtue, wisdom, goodness, magnanimity, meekness, piety. There is a culturedfinish in their actions, a refined sweetness in their manners, achastened delicacy and power in their lives which give them theirBeauty. 

This is the Beauty, young women, to which I would invite your admiringattention. Now, in the May-morning of your lives, you should search forthe flowery wreaths of spiritual Beauty. If God has arrayed your personsin the elegance of rich proportions and lively colorings, be thankful, and make this outward Beauty the symbol of one more rich, lasting, andpriceless within which you will seek to adorn your minds. If your formsand features are not attractive, then be thoughtful that you maycultivate your minds, enrich your hearts, beautify your spirits, makeuseful your lives without the temptations of an alluring outwardloveliness. Beautiful or not beautiful, it matters little so the mind becultivated, the heart subdued, and the life right. Nothing is moreimportant to young women than that they should early learn todistinguish between outward and inward attractions, to place a properestimate upon each. The true woman-beauty is inward; that which makesthe woman attractive, lovely, useful, esteemed, loved, and happy, and isdeeper than the color on her cheeks or the form of her person. It is inher mind, and is attainable by her own exertions. Every woman may bebeautiful. Every young woman may shine, attract, and be admired andloved. She has only to be lovely in spirit and life, to be good anduseful, cheerful and agreeable. 

_Cheerfulness_ is a Beauty which every body admires. A cheerful spiritis a continual feast. It smiles its way through life. It wins crowns forits possessor. It makes and gives happiness. All sunshine and flowers isa cheerful heart. It shines in perpetual spring. Its birds are eversinging, and its joys ever new. Every young woman may cultivate acheerful spirit, and throw its charm around her associates. _Agreeablemanners_ is another Beauty of spirit which charms every body. It is theproduct 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 ofcultivated womanhood. All who will, may possess it. But they can not doit without effort, culture, and constant watchfulness over the impulsesand habits. To possess agreeableness of manners they must have a_correct taste_. This is an inward Beauty of rare loveliness. It growsout of a good judgment and an informed mind. Ignorance and awkwardnessare usually found together. Every young woman may inform her mind, enrich her judgment, and thus correct and discipline her taste. She mayread; she may think; she may act; she may imitate the good and wise; shemay restrain her folly; curb her impulses; subdue her passions; awakengood aspirations, and thus by persevering effort she may acquire acorrect taste. 

Then she may cultivate _kindness of heart_. She may seek to do good toall, to feel for their sufferings, pity their weakness, assuage theirgriefs, assist them in their trials, and breath everywhere the spirit ofa kind heart. 

Thus she may make herself beautiful in spirit. And she may rest assuredthat that Beauty will win her laurels of life and joy. It will soonbecome apparent to all with whom she associates. It will come out andsit like a queen on her person. It will speak in all her words andactions. She will move amid enchantment. No deformity of body canconceal a beautiful spirit. It will shine through an ugly face, ashriveled form, a bad complexion. Nothing made of clay can hide it. Nobeauty of person can conceal deformity of spirit. A bad temper will lookhateful in the prettiest face. A hollow heart will sound its dirge ofwoe through the most perfectly organized form. Peering through alloutward Beauty is seen the hateful demon of a bad heart. Shiningthrough all bodily deformity are always visible the angel faces of thevirtues that cluster in a beautiful spirit. All wise young women willrest 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 theproprieties of civilized and Christian life. If religion reaches a part, it does the whole of life. If it should direct us anywhere, it should inthe matter of Dress. There are few things upon which people are moreliable to err, and about which there is more wrong feeling than this. Many religious sects have seen this, and have attempted to bring thematter of Dress wholly under the ban of ecclesiastical direction. Inthis they were partly right and partly in error. They were right inbelieving that religion should extend a fostering and restraining careover the subject of Dress; but wrong in believing that it should Dressall in the same manner. Our Quaker brethren, the Friends, than whom nopurer and better people have ever lived--noble followers of the lowlyPrince of Peace--the truest _friends_ that humanity has ever foundsince the days of the Apostles, or that Jesus has ever had in theearth--the world-renowned speakers of the sweet, plain language whichhath the charm of divinity within it, and in which love always choosesto express its tender emotions--adopted the idea that religion shouldextend 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 ofsectarianism to cut every man's Dress by exactly the same pattern, andto choose it all from the same grand web of drab. It is sectarianism, and not religion, which would Dress every man alike. That is makingDress the badge of the order. Any thing put on outwardly to tell theworld to what sect you belong is an evidence of sectarianism, and not ofreligion. The Quaker wears the sign of his sect all over his body. Thedrunkard wears his on his face. The Catholic wears his in his beads andcross. 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 clothedall the forests, fields, flowers, birds, and skies in that color, andhave fitted every man's taste to enjoy it. 

If He had designed every man to cut his Dress in one form, after onemodel, I see not why he did not fashion nature after that pattern, andmake that peculiar curve, and cast the grand leading ones in all hisworks, 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 isequally diversified, and the forms and complexions of men are not lessvarious. 

It is clear to my mind that we may reason from this, that men not onlymay, but should dress in different forms and colors and after differingstyles. What is pleasing to some men's taste is and ever will bedispleasing to others. Taste is an inherent quality in our minds. Wenaturally possess tastes peculiar to ourselves, and no amount of culturecan make these differing tastes agreeably harmonious. Some tastes revelin the gay, others in the grave, others in the changing. Some delight inhigh colors, others in subdued; some in diversity, others in sameness. There is nothing irreligious in this difference in taste. Each one isequally gratified in God's beautiful and diversified works. The graveand golden clouds, the dark and rosy tints of the sunset sky, thegorgeous rainbow and the modest Aurora, the flashing flower and thelowly heather, the towering pine and the creeping vine, the rich greenfield of summer and the calm gray forest of winter, the thousand millionforms of the hill-and-dale landscape, and the equally diversified colorsand forms of birds and beasts, confer the richest feasts of pleasureupon every variety of natural taste. 

Looking thus upon the panoramic field of God's works, we must concludethat he has taken especial care to gratify the varying tastes of hiscreatures. And more than this; we must conclude that He himself has aninfinite taste, which finds an infinite pleasure in making and viewingthis magnificent universe of flashing splendor and somber sweetness, this field on field, system beyond system, far off where human eye cannever reach, all shining and moving in an infinite variety of forms, colors and movements. Moreover, we can not but feel that God is a loverof Dress. He has put on robes of beauty and glory upon all his works. Every flower is dressed in richness; every field blushes beneath amantle of beauty; every star is vailed in brightness; every bird isclothed in the habiliments of the most exquisite taste. The cattle uponthe thousand hills are dressed by the Hand Divine. Who, studying God inhis works, can doubt that he will smile upon the evidence of correcttaste manifested by his children in clothing the forms he has made them?Who can doubt that Dress is a matter properly coming within purview ofreligion? Religion is what we learn of God. It is human imitation of theDivinity. "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect. "

Now what I mean by Dress coming under the direction of religion is, thatour manners and style of Dress shall not interfere with the principlesof true religion, shall not injure the body, corrupt the heart, debasethe mind of the individual; shall not degrade society, nor work any evilinfluence in it, but, on the contrary, shall do good both to theindividual and society. Now let us ask whether our present modes ofDress 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 designedthem? Are your organs and limbs and muscles permitted their full andproper play? Is your blood in no way impeded in its life-mission throughyour bodies? Are you protected from the winter's cold, from wind and wetat all points, as you should be? Can you breathe freely and easily theproper amount of air to oxygenate your blood and give you health andstrength? If so, what mean the languid faces, the sallow countenances, the pale cheeks, the wasp-like forms, the rounded shoulders, the bentspines, the feeble lungs, the short breathings, the cold feet, thehampered step, the neuralgic pains, the hysteric nervousness, the weaksides, the frailty, weakness, and painfulness so prevalent among women?What mean the head-aches, and liver-complaints, and consumptions, andneuralgias, and the troublesome ailments of your sex from which scarcelya woman of you is free? Those strings which bind so closely your chests, do they not impede your breathing, and thus weaken your lungs andcorrupt your systems? Those dresses hooked so closely that every seam inthem gapes as in agony, giving you so much the appearance of convicts instrait jackets, are they not in the way when you want to breathe a fullbreath, and do they permit the exercise of all the muscles that strivefor life within them? That enormous weight of skirts that you hang overportions of your bodies that should be choicely protected instead ofburdened, how they hang down like so many dead weights on your vitality, weakening and diseasing the most delicate economy of your fearfully andwonderfully made systems! and how your whole frames are taxed every dayof your lives with this wrongly placed and worse than useless burden. This alone is enough to bring premature disease and death to anyordinary woman. The law of health demands that the extremities of ourbodies should be kept warm and well protected, while the partscontaining our vital economy should be only comfortably clothed and leftfree to the most natural and easy action, well ventilated or exposed tothe ingress and egress of the atmosphere, without any local pressures ormeans for unnatural warmth. Only think of wearing a thick, heavy girdleof many pounds' weight around the whole zone of the abdominal region--asort of engirdling poultice, heating and pressing like a girdle of hotlava, day after day and year after year! Is it a wonder that you have somany weaknesses and pains and saddening afflictions upon you? And thenyour feet treading these cold pavements, this damp earth, these frozenor wet walks, in slippers and silk or cotton stockings! The very part ofyour bodies of all others you should keep most warm and dry, you exposeto every wind and frost, water-pool and snow-storm, in the year; sitthrough the whole winter with them on cold floors, where everydoor-crack and floor-crack is breathing in upon them cold, damp breathsfrom cellars or streets while perhaps your heads are hot in a dry stoveair, and your lungs are breathing an atmosphere so hot and close that ithas scarcely a breath of life in it, and all the while you say you arecomfortably dressed!

And then, to make the matter still worse, you trail your bedrabbleddress into all the mud and water and tobacco filth on the yard's widthyou occupy in walking, exhibiting the strangest spectacle of civilizedhumanity that can well be imagined, a woman claiming good sense, sweeping the streets all about her to make cold and wet her alreadyalmost bare feet and ankles!

Nor is this all. These damp winter winds bathe many a bare arm, kisswantonly many an unprotected neck, and visit rudely many a bosom onlyveiled with a gossamer gauze. To say nothing of such an exposure toevery lewd eye that roves the street, and the unwomanly impudence itoffers to every modest gaze, it is a hazardous, wicked, criminalexposure of health, and a total neglect of all the ends and uses ofDress. And then, to crown all, you go out in all weathers with yourheads exposed to the fiercest blasts, all unbonneted; for Webster says abonnet is a _covering_ for the head; but few are the women's heads wehave seen covered this season--and then wonder why you should have suchterrible colds, such troublesome coughs, such griping pleurisies, suchburning fevers, and so many ailments!

Now, I ask again, and you shall be judges, young women, if your modes ofDress do not injure your bodies? Do they answer the ends of Dress? Anyone who has given the subject a moment's judicious consideration mustsee that there has been and still is a fearful departure from the realuses of Dress. The primary object of Dress is to clothe and makecomfortable the body, so that it may be the peaceful and happydwelling-place of the spirit in its earthly pilgrimage. But filling itwith disease is not making it comfortable. Hampering it in fetters isnot making it comfortable. 

I have referred to a few of the most prominent evils of our present modeof female Dress. Now, let me ask, if our women would dress warmly andsecurely from wind and wet, yet not in too close confinement, their feetand limbs; if they would shorten their skirts so they would swing clearof wet, mud, filth, and passing obstacles; diminish their number anddimensions, so that their weight would not be burdensome, and suspendthem from the shoulders, instead of girting them around the abdominaland spinal regions; would give their chests a free and easy play; wouldcover their heads, arms, and necks whenever exposed to cold and dampweather or night air, and would always seek to be clothed easily andcomfortably, giving always a sufficiently free circulation of airbetween their dresses and bodies, to carry off the constant exhalationsgoing out from every living body; if they would thus dress, would theynot be far more healthy, happy, and useful? Would the roses not returnto their cheeks, the full, swelling beauties of woman's strength totheir forms?

This subject has weighty moral and religious considerations connectedwith it. Have we any moral right thus to abuse our bodies, thus tocommit a snail-working suicide? What matters it, so far as the guilt isconcerned, whether we kill ourselves in a minute or a year, a year or anage? We have more suicides among us than we sometimes imagine. Theyoung 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 cordsand whalebones, and her load of burdensome skirts, and dances in highglee two thirds of the night; then, with a vail on her head and herunder-garments not yet dry from the recent perspiration, she goes to hercold chamber and bed, to get a troubled sleep, and awaken in a feverwhich carries her to her grave. Then round her mutilated body gather hermourning friends to bid it a long farewell and hear her minister talk ofthe 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 coldand 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 theinscrutable ways of God; but to me it is still another case of suicide. Another passes through the common lot of girlhood, with the commonsuccession of colds and coughs, fevers and pains; in due time marries, with her chest cramped into half its proper dimensions, her lungs smalland weak, her female economy all diseased and weakened by the abuses ofdress and exposure. At length the period of maternity approaches. Tooweak to sustain its labors and burdens, she dies amid them. Friends comeweeping again, and the minister condoles them with the sad old story ofGod's inscrutable ways. But to me it is not inscrutable. It is anothercase of suicide. Could the grave-yards all over the country speak, theywould utter fearful tales of this suicidal abuse of Dress. 

The second question is, Do our ideas of Dress corrupt our hearts? Onemay almost worship at the shrine of Dress. Many are the young ladieswhose thoughts rise no higher than the dress they wear and the bonnetthat decks their heads. If they can be hung over with gewgaws andtinselry, if plumes shall tremble on their heads, silks shall rustleabout them, and jewels shine wherever they go, to catch every eye andbewilder every passer-by, they fancy they are in the upper-ten ofwomanhood. Vain! The peacock, whose little heart is one beating pulse ofvanity, is not half so vain as they. Giddy, trifling, empty, vapid, cold, moonshine women, whose souls can perch on a plume, and whose onlyambition is to be a traveling advertisement for the men and women whotraffic in what they wear, are many who flaunt in satins and glitter indiamonds. 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 loveDress; love it inordinately; love it when they ought to love somethingworthier; and spend their time, and thoughts, and mind, and heart, andmoney on what they shall wear. The fashion-plate is their profoundeststudy. The science of dressing is the only one they care to know. Thecut of a collar is a matter of sublime importance. How much of thisfoolish vanity there is in the world! How many otherwise good women doesit spoil! And now the question with every young woman should be, How doI feel about my dress? Is it a matter too bright in my eye--a subjecttoo important in my mind? Am I vain of my dress? Does it corrupt myheart, take my attention from virtue, from mental improvement, from thegraces of a good life, from religion, from my Saviour, and my God? Do Idevote thoughts to Dress that ought to be given to the great problems ofduty, life, womanhood, to the development and culture of my powers ofheart and mind; to science, conversation, language, and the objects ofliving? Why am I? Why do I live? To what end? Is there a great object inmy being? Have I any thing to do in its attainments? Does my love ofDress interfere with the true objects of woman-life? This is thequestioning 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 toyour bonnets and shoes?

Oh, what a fearful waste of time and talent is given to the frivolityand vanity of dress! what a sacrifice of soul and body, principle andlife, is made upon its altar!

What multitudes of young women waste all that is precious in life on thefinified fooleries of the toilet. How the soul of womanhood is dwarfedand shriveled by such trifles, kept away from the great fields of activethought and love by the gewgaws she hangs on her bonnet! How light mustbe that thing which will float on the sea of passion--a bubble, afeather, a puff-ball! And yet multitudes of women float there, livethere, and call it life. Poor things! Scum on the surface! But there isa truth, young women; woman was made for a higher purpose, a nobleruse, a grander destiny. Her powers are rich and strong; her genius boldand daring. She may walk the fields of thought, achieve the victories ofmind, spread around her the testimonials of her worth, and make herselfknown 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 themdown 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 itsimprovement. Taste is an element of mind. It is the spring-source of thefine arts, of all the embellishments of life, of poetry, and all thatpertains to elegant literature. It is the grand refiner of life. Whatsoever cultivates the taste, develops properly its activities, andrefines and elevates its pleasures, does a good office for man. And thisis 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, acultivator, a subduer of coarseness, barbarity, rudeness. Pity the soulthat has no taste for Dress. The Dress of a man speaks out his soul. Inother words, a man is known by his Dress; not by its richness, not byits conformity to fashion, but by its neatness, appropriateness, harmony, and the way he carries it. A clown will carry a king's dressclownishly; and a true king will carry a clown's dress kingishly. It isnot 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 ofgewgaws, glitter, paint, feathers, colors, mere show, with little or noreference to utility or taste. The barbarian approaches one step nearerthe true standard. He exhibits a faint idea of utility and taste; hesubdues and blends colors, puts ornaments into use, and varies his Dressa little to suit circumstances. The civilized man shows more taste, lessambition for glowing colors, a greater skill in making, a better idea offitness and propriety. The enlightened man is more grave in thecharacter of his Dress, wears less ornaments, admits none save where itcombines utility and taste, is chaste, subdued, harmonious, classical inevery thing that pertains to Dress. We can not yet lay full claims to anenlightened Dress. Our female Dress is a half barbaric costume--a rudemixture of ornament and utility, in which ornament greatly predominates. 

Our soldier's Dress, very appropriately, retains all the elements ofsavagism--high colors, sharp contrasts, profuseness of ornament. This isas it should be. But every enlightened man should regret that our femaleDress is not more grave, classical, chaste, subdued, and appropriate, combining taste and utility, refinement and strength. A woman in fullstreet Dress, with her profusion of ornaments, her flounces andfly-about gewgaws, is a very poor representation of good sense, refinement, and cultured, classic taste. If our artists should carve andpaint their master-pieces in such taste, we should pronounce itbarbarism at once. 

I would gladly pursue this theme, and trace the office of Dress in allits operations as a reforming and refining agent, and show how toimprove our tastes, correct our judgments, and utilize and at the sametime beautify our dresses. But time will not permit. I will only say inaddition, that the love of Dress, when properly used, is noble; whenabused, 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 youngwomen, 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 aninward Dress. While we toil to robe in beauty these perishing bodies, weshould labor more industriously to adorn those immortal qualities whichshall wear their adornments when a new heaven and a new earth shallsucceed to those that now are. This is the point at which young womenerr more than elsewhere. They labor to dress the body, and sadly neglectthe soul. O what a fearful dearth of soul-dress, of mental adornment, ofinterior beauty there is among young women! Scarcely can one in ten ofthem speak their mother-tongue correctly, converse intelligibly tenminutes upon any subject of common interest, write a simple business orfriendly 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 ofmind? How little, how little! There are some noble exceptions to thisremark, I know. But we must not disguise the fact, that there is afearful want of mental culture among young woman. They give fortythoughts to dressing their bodies to one for their minds; they spendforty dollars for bonnets, shoes, and clothes to one for books, instruction, and improvement; they give forty hours to toilet to one tosolid study and serious reflection; they put forty adornments upon theirpersons to one upon their minds. How sad the thought! Compare awell-dressed body with a well-dressed mind. Compare a taste for dresswith a taste for knowledge, culture, virtue, and piety. Dress up anignorant young woman in the "height of fashion;" put on plumes andflowers, diamonds and gewgaws; paint her face and girt up her waist, andI ask you if this side of a painted feathered savage you can find anything more unpleasant to behold. And yet just such young women we meetby the hundred every day on the street and in all our public places. Itis awful to think of. Why is it so? It is only because woman is regardedas a doll to be dressed--a plaything to be petted--a house ornament toexhibit--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 thetoilet and be herself. Woman by nature is no more a toilet puppet thanman. Her mental and moral duties are equal to his. Her powers of mindand heart are equal to his. Her field of labor it is wide as his. Hertime is as precious as his. It is as important that her soul should growas his. She has as much need of knowledge, wisdom, courage, strength ofmind and purpose, as much need of all the powers and beauties of acultured soul, as he. Why should she not adorn her mind, develop herpowers, live to a high purpose, act well a noble part, do and beaccording to her capacity? Let young women elevate their aims; give lesstime to the toilet, more to study, duty, and active employment; regardthemselves as something more than dolls, as something intelligent, useful, to be improved, to grow wise and great. Let them dress theirminds in wisdom, adorn their hearts with virtue, clothe their souls withstrength, with the majesty of noble purposes and high resolutions, andthey will soon be something more than automatons on which the millinerand mantua-maker hang their wares. 

I have written plainly rather than flatteringly, and I have done sobecause 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 fromits long lethargy and put on the habiliments of wisdom and usefulness;when she should live to a grander purpose than she has done, and shouldmake her power felt more sensibly in the morality and religion, businessand bosom, of the world. I am not a disregarder of the beauties andproprieties of Dress. On the contrary, I admire appropriate Dress. Itspeaks out the man or woman. But I would have everybody feel that theman makes the Dress. Almost any thing looks well on a noble woman. Theplainest Dress becomes agreeable when worn by a person of grand purposeand good-doing life. Real life when unadorned is most adorned. Noblewomanhood is always beautiful. The world always has and always willadmire it. The richest Dress is always worn on the soul. The adornmentsthat will not perish, and that all men most admire, shine from the heartthrough this life. God has made it our highest, holiest duty to dressthe soul he has given us. It is wicked to waste it in frivolity. It is abeautiful, undying, precious thing. If every young woman would think ofher soul when she looks in the glass, would hear the cry of her nakedmind when she dallies away her precious hours at her toilet, wouldlisten to the sad moaning of her hollow heart, as it wails through heridle, useless life, something would be done for the elevation ofwomanhood. I hope I address those who appreciate my words and myfeelings. Above almost every thing else do I desire woman's elevation inthe moral and intellectual scale of life. You may not see the mental ormoral nakedness of the mass of our young women as I do; you may not hearthe pleading voice of religion as I do; but I trust you do see your needof higher purposes in life, and more active usefulness; I trust you dosee that you have souls to dress and hearts to adorn, and will attend tothis, 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 folliesare paraded in every public print; her dry-goods propensities are talkedof in every circle where she is not truly respected, and in many whereshe is; her Parisian proclivities are made the butt of very generalridicule, and the dignity of her character is not a little lowered byher too great intimacy with fashion plates and dandy shops. Though, perhaps, man is as much to blame for this as woman--for she seeks toplease him, and courts his smiles more than the smiles of all the godsof Fashion--still she must bear her part of the blame--I ought to sayguilt--of this terrible and reckless folly. 

It is a great fault with American woman, that they worship so blindly atthe shrine of Fashion. They sacrifice taste and comfort, time and money, health and happiness, character and life, on this graceless and godlessaltar, What shopping--what trimming--what sewing and stuffing andpadding--what bowing and scraping--what simpering and oiling andscenting--what cooking and spicing and preserving--what eating andsipping and drinking--what wasting and lying and cheating--whatgossiping, slandering, and abusing--what forging, straining, andoverreaching--what miserable time-serving and eye-serving at the expenseof all that is pure and noble in the human heart and life, are resortedto keep pace with the changing moods of Fashion! What is there in ourhighly civilized life that escapes the palsying touch of Fashion?_Dress_, what is it? Fashion from head to foot. No matter if it outragesall physiology, puts hands around the lungs, gauze on the feet, andhangs multitudinous skirts upon the most vital and yielding portions ofthe female system. What of all that? Fashion is superior to health andlife. What if it shrivel a woman into a mummy, and fade her into aghost, and plant in her vitals the never-dying worm of consumption! Whatis beauty and physical womanhood to Fashion? Who would not rather fadeat 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 notgreased and peppered, shortened and raised, concentrated and almostdistilled, and then taken at hours of _ton_, and in wholesalequantities, of what avail is it? Better have the dyspepsia than eatcoarse bread! What woman would not rather have a nervous debility thandispense with hot coffee and strong tea? Then, to refuse roast beef andbaked ham would be very ungenteel! A bilious attack would be much morefashionable. It would be unwomanly not to have an animal die every timeshe was hungry, so that her life might pick the bones of death. It isvery poetical to realize that life flowers on the sepulcher of death. 

_Friendship_, its links must be forged on Fashion's anvil, or it is goodfor nothing. How shocking to be friendly with an unfashionable lady! Itwill never do. How soon one would lose caste! No matter if her mind is atreasury of gems, and her heart a flower-garden of love, and her life ahymn of grace and praise, it will not do to walk on the streets withher, or intimate to anybody that you know her. No, one's intimate friendmust be _ą la mode_. Better bow to the shadow of a belle's wing thanrest in the bosom of a "strong-minded" woman's love. 

And _Love_, too, that must be fashionable. It would be unpardonable tolove a plain man whom Fashion could not seduce, whose sense of rightdictated his life, a man who does not walk perpendicular in a standingcollar, and sport a watch-fob, and twirl a cane. And then to marry himwould be death. He would be just as likely to sit down in the kitchen asin the parlor; and might get hold of the wood-saw as often as theguitar; and very likely he would have the baby right up in his arms andfeed it and rock it to sleep. A man who will make himself useful abouthis own home is so exceedingly unfashionable; that it will never do fora lady to marry him. She would lose caste at once. 

_Religion_, too, must be fashionable to be of any worth. What is achurch out of Fashion? Who goes there? God never will hear a prayer insuch a church, nor pardon a penitent, nor give grace to a striving soul. That antiquated pulpit! Those plain old pews! That queer-lookinggallery! Oh, yes; the pews are very comfortable; the singing sounds mostadmirably; the preaching is God's unvarnished truth quickened by divinelove and mercy. Oh, how it would melt one's soul if it was only in afashionable church. And then the minister. He is such a plain man, andsays such plain things; he is all the time talking about such every-daymatters, and makes one feel so ashamed because he seems to know justwhat we have all been doing and thinking about. Instead of preachingabout Babylon and Belshazzar, and pouring out his eloquence upon theantediluvians and the glorious company in heaven, he aims every wordright at us, and gets so earnest about our daily sins that he reallymakes one's heart ache. It is unpleasant to listen to such a ministerunless one can really forget the world and go with him into hisspiritual idea of life. Then he does not try to please the ladiesenough. He talks to them just as plainly as to the men. He is alwayswanting to have them do something that is not pleasant, go to see somepoor person, teach some ragged little urchins, give up some fashionableway 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 alladmit. He never speaks an unpleasant word to any body; it is said hespends half his salary for the poor, and visits them a great deal, andspends 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 tohear him, and love him strangely. But fashionable people do not go theremuch, and he gets a poor living. One may know that by his poor dress andsmall house. So it is; religion must be done up in fashionable order, orit 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 aladies' man it is understood that he must be a fashionable man, aconformist, a pliant, time-serving, honey-mouthed, smile-faced, glove-handed, eel-natured kind of a creature, as ready to smile on a sinas a virtue; whose rebukes are so sugared that they are as agreeable totake as homeopathic pills. There are multitudes of churches that havemore fashion in them than religion, and enough of worshipers andministers who think more of the mode than the matter of worship. 

Literature must have on it the brand of Fashion, and even education mustreceive the crown stamp of this graceless monarch, or be rejected by theworld and receive no diploma at its hands. It is true that the rule ofFashion is almost omnific. To be out of Fashion is to be a mark for thecold finger of scorn from its votaries, and set up as a target for theshafts of their ridicule. So true is this, that it has become a commonsaying, that "one may as well be out of the world as out of theFashion!" Yet what is Fashion, what does it amount to? Is one reallymore respected, more beloved, more received into the arms of the good, more caressed by the worthy, for being fashionable? We think not. Thebest and most beloved men and women that have ever lived have been farfrom the votaries of Fashion. They have lived with little thought andlittle conformity to the demands of this prince of weak minds. They haverather asked what was right, what was best, than what was fashionable. Conformity to Fashion tends rather to disgust than respect. Deep down inthe hearts of all people there is a sense of the hollowness of Fashion, and a just loathing of its pretension and show. Even its votariessecretly despise it, and obey its dictates only because they think theymust. They know its baseness better than we can tell them. True, they donot fully realize its sinfulness nor wholly appreciate its evils. Butits hollowness and falseness they feel at times most keenly. Else whytheir perpetual unrest, their longing, dissatisfied condition of mind?Oh, if we could pull off the false glitter that lays like a gorgeousmantle over the fashionable world, we should see such an aching void, such a palpitating heart of woe, as would make the very stones cry outfor sympathy. Look at a fashionable woman--one woman, a poor, weakmortal, apprenticed to earth to learn the work of the skies, pupiledhere to be schooled in the great lessons of beauty and goodness writtenon all the outward universe and taught by the constant voice of God inthe soul in its best experiences; see such a woman fretting herselfwell-nigh to death in chasing the butterfly delusions of Fashion, seeing them fade in her hands as fast as she grasps them, starving hersoul and dwarfing her mind in the pursuit of such phantoms, enfeeblingher body, irritating her nerves, breaking down her constitution, fadingin early womanhood, and dying ere her years are half lived; what objectis more sorrowful and has higher claims upon our pity? We think it sadwhen a woman is thus crushed by neglect or abuse, by the hand ofpoverty, by hard toil, or the harder fate of a consuming death at thehands of a false or brutal companion. But really, why is it sadder thanto die by inches on the guillotine of Fashion? The results are the samein either case. Abused women generally outlive fashionable ones. Crushedand care-worn women see the pampered daughters of Fashion wither and diearound them, and wonder why death in kindness does not come to take themaway instead. The reason is plain: Fashion kills more women than toiland sorrow. Obedience to Fashion is a greater transgression of the lawsof woman's nature, a greater injury to her physical and mentalconstitution, than the hardships of poverty and neglect. The slave-womanat her tasks will live and grow old and see two or three generations ofher mistresses fade and pass away. The washerwoman, with scarce a ray ofhope to cheer her in her toils, will live to see her fashionable sistersall die around her. The kitchen-maid is hearty and strong, when her ladyhas to be nursed like a sick baby. It is a sad truth, thatFashion-pampered women are almost worthless for all the great ends ofhuman life. They have but little force of character; they have stillless power of moral will, and quite as little physical energy. They livefor no great purpose in life; they accomplish no worthy ends. They areonly doll-forms in the hands of milliners and servants, to be dressedand fed to order. They dress nobody; they feed nobody; they instructnobody; they bless nobody, and save nobody. They write no books; theyset 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. Andwhen reared what are they? What do they even amount to, but weakerscions of the old stock? Who ever heard of a fashionable woman's childexhibiting any virtue or power of mind for which it became eminent? Readthe biographies of our great and good men and women. Not one of them hada fashionable mother. They nearly all sprung from plain, strong-mindedwomen, who had about as little to do with Fashion as with the changingclouds. I have given considerable attention to this fact. It is worthyof the deepest thoughtfulness. Oh, it is a solemn fact that we descendinto our children, in our weakness or strength, in our meanness ormajesty, as we have lived. And what a lean, meagre, moonshineinheritance does a fashionable mother convey to her offspring! I confessthat to me there is something grand in being the mother of a noble sonor daughter, of a strong and virtuous family of children. If there is ajust human pride, it may live in such a mother's heart. The mothers ofWashington, Adams, and Channing; of Josephine, Hemans, and Stowe, standhigher in my mind than any kings or queens that ever lived. The proofof their greatness was in their children. Such sublime inheritancescould not have been given if they had not been possessed. Such grandeurof mind, such greatness of heart, such majesty of soul, such royalworth, are everlasting honors to their noble mothers. And I doubt notbut when the vail of flesh is taken from such women, their truegreatness will be visible. By the side of such how will stand thefashionable mother? In that upper world, souls will rate according totheir real worth, according to the gold that is in them. Oh, if vigoroushealth, great virtues, a large heart, and capacious powers of mind areto be coveted for any thing, it is that they may descend into ourchildren, and reappear in them, to adorn and bless themselves, us, andthe world, and be a glory unto God in earth and heaven. I had rathersire a noble son or daughter than win a thousand victories as brilliantas 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 giveexistence to one is the cause of a deeper joy and a richer gratitudethan is otherwise granted to mortals here below. 

In this light, how stands the tawdry foolery of Fashion? and what placedoes the fashionable woman take?

Then the _example_ of a fashionable woman, how low, how vulgar! With herthe cut of a collar, the depth of a flounce, the style of a ribbon, isof more importance than the strength of a virtue, the form of a mind, orthe style of a life. She consults the fashion-plate oftener than herBible; she visits the dry-goods shop and the milliner oftener than thechurch. She speaks of Fashion oftener than of virtue, and follows itcloser than she does her Saviour. She can see squalid misery andlow-bred vice without a blush or a twinge of the heart; but a plume outof Fashion, or a table set in old style, would shock her into a hystericfit. Her example! What is it but a breath of poison to the young? I hadas soon have vice stalking bawdily in the presence of my children, asthe graceless form of Fashion. Vice would look haggard and mean at firstsight, but Fashion would be gilded into an attractive delusion. Oh, Fashion! how thou art dwarfing the intellect and eating out the heart ofour people! Genius is dying on thy luxurious altar. And what asacrifice! Talent is withering into weakness in thy voluptuous gaze!Virtue gives up the ghost at thy smile. Our youth are chasing after theeas a wanton in disguise. Our young women are the victims of thineall-greedy lust. And still thou art not satisfied, but, like thedevouring grave, criest for more. Where shall we get the strong women ofthe next generation--the women who will live for principle--whosecommanding virtues shall be a tower of strength--whose wisdom shall be apoem of prophecy, and whose love a hymn of praise? Who will be themothers of genius and wisdom, of the manhood and womanhood that shallredeem mankind? Oh, not from thee, all-degenerating Fashion! shall weget 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 todazzle and delude to ruin. Avaunt, thou grand sycophant of thenineteenth century, thou vile usurper of the people's throne!

Oh, American women, be exhorted to flee from the sorceress whoseenchantments are binding you in the silken chains of an ignobleeffeminacy. Your weakness weakens our nation and sends a destructivepalsy down into succeeding generations. Your loss of strength ishumanity's loss. How can there be individual identity where Fashionrules? how individual taste, individual opinion, individual virtue andcharacter? How can there be genius and talent where Fashion molds thewill and cuts the life to a pattern? How can there be wisdom whereFashion dictates the mode of thought and the form of utterance? How canthere be greatness where Fashion shapes the growth and prescribes itsbounds? There is nothing in our country so paralyzing to the growth ofmind and the progress of righteous principles as the easy and generalconquest of Fashion over our people. If it were only in matters of dressand equipage, of outward adornment, that it bore sway, it would not beso ruinous. But it goes into every department of thought and life, intoopinions, principles, religion. It shapes the creed, prescribes the formof worship, and puts its excommunicating ban upon all heresy. It entersthe sweet retreat of home and poisons its love and life. It sets up itsproud form in the sanctuary and dishonors worship with its coldformality. Everywhere it is a godless tyrant. To develop our strengthof body and mind we want freedom. Genius expands its wings in freedom'sairs. Health blooms in freedom's prairie-fields. Wisdom grows in thehermit-cells of individual thought where no binding chains of customcramp the mental powers. Love is always truest and sweetest and noblestwhere it is freest. Nature is freedom's temple. No forming shears ofFashion cuts her patterns. She grows every leaf, and opens every flower, and solemnizes every bird-marriage, and utters every hymn of praise inthe truthful and innate spontaneity of her universal soul. So humanityshould be free; not free to sin with impunity, but free to dressaccording to its own individual taste and comfort; free to live in homesarranged without respect to Fashion, but agreeable to the wants andinterests of their members; free to eat and swear and act as seemethgood in each one's mental sight; free to think and speak on all thegreat subjects of human interest; to believe and worship by the light ofreason and the inspiration of conscience without fear of the guillotineof public opinion established by Fashion. The greatest want of ourcountry is this freedom. We now do every thing so much by rule, that therule crams the soul out of every thing done. The rule is always ofFashion's make. We love and marry, educate and worship, by rule. I wouldnot recommend an abjuration of all rules. Rules are good so far as theyare just and founded on universal principles. But arbitrary, time-serving rules are evil. In matters of dress I would have everywoman consult her own taste, form, complexion, comfort, character, andperson. In doing this she may develop her mind, cultivate her taste, andgratify a reasonable desire to please others. Instead of every one'sdressing alike as Fashion dictates, let each one consult her convenienceand circumstances, and dress as best becomes her ideas of a suitablewardrobe for herself. If one chooses to wear a dress very long, let herdo it; another to have her dress Bloomerized, let her do it. If oneprefers a close bonnet, another an open; one thin shoes, another thickboots; one a flowing robe, another a tight dress; one a high-necked, another a low-necked dress, one a belted, another a bodiced waist, letit be as each one shall prefer. In a word, let each woman dress herselfand her household as her judgment, skill, and taste shall dictate, without everlastingly consulting the last fashion-plate. It would bebetter that every one was dressed differently from all others, than asnow, all rigged up to order by the last nuncio from Paris. In nature, variety spreads a curious interest over all her vestiture. In the humanworld, Fashion clothes all in a tiresome sameness. To say the least, avery great improvement might be made by a little more freedom andcourage, and exercise of individual judgment and taste. As it is, individualism is laid on the shelf, and all are swallowed up in afashionable generalization. So in matters of household arrangement, inthe 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, andflexibility, would see more of individual judgment and peculiarity, moremarks of personal character and affirmative force of will and opinion. As it is, there is a tedious monotony in all these things. Our housesare all made and furnished too nearly alike; and so of all our affairs. A fashionable sameness, somber and dull, spreads over our whole outwardlife. 

Then, in opinions of men and things, of politics and social relations, in education, literature, art, in morality and religion, there should bemore freedom, more conformity to individual judgment, more thinking forself and less by proxy, more personal and less party influence. There isa terrible tyranny over us in these things. We are cast in the stiffmold of Fashion. We have our fashionable forms of thought, and seemafraid 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. Ourminds are all different. No two think exactly alike, or look exactlyalike, or feel exactly alike. Then why should we not be free and use ourown reason for our own purposes and give others the same privilege? Whybe such slavish conformists, and brand as traitors or heretics all whodiffer from our party or church?

I would awaken young women to these things. They have their individualinterests, both temporal and eternal. They have their characters andlife-connections to form. They have great and stirring interests to holdin their hands. They have examples to set and lives to live And theyhave a mighty influence to exert in their day both upon the present andcoming generations, both upon this and the future world. The subject ofthis essay is one of inexpressible interest to them. Woman is too muchin chains. She wants more freedom. And she will never have it till shetakes it herself. She should covet and seek a higher life. She shouldclaim her full equality with her brother, man, and strive to showherself worthy. In woman and her life are wrapped up some of thegreatest interests and issues of humanity. O that each individual womancould 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 ofliving. God has a great purpose in every human soul; that purpose is its_truthful education_. Life is God's school. He is its greatsuperintendent; his Son is prime instructor. The world is His primaryschool-house, or, rather, our primary school-house built by him. Here welearn the alphabet of things; and learn to spell and read a little fromthe great book of God. Here we sit in our places and learn our firstlessons; stand in our classes and recite them. Here we get ready forthat college which God has built for us on the spiritual Mount Zion. Inthis lower school we prepare for the department above. Our position inthat department must be determined by our dutifulness and progress inthis. Oh, solemn thought! We must be measured by our merit; we muststand in our lot; "every man in his own order. " The deeds done in thebody shall tell upon the life of the spirit. What we make for ourselvesnow, shall be ours in the college-hall above. Wisdom gained in lifeshall not be lost in death. It will live a halo of brightness, a crownof glory, when "death, the last enemy, shall be destroyed. " God did notask us whether we would come into this primary school or not; whether wewould take this lower-world life. Neither will He ask us whether we willgo into the higher department; whether we will take the upper-worldlife. He gave the one; he will give the other. But the _use_ we make ofthese lives He has put not a little into our own hands. What will be inthese lives He has left not a little with us. Our standings we are tochoose to a certain extent. Our characters are the workmanship of ourown hands. Our worth is of our own making. Our _Education_ is a personalmatter. God has given us minds, a school, a study-room, teachers, allthe books of nature, experience, revelation, reason, duty, affection, and now commands us to _educate_ ourselves, promising to be with us andassist us as our kind Superintendent in this grand work of life. 

Education, strictly speaking, covers the whole area of life. It is theword which means all God asks of us, all we owe to him, the world, andourselves--that great word which expresses the sum total of human duty. Nor is it confined to this present period of life. To educate is thework of Heaven. Time and eternity are the school periods ofintelligence. Reason may have an eternal growth. Conscience may widenits powers and deepen its sanctities in heaven. Affection may grow inbeauty and fervor through immortal ages. Mind may expand and intensifythrough eternity. To educate is to develop mind; to expand itscapacities; to strengthen its energies; to deepen its affections; toelevate its aspirations; to sharpen its perceptions; to quicken itsactions; to intensify its emotions; to harmonize its powers; to empowerits will, and magnify its sweep of action. 

Education is a work of progress. It begins in life and has no end. Deathdoes not terminate it. We learn the elements of things below. Above weshall study their essences. We progress in proportion to our ownefforts. Education may be good or bad, right or wrong. Reason may growstrong in error, may revel in falsities. The will may be mighty forevil. The heart may grow in vice, and the passions expand in misrule. The mind may be educated into terrible confusion, so that its passionswill clash in battle array, and its powers war with each other likeexterminating demons. The din of mental warfare and the clash ofspiritual arms are heard in almost every soul. Terrible conflicts arewithin us. And whole fields of slaughtered virtues are swept over bytheir death-dealing siroccos. Like nations of the earth our mentalpowers are grouped together, and group confronts group like embattledarmies, sending their hissing arrows of fiery death into each other'sranks. Power strikes at power, like single combatants on the field ofstrife. Such is the awful sight seen by God in many a human soul. Andsuch to a greater or less extent is what He sees in each one of us; sodireful are the results of bad Education. 

Few of us have been educated altogether aright. We have gained muchmental strength in wicked conflict. Our passions have expanded inlawless riot. Our mental arms have grown strong in corrupting labors. Our energies have been made vigorous in vicious employments. Our feethave been made active in the dance of folly and the race of mammon. Wehave risen to power in the service of a tyrant master. We have done thebidding 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 usdaily who were sweet and beautiful in their babyhood as ever smiled in amother's face. On every hand we meet with the graduates of some schoolof vice, in whom the powers of darkness are mighty for evil. Some comeout from the dark holes of intemperance; some from the luxurious saloonsof gambling; some from the gilded halls of fashion; some from those darkplaces where virtue dies a bleeding sacrifice to sensuality. These arethe schools in which the mighty in wickedness are educated. And then wehave lesser schools all about us in which the young take lessons invice: 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 Educationthan in innate depravity. The little cherubs that come into our armsright from the hands of Deity are innocent and pure. The skies above usand the flowers around us are not purer and sweeter than they. Theirlittle souls are immaculate. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven. " I cannot believe in depraved babyhood; but I must believe in depraved youthand manhood. All about me are the sinful wrecks of once pure souls. Itis wrong Education that has made them the sad, pitiable things they are. Oh, what wretched contortions of God's beautiful handiwork have men madeof themselves! Of all the things that God has made, the human soul ismost perfect and beautiful. The flower and trees and fields arebeautiful. The flashing aurora, the golden clouds, the sapphire sky, arebeautiful. The circling planets, the blazing sun, the starry canopy, arebeautiful. But what are they compared to a human soul? What is anephemeral flower or an age-lasting star compared with glorious reason, with eternal love, with deathless benevolence, and conscience? What werethe material universe with all its sublime grandeur and awe-inspiringmagnificence with no soul to gaze upon it? And yet perfect and beautifulas 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 doneit all. We have trained our minds in wrong schools. We have educated ourpowers at the feet of evil teachers. We have taken lessons in thescience of wickedness. We have followed bad examples and copied corruptmanners. And we still do so. These things have made us what we are. 

Our Education is not all got in our organized schools. Our hiredteachers and printed books are not all that act on our powers to developthem. Life is one grand school, and its every circumstance a teacher. Society pours in its influences upon us like the thousand streams thatflood 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 forcesabout them. 

We are educating all the time, and the question with us should be, Howdo we educate ourselves? What manner of men and women do we make ofourselves? The great question of life is an educational one. We all getan Education; but the _kind_ is the point for us to determine. Some areeducated in vice, some in folly, some in selfishness, some in deception, some in sensuality, some in nothing in particular and every thing ingeneral, some in goodness, some in truth and right, some in theology, and some in religion. Our kinds of Education are legion. We can not livewithout being educated some way. Every day gives us many lessons inlife. Every thought leaves its impression on the mind. Every feelingweaves a garment for the spirit. Every passion plows a furrow into thesoul. All is motion in that mysterious, wonder-working house in which weourselves live--the mind. 

Every hour of life has solemn, fearful results. The question should hangall 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 asit will. It is awfully hazardous to yield ourselves up, as most peopledo, to the circumstances of society about us. It is a fearful risk toplunge into the stream of popular custom and float on like a dead spongedrinking in its turbid water. Most people are like mocking-birds andmonkeys, repeating all they hear and mimicking all they see. Our dutyis to educate ourselves as we should. 

Having hinted these general principles of Education, we may now addressourselves especially to young women, and apply them to their life. Thedaily life-education of the mass of young women is not what it shouldbe. It is much like the life-education of the mass of young men. It isthe Education of circumstances, custom, society, etc. Young women live, think, and act just as society dictates. They wear what fashion saysshall be worn; they say what etiquette say is proper; they do whatcustom dictates; their ideas of gracefulness, propriety, and life aremolded in the common mint of popular sentiment. They float on the streamof society mere automatons in the great hand of the world. They do notdirect their own Education as though they had any object in life. Theyseem to lay helpless in the hands of the world, the pets or playthingsof 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 withno self-direction. Ask one of them what he lives for, and he will tellyou, "to chew tobacco, swear, be a man;" and his idea of being a man isto be able to do these things with grace and dignity. To ask any one ofthe mass of young women what she lives for, and if you can get her tosay it out, she will tell you, "to get married. " Now it is certainlyright to get married, and to live with this object in view. But there isa grand educational preparation needed for this. And this preparation isthe very thing most neglected. Every young woman should have some noblepurpose in life, some grand aim, grand in its character. She should, inthe first place, know what she is, what powers she possesses, whatinfluences are to go out from her, what position in life she wasdesigned to fill, what duties are resting upon her, what is she capableof being, what fields of profit and pleasure are open to her, how muchjoy and satisfaction she may find in a true life of womanly activity. When she has duly considered these things, she should then form the highpurpose of being a true woman, and of making every circumstance bend toher will for the accomplishment of this noble purpose. There is nohigher thing beneath the bending heavens than a true woman. There is nonobler attainment this side of the spirit-land than lofty womanhood. There is no purer ambition than that which craves this crown for hermortal brow. To be a genuine woman, full of womanly instincts and power, possessing the intuitive genius of her penetrating soul and the subduingauthority of her gentle, yet resolute will, is to be a peer of earth'shighest intelligence. All young women have this noble prize before them. They may all put on the glorious crown of womanhood. They may make theirlives grand in womanly virtue. There is in every woman-child the seed ofwomanhood. She may water and nourish that seed till it shall blossom inher soul and make her spiritually beautiful. Woman has a power, awoman-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 iscultivated woman that wields the scepter of authority among men. Wherever cultivated woman dwells, there is refinement, intellectual andmoral power, life in its highest form. To be a cultivated woman, onemust commence early and make this the grand aim of her life. Whether shework or play, travel or remain at home, converse with friends or studybooks, gaze at flowers or toil in the kitchen, visit the pleasure partyor the sanctuary of God, she should keep her object before her mind andtax all her powers for its attainment. She must learn to make the mostof opportunities. One fault with our young women is, that opportunitiesavail them but little. They see much and perceive but little, talk muchand think but little, hear much and learn but little, read much andacquire but little. 

I suppose almost every young woman has seen many steamboats, yet it maybe doubtful whether one understands the mechanical principle by whichthey are propelled and directed. They have seen the flowers andvegetation, birds and beasts, of our region of country, and yet theydoubtless are about as ignorant of them as of the products of the torridzone. They live under our form of government, yet how many know whereinit differs from other governments! They have heard or read of almostevery science, yet how little acquainted are they with the commonestprinciples of science! They have all had their countenancesdaguerreotyped, yet who knows how it is done? They all wear silk, cotton, linen, yet who knows the history of either one of these articlesof apparel? They have bodies "fearfully and wonderfully made, " yet howlittle they know of their structure, laws, and uses! They have minds, beautiful and immortal gifts of divine wisdom and goodness, yet howlittle attention have they given to learn their principles of action!All around them are little worlds of every-day things upon which theyhave never bestowed a passing thought, things which are full ofinterest; yet the common habit of seeing much and thinking little hasled them into this same superficial habit. It is like the young man ofwhom 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, andyet knew nothing of any of them. It is a sad fault with us all, andespecially with women--we don't _think_ enough. The mass of young womentrifle a great portion of their life away on the smallest imaginablethings. They chatter like birds and gabble like geese, without thetrouble of _thinking_. The things they see and hear every day awaken noconsecutive thought. The stars shine above them, and they call thempretty things, but never ask the astronomic story of their magnificence. The world beats its great march of life around them, but they seek notto know the rich lessons of human activity therein. I know that societydoes not hold out so great inducements for woman to think and educateherself as it ought. I know woman is oppressed with legal and customicdisabilities. I know she is shut out from many fields of activity andindustry for which she is eminently fitted by her natural endowments. Iknow that her labor is not half rewarded, that her ambition is crampedinto a narrow field. I know that by custom and law she is the slave ofman, who holds her person, children, and property in his custody. I knowthat men think they must be silly and simpering in woman's presence, because they suppose she can appreciate and enjoy nothing higher. I knowthat many men have an awful horror of "strong-minded women, " reallyeducated women. I know that any thing beyond housewifery or parlorgracefulness by many is considered unwomanly; yet woman may overcome allthe obstacles in her way if she will educate herself to _think_, andthink soundly and forcibly. She must be her own deliverer from thesebarbaric customs and laws, and her own _thought_ must be the instrumentof delivery. Let women everywhere become solid thinkers so far as theircapacities will admit, instead of triflers; let their life-education bedeep, useful, and practical, instead of superficial and theoretical; letthem be as well acquainted with the principles of society as they arewith those of fashion; let them be as much interested in human progressas they are in dress and gossip; let them take into their hands the keysof knowledge and unlock the storehouses of practical wisdom all aboutthem, and go in and lay hold of the treasures, and human society wouldsoon blossom as the rose. The great thing needed now by our society ismore woman-influence--more woman-thought, character, and power. Ourfemale Education is too superficial, trifling, babyish. Our girls arenot half developed. Our young women do not exhibit one half their realstrength and beauty. Their minds are robbed of much of their naturalvigor. They are dwarfed by their delicate nutriment. 

As soon as a little girl begins to be a young lady she must be shut upin the house; talked to as though she did not know much; read novels; bedressed up; go to parties; have suitors; take lessons in music; have adancing 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 steppinginto the dirt or putting her hand upon a rock; write a half-dozencompositions on friendship, mother, and home; daub a little inwater-paints; receive a diploma, and then set up for matrimony. This isfemale Education--without an object, without ambition, without point orforce, without strength, depth, or breadth. It is simply a littleoutside polish. It does not teach how to _think_; it does not developmind; it does not confer power; it does not form character; it does notfix the will, direct the life, establish opinion, deepen sentiment, ordo 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 thatshall give growth to the mind, power to the will, and efficiency to thelife; one that shall enable any woman to be independent, true toherself, to entertain and maintain her own opinions, to get her ownliving, to mark out her own course in life, to count one in any positionshe may choose to occupy, to be all that may belong to a free, independent, accountable, intelligent creature. They want to be educatedso they will know their own powers, understand their own duties, andcomprehend the value of life too well to waste it on trifles. They wantto be able to _know_ the world in which they move, to take an activepart in all life's duties, to converse intelligently upon all ordinarysubjects, and make a useful figure in the circles in which they move. 

Woman's powers are eminently practical. She has a strong judgment, arich store of practical good sense, an ample fund of tact, skill, shrewdness, inventiveness, and management. Women are the best managersin 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 theyhave had access. 

Now if our girls were reared to the practical duties of life, trained tosome great and good end, taught to live for something, have some grandand noble purpose in life, and live to that purpose, how much richer inall that embellishes life and magnifies humanity would be our world!

Our boys have something to live for. Each one says, "I'll be this orthat; 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 fellowsshall hear. " And so each one educates himself into his purpose. But howis it with our girls? What do they live for? What do they expect to beand do when they are women? They have powers equal to the boys--can playas well, run as fast, learn as readily, manage as skillfully, perceiveas quickly, are as dutiful, useful, and efficient. Why should the boysgrow up with a great and good purpose before them, while the girls growup for nothing? See what a woman has to do, and what mighty springs ofaction and influence she holds in her hands. She sits on a throne ofpower at the very fountain of life. She is goddess of all the springsand little rivulets of humanity. She makes men and trains them. Asmother, wife, and friend she wields a triune scepter of vast power. Sherears the twigs that grow into the oaks of the world. She may bend themat her will. If woman was rightly educated, who could tell what a raceof men would grow up to people the coming ages? How can the woman-mind, undeveloped, untrained, uninspired with great aims, grand and braveresolutions and actions, impress the minds of the generation to comewith strength, power, activity, intellectual and moral vigor? It cannot. Oh, it is a burning shame that our women are not educated to agreater 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 couldeducate but one sex, it should be the girls. I could make a greater andbetter world of the next generation by educating the girls of this. Itis not half so important that our legislators be wise, as that ourmothers be so. It is not half so important that our men be brave, asthat our women be so. Strengthen the women-heart, and you strengthen theworld. Give me a nation of noble women, and I will give you a noblenation. 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 generalsense. We propose now to treat the same general subject more definitelyin relation to _Physical and Intellectual Development_. 

Such is the natural position of woman in human society, that the welfareand progress of that society depends in no small degree upon herculture. She presides over the fountains of life, all life--both maleand female. She impregnates every human being with the qualities of hersoul. She images herself in all men's being. Into the very woof ofexistence she weaves the shreds of her own being. Woman's soul colors, forms, molds, modifies, endows the soul of humanity. It is so. It mustbe so. The infant-mind sleeps in the mother-mind till all its powers areset and their tendencies established. The child-being is subject toevery mood of mind and state of body which exists in the mother-being. Then the early twig is nurtured and the early blossom unfolded onwoman's bosom. Woman performs the first work of culture, imparts thefirst ideas, awakens the first thoughts, aspirations, and emotions, stirs the first tides of feeling, and wields the first scepter in theminds 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 thefirst 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 shegoes up she bears every thing human with her. Depress her, and the worldsinks. If you would ennoble and dignify the world, do this for itswomen, and the work is done. If you legislate for the world, legislatefor woman. If you would educate the world, educate woman. If you wouldgive freedom to the world, give it to woman. If you would redeem theworld, redeem woman. The world lies in her arms. She nurtures it on herbosom; she rocks it in her cradle; she breathes into it the breath ofits mental life. Above her it can not rise. She is the fountain, and thestream rises not above it. What woman is in any nation or age, thepeople of that nation or age will be. Noble women give nobility to thesphere of action and influence in which they move. Genius, worth, mentaland moral power, owe more to woman than to all things else. If I wishedto bless the world, I should bless woman. If I wished to sweeten astream, I should mingle the sweet in its fountain. If I wished to makean oak strong, I would put water and nourishment at its roots. If Iwished to rear me a noble horse, I should take care that its motherpossessed the strength and qualities I wished in the animal. It is clearto my mind, if we would do a good thing for mankind, we must do it forwoman. Woman should be unshackled, her soul set free, her ambitionawakened, her nobility developed, her strength nurtured, her mindeducated, her normal sense quickened, her consciences sanctified, heraffections taught to wind their tendrils about all that is noble. 

Such being the natural position of woman, we hold it as a self-evidenttruth, that she should be educated deeply, thoroughly, solidly; that thefirst 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 actionsin its world-sphere, is the body. Between the mind and body there is anintimate, mysterious, and wonderful relation. They act and react uponeach other. The condition of each one affects the condition of theother: a diseased body tends to produce a diseased condition of mind; adisturbed mind wears upon the body; a nervous hot-blooded body is aconstant irritation and flame to the mind; a passionate, restless mindgives no peace to the body. 

Thus they act and react upon each other in all their multiformmovements, conditions, and activities. No action or condition of the oneis negative to the other. The state of the body, then, is important tothe mind, to its free and easy action, to its natural growth and readyculture. This is a fact criminally overlooked by the great mass ofmankind, and especially by women. It is overlooked by many teachers, andin our general system of mental education. 

To train the body is our first care. To develop its strength, to secureand preserve proper tone, to make it harmonious, active, and beautiful, to plant in its vitality the roses of health and sow in its blood theseeds of enduring life and activity, is our first and imperious duty. Toneglect the body is to neglect the mind. To abuse the body is to abusethe mind. To enervate, irritate, or corrupt the body is to produce alike effect upon the mind. To beat, bruise, and shatter the house inwhich we live is to do violence to the dweller therein. Every pain inthe body, every weakness, every injury done to it, does a harm to themind. In ordinary life we do not receive this as true; yet in all severecases we know it is so. But there can be no doubt that it is true theworld over and life through. The mind is our principal care. And we areto nurture our bodies as the present instrument of mental action. If theinstrument is shattered and diseased, the action of the mind will becorrespondingly imperfect and weak. The body is the instrument on whichthe mind makes the music of life; and if we would have that musicharmonious and sweet, we must have a good instrument and keep it in goodtune. The wonderful genius of Ole Bull, whose strains seem almostdivine, and full of the mysterious and infinite depths of meaning thatbelong to music in its highest power, could never make the notes of woeor joy dance at his will like things of life, from the strings of abroke and rickety instrument. He must have an instrument alive in everynerve, sound in every limb, perfect in every part, sensitive to thetouch of the sounding bow, before his genius can revel in the melody ofmusic 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 wonderfullyand fearfully made parts before the minds which use them can makeharmonious the music of life. This is no idle dream. It is the languageof philosophy, the utterings of experience, the voice of reason. Asickly 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 tobe, in a sickly and fevered body. Reason can never wield her grandestscepter of power on a shattered and trembling throne. Love can never bethat pure, constant, heavenly flame which is a proper symbol of divineaffection in a bosom racked with pain or oppressed with weakness. Thedivine energies of humanity can never urge the soul to a realization ofits highest ideals of excellency in a frame overcome with disease, relaxed with dissipation, or oppressed with unnatural burdens. Yes, thebody must be sound, healthy, perfect, to realize the highest mentalstates of which we are capable. Feeble and sickly is the best culture wecan give to a mind locked in a feeble and tormented body. No propositionis clearer then, than that we should nurture, cherish, and invigorateour bodies with the most watchful care and rigid and healthfuldiscipline. It is wicked to neglect or abuse them. We violate the mostsacred principles of duty when we harm the dwelling-places of our souls. To carelessly expose ourselves to any physical danger, to engage in anyspecies of dissipation or intemperance, to ruthlessly waste in any waythe physical energies which God has given us, to recklessly weaken, sicken, mar, or injure our bodies is as much a sin as to violate thecommands of the Decalogue, or deny in practice the principles of themoral law. God will not hold such an offender guiltless. The visitationof His retribution is and will be upon such transgressors. It is ourduty to be healthy, to obey the physical laws of our being, to possesssound and active bodies. Every pain, fever, sickness, is a retributiveevidence of a violation of these laws; and for every such violation wenot only suffer physical evil, but we suffer mentally, morally, socially, and spiritually. We belittle ourselves in the sight of God andmen, bemean ourselves in the presence of the moral law, and stay more orless our progress in the great educational work of life. If we would beeminently pious, benevolent, and good, we must be healthy. If we wouldbe endowed with wisdom, virtue, and love, we must be healthy. If wewould win men's deepest confidence and God's highest approval, we mustbe healthy. If we would develop most vigorously all our powers of mindand heart, and give the richest possible culture to our souls, we mustbe sound in body. If we would impart the greatest possible intellectualand moral vigor to the generation to come, we must obey the laws ofhealth. If we would progress most rapidly in the divine life, and winthe brightest laurels for our spiritual brows, we must cultivate wellour physical powers. Life's attainments and heaven's joys are not alittle affected by our physical conditions. We are of those who believethat 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 aboutconsuming disease and cankering maladies that eat out our joys and wasteour powers. We have no right to make our bodies pestiferous hospitals tobear about the seeds of disease, weakness, and misery. Our physicaleducation is the very first thing to be attended to. In childhood andyouth it is a matter of great moment. Every child should be thoroughlyinstructed in his physical duties, and every youth should make himselfwise in all matters pertaining to life and health. I deem this subjectof vast importance to young women. Their usefulness and happiness dependin no small degree upon it. Their progress in the arts of life, theirinfluence on the generations to come, their degree of culture and power, depend much upon their obedience to the laws of health. If they would bethe women they ought to be, noble, high-minded, matronly women, impressed with a lofty sense of their duty and high and generousconceptions of womanhood, it is imperatively important that theycultivate judiciously the greatest possible strength and activity ofbody. 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 theyeat well, sleep well, work well, walk well, bear well the changes ofclimate, endure heat and cold, toil and fatigue, trial and study? Aretheir forms full of life and health, their muscles full of strength andactivity, their chests well expanded, their lungs full and free, theirhearts large and strong, sending out the currents of life ladened withtheir stores of well-formed nutriment? Ah, would it were so! But we knowit is not. Our young women are sickly house-plants, that a chill windwill shake or an untimely frost nip and wither. They are pet-birds, withno 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 aserpent. They are full of weaknesses and pains that wear out life andenervate all their mental and spiritual powers. The women of our daygrow old in their youth. They often have all the marks of fifty years ofage at twenty-five--decayed teeth, sallow skins, sunken cheeks, wrinkledfaces, nervous debility, and a whole crowd of female ailments. Ourgrandmothers at sixty years were stouter and more capable of endurancethan our young women at twenty-five. Why is it so? Simply because ourgirls and their mothers have neglected to cultivate their physicalpowers. They have been shut up in tight rooms, bound up in bandages, fedon sweetmeats and spices, doctored with poisons, dressed in whalebonesand death-cords, petted like house-plants, steeped in tea and coffee, till they are nothing but bundles of shattered nerves and diseasedmuscles. 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 menare by far the most healthy. And well it may be so. Our boys are turnedout to stretch their limbs and try their muscles, while the girls arecompelled to look at them through the windows. It is a burning shame toimprison all the little girls in the country, to shut them in from thefresh air and the life-giving sun, from the green fields and the flowingwater-brooks, from the woods and hills where health is breathing inevery gale and strength is made at every bounding step. All the girlsshould wear good, tight boots, loose, flowing short-dresses, opensun-bonnets, and then run, and shout, and laugh in natural out-of-doorsglee. They should sleep in cool, well-ventilated rooms; eat simple, coarse, plain food; exercise much in health-giving work and play; drinkpure, cold water, and bathe in it daily; be taught to practicetemperate, prudent, and regular habits; learn the laws of health and howto obey them, the physiology of their own bodies, and what is demandedfor health and strength. Such a course of early physical training willimpart beauty, vivacity, cheerfulness, amiability, strength of mind, warmth of heart, and moral stability, more surely and rapidly than canotherwise be done. Girls thus trained will possess a higher and noblerwomanhood, exert a wider and deeper influence in their families andspheres, impart firmer bodies and richer minds to their children thanthose who are rocked through girlhood in luxury and dress and shut upin confined air and more confined dresses. We are pampering our women todeath. We are killing them with tenderness, not with enlightened moraland 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 andstrength as soon as possible, and obey them to the very best of theirability; that they study the physiology of their own systems, and knowhow fearfully and wonderfully they are made, and what conditions of lifeare necessary to the fullest and most perfect physical development; thatthey live with the resolute determination that they will be well, andthat not a pain or weakness shall be felt without tracing it immediatelyto its real cause and applying the proper remedy at once; that healthshall be deemed a condition of happiness and its maintenance a religiousduty; that sickness shall be considered a sin and pain, a justchastisement of God for it. When our young women are thus physicallytrained, they will be prepared to bless the world as it never has beenblessed; they will usher in a period of moral and intellectual grandeursuch as the world has never witnessed; they will exert a strongwoman-influence in every sphere of thought and action which will be atonce refining, ennobling, and redeeming; they will so establish correcthabits of living, so sanctify the altars of home, so adorn the walks ofsocial life, that the very heart of the great body of society will throbanew with fresh impulse of life and send out its currents of health andstrength to the remotest parts. 

II. With such a physical preparation, we are ready for intellectualaction, for the education of mind. 

Woman has not had a fair chance for the culture of her mind. She hasbeen continually anathematized and tormented with the idea that she isthe "weaker vessel. " Her father, her brother, and her husband havealways told her that her mind was weak and small, and that it could notcomprehend great things nor do great works. Sometimes her mother andsister are joined in this wholesale slander of the female mind. When alittle 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 weigheddown the wings of her aspirations. It has been an incubus ofdiscouragement in all intellectual pursuits. How could woman be anything with the whole world against her? with even those she loved best, and in whose judgment she most confided, all the time reminding her ofher mental weakness and inferiority? And as it has been, so it is. Womanis still believed intellectually inferior to man, by ninety-nine onehundredths of mankind. Poor, weak, silly, drunken, half-idiotic men, whose wives have to support them, will tell you in conscious pride ofsex 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 thisworn-out string of woman's weakness of mind. It is an idea not peculiarto enlightened people. The savages believe it, and many of them believethat she is only a pretty beast without a soul that is given to man tobear his burdens. Among savage, barbarous, and half-civilized people, woman's inferiority is never questioned. The idea is entertained in itsbald usurpation and black injustice without a questioning thought. Amongus it is covered over a little with cotton beauty and rolled up insugar-plum sweetness so the woman will bear it a little better. Ourwomen are tickled with the idea that they are the _beauty_. Our publicspeakers, lecturers, papers, speak of the audiences of _intelligence_and _beauty_, meaning by _intelligence_ the men and by _beauty_ thewomen; a deep insult to the woman-mind. 

I freely admit that the mass of men in our country do possess moreintelligence than the women; but the reason is not because of woman'sinferiority, but because of her oppression and want of opportunity. Shehas not had half a chance. She has been shut out from almost every fieldof intellectual labor, barred from every position of trust and profit, laughed at by baby men and silly women if she attempted to devote herlife to intellectual pursuits, opposed with the most barbarous legaldisabilities and the still more barbarous incubus of public opinion. Yetnotwithstanding all this oppression and want of opportunity, she hasshown a quickness of perception, an intuitive acumen, a sharpness offorecast and solidity of judgment that among nearly all married men hasmade her opinion a matter of great importance. Few are the married menthat are willing to risk a disrespect of their wives' judgment in anyimportant matter. An eminent lawyer of Virginia once told me that buttwice in his married life had he acted counter to his wife's advice, andin both instances his judgment failed and hers was right. Many men havefound their wives' intuitive judgment so correct that they dare notresist it, as though it were the utterings of an oracle. It is wellknown that such men as Bonaparte and Jackson have relied with greatconfidence upon their wives' opinions. So universal is this opinionamong men, that all our best moralists and most sage philosophers adviseall married men to consult their wives on all important matters, and tobe very cautious about resisting the settled convictions of woman, notas a matter of courtesy or policy, but because of the accurateperceptions and sound judgments of woman's mind. 

This is not all fustian for the flattery of women; it is the deliberateconviction of our best and wisest minds. And yet a great majority ofthese same minds can not get rid of the idea that woman's intellect isinferior. 

Though the mass of women of all countries have been intellectuallyundeveloped, we have instances enough to show that the woman-mind is aspowerful, close-sighted, and active as man's. Women have ruled themightiest nations, mastered the abstruse sciences, led vigorous armiesto victory, written powerful books, made vigorous and brilliantachievements in eloquence, commanded vessels, conducted complicatedcommercial relations, edited influential journals and papers, sat inchairs of learning and done every thing necessary to show that thefemale 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 issuch, that all the mind she has should be developed and richlycultivated. 

We talk much about female education; we have female schools andcolleges; and one might think, to read of them, that we educated thefemale mind. But it is a sad mistake. The greater part of our femaleseminaries and colleges are mere shams. They do not develop mind. Theydo not train its muscles to hard work; they do not discipline its nervesto close application and vigorous research; they do not harden its handsto the toil of thinking, nor strengthen its arms to battle with theintricacies of science nor the problems of metaphysics. They are meregilding shops, whitewashing establishments, paint factories, where girlsare polished to order with the etiquette of boarding-school finish. 

We send our girls to these schools to be educated; but educated forwhat? Why, nothing in particular; but to be educated because it isfashionable; to go home and sit in the parlor _educated ladies_; to talkabout novels and poetry with the gentlemen that come in; to go intoecstasies 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 itbecause it is fashionable; recite and write and go through all the formsof school training, just because it sounds well and will give a ladysocial position, not literary standing or scientific character, intellectual influence, or dignity of thought and life; and go throughit all and graduate with diploma in hand at fourteen or sixteen years ofage. Here again women are cheated with a bauble. Little girls are toldthat they are educated at this tender age, and to prove it are referredto their diplomas, announcing to the world that they have been through aregular course of study at such an institution. Only think of it--afinished education at sixteen! Why, the majority of our young men cannot get ready for college till they are twenty or twenty-five. Therethey spend four years in hard study and the most vigorous mentaldiscipline, delving in the deep mines of science and untombing the richarchives of history and human thought; then study three years themasters of their professions. And even then they are but boys in thoughtand action, and must meet the hard discipline of active life before weaward to them intellectual manhood. We compare these educated girls withthese educated young men, and wonder at the weakness of the female mind!The girls went to school because it was fashionable; the boys at thecall of an honorable ambition. The girls studied to appear well insociety; the boys to tread life's highway with honor and win laurelsfrom the hand of the world in the duties of useful professions. Thegirls were stimulated by nothing that was great and noble in action; theboys were fired by all that can stir up human ambition. True, the innateglory of cultivated minds was before them both, but that alone in ourpresent sensuous life has seldom been found a sufficient stimulus tovigorous intellectual discipline. I should be glad to see a class of ourstrongest young women go through Dartmouth, Yale, and Cambridge collegeswith the same preparation and stimulants that our young men possess. IfI mistake not, they would graduate with honors, and be heard from in thehigh field of intellectual life. 

But as this can not be at present, our young women must make the best ofthe opportunities they have. What education they do get should bethorough, practical, and from proper motives. They must fill woman'splace, and they ought to prepare for it as thoroughly as possible. Theyhave an intellectual life to live and intellectual duties to perform. How poorly they will live that life and perform those duties without apreparation. Many young women can not attend school and enjoy the commonroutine of mental discipline; but they may read and study at home; theymay cultivate their minds by the fireside; in the lecture-room, in thechurch, and in the intellectual circle. The midnight hour may impartstrength to their minds, and the morning dawn may find them storing themwith useful knowledge. The world is full of good books, and from themthey may glean invaluable treasures. Every young woman spends timeenough in idle gossip and foolish flirtation to educate herself well. Schools are not necessary--they are only helps to education. Many greatminds have been educated without them. To educate is to learn to think. The way to learn to think is to practice thinking; "Practice makesperfect. " The archer practices with his bow; the artist with his brushor chisel; the writer with his pen; the mechanic with his tool; thelawyer with his brief. So the student should practice with hismind--practice thinking, reasoning, investigating, analyzing, comparing, and illustrating. This is the practice our young female minds want. Theydo not think enough. They do not dig for thought, search for ideas, investigate for truth. They are too light, frivolous, and giddy. Theywill run by a great thought to trifle with a silly whim. They will leavea rich intellectual lecture for a giddy party. They will turn away froma mental feast to enjoy an idle gossip; I mean too many of them will. 

How beautiful, how truly captivating, is an intellectual woman! We havemany such among us, and their number is increasing. The female mind isawakening from its long slumber. In ten years we shall have many more. Our present female education will soon be too superficial. These surfacestudents will soon be left in the shade. Woman is hearing the voice ofGod which commands her to use well her talents. Soon He will call forthem, and she must answer for their use. It is an omen of good thatwoman is rising and putting on her strength. She has a rich mind, and Iam glad that she is becoming aware of it. 

Young women, heed the voice which asks you to educate. If you heed itnot, you may look meagre and antiquated by-and-by. In that "good timecoming" how sad a thing will be an uneducated woman, one whose mind isbarren of thought! You are to live, or ought to live, through twogenerations. 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 andgeneration. There is a work for you to do. You must sanctify the thoughtof the world. Our men are too worldly and sensual in theirintellectuality. You are to redeem their minds from this baseness. Wewant more pure thought, more sanctified mind, more looking upward towardgoodness, heaven, and God. And with your assistance we may be redeemedfrom this downward tendency. I have often said it: the world wants morewoman's thought. It is too masculine, hard, inflexible. Our men thinktoo much by rules of logic. Educated women would be more intuitive, spontaneous, religious. You may remedy this evil. Much responsibilityrests upon the young women of to-day. Let them know it, and lay asidetheir 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 thanthose which are the theme of this Lecture--MORAL and SOCIAL Culture. Concerning the moral and social deportment of women's nature there canbe no difference of opinion. I am happy in knowing that although mendiffer about woman's intellectual capacities, they agree in ascribing toher the highest order of moral and social qualities. All admit thatwoman is the morality and religion, the love and sociality, of humanity. In these developments of human attainments, she is the queen without apeer. These are at present woman's peculiar fields of power. Society hasmeasurably shut her out from the intellectual arena of life. But if ithas cut short her operations in this, it has extended them in the fieldof social life. Wide and grand are her opportunities here. Man is not sodeficient in gallantry as he is in generosity and judgment. In what manhas oppressed woman, it is more the fault of his head than his heart; itis more a weakness of conscience than of affection. He is prouder of hisjudgment than he ought to be. His judgment often fails because it is notsanctified by conscience. His intellect is often deceived because itsvision is not extended and widened by a deep affection and a broadbenevolence. In this, woman has the advantage of him in the presentrelations of the sexes. Her moral sense consecrates her intellect, andher heart quickens it, thus making her judgment more intuitive andready, more comprehensive and sure. She _feels_ that a thing is so; he_reasons_ that it is so. She judges by _impression_ when facts arestated; he by _logic_. Her impressions she can not always explain, because her intellect has not been sufficiently cultivated; his logicoften fails him, because it is not sufficiently imbued with the moralelement. The light of the conscience and the heart does not shine uponit with sufficient strength. This we understand to be the presentdifference between the male and female mind. It is more than adifference in growth and culture, in inherent constitution. We do notbelieve that the relation between the different departments of the humanmind naturally differ in men and women; that is, we do not believe thatman is more intelligent and less moral, and women more moral and lessintellectual. A perfect male mind is an equal strength of the severaldepartments of mind; that is, an equal strength of the intellectual, moral, social, and energetic portions of the mind, a balance among itsseveral powers. The same is true of the female mind. 

So far as this relation of the parts is concerned, it is the same in theperfect male and female mind. In just so much as this relation ischanged, is the judgment corrupted and the mental strength impaired. Inthe present male mind this relation is changed by giving the greatercultivation 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 fromonly one quarter. He has less power of mind than he would have with thesame amount of cultivation properly and equally distributed among theseveral departments of his mind. Strength lies in balance of power. Ourmen are not too intellectual, but too intellectual for their moral andaffectionate strength. They are like an apple grown on all one side, ora horse with disproportioned body, or any animal with some of its limbstoo short for the rest. Mentally they are deformed and lame by theirone-sided culture. In the present female mind there is a disproportionin another direction. In this the intellect has been neglected, whilethe moral and social mind has had a better degree of cultivation. Thusour women have been mentally deformed and weakened. They are less womanthan they ought to have been. Their characters and judgments have lackedharmony, and their lives have been marked by the same deficiencies. Their minds are one-sided, and marked with sad irregularities. They arenot too moral and affectionate, but are not sufficiently intellectual. The same amount of culture which they have received would have conferredmore beauty and dignity to the character and life had it been moregeneral, or equally applied to the several powers of mind. Soundjudgment, pure life, dignity of character are the results of a balanceof power and culture in the several departments of mind. This differencein the culture of the male and female mind has made a breach between thesexes. The present male mind can not comprehend the female, nor thefemale the male. Instead of growing up in similarity and harmony, theyhave grown up into wide differences. 

Our present men and women are not in harmony with each other. There arecultivated antagonisms of mind between them. They can not see, feel, northink alike. Their lives are impregnated with a different spirit. Andthis is one of the primary and fruitful sources of unhappiness in themarriage relation. Men and women are so different in their cultivationthat 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 isa wide difference between them; but the difference is in the nature, texture, and quality of the mind, and not in the relation of parts. Thefemale mind has an inherent constitution peculiar to itself that makesit female; so with the male. This difference is beyond the fathomingline of human thought. We know it exists, but wherefore and how we knownot. It is the secret of the Divine Constructor of mentality. In ourmental structure we are to seek for harmony, a consistent rhythmicdevelopment of parts. The opportunities offered to woman for thecultivation of her moral and religious nature are eminently favorable. If her intellectual opportunities are not so good, her moral andreligious are better. She is not so pressed with temptation. The worlddoes not bear with such an Atlas burden on her conscience. The almightydollar does not eclipse so large a field of her mental vision. Materialpursuits do not check so much her spiritual progress. God is nearer toher heart, more in her thoughts, sweeter in her soul, brighter in hervisions, because she is less compassed about by the snares of vice andthe hostile pursuits of the false and flattering world. It is a blessedthing for humanity that woman is more religious and morally upright;because man is too irreverent and base. He lacks the sanctity of highmorality and the consecration of religion. I speak of man in the mass. Woman is the conservation of morality and religion. Her moral worthholds man in some restraint and preserves his ways from becominginhumanly corrupt. Mighty is the power of woman in this respect. Everyvirtue in woman's heart has its influence on the world. Some men feelit. A brother, husband, friend, or son is touched by its sunshine. Itsmild beneficence is not lost. A virtuous woman in the seclusion of herhome, breathing the sweet influence of virtue into the hearts and livesof its beloved ones, is an evangel of goodness to the world. She is oneof the pillars of the eternal kingdom of right. She is a star shining inthe moral firmament. She is a princess administering at the fountains oflife. Every prayer she breathes is answered to a greater or less extentin the hearts and lives of those she loves. Her piety is an altar-firewhere religion acquires strength to go out on its merciful mission. Wecan not over-estimate the utility and power of woman's moral andreligious character. The world would go to ruin without it. With all ourministers and churches, and bibles and sermons, man would be a prodigalwithout the restraint of woman's virtue and the consecration of herreligion. Woman first lays her hand on our young powers. She plants thefirst seeds. She makes the first impressions; and all along through lifeshe scatters the good seed of the kingdom, and sprinkles the dews of herpiety. But woman does not do enough. Her power is not yet equal to itsneed. Her virtue is not mighty enough. Her religion comes short in itswork. Look out and see the world--a grand Pandora's box of wickedness--agreat battle-field of clashing passions and warring interests--afar-spread scene of sensualism and selfishness, in which woman herselfacts a conspicuous part. Look at society--the rich eating up the poor;the poor stabbing at the rich; fashion playing in the halls of gildedsensualism; folly dancing to the tune of ignorant mirth; intemperancegloating over its roast beef, or whisky-jug, brandy punch, champagnebottle, bearing thousands upon thousands down to the grave of ignominy, sensualism, and drunkenness. Is there not a need of more vigorous virtuein woman? Is there not a call for a more active religion, a morepowerful impulse in behalf of morality? Who shall heed this cry ofwicked, wasting humanity, if young woman does not? To youthful woman wemust 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 moralcomplexion to the society of to-morrow. It is important that they shouldfix high this standard of virtue. They ought to lay well theirfoundations of religion. They ought early to baptize their souls in theconsecrated waters of truth and right. 

I. The first element in their moral character which they should seek toestablish firmly is _purity_. A pure heart is the fountain of life. "Thepure in heart shall see God. " Not only is purity of life needed to makea young woman beautiful and useful, but purity in thought, feeling, emotion, and motive. All within us that lies open to the gaze of Godshould be pure. A young woman should be in heart what she seems to be inlife. Her words should correspond with her thoughts. The smile of herface should be the smile of her heart. The light of her eye should bethe light of her soul. She should abhor deception; she should loatheintrigue; she should have a deep disgust of duplicity. Her life shouldbe the outspoken language of her mind, the eloquent poem of her soulspeaking in rhythmic beauties the intrinsic merit of inward purity. Purity antecedes all spiritual attainments and progress. It is the firstand fundamental virtue in a good character; it is the letter A in themoral alphabet; it is the first step in the spiritual life; it is theAlpha of the eternal state of soul which has no Omega. Whatever may beour mental attainments or social qualities, we are nothing withoutpurity; only "tinkling cymbals. " Our love is stained, our benevolencecorrupted, our piety a pretense which God will not accept. An impureyoung 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 youngwoman. To feel a disposition to sensuality, a craving for the glitter ofa worldly life, or a selfish ambition for unmerited distinction isdangerous in the extreme. It is the exuding of impure waters from theheart. Who feels such utterings within should beware. They are thewhisperings of an evil spirit, the temptations to sin and crime. If Icould speak to all the young women in the world, I would strive to utterthe intrinsic beauties and essential qualities of purity; I would seekto illustrate it as the fountain of all that is great and good, all thatis spiritually grand and redeeming. There is no virtue, no spirituallife, no moral beauty, no glory of soul, nor dignity of characterwithout purity. 

To be pure is to be truthful, child-hearted, innocent of criminal desireor thought, averse to wrong, in love with right, in harmony withwhatsoever is beautiful, good, and true. This state of the soul issubject to cultivation. It may be made strong and active. By personaleffort, by constant watchfulness and striving, every young woman may bepure; 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 corruptbefore she is aware of it. The world will send into her heart its putridstreams of influence to corrupt and debase it. 

The second virtue she should cultivate is _benevolence_. Queen ofvirtues, lovely star in the crown of life, bright and glorious image ofHim who is love, how beautiful is it in woman's heart! A woman withoutbenevolence is not a woman; she is only a deformed personality ofwomanhood. In every heart there are many tendencies to selfishness, butthe spirit of benevolence counteracts them all. A hollow, cold, graceless, ungodly thing is a heart without benevolence. In a world likethis, where we are all so needy and dependent, where our interests areso interlocked, where our lives and hearts overlap each other, and oftengrow together, we can not live without a good degree of benevolence. Ourtrue earth-life is a benevolent one. Our highest interests are in thepath of benevolence. We do most for ourselves when we do most forothers. "It is more blessed to give than to receive. " Good deeds doublein the doing, and the larger half comes back to the doer. The mostbenevolent soul lives nearest to God. A large heart of charity is anoble thing. Selfishness is the root of evil; benevolence is its cure. In no heart is benevolence more beautiful than in youthful woman's. Inno heart is selfishness more ugly. To do good is noble; to be good isnobler. This should be the aim of all young women. The poor and needyshould occupy a large place in their hearts. The sick and sufferingshould move upon their sympathies. The sinful and criminal should awakentheir deepest pity. The oppressed and down-trodden should find a largeplace in their compassion. How blessed is woman on errands of mercy! Howsweet are her soothing words to the disconsolate! How consoling hertears of sympathy to the mourning! How fresh her spirit of hope to thediscouraged! How soft her hand to the sick! How balmy the breath of herlove to the oppressed! Woman appears in one of her loveliest aspectswhen she appears as the practical follower of Him who "went about doinggood. " The young woman who does these works of practical benevolence iseducating her moral powers in the school of earnest and glorious life. She is laying the foundations for a noble and useful womanhood. She isplanting the seeds of a charity that will grow to bless and save thesuffering of our fellow-men. In no other way can she so successfullycultivate the virtue of benevolence. It is not enough that she pity thesorrows of the poor and suffering. Her hand must be taught to heed thepleadings of her pitying heart. What she feels, she must do. What shewishes, she must make an effort to accomplish. What she prays for, shemust strive to attain. Everybody predicts a beautiful life from agood-doing young woman. 

Active and cheerful should be every young woman's efforts for theneedy. Thus will she make to herself a large heart of benevolence, anddraw 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 andtruthfully said, "The two most beautiful things in the universe are thestarry heavens above our heads and the sentiment of duty in the humansoul. " Few objects are richer for the contemplation of a trulyhigh-minded man than a young woman who lives, acts, speaks, and exertsher powers from an enlightened conviction of duty; in whose soul thevoice of duty is the voice of God. In such women there is a mighty forceof moral power. Though they may be gentle as the lamb, or retiring andmodest in their demeanor, there is in them what commands respect, whatenforces esteem. They are the strong women. The sun is not truer to hiscourse than they to theirs. They are reliable as the everlasting rocks. Every day finds in them the same beautiful, steady, moral firmness. Menlook to them with a confidence that knows no doubt. They are fearlessand 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 willdo 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 themildest and meekest we have. They are sweet as the flower, while theyare firm as the rock. We know them by their lives. They are consistent, simple-hearted, uniform, and truthful. The word on the tongue is theexact speech of the heart. The expression they wear is the spirit theybear. Their parlor demeanor is their kitchen and closet manner. Theircourtesy abroad is their politeness at home. Their confiding converse issuch as the world may hear and respect them the more for it. Such arethe 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 shouldcultivate. Nothing will more surely secure confidence and esteem. Thereis especial need of such cultivation, for young women are doubted inmany respects more generally than any other class of people. Most peopleseldom think of believing many things they hear from the lips of youngwomen, so little is genuine integrity cultivated among them. I am sorryto make such a remark. I wish truth did not compel it. 

I would that young women would cultivate the strictest regard for truthin all things; in small as well as in important matters. Exaggeration orfalse coloring is as much a violation of integrity as a directfalsehood. Equivocation is often falsehood. Deception in all forms isopposed 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 affectionare the out-growth of confidence. She who secures the firmestconfidence will secure the most respect and love. No love is lasting butthat which rests in confidence. Confidence can only be secured byintegrity. The young woman with a high sense of duty will always secureconfidence, and having this, she will secure respect, affection, andinfluence. 

The fourth virtue of inestimable value which the young woman shouldcultivate is _piety_. This may be regarded as the crown of all moralvirtues. It is that which sanctifies the rest. It is a heavenly sun inthe moral firmament, shedding a divine luster through the soul--a balmy, hallowing light, sweeter than earth can give. Piety is the meek-eyedmaid of heaven, that holds her sister Faith in one hand and Hope in theother, and looks upward with a confiding smile, saying, "My treasure isabove. " Of all the influences wrought in the human soul, the work ofpiety is the most harmonizing and divine. It subdues the flesh and theworld, and calls down Heaven to bless the happy pietist. It is theconstant, ever-speaking voice of the Father uttering in sublime andbeautiful impressions the holy eloquence of his everlasting love. It isthe communing ground of the mortal child with the immortal Parent. Inthe mind of youthful woman it is as beautiful as it can be anywhere. Andwhen she consecrates all her powers by the laying on of its heavenlyhands, and sanctifies all her feelings by its hallowed influences, sheexhibits a view of beauty--of physical, moral, and spiritual beauty--notelsewhere surpassed on earth. A deep, pervading, all-controlling pietyis the highest attainment of man on earth. It is that reverent, humble, grateful, affectionate, and virtuous purity of spirit in which the humanand divine meet and embrace each other. It is the spiritual crown whichmen put on when they go into the kingdom of heaven. This is what we urgeas the last and finishing excellency of the youthful female character. The cultivation of this is what we press as conferring mortal perfectionof character, or as great perfection as frail, sinful creatures can puton below "the mansions of the skies. "

We urge it as the best and highest duty of every young woman--a duty sheowes to herself, her fellows, and her God--a duty as full of joys as theheavens are of stars, and when performed, reflecting matchless graceupon 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 ownintrinsic worth; for the blessedness of being pious; for the excellencyand worth of character and life it confers. No character is completetill it is swayed and elevated by genuine piety. No heart is fully happytill it is imbued with the spirit of piety. No life is all it may andshould be till its motives are baptized in the waters of piety. No soulis saved till it is transformed by the gracious spirit of this daughterof the skies. This divine grace of the soul should be sought by everyyoung woman, and cultivated with the most assiduous care, for without itshe is destitute of the highest beauty and divinest charm and power ofwomanhood. 

II. Thus cultured and growing morally, the young woman should not forgetto develop her social nature by the hand of prudent culture. She is madeto love; not only to love one being, but all her fellows. Around kindredspirits should be linked the chain of friendship, and this chain shouldbe kept bright by gentle and confiding usage. Nothing is more properthan 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 islovely; but as to what is lovely we often differ. What is lovely to oneis not always lovely to another. But there are qualities of mind andheart that are intrinsically lovely, and about which there can be nodifference of opinion. What is virtuous, good, amiable, high-minded, generous, self-sacrificing and pure, we all admire. What goes to make aperfect character, a moralist, a Christian, a wise man or woman, isagreeable to us all. Now this is what we should love. This is what weshould seek in our friends. It is not a beautiful person, or bland andpolite manners, or any thing that belongs to the exterior being that weshould love. It is inward worth and beauty--loveliness of spirit. Aroundthe soul should be woven the cords of friendship and love. The outwardis deceitful and perishing. The inward is true and lasting. Ouraffections should be taught to fix themselves on the inward. Where wesee inward beauty, there we should fix the seal of our friendship. Andour affections should be taught to conform to this rule. No matter howattractive 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 ouraffections in the social intercourse of life. Young women can not be tooparticular in obeying this rule. Their moral and spiritual life, theirvalue in the world, their well-being and happiness depend upon it. Iftheir affections are not brought to act wisely, to cling to the good andthe true of soul, they will yield them untold misery. If they love thegood, 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, foremployment. Activity is the life of us all. To do and to bear is theduty of life. We know that Employment makes the man in a very greatmeasure. A man with no Employment, nothing to do, is scarcely a man. Thesecret of making men is to put them to work, and keep them at it. It isnot study, not instruction, not careful moral training, not goodparents, nor good society that makes men. These are means; but back ofthese 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 hardenshis muscles, strengthens his body, quickens his blood, sharpens hismind, corrects his judgment, wakes up his inventive genius, puts hiswits 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'swork, bear a man's part in life, and show himself a man in that part. Noman feels himself a man who is not doing a man's business. A man withoutEmployment is not a man. He does not prove by his works that he is aman. He can not act a man's part. A hundred and fifty pounds of bone andmuscle is not a man. A good cranium full of brains is not a man. Thebone and muscle and brain must know how to act a man's part, do a man'swork, think a man's thoughts, mark out a man's path, and bear a man'sweight of character and duty before they constitute a man. A man is abody and soul in action. A statue if well dressed may _appear_ to be aman; so may a human being. But to _be_ a man and _appear_ to be are twovery different things. Human beings _grow_; men are _made_. The beingthat grows to the stature of a man is not a man till he is made one. Thegrand instrumentality of man-making is Employment. The world has longsince learned that men can not be made without Employment. Hence it setsits boys to work--gives them trades, callings, professions--puts theinstruments of man-making into their hands and tells them to work outtheir 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 boyswho are put to no business, the young men who have nothing to do, themale beings that have no Employment. We have them about us--walkingnuisances--pestilential gas-bags--fetid air-bubbles, who burst and aregone. Our men of wealth and character, of worth and power, have beenearly bound to some useful Employment. Many of them were unfortunateorphan boys, whom want compelled to work for bread--the children ofpenury and lowly birth. In their early boyhood they buckled on the armorof labor, took upon their little shoulders heavy burdens, assumedresponsibilities, met fierce circumstances, contended with sharpopposition, chose the ruggedest paths of Employment because they yieldedthe best remuneration, and braved the storms of toil till they won greatvictories for themselves and stood before the world in the beauty andmajesty of noble manhood. This is the way men are made. There is noother way. Their powers are developed in the field of Employment. 

Men are not born; they are made. Genius, worth, power of mind are moremade than born. Genius born may grovel in the dust; genius made willmount to the skies. Our great and good men that stand along the paths ofhistory bright and shining lights are witnesses of these truths. Theystand there as everlasting pleaders for Employment. Now what is true ofmen in this respect is equally true of women. If Employment is theinstrumentality in making men, it is equally so in making women. A humanfemale is not a woman till she makes herself so. There is somethingnoble, glorious, in a woman. She is the impersonation of spiritualbeauty. But all females are not women. There are scores of them who areonly female humanities; and scores more who are only _ladies_. A ladyand a woman are two very different things. One is made at the hands offashion; the other is the handiwork of God through the instrumentalityof useful Employment. A lady is a parlor ornament, a walkingshow-gallery, a mistress of tongue-tied etiquette. A woman is aconsecrated intelligence--a love baptized--a hand employed in the workof good. To be a woman requires exertion and prudence. Women are notborn; neither do they grow up of themselves; they are made. Theirvirtues blossom in the garden of industry. Their fruits ripen on theboughs of toil. Their treasures grow on the tree of labor. A woman withnothing to do can not develop a truthful womanhood. A woman with noEmployment for her hands or mind can be only the shadow of a woman. Whatis 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; justas ignoble in woman as in man. No woman of health and sound mind shouldallow herself to be or feel dependent on any body for her living. Thesick are always dependent, though they have wealth at their command. Butthe well should never be dependent. To eat and wear the fruits ofanother's labor, tends to degradation. To feel that one is shining inborrowed plumes and eating the bread of dependence, is degrading to anoble mind. A noble mind will not willingly do it. The want ofEmployment, and the dependence of many women, have ruined theircharacters and made them little else than nuisances to their fellow-men. Thousands of women have no Employment, and live through life in a stateof abject dependence. What are they, what can they be, under suchcircumstances? It requires Employment to develop men, why should not itto develop women? Dependent men are ninnies, why should not dependentwomen be? Where is the difference between the male and female mind, thatone should be expected to be noble and magnanimous under circumstanceswhich would be ruinous to the other? We know that a young man thrownupon his own resources is more likely to be a great, good man than whencradled upon the lap of luxury or fortune. Why is it? Simply because heseeks 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. Plantan acorn in the crevice of a barren rock, and it will strike down itsroots and send them out in search of fastening places till it willsurround the rock with a net of clinging fibers; and as the winds growfiercer and the storms howl wilder, the oak will strike deeper and widerits anchoring roots. It will brace itself to meet the emergencies of itslife. It will nerve its energies to stand its ground. It will gathervigor from every storm, resolution from every wind, strength from everydefiant bolt from heaven. 

So it is with man. Place him on his feet in a hard place, where the sunsof life strike hotly upon him, and the storms blow fiercely, where hemust stand by his own strength or fall, and he will grow into strengthby the very pressure of adverse circumstances. Every blow of his ownwill give it strength; every effort of his mind will give it vigor;every trial of his character will knit firmer its binding fibers. Thisis equally true of woman. Her character is formed and her powerdeveloped in a similar way. A woman can no more be a true woman than aman can be a true man without Employment and self-reliance. I would haveevery boy and girl in the whole country taught to make their own livingat some useful Employment; to mark out for themselves a sphere of actionand then fill that sphere; to be useful in some honorable pursuit. Iwould not put the boys to trades and professions to make them great andgood, and fold up the girls' hands and lay them away in the drawer orshut them up in the parlor. I would not make the boys self-reliant andvigorous by generous Employment, and the girls weak, puny, and dependentby idleness or folly. I would not give the boys opportunities to developtheir powers and become noble men, and deprive the girls of all theseglorious privileges. I would not open a thousand avenues to distinction, wealth, and worth to the boys and comparatively none to the girls. Iwould not send the boys out into the field of life bravely to earn theirown living, and grow strong in doing it, and the girls out to beg theirliving of the boys, and grow weak and worthless in their dependentbeggary. I like the girls too well to have them thus mistreated. I wouldgive them just as good a chance as the boys have. They should not bedegraded with half-pay, and only two or three ways to get a living, justbecause they were made to be women. They should not be shut out from athousand avenues of distinction and usefulness, for they are richlyendowed, just because they are made to be women. They should not be madeto feel that it is degrading to be a woman, to feel, as a man expressedit to me the other day, that "women are such good-for-nothingcreatures. " I love noble, "strong-minded, " and strong-hearted women. Iwish we had more of them. I know of no way to make them but to give ourgirls more active Employment. Every girl should have a trade, abusiness, a profession, or some honorable and useful way of gaining alivelihood--some Employment in which her powers of body and mind may beamply developed. If she has not, she will be dependent upon somebody, and her dependence will degrade her; and her want of Employment willkeep her a half-developed specimen of humanity. 

If I had half-a-dozen boys, and should let them grow up in play aroundmy house and on the streets, in visiting, gossiping, dressing, riding, dancing, asking nothing of them only to bring me my slippers, or someoccasional act of kindness now and then, my neighbors would all cry outagainst me, declaring that I was spoiling my boys. They would denouncemy course as absolute unkindness to the boys; would declare that theynever would be any thing with such a miserable training. And yet myneighbors treat their girls in just this way. Now if it will spoil theboys, 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 withsuch a training, how can the girls be?

If the present generation of boys should be reared just as we arerearing our girls, what a puny race of men we should have with which tocommence the next century! Men complain that women are such weak, good-for-nothing creatures that they are only fit to be wives andmothers. Now it seems to me that no woman is fit to be a wife and motheruntil she is a strong, self-reliant woman, both bodily and mentally. Itake it that the more vigorous a woman's body and mind are, the bettershe is qualified to fulfill the duties of wife and mother. 

I take it that the more self-reliant and independent a woman is, thebetter she is qualified to be a helpmate for her husband, and a wise andjudicious counselor for her children. I take it that dignity ofcharacter, power of action, resolute will, commanding judgment, steadytemper of mind, strong inward resources, are as essential in a good wifeand mother as in a good husband and father. In a word, I take it thatall that is noble, dignified, useful, and beautiful in character andlife, is as essential in women as in men. If so, then why not give womanopportunities such as are necessary to develop her powers and form hercharacter? Those opportunities can not be given without Employment. Wecan 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 hasnothing to accomplish, whose hands are idle, whose mind has nothing onwhich to fix its energies--who, in a word, spends a listless, triflinglife--how can such a woman possess weight of character, force of mind, or mental worth? When God calls for her stewardship, how can she answerwith any honor to herself? When she comes to see her soul disrobed ofmortality, how naked and undeveloped it will look!

It appears to me that every young woman should aim to be something anddo something. Her powers of mind and body should be applied to a goodend. Her hands should be set to some useful employment and made skillfulin 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 mostsuccessfully to herself and her fellows. If our young women feel thatthey can sell tape and pins, set type or make shoes, keep books ormanage a telegraph office; if they can keep a bakery or a dry-goodsstore, direct a Daguerreian gallery, or do any thing else that is rightand proper to be done, let them not hesitate to do it. Let themaccomplish themselves in the art or business that to them seems mostagreeable, and set up for themselves. They will be a thousand times morehappy and useful than in leading listless and thriftless lives. The kindof Employment is not a matter of so much importance as the fact of beingemployed. Our boys choose their occupations; so should our girls. Butthey should always choose to do something that is useful. Our homes arefull of necessary and useful employments. Our girls should engage inthem with zeal. 

No matter if they are rich. They need Employment just as much. A richyoung man is not excused from business--from acting nobly his part inlife, and doing something worthy of a man. And if he excuses himself hewill only be despised by the community in which he lives. We allunderstand 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 excuseherself? Idleness is the ruin of her body and mind; Employment will giveboth activity and strength. She will be wiser, better, happier by beingemployed in something that will benefit herself and the world. We have astrange 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, andhoused, and posted about in carriages, waited upon and petted as thoughthey were made for nothing else. It is horridly vulgar for such youngwomen to work. It would be a violation of propriety for them to beuseful. They would lose caste if they should engage in any usefulemployment. So they must be useless appendages, hung about the body ofhumanity to torment themselves and as many others as they can. What atorment it must be to them to lead such aimless lives, studying all thewhile for some new way to kill time! How many women there are over whoseheads time drags heavily! They have nothing to do. The dull round ofsociety is irksome. They have stood at the toilet till every thing thereis fatiguing. They have talked over and over their little round offashionable nonsense. They are weary of their monotonous, inactive, inglorious life. Thousands are the women in easy circumstances who feelthus. They would be glad to lift up their hands and do something, butthe chains of custom and fashion are upon them. A false social positionhas made them timid and fearful. I know that many noble women are wearyof such a life. They are tired of being dolls. They would be glad to bewomen and fill the places of useful, energetic, resolute women. 

The position of dependence in which society places its wealthy and easycircumstanced women is directly calculated to destroy theirself-reliance and force of character. They are attended by servantswherever they go, who do what they ought to do, and often think whatthey ought to think. The woman who always asks her servant to do whatshe may do herself, soon becomes dependent upon and loses a good portionof herself in her servant. If my servant eats my dinner for me, he getsthe 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 mayand ought to do myself for my own good, he receives the benefit while Ilose it. Thus it is that this system of servitude in all its forms tendsto degrade the party to whom the service is done. To have done for uswhat it is best we should do ourselves always injures us. If we haveduties to perform, and hire or command another to perform them, we robourselves of one of the richest blessings that can come to a mortalbeing--the consciousness of having performed a duty and the improvementgained by its performance. Thousands of women in our country are greatlyinjured by the presence of their servants. Servants do for them whatthey ought to do for themselves. They acquire the habit of dependence, and it soon degenerates them into petty tyrants. If I had but twolessons to impress upon the young women of my generation, the firstshould be that a useful Employment is the primary means of developing atrue womanhood. 

I know there is an antipathy to labor among a large class of women; Iknow that women as well as men seek to avoid care and responsibility; Iknow that useful Employments are looked upon as hard necessities, to beavoided 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, butfor honorable, mind-developing, soul-redeeming, heart-adorningEmployment. Both men and women are made better by useful Employment. Life is given for Employment; our powers are made for activity. If Godhad 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 atour hands. But not so. He has made all that is grand in life, that isglorious in thought, depend upon our own exertions. This is as true ofwomen as of men. Then the idler is a leech on himself--his owndespoiler. An idle woman is as base a thing as an idle man. She was madefor 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 itis vulgar to be useful; that delicate hands are evidences of ladyship. They ought to know that a delicate hand is an evidence of a shallowbrain; that a soft hand is an evidence of a soft head. Ladyship andwomanhood 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 ofgood. It is made in the field of noble Employment. 

I seek to elevate woman. I look to her elevation as the elevation of therace. 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 lifelived but in active and useful Employment. Woman ought to stand by man'sside in all that is great and good in thought and action. The history ofevery country should have as much to record of woman as of man; but thiscan never be until woman's field of Employment is extended. She must goout 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 herindustry and judgment. I would not make woman unwomanly, but would crownher with all the grace and dignity of true female worth. I look touseful Employment as the best and only means of securing this end. Idleness will not make any woman womanly. Ignorance of business and theworld will not. In the pursuit of their own elevation let them learn howto be true to themselves and their duties, and we shall soon have ageneration of women such as the world has never seen--of strong, brave, accomplished, and useful women whom history will record as thebenefactors 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 wouldbe worthy of devoutest attention. I believe that there are three thingsof universal interest among men--_Mother_, _Home_, _and Heaven_. In allages and countries mother has been a sacred word. It has laid on theheart of childhood like a dew-drop on the rose, sweetening andrefreshing it. A man loves to think of his mother; of her watchful care, her tender vigils, her holy charity, her forgiving goodness, hermatchless and marvelous love. 

What a great refreshing fountain of life is a mother's love! We all turnto it as the heart's common resting-place. We love to think of ourmothers. They loved us with such a deep devotion; did, and sacrificed, and suffered so much for us; were so unselfish and ready to forgive, sovividly alive to our interests, and felt their beings so intertwinedwith ours that we feel that we must love them. It is the last andlowest ingratitude of a human heart not to love its mother. God made themother. Such love is Heaven's work. Not in angels' hearts beats asweeter, deeper, richer feeling. Mother is another name for consecratedlove. Not all the theologians in the world could convince me that thenatural mother-heart is not holy. I have seen too deeply into my ownmother's soul; I have felt too much of the fire of her deathless love; Ihave witnessed too many evidences of its immaculate purity to believe itinherently depraved. I have always felt that it was a slander againstour own mother to believe the mother-heart naturally corrupt. Yes, allthe mother is holy. God loves the mother for what she is. She is areflection of himself. The gates of his everlasting Home will neverclose against a mother. Though she may be wicked in other respects, inher maternal heart lives a germ of the tree of life which can neverwholly die. What love sometimes beams in a wicked mother's heart! Allmothers are alike. The wise and the foolish, the idiotic andphilosophic, the rich and poor, the cultivated and barbaric, are all thesame in love; the same beautiful, tender, forgiving spirit of devotedaffection dwells in all. Oh, see the mother as she gazes fondly upon herchild; as she feeds him from her breast; as she watches by his sickcouch; as she counsels him to virtue and goodness; as she weeps over hiswaywardness and toils for his happiness!

All the arching glory of the moral world bows in reverence before themother's love. This is the radiant center, the focus of humanaffection. And this is the central sun of _Home_! Home has no permanentforce, no abiding stability without a mother's love. Take mother out ofHome, and the Home is gone. She is the regulator, the main-spring, thecenter around which all else revolves. How rich is every Home that hasin it a true mother! If there were no other attraction in this sacredspot, no other charm, the mother's presence would make it dear andglorious. While a mother lives, Home will be a blessed place. Then_heaven_ is another word of universal use and power. In every human soulthere lies an idea of heaven; dim and shadowy sometimes, bright andglorious at others; but yet everywhere present. The Arab wanderers, thewild 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-placefrom all that wearies or troubles. It seems as though God in goodnesshad implanted this thought in all creatures' minds as the germ ofeternal life, to cheer and support them in the shadowy hours of earthand time. Yes, the thought and hope of heaven is universal. Many mencherish ideas of hell, the very opposite of heaven; but this does notinterfere with their own hope of heaven. All men hope for heaven forthemselves. Hell is always for somebody else, if they are so unfortunateas to be tormented with so fearful and saddening a thought. And thisthought of heaven, this universal impression of a better land, aspirit-bower, so comforting, so elevating, so inspiring, grows naturallyout of our primary conceptions of Home. We all love Home--Home that isa Home--and this love enlarged by the imagination, pictured inperfection by the quick hand of Faith, consecrated by natural religion, is our idea of heaven. Heaven is Home perfected, the consummation of theheart's love of Home. In our ideas of heaven we gather our loved onesabout us just as we do in our Homes. What would heaven be to us withoutour mother, our brothers and sisters, the dear home-companions of ourhearts? It would not be heaven because it would not be Home. The heartcould not rest there. It would fly away on the quick wings of its loveto the dear absent ones. A heaven half filled would not be a heaven. Aheaven with broken families would be heaven with broken hearts. 

Every heart would pine in sadness in the loss of some of its dearones--some of its Home souls. Home-love is the germ of heaven-love. Godplants in Homes the seeds that shall bear fruit in heaven. Thus we seethat _Mother_, _Home_, and _Heaven_--these three words of such universalinterest and power--are associated and related words. They convey ablessed trinity of ideas meeting in one associated glow of spiritualbeauty. They belong together and can not be separated. They are parts ofthe same golden whole. Home, in all well-constituted minds, is alwaysassociated with moral and social excellence. The higher men rise in thescale of being, the more important and interesting is Home. The Arab orforest man may care little for his Home, but, the Christian man ofcultured heart and developed mind will love his Home, and generallylove it in proportion to his moral worth. He knows it is theplanting-ground of every seed of morality--the garden of virtue, and thenursery of religion. He knows that souls immortal are here trained forthe skies; that private worth and public character are made in itssacred retreat. To love Home with a deep and abiding interest, with aview to its elevating influence, is to love truth and right, heaven andGod. I envy not the soul that loves not Home. There is moral safety andforce in this love. Many a man who is an ornament to his family and ablessing to the world would have gone to ruin had it not been for thelove he bore his Home and its inmates. A weakness of the home-love isoften the cause of moral ruin. Many a man of strong impulses andimpetuous character has braved hardships, faced dangers, resistedtemptations which would have been too powerful for him had it not beenfor his strong love of Home. A strong love of Home in any man's heart isa triple wall of brass around his moral nature--an impregnable bulwarkagainst the assaults of moral evil. No labor is too great for the stronglovers of Home to accomplish. See them on ocean's billowy bosom; onmountains of ice and snow; on fields of bloody strife; on burningdeserts; in trackless forests; amid disease, danger, and death, bravingevery foe to life and peace, and all to fill their homes with comfortand joy. In every proper sense in which Home can be considered, it is apowerful stimulant to noble action and a high and pure morality. Sovaluable is the love of Home, that every man should cherish it as theapple of his eye. As he values his own moral worth, as he prizes hiscountry, the peace and happiness of the world; yea, more: as he valuesthe immortal interests of men, he should cherish and cultivate a strongand abiding love of Home. 

I take it that it affects our whole lives; ay, that it runs over thegrave, sweeps by death, and affects our future condition. Then is notthe idea of Home important? Shall we look thoughtlessly upon thesenurseries of immortal fruits? Shall we pollute and degrade the Homes inwhich we dwell? Shall we send out from them unholy influences to corruptthe world? These Home questions are the most important ones we canraise. Their decision is to affect us more than any decision by thesupreme authority of our country. Not all the judges in the world everdecide questions half so important and pregnant with solemn results asthose we are left to decide in our own Homes. Hence I would present thesubject of Home to young women as one in which they are as deeplyinterested as they can be in any subject. It is expected that everyyoung woman will preside over the destinies and interests of a Home. Insome way her interests, through her whole earth-life, will be connectedwith Home. Woman's nature and tastes fit her in a peculiar manner to bethe presiding genius of Home. However widely may be extended therightful sphere of woman's operations, the mass of women will findemployment and usefulness in the embossmment of their families. 

Home will always be woman's world. She will be queen over its rich andfar-stretching realms. In the studios of Home she will carve thestatuary of her moral heroism, and picture the spiritual beauty of herfaith 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, thoughshe may speak from forums, teach from college chairs, write books, filloffices of trust and profit, go on missions of truth, peace, and mercyamong her fellows, she will still love best of all places thesequestered scene of Home. I would not, either by law, or custom, orpublic opinion, confine woman's powers to the routine of domesticduties. I would open the whole world to her, and tell her to findemployment, usefulness, and happiness wherever she can; but in so doingI should feel that not a Home would be desolated; not a woman wouldbecome less a lover and blesser of Home. On the contrary, woman wouldlove her Home all the more, and make it all the purer and nobler. Shewould choose its sweet vocations, not from the stern dictation ofsociety, but from her soul's choice. Every family must have a Home; andevery Home must have a head, a heart, a guardian. Woman is nobly fittedto fill this responsible post of honor and trust; but let her do it fromchoice. Do not compel her to do it. Woman does not like compulsion. Itis not human to like compulsion. Give to woman the same freedom you doto man. Open the whole width of the field of life to her, and she willchoose with avidity her own appropriate place. She has a strong senseof propriety and a good judgment in the choice of her sphere ofactivity. 

Every young woman should early form in her mind an ideal of a _trueHome_. 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 ofluxury is not a Home. Many a flower-girt dwelling and splendid scansionlacks all the essentials of Home. A hovel is often more a Home than apalace. If the spirit of the congenial friendship link not the hearts ofthe inmates of a dwelling it is not a Home. If love reign not there; ifcharity spread not her downy mantle over all; if peace prevail not; ifcontentment be not a meek and merry dweller therein; if virtue rear nother beautiful children, and religion come not in her white robe ofgentleness to lay her hand in benediction on every head, the Home is notcomplete. 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, acarriage, and the ornaments and appendages of luxury. And if in ourlives we do not realize our ideals, we make ourselves miserable and ourfriends miserable. Half the women in our country are unhappy becausetheir Homes are not so luxurious as they wish. 

Somebody has more ornament and style about their Homes than they, and sothey worry their souls to death about it. This is one of the mostfruitful sources of disquiet in nearly all our Homes. Our women wantmore show, fashion, luxury, outward ornament than they can afford, orthan is necessary to their happiness. All around us there is a great seaof disquiet from this one cause. We forget that Homes are not made up ofmaterial things. It is not a fine house, rich furniture, a luxurioustable, a flowery garden, and a superb carriage that make a Home. Aworld-wide distance from this is a true Home. Our ideal Homes should beheart-homes, in which virtues live, and love-flowers bloom, and peaceofferings are daily brought to its altar. Our ideal Homes should be suchas we can and will make in our own lives. We should not expect Homesbetter and happier than we are. Our Homes will be sure to be much likeus. If we are good, kind, and happy, our Homes will be likely to be. Ifwe are craving, selfish, discontented, our Homes will be. If all thewealth in the world were laid at our feet and lavished on our Homes, weshould not be happier unless our hearts are better. Wealth, luxury, ornament bring care, anxiety, and a craving for more, which render themnearly 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 ofHome is a quiet, secluded spot, where loving hearts dwell, set apart anddedicated to _improvement_--to intellectual and moral improvement. It isnot a formal school of staid solemnity and rigid discipline, wherevirtue is made a task and progress a sharp necessity, but a free andeasy exercise of all our spiritual limbs, in which obedience is apleasure, discipline a joy, improvement a self-wrought delight. All theduties and labors of Home, when rightly understood, are so many means ofimprovement. Even the trials of Home (for every Home must have itstrials, and severe ones, too) are so many rounds in the ladder ofspiritual progress, if we but make them so. 

One idea concerning Home should be deeply impressed on our minds. Of allplaces in the world, Home is the most delicate and sensitive. Itssprings of action are subtle and secret. Its chords move with a breath. Its fires are kindled with a spark. Its flowers are bruised with theleast rudeness. The influence of our homes strikes so directly on ourhearts that they make sharp impressions. In our intercourse with theworld we are barricaded, and the arrows let fly at our hearts are wardedoff; but not so with us at Home. Here our hearts wear no covering, noarmor. Every arrow strikes them; every cold wind blows full upon them;every storm beats against them. What in the world we would pass by insport, in our Homes will wound us to the quick. Very little can we bearat Home. Home is a sensitive place. If we would have it a true Home, wemust guard well our words and actions. We must be honest and kind, constant and true, to the very extent of our capacity. All littleoccasions of offense and misapprehension should be avoided. Littlethings 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 totransport us with joy or sting us with anguish. If we would make ourHomes what they should be, we must attend faithfully to the littlethings which make them so. 

Our life abroad is but a reflex of what it is at Home. We make ourselvesin a great manner at Home. This is especially true of woman. The womanwho is rude, coarse, and vulgar at home, can not be expected to beamiable, chaste, and refined in the world. Her Home habits will stick toher. She can not shake them off. They are woven into the web of herlife. Her Home language will be first on her tongue. Her Home by-wordswill come out to mortify her just when she wants most to hide them inher heart. Her Home vulgarities will show their hideous forms to shockher most when she wants to appear her best. Her Home coarseness willappear most when she is in the most refined circles, and appearing therewill 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 willappear abroad. If she attempts to appear otherwise, everybody will soonsee through the attempt. We can not cheat the world long about our realcharacters. The thickest and most opaque mask we can put on will soonbecome 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 towhat she is not, believes her pretense is not understood. Other peoplelaugh in their sleeves at her foolish pretension. If young women werewhat they ought to be at Home, they would never have to put on a maskwhen they go into company. How uncomfortable it must be to have to coverup the Home character the moment we appear in the world! Nothing shouldbe said or done at Home that would make us appear in a bad light in theworld. If this one rule is constantly kept, how pleasant will be ourHomes, how proper our habits, how beautiful our lives! How easy andgraceful will become our Home manners, how elegant and appropriate ourHome language, how pure and lovely our Home characters! Home excellencesare 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 theskies. A Home woman of worth is the most beautiful and lovely woman inthe world. A Home character is the one that will stand the scrutiny ofthe All-Seeing Eye. If these were the last words I had to say to youngwomen, I would say, Be at Home what you would be abroad; what you oughtto be everywhere; what all good people would have you; what God requiresyou 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 weightyimportance. It relates to some of the dearest interests of ourearth-life, gathers within itself some of the holiest affections of ourhearts, and places before the bars of our consciences some of the mostserious questions of practical morality and religion. Man and woman area related pair. God has made them so. The relation they bear to eachother is a divine one. It takes hold of the heart of life. It spans ourwhole manhood. It enters into our hopes, aims, and prospects. It holdsits scepter over our business, our amusements, our philosophy, andreligion. Its sphere is larger than we at first imagine. The relation isdeeper and broader than we have yet comprehended. It lies in the verybeing of every man and every woman. There is in humanity two grandprimary and universal principles of being--the masculine and feminine. They bear such a relation to each other that the one is essential to theaction of the other. They mutually electrify and empower each other. Itis in this mysterious relation that Infinite Wisdom has laid the springsof animate being. If any one mystery of our existence is deeper than anyother, it is that which lies in the solemn depths of this relation. Weought to approach it wrapt in reverential awe and wonder. We look out onthe earth in its brilliant beauty and teeming activity, and up to theheavens in their gorgeous glory and magnificent movements, and areoppressed with profound astonishment at what we behold. Yet all this wecan in a measure comprehend. At least the secondary causes of thephysical universe are clear to our minds. We can measure them with theline of mathematics; we can weigh them in the balance of reason. Butwhen we turn in upon ourselves we meet a universe ten thousand timesmore wonderful and glorious, yet wrapt in the deep mystery of spiritualbeing. It is practical irreverence not to look upon our relations withreligious respect. Of all these relations, the one between man and womantakes the most direct held of our practical life and enters most largelyinto the details of our purposes and thoughts. Men and women live in andfor each other more than for any thing else. The fact stands out on theface of human society. We must take the fact as we find it. We did notmake human nature; hence we have no right to complain of it. Ourbusiness is to comprehend it so far as possible and seek to keep it inthe path of its design and destiny. Our morality and religion should beadapted to our nature. They should meet the every-day wants of men. 

The philosopher, the moralist, and the minister should aim at practicalutility in all their labors, and men and women should study carefullythe great book of every-day life. The relation of men and women to eachother is one of the most important lessons in that book. If we would bewise, useful, or happy, we must understand at least the _duties_ growingout of this relation. If we would bless mankind or please God, we mustfulfill these duties. I have but little faith in any philosophy orreligion that would shun the walks of practical life. We have too muchethereal philosophy and spasmodic religion. Men reason profoundly aboutetherealities, and go into ecstasies about glory and joy to come. Thismay be all well enough, but I submit whether it would not be better toreason how to live well the life that now is, and how to sanctify itwith the redeeming presence of the spirit of the lowly Jesus. Our chiefconcern is with this life. If we make it right, no harm can come to usin 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 ofthem are to be performed with religious sincerity and joy. To me God isin our present life, walking with us daily and entreating us to walkwith him. I see His arrangement in the relation of man and woman. I feelhis benediction in the joy and blessed influence that arise from thisrelation. I can not consider it or enjoy it in any other than areligious sense. Nor can I conceive of any true religion in the heart ofhim who practically sinks this relation to a level with sensualism orfolly. I hear almost daily from the lips of professedly religious menand women, language and thoughts on this subject which bespeak a carnalheart and an unsanctified mind. They treat the relation with levity. They make it a practical joke. They look at it through carnal eyes, andlisten to its language with carnal ears. Their whole conception andpractical understanding of it is sensuous. I have but little confidencein their religion. It is only an emotion of the heart. It has neversanctified the conscience nor consecrated the life. 

With these introductory remarks let us observe in the first place, thatthe most potent influence that bears on our earth-life grows out of thisrelation. This is a fact standing out boldly on the face of life. Andthis influence is more powerful in refined and cultured life than insavage and primitive existence. As individuals, nations, and racesadvance in the arts, principles, and culture of civilization, theinfluence of the sexes becomes more general and irresistible. So far asa people advance morally, religiously, and spiritually, this influencebecomes more direct, constant, and powerful. The truest men and thetruest women we have are most under each other's influence. They bowmost reverently in each other's presence and entertain the highestopinions of each other. Their feelings toward each other are most pureand truthful. One of the most intellectual, religious, and refined womenthat it has been my privilege to meet in life's sequestered vale, whilespeaking in a private conversation, made this significant remark: "Nextto my God do I adore man, for he is God's best image. " She was amatronly woman about sixty years of age, who had tasted life's full cupand been blessed by its richest and most profound experiences, and whosaid of her religion: "For twenty-five years it has been my meat and mydrink. " It is a joy and a blessing never to be forgotten to have knownsuch a woman. The best men I have ever known, considered both inrelation to their spiritual experiences and their influence in life, have joyfully and reverently expressed their feelings of profoundrespect and sacred affection for woman, confessing that, under God, shehad wrought in them a mission of redeeming love. So frequent have beensimilar expressions both from men and women in the highest spiritual andpractical walks in life, and so clear and strong has been theirexperience, that it can not be doubted that the influence of man andwoman upon each other is potent and penetrating in proportion to theirdegree of refinement and spiritual culture. The tendency of moraltraining and religious discipline are to strengthen and elevate thisinfluence. 

Woman improves in man's view as her nature is cultivated and her soulblessed with sanctifying influences. Man grows in woman's sight as hismind is developed and his heart subdued. They mutually exert a higherand deeper influence over each other by their progress in things goodand true. If I am correct in this, it presents us with a stronginducement to develop our best powers and live our best lives, that ourmental 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 theywould secure the deepest respect and holiest friendship of the young menwith whom they associate, they must themselves be refined, elevated, andnoble in their characters and lives. If they would exert their bestinfluence upon young men, and benefit them most by their associationwith 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 adepraved man _feel_ that he stands in the presence of pure, cultivatedwomanhood, around which is wrapped the mantle of Jesus, and throughwhich breathes the spirit of his holy religion, and he will be ashamedof himself, and long to be sufficiently pure and elevated to commune insacred friendship with her spirit. Oh, if young women could only realizethe moral powers which they could gather up within themselves, and wieldover their male associates in all the walks of life, by a properdevelopment of their minds and hearts, and a truthful submission to theprinciples of moral right, how different would they be, and how changedwould be the face of young society! That young women do wield a mightyinfluence over young men we admit; but it is not so great nor so good asit 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 rebukebut very little the evil doings of their male associates. They chide notthe waywardness of young men as they ought. They smile upon them intheir villainy. They court the society of young men they have everyreason to believe are corrupt. They will meet without a shudder ordisapproving frown, in the ball-room and the private circle, men whomthey know would glory in being the instrument of the moral ruin of anywoman. Young women who claim to be good, and who would not for a fortunebe guilty of a moral impropriety, often wreathe the villain's way insmiles. 

Young men in "high life" can smoke and chew, drink and swear, in woman'spresence, and she turns not away in disgust nor rebukes them with a cutof their acquaintance. There are a large class of young women who onlyask 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 theyonly keep straight in the ladies' presence, it is all that is asked. Nowthere is by far too much of this low state of morality among youngwomen. I say among young women, because if their moral feelings werewhat they should be, they would not associate with such young men. Theywould not enroll them on their list of friends. They would not knowtheir names; would not recognize them when they met. I have noconfidence in the moral sense of young women who will acknowledge suchassociates. The very first duty which women owe to young men is todemand of them a higher standard of morality. I say _demand_. Theyshould peremptorily demand it. Young women should erect the standard foryoung men which young men have erected for them. Young men who have anyrespect for themselves will not associate with women that chew, andsmoke, and swear, and get drunk--those whose morals are low and base. They spurn such associates from them. Let young women do the same. Letthem say to the young men, "You shall not do the things you prohibit usfrom doing; you shall not, behind our backs, do things you would despiseus for doing; you shall not bring into our society characters from whichyou know every honest and pure woman ought to recoil as she would from abasilisk; you shall not breathe into our faces the pestiferous breath ofthe drunkard, nor burden our ears with the hateful sound of theblasphemer; you must be what you would have us, or you must be out ofour society. " Let young women talk thus and act thus, and true young menwill respect them all the more. No woman is respected more for smilingon the villain. He himself despises her for it. The truth is, oursociety is corrupt on this subject. _Men_ are permitted to do withimpunity what would blast a woman's reputation for life. A man may becoarse, vulgar, and wicked, and society admits him to all itsprivileges, and good women will meet him on terms of equality. Societycan never be what it should be till the same standard of morality andpropriety is established for men and women. It is woman's duty toestablish such a standard--a duty she owes to man. She does man an actof injustice when she accepts him as an associate at the sacrifice ofher moral dignity. It is her duty to rebuke his evil course. It iskindness to him to do it. 

Young women can not do a bad man a greater evil than to associate withhim on terms of moral equality. All young women should show by theirwords and actions that they have a deep and holy respect for moralworth; that they will demand it in their associates. Such a course wouldinspire a greater respect for them in the minds of young men, and give ahigher tone to the moral feelings of our youth. 

It is a well-settled conviction of my mind that society separates toomuch its male and female youth. In our schools our boys and girls areseparated. Almost the entire course of education is pursued in sexualisolation. The girls are taught that it is not pretty to be with theboys, and the boys that is not manly to be with the girls; and yet bothare anxious for each other's society. In this unnatural and unhappystate, their imaginations are left to fill up the void made by theseparation. Imagination seldom does such work well. I believe it is thegrand corrupter of youth. The brother and sister should grow up togetherin the same family, be educated at the same school, engage in the samesports, and, so far as practical, in the same labors. Their joys andsorrows, tastes and aims, should be mutual so far as possible. The samemoral lessons, the same moral obligations and duties should bear uponthem. The moral standard for the girl should be the moral standard forthe boy, and he should be made to feel that the moment he falls below ithe is unworthy, and must not expect her confidence and society. It is asad error that the youth of our towns and country are separated in somany of the most important duties of life. They are permitted to cometogether only for sport and nonsense. Their study and work are separate. Hence the good influence which they ought to have upon each other is ina great measure lost. They are unacquainted with each other. They knownot each other's natures. They have but little interest in each other'sbusiness and duties. They meet only to cajole and deceive each other. They wear masks in each other's presence. For this state of things noone in particular is to blame, but every one in general. It is the faultof society. Now it seems to me to be a duty of every young woman to seekto correct this state of things, by acquainting herself as far aspossible with the interests and business of young men that she may seekto benefit them by her approval of what is right and condemnation ofwhat is wrong. 

If woman was more intimately acquainted with the life, duty, hopes, andaims of man, with his business, his education, his sharp encounters, histrials and temptations, she could be of much more service to himintellectually, morally, and socially. I do not believe in the presentisolation of woman from man's business, ambition, and hope. Woman mightbe a perpetual inspiration to man to act nobly his part in the theaterof life if she knew that part and was more deeply interested in it. Andhere is just where young women can be of great service to young men. Innearly all young men there is more or less of noble ambition, ofpraiseworthy aim for an active and useful life. Some wish to fill postsof honor and trust in their country's service; some would win respectand honor in some of the learned professions; some would seek esteem andcompetency in the schools of art; some would lay the foundations of anoble life in mechanism; some in agriculture; some in commerce. Theavocations are many, but the spirit, the aim, the ambition is one. Inthese avocations young men expect to make their fortunes, win theirfame, work out their good, and do their life-work. If young women hadtheir hearts in these things, saw the true end of life, and would enterinto the young man's plans and hopes, they might cheer and animate, encourage and empower, thousands of young men who otherwise will makegrand failures of life. How little encouragement, how little counsel andcheer do young men now get from their young female associates! Whatyoung woman enters heartily into the best aims and highest hopes of theyoung man with whom she associates?

What young woman watches with anxious and benevolent solicitude theyoung men about her, in relation to their success and progress in thevocations and pursuits to which their lives are wedded, and from whichtheir fortunes, characters, and spiritual good are in no small degree tobe made? Our young women are too childish and trifling in theirthoughts and intercourse with young men. They seek to dissipate ratherthan benefit them; or, if they do not seek it, their intercourse tendsto dissipation. It should not be so. All of woman's influence shouldtend to elevate man. He is bad enough, do all she can for him. The hoursshe spends with him should be for his inspiration; to make him moreactive 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. Itinjures both parties. Woman exerts a great influence over man. Sheshould see to it that that influence is good. She should encourage himin all his intellectual pursuits, throw the whole weight of herinfluence upon his moral nature, resolutely demand a good life at hishands, and electrify his laudable purposes with the strength of herholiest prayer. She may be to him an angel of redeeming mercy. She maymagnetize his soul with strength. She may gird him with the armor ofreligion and make him a soldier of the Cross, braver than Cęsar andmightier than Napoleon. But to do it she must herself be strong in theright. She must be panoplied in the armor of spiritual warfare. She mustbe a true woman, girded and crowned with the royalty of noble womanhood. Being this, she must ask her brother to wear the royal badge ofhigh-toned manhood. Let young women learn how men are made; how, byindustry, labor, prudence, perseverance in the common vocations of life, and by a strict adherence to rectitude and goodness they grow to beuseful and great, and then they may become ministers of good to therising manhood of our country. 

I have great hopes in young woman. The destinies of the generations tocome are not a little in her hands. In the stirring times that arebefore us she must act a noble part. Her pen, her voice, her power willmove upon the world. Every young woman will do something in thismovement. Let her determine to do her part well; to be a true woman; tolead a true life; to exert a true influence on mankind in the fear ofGod 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 treatingit we feel impressed with its solemn and practical importance. Talk ofMarriage as we will, it is a serious and stern reality. It takes us bythe hand and leads us into the great temple of life where duties standministering around the solemn altar, and the baptism of love is followedby the quick discipline of trial. Young, single existence is but thevestibule of real life, where anticipation weaves a golden web, bearingbut a faint resemblance to the web of actual life. The youthfulimagination is apt to dress the institution of Marriage in too manygarlands, and to consider it full of ethereal joys and paradisaicalblessedness such as can exist only in the chambers of an untaught fancy. That the natural fruitage of true Marriage is peace and blessedness is apleasing fact which we can not contemplate but with delight, and forwhich we can not be too grateful. But it must always be understood thatthe joys of marriage are natural, and such as grow out of theperformance of duty and a life of truthfulness. They are conditionedupon obedience to the matrimonial laws. It is not all the married thatare happy. If you would find misery double-distilled, you may find it inawful and ruinous abundance among the married who entered their reallife in the whirl of enthusiastic delight. There is every possibledegree of anguish in the married life, from the unbreathed unrest of thethinly clouded soul to the terrible grief that breaks out in louddenunciations and open and disgusting conflict. And could you draw backthe vail that hides the privacies of this life, and see the black wavesof distrust and the deep waters of disquietude that cast up mire anddirt continually, which roll and heave in constant commotion out of theworld's sight in the seclusion of the Marriage relation, you might doubtthat the institution was ordained in mercy, and question its utility. Like every other good, it must be rightly used or it turns to evil. Thegood of good things is mostly in their use. Life is good if rightlyused, but oh, how bad when wholly abused! So with Marriage. The bestthings become instruments of the direst evil when wrested from theirtrue use. 

The first lesson to learn in relation to Marriage is, that its fruits ofpeace and joy hang on the boughs of obedience to its regulations, conformity to its laws. Who would be happy in the married life mustenter into it well and live it righteously. It has laws to be obeyed, regulations to be observed, principles to be submitted to, withoutwhich it has no joys, no elysian fields of bliss and blessedness, nobuds 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 andpress against each other, either to please or fret and chafe each other. Tastes, dispositions, feelings, either join in sweet, accordingfriendship, or rankle in disagreeable contact. Marriage is a union, intimate, strong-bound, and vitally active. The union is a compound or amixture; it is natural, congenial, pleasing, or it is forced, inharmonious, and revolting. Which it shall be we are to determinebefore we enter it. We are not to shut our eyes to reason and commonsense, and marry whoever offers. Young women who do so may live torepent it. If there is any period in a woman's whole life when hersharpest eye, her keenest apprehension, her soundest judgment, and hermost religious seriousness are needed, it is when she proposes toherself the question, "Shall I accept in marriage the hand that isoffered me?" It is the second greatest question of her life. It is thequestion, the answer of which is to wring briny tears out of her heartor baptize it in the waters of refreshing sympathy. 

I once knew a merchant who used to say that "Goods well bought were halfsold. " 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 aprofit on badly bought goods. So it is hard to live a good and happylife in Marriage bonds that bind and gall the heart that wears them. Iused to be a farmer, and I then learned that a balky horse would oftenwork well in an easy harness, while a good horse would be tricky andstubborn in a collar that chafed. So I have often seen bad people wholived very happily in the married life, so far as their personalrelations were concerned, while good people chafed and grieved in sadmatrimonial inharmony. Half the victory is in starting the battle right. A man of more good sense than refinement once said, "Be sure you areright, then go ahead. " It is the utterance of wisdom, and is asapplicable to the subject before us as any other. "Be sure you areright. " We are not only to be right, but we are to know it. There is tobe no guess-work about it--no wish-work or hope-work about it. It is tobe knowledge-work. Applied to the subject in hand, young women are toknow that they are right in their Marriage alliances; are to know thatthey have bargained with men after their own heart. They are not toguess they are going to get pretty good husbands, nor hope they are, norto believe they are from what personal friends have said. 

They are not to rely upon common report, nor the opinion of friends, nora fashionable acquaintance, but upon a personal knowledge of theindividual's life and character. How can another know what you want in acompanion? You alone know your own heart. If you do not know it you arenot fit to be married. No one else can tell what fills you with pleasingand grateful emotions. You only know when the spring of true affectionis 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 idealof manly demeanor, you know who would make you a good husband. But ifyou only fancy that he is right, or guess, or believe, or hope, from alittle social interchange of words and looks, you have but a poorfoundation on which to build hopes of future happiness. A young man anda dear friend once said to me, "I am going to take her for better or forworse. " The remark ran over me like a chill breath of winter. Ishuddered at the thought. "For better or for worse. " All in doubt. Goingto marry, yet not _sure_ he was right. The lady he spoke of was a nobleyoung woman, intellectual, cultivated, pious, accustomed to his sphereof life. They were going to marry in uncertainty. Both were of finefamilies; both excellent young people. To the world it looked like adesirable 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 herheart. She stayed away one year and came back; lived with him one yearmore and died. Sad tale. It proved for the worse, and all because theydid not _know_ each other; if they had they would not have married. Ionce heard of a woman who married a man to get rid of him. It is adangerous riddance. Equally dangerous is it to marry a man to find himout. "_Know_ whom thou _marriest_, " is the voice of wisdom. Yes, thequestion of Marriage is one of solemn import. It is a life-question. Itis a final settlement of a great demand of our nature. It is thedecision of the heart's earthly weal or woe. It is our social life ordeath. It is planting the seeds for the moral harvest of life. It is theadjustment of a great religious question, the submission to a solemnordinance of God. Yes, Marriage is a divine institution. It is not ofearthly origin, though it is often prostituted to earthly uses. It is aGod-made arrangement for human development and happiness, and woe be tohim who defiles it with sensuous abuses. It is before the Church, beforeany of the solemn ordinances of God's house, the primal decree of theFather for his human children. To degrade or abuse the Marriage covenantis blasphemy, irreverence, sacrilegious wickedness. If one would enterthe portals of the church bowed in reverence to God, much more should hethus enter the sanctuary of Marriage. If he should sit reverently at thetable of the Lord's Supper, much more should he sit thus in the bower ofthe hymeneal life. If he should bow his head in solemn meekness in thebaptismal rite, much more should he bend lowly in this relation. If heshould kneel in pious prayer before the throne of grace, so he shouldhumble himself before God at the life-union altar. There is no moreserious step in life, none more important, and none that should be morereligiously taken. 

In this view of the subject, what a sad picture does the world present!How trifling, giddy, thoughtless! Among the multitudes who marry, howfew 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 worldlyambition. Woman becomes a base creature by thus pandering to earthlyends. Then worse than this, still greater multitudes are prompted tothis union by sensuous desires--base animalism. Oh, to what a sink ofiniquity, what a pool of pollution, what a stagnant pit of moralrottenness is the Marriage relation sunk by the unhallowed and unbridledsensuality of thousands who enter it! If there is any place in the worldwhere the voice of God should be heard ringing in pealing thunder-tonesthe commands of virtue and religion, it is in the seclusion of theMarriage relation. Men, and women, too, ought to look to Marriage with aprofounder respect and a higher purpose. It is a holy institution. Todegrade it is wicked and brings the most bitter unhappiness. If I shouldinduce a single young woman to look more reverently upon the life-union, to regard it in its moral and religious aspects, and determine to enterit under the sanctions of true religion, and demand a like state of mindin her companion, that they might live to be blessings to each other, Ishould feel richly remunerated for my labor. I treat this subject nowand have at former times with a view to elevate the minds of youth inrelation to it. 

It is in vain to try to make the world moral and religious while thegreat institutions of social life are corrupted and corrupting. At thevery bottom of adult life lies the institution of Marriage. To reformthe world we must begin with this. If we can get men and women wellmarried, the work of reform is half done; life is half lived. It is nextto impossible to make good and happy an ill-assorted pair. They workagainst each other almost in spite of themselves. They are like asteamboat with its wheels playing in opposite directions. They make agreat noise and a terrible jarring, and put forth desperate efforts, butno forward motion is produced. 

It would be well if we had more judicious books on Marriage, designedfor youth. One on the Philosophy of Marriage; one on the Duties ofMarriage; one on the Religion of Marriage; or all these subjects treatedin one book might be very profitable; and if such a book were designedfor high schools, academies, and colleges, and made a study, as is moralscience and natural religion, it might be made eminently useful. Thereis a science of Marriage. It should be developed and made a study. Somestrong mind and pure heart, baptized in the spirit of divine truth andlove, should write it out. I know the youth of our country would receiveit gladly and study it with great profit. What is most wanted is thoughtand 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 grandplowshare that turns up the old soil of error and despotism and revealsthe hidden treasures of truth. Get people to thinking and they will belikely to think themselves right in the end. We want thought on thesubject of Marriage--calm, consecutive, serious thought. Nothing elsewill do. We have passion, zeal, impulse, imagination; but we lackthought. Thought is the helm of passion, the ballast of imagination, thecompass of impulse. Let youth think on the subject as they ought, andthey will marry well. 

I remarked that the institution of Marriage was at the bottom of adultlife. This is a truth, and it is a thought for the girls. Marriage wasnever designed for children. It is for men and women. It is good for menand women; but it does not follow from this that it is good forchildren. It would not be good even if children knew how to marrywisely. They are both physically and mentally incapacitated for sosolemn and important a relation. They are immature in body and mind, inheart and head. Their judgments are unsound. Their affections are not tobe trusted. They are children in every sense of the word, and can onlymake children's work of married life. The wisest and best in early adultlife can be none too well prepared for the great duties of marriedlife--how can children be prepared? It is impossible. One of thegreatest evils of our time is the too prevalent custom of entering earlyinto the Marriage relations. Children make bad selections of companions. In nine cases out of ten they choose differently from what they would afew years later. They have no fixed characters. They do not know whattheir opinions will be. Their tastes are not formed. Their aims in lifeare undetermined. What they were made for and what they live for theyhave scarcely asked. The arguments against early Marriages are many. Ihave not time to enumerate them or to show their force. I have neverheard of but one argument in favor of early marriages. That is foundedin the false idea of marrying in mutual ignorance of each other. It issaid the characters of the parties are more pliable in early youth, sothat they will assimilate to each other the more readily. But if theyare not already assimilated they ought not to marry. If each has got togive up his character to live in peace, it is a proof that they arewrongly matched. Those really fitted for each other find their happinessin the harmony of each other's characters. Their two characters blendtogether like concordant sounds, or two streams of running water. Thesecret of true Marriage is in mutuality of character, harmony ofsentiment and action, congeniality of spirit. Without this unity therecan be no true Marriage; no real happiness or utility in the marriedlife. 

In all true Marriages the twain become one; one in feeling, aim, andspirit, one in reason, sentiment, and love. And when this does not existbefore Marriage, it can not reasonably be looked for after. That thisharmony shall be perfect we can not expect, because there are no perfectcharacters 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 owncharacters are unformed, their powers undeveloped? But it may be asked, what we call an early Marriage? About this there may be a difference ofopinion. What some would call early, others would call late. Our ideason this point should be founded in physiological and mental science. There is a true test by which to settle this question. That test isfound in the human constitution. Any Marriage is early that isconsummated before adult womanhood is attained--womanhood of mind, heart, soul, and character. Any Marriage before eighteen years of age isa very early Marriage; before twenty it is early. As a general rule, between twenty and twenty-five it is timely, though with many it isearly at twenty-two, and some never get old enough to marry. A minduntaught, a heart undisciplined, a spirit unsubdued, in a civilizedcommunity, is not fit to be married. Such a character is never oldenough. 

Above all things, before Marriage, there should be time enough for agenerous education; for a wise preparation for practical life. No youngwoman can be educated in any practical and general sense beforetwenty-two, no matter what may be her opportunities. Life ought to beunderstood; its practical aspects should be fairly and wiselycontemplated; its principal duties should be well weighed; its trials, temptations, and besetments should be considered; all that must be doneand borne should be the subject of thoughtful meditation before a womanshould dare to set her foot upon the hallowed ground of matrimony. Nochild is capable of considering such grave subjects. An adult mind isscarcely equal to the task. When I say young women should have time tobe educated, I mean all young women. It is true, all will not beeducated in our schools, but all must have some sort of an education;they must have some experience, observation, contact with men andthings, a knowledge of life; must learn to rely upon themselves, andlearn moral duty and what the world expects of a wife. The early marriedmust also necessarily be married in ignorance; and as a general rule wemay say, who marries in ignorance will remain in ignorance. An ignorantwife! Poor thing! How sad the spectacle! What can she do with life? Shewill make an ignorant mother and rear ignorant children, and exert anignorant influence all through her life. She will perpetuate theabsurdities of ignorant people. She will do the work of ignorance withher husband and family. Still worse is a neighborhood of ignorant wives. A State of ignorant wives would bring barbarism again. And how could itbe otherwise, if all girls should marry in their girlhood? It is thegirls that live to womanhood before they marry that redeem and polishsociety. Those who marry in girlhood are drawbacks on society. They aredead weights holding back the wheels of progress. There are but fewtruly educated and influential women in the country who married beforethey were twenty-five--many of them not till after. They are now thepride and glory of their husbands, of the communities and States inwhich they live. I hold that a noble and influential woman is an honorto the country and a pillar of civil and religious liberty. Every suchwoman is a central sun radiating intellectual and moral light, diffusing strength and life to all about her. The hope of thecountry--ay, of the world--is in its women; I may say its wives. Now andthen a wife will develop and educate herself after she is married, ifshe is fortunate enough to get a husband who will encourage and help herin the work, even if she is married young; but the great mass willremain 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 tobe the center of a family. Boys and girls, men and women, are to go outfrom her to live in the world. Scan it closely and you will find thatthe world will be modeled very much after its wives. If we have greatand good men, great and good institutions, States and countries, it isbecause we have great and good wives. A wife will be happy just about inproportion to the amount of good she does. That amount of good willdepend very much upon the education of her girlhood; so that view it inwhatever light we will, a woman's life, usefulness, and happiness dependin no small degree upon the length and character of her girlhood. If sheremains unmarried till she is twenty-three or twenty-five, and developsand cultivates herself as she ought, she will be almost sure to make agood and useful woman, an ornament and an inspiration to the circle inwhich she moves. If she marries at sixteen or eighteen she will be verylikely to make just what she is--an immature, unfinished specimen ofhumanity; nothing more, nothing less. 

One point more I would dwell upon a moment. It is this: The marriedlife, though entered never so well, and with all proper preparation, must be lived well or it will not be useful or happy. Married life willnot go itself, or if it does it will not keep the track. It will turnoff at every switch, and fly off at every turn or impediment. It needs acouple of good conductors who understand the engineering of life. Goodwatch must be kept for breakers ahead. The fires must be kept up by aconstant addition of the fuel of affection. The boilers must be keptfull and the machinery in order, and all hands at their posts, elsethere will be a smashing up, or life will go hobbling or jolting along, wearing and tearing, breaking and bruising, leaving some heads andhearts to get well the best way they can. It requires skill, prudence, and judgment to lead this life well, and these must be tempered withforbearance, charity, and integrity. Individual rights, opinions, andfeelings must be respected; individual duties must be faithfullyperformed; the proprieties of courtesy and kindness must be moststrictly observed; violations of politeness and affection must beprohibited; ebullitions of temper must be considered as sad andlamentable improprieties, to be mourned over but always quickly andreadily 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 perfectagreement in opinion and feeling between the parties must never beexpected. The rule should be, that they will agree just so far aspossible without a violation of the individual conscience, and when theycan not agree further they should agree to disagree, with mutual respectfor each other's opinions and mutual esteem and love for each other. Neither one should attempt or wish to set up a petty and matrimonialtyranny over the other. Each should think, feel, and act in kindlyindependence; and each should encourage the other in independent thoughtand action with a view to individual culture and mutual benefit. Butbelow 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 wholelife. Love should utter its melodious tones and breathe its sweet spiritin every department of the united life. This is the life that should bedetermined upon before Marriage, this the life that the parties shouldmark out for themselves in all its detail, before they enter into theMarriage covenant; and this the life when lived that is blessed andblissful beyond expression. 

I said in the outset of this discourse that the young are apt to hangtoo many garlands about the married life. This is so as this life isgenerally lived. But if it is wisely entered and truthfully lived, it ismore beautiful and happy than any have imagined. It is the true lifewhich God has designed for his children, replete with joy, delightful, improving, and satisfactory in the highest possible earthly degree. Itis the hallowed home of virtue, peace, and bliss. It is the antechamberof heaven, the visiting place of angels, the communing ground of kindredspirits. Let all young women who would reap such joys and be thusblessed and happy, learn to live the true life, and be prepared to weavefor 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 upontheir _Religious Duties_. The theme is a rich one. Any consideration ofour 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, allperfections, all glories, word of all words, in power and grandeur aboveall. It should inspire us with reverence. The thought of thatincomprehensible Being, which we mean by this word, should ever impressus with moral solemnity. And when we associate with this majestic Beingthe idea of Father, clothe him in a Father's love, fill him with aFather's care and benignity, he appears to us infinitely lovely andattractive as well as infinitely great and good. It is no common thoughtthat gives to the universe of spiritual creatures a Father, that bindsthem all in one family with God as the head, that mingles in the greatcup of universal existence of which countless millions of sentientbeings are daily partaking, the sweetness of a father's goodness; thatsees that goodness in the shining sun and falling shower, in the starryfirmament and the little flower, in the sweep of worlds and the drop ofdew, in the waving grain and the bubbling spring, in the changingseasons and the still, calm moments as they fly, in the great race ofmen, and in the individual members thereof. We often say "Our Father inHeaven, " but we seldom think of the majesty of the expression, nor theglorious beauty of the thought it conveys. God's grandeur is as much inhis love as his power, as much in his goodness as his wisdom. He is assublime in his Fatherhood as in his supremacy. The ocean of histenderness is as deep as the mountain of his holiness is high. God, inhis character, sweeps over the infinite spaces of principle and gathersin the infinite perfections of all characteristics of good. It is tosuch a Being that we owe our existence and all that makes it blessed andblissful. When we think of the earth as our present home, so wiselyarranged, so beautifully adorned, and of heaven as our final andimmortal scene of growing joy and blessedness; when we think of our ownwonderful powers of mind and heart, and the objects of love and thoughtabout us upon which to exercise them, progressive, immortal, Godlike intheir nature; when, added to these, we think of the Bible with itsblessed and elevating relations, its love of truth, its mines ofwisdom, its moral sanctions, and, more than all, its Divine Redeemer, our Pattern Friend, Brother, and Saviour, we can not well fail to beimpressed with the infinite excellency of Him from whom we have receivedsuch rich benefactions. 

And when we think that all this is done for us of his own unpurchasedlove, our obligations to our Divine Father become clear to our moralperceptions. We then see that we have religious duties to perform, duties which press upon us at all seasons and places, duties which wemust perform, or stand before the great white throne of Eternal Loveconvicted of deep and dark ingratitude. We have received every thing, and have the promise of every thing, and have given nothing. We havebeen loved with an infinite affection, and have the promise of itseverlasting continuance, and yet many of us have not returned the pooraffections of our feeble finite hearts. We have been over-arched withthe firmament of immortal goodness all our lives long, and have thepromise that it shall span us forever, and yet we have drank in butlittle of its life and light. We have fed on the bounties of a benignantProvidence and have scarcely returned an emotion of genuinethoughtfulness. Here we are; God is all the time doing for us; and weare thoughtless of his favors and indifferent to his holy friendship. Hestrives to impress us with his greatness, but we scarcely seem torecognize the entreaties of his love or the munificence of his bountifulhand. Through His love he pleads in the earnest eloquence of a divinelife 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 weakin our resolutions. The world has stolen away our hearts. Evilassociates have corrupted our good manners, and we are irreverent, sensuous, even in the house of God. To illustrate our impiety: supposeyou, by some accident, had been cast away on some lone island, barrenness reigned around you; cold winds beat against you; alone anddesolate you stood exposed to every element without and a prey to everywant within. The sea in its wild fury roared around you. No living beingheard your cries; no heart beat in sympathy with yours. Now, suppose inyour distress a good spirit of the island should speak to you, out of acell or cloud, and ask your wants; and should lead you into a beautifultemple, and tell you it was yours; should feed and clothe you; shouldsurround you with beauty and comfort, furnish you with friends, and makeevery thing delightful so far as another could do for you, what kind offeelings ought you to entertain toward the good spirit? If you shouldforget him in your enjoyments, should abuse his gifts, should make himthe subject of jest and sport, and blaspheme his name, would you not, inyour thoughtful moments, despise yourself for your ingratitude? And yetthis good spirit, in the supposed case, would not do for you a titheyour heavenly Father is doing for you every day; for life, and breath, and powers, all natural as well as spiritual things, we receive at hishand. 

Few things are more base than an ungrateful spirit. If we do a favoreither to a friend or stranger, and get no response of gratitude, wefeel that something is wrong in his heart. Ingratitude we name among themost hateful feelings that ever darken the fallen heart of humanity. Itis the parent of innumerable vices. It is a cold, Satanic mood of mind, suggestive of numberless forms of evil. And yet, unless I greatlymistake, there is much ingratitude in all our hearts. We eat, and forgetthe Hand that feeds us. We wear, and heed not the Adorner of ourpersons. We admire our bodies, and offer not an emotion of praise to thegrand Architect of the universe and its beauty. We rejoice in ourstrength and comeliness, scarcely thinking that we owe it all to theDivine love. We delight in our domestic relations and affections, andoften grow eloquent in praise of the sweet emotions of delicious joywhich rise within us, half forgetting that they are all gifts from thegracious Divinity. 

We grow proud in the might of our minds, and vain of our works, bloatingoften to the bursting point, claiming all the glory to ourselves, awarding little or none to God. This is lamentably true to an alarmingextent. It is true of youth as well as manhood. Though youth is brimfulof good impulses and quick affections, it is sadly deficient inreligious gratitude. It is right that young people should enjoy the goodthings of life and the world, should make merry with each other, andeven be gay amid the profusion of natural gaiety about them, but indoing so they need not and should not be unmindful of their good Fatherin heaven. First in their affections, highest in their joyful adorationshould 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 withthe natural buoyancy of the heart. To love a parent does not make lessactive and cheerful the love we bear others, nor gloom our lives withone single cloud. The young woman who loves her father with an earnestaffection, will not love any body else less, but more. The young man wholoves his mother with his whole soul, who at all times and places, amidall pleasures and amusements, retains her image in his heart of hearts, and turns to her ever as the refreshing fountain of his sweetest joy, isnone the less capable of loving all his fellow-men. On the contrary, thelove he bears his mother will be the seed from which will grow a grandtree of love, the branches and freshness of which will fill his wholeheart and beautify his whole life. If a young man loves his mothertruly, he is safe for a good life. In the end his love will conquer alland bear off the crown of victory. So of a young woman. This love ofparents is among the healthiest and noblest feelings of the heart. Itseems to be the germinating point of both affection and virtue. It isboth a guard against evil and an inspiration to good. It is more thansimple love, such as we bear others. It is mingled with gratitude. Andas we grow older, gratitude becomes the stronger feeling. And asgratitude assumes the supremacy, the feeling becomes sweeter and holier. It assumes a religious nature. It is baptized at the fountain ofreligion. And instead of glooming life, it because it is the power oflove. "God is love. " It is simple as the story of love in the humanheart. "The wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein. " All caneasily learn how to love God. Ask the Saviour, and he will say, "Love thyFather. " This is the burden of the glorious sermon of His life. If welove 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 canwe come to the Father, for no other has shown him. Christ is the onlyway open. How simple, how beautiful--"Love thy Father, and thou shalt besaved"--saved from darkness and sin!

Christ is the same as God speaking to us; it is God through Christsaying, "Love me, and thou shalt be blest. " It is as though a goodfather said to his child, "Love me, and thou shalt be a good and happychild. " The child that loves the Father will obey the Father's voice ofwisdom, and be good as he is great. Love of the parent is the seed ofvirtue. 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 thecentral 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, andhence of "eternal life. " 'This love molds and modifies the character;checks the impulses; sways the passions; subdues enmity; elevates theaffections; gives the ruling loves to truth, to heaven, makes it morecheerful and bright. It sweetens the whole heart and sheds a moral andaffectionate influence through the whole mind. 

Similar to this love of parents, and growing out of it, should be ourlove to God. Him we should regard as our parent. As such we shouldalways think of Him. In all our works, and walks, and joys He should bepresent in our minds as our Father. Sweet shall be our thoughts of Him. Cheerfully should we meditate upon His wonderful works and ways. Gladlyshould our hearts praise Him and our souls commune with him. Hiscommands should inspire us with holy delight. All our life should bemade radiant with the inspiring thoughts of our Father. His matchlesslove and marvelous wisdom should make us feel like little children, happily yet adoringly and gratefully receiving the gifts of parentalgoodness. With such a love as this growing in our hearts and shining inour lives, how good and happy must we be! And yet this is religion. Lovethy 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 sumof 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 hadonly partially revealed himself. The glory of the full revelation wasreserved for the immortal and immaculate Son. To know or love the Fatheris eternal life. This is the religion of the Saviour--this the religionof redemption. Salvation is in it. It is the power of God to God; givesits sanction to virtue; adorns the mind with the graces of godliness;sweetens the heart with amenities of goodness, and dignifies the soulwith a spiritual assimilation to the Father. Man thus becomes aspiritual child of God. He is by a nature a natural child, and he isthus by grace or love made a spiritual child. Under the power of thislove the world assumes a new aspect; it becomes a secondary object, goodin its place, but only a means of spiritual improvement. Life becomessublime in its great ends and eternal results. The soul of man becomes, at least in prospect, a glorious and eternal thing, often darkened byerror and polluted by sin, but the object of God's love and care and theRedeemer's solicitude, progressively unfolding its powers and putting onits beauties under the sunshine of the All-seeing eye. And the race ofmen become the children of the great and loving Father, whose care andsmiles no figures shall number, no ages wear out. This is the religionwe believe the Saviour inculcated among men, which was the power of Godunto salvation, the central and all-powerful idea of which is love. Thisis the religion in which thousands are this day rejoicing and livinglives which are the brightest ornaments of humanity. And this is thereligion which we offer to our youthful friends as the only cure forsin-sick humanity--the only safe guide through life--the only hope andstrength of youth, manhood, and old age. We have not a separate religionfor youth, nor a distinct religious life for them to live different fromthe old. It is the beauty of true religion, as of true love, that itlasts 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 bean eternal religion. Who becomes truly religious here, learns so much ofheaven, walks so far in the celestial road. A truthful, religious lifeis the first step _in_ heaven, not _to_ heaven. Christ calls it thekingdom of heaven. Without the principles of religious love no woman'scharacter 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 notbaptized in this religious love, this love of the Father, she lacks themost essential beauty of spiritual womanhood. If she is not grateful toGod, not in love with his glorious perfections, she is yet low andworldly. Her soul is bound in the chains of sense. It is this religionwhich adds the finishing touch of excellency to woman's character. It isthis which makes her divine. In her best estate she is only earthly tillthis has wrought its redeeming work within her. To be blessed as she maybe to make her life good and spiritually grand, she should begin earlythis devotion to the Father. Her heart should in early youth turn itsface to its God and look up in sweet and grateful adoration. Woman'sheart is the natural shrine of religion; and this shrine should bededicated while she is young. In cheerful confidence she should give hersoul to her Father in heaven. The earlier she does it, the truer andhappier will be her life. It is a sad mistake that religion isdepressing and saddening to youth. "It is the soul's calm sunshine andthe heartfelt joy. " It is good for youth as for old age--as good torejoice as to mourn by. It is as much for sunshine as for shade. He whohas the most of it is the lightest-hearted man. 

It is as fitting for the marriage altar as for the burial scene. It iscalculated as much to elevate and gladden the cheerful heart as torelieve and bless the sorrowful one. Woman in all her relations has anespecial need of religion to sustain her. Her pathway is beset withtrials. She loves and must love her friends. These, one after another, are separated from her by the customs or accidents of society, or thestern hand of death; sickness and misfortune must come upon her. Hersoul is sensitive, and she feels keenly the severing of love's dearestties. Nowhere else can she find a balm for her aching heart but in thebosom of the Father. If her heart is spiritualized by a holy religiouslove, there will come to her ministering spirits in the hopes and joysof religion which will bring relief. 

Oh, if I could impress on the young female mind the importance of thissubject, I should do the world a benefit we could not estimate. Think ofa woman all through life shedding about her the genial influence of truereligion. From early youth to latest age she is an evangel of peace andlove. Her steps are marked with deeds of charity; her life is radiantwith goodness. She loves her Father, and, loving him, she loves hischildren; and, loving them, both her and her heart grow large and hersoul strong and beautiful. Her life is a song of praise. Men love to doher secret homage, and in many a heart she is surnamed "angel. "

Why should any woman think to live without religion? Oh, how sad is herlife without it--how dark her death! It is only in religious love thatthe future becomes bright, and hope changes to cheerful faith. I havepresented woman's religious duty in a simple form of love to God. I havenot time to speak of its detail, nor the means of cultivating this loveand growing in the Divine grace; these are given in the sublime yetsimple words of Jesus of Nazareth. To him I refer you for light to guideyou. 

I wish to speak a little of an objection that often comes up to the viewof the subject I have taken. It is this: "How can we love a being wehave 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 showhow it looks to me. 

Our daily experience tells us that we can love beings we have neverseen. I doubt not that every American loves Washington. His name is dearto us all. His character and life are our boast and admiration. Not moreshould 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 clearand glorious to us as it was to his compeers. It thrills us asdelightfully and moves upon us as powerfully as it did upon them. It isa glory hung around the name of America to which the world looks with areverent and admiring joy. To tell me that I can not love Washingtonwould be to rob me of the highest pride I feel in my country. I lovehim for what he was in the day of his earthly glory, the man of allmajesty, the pride of all nations. I love him for what he did, for thelife of spotless virtue and magnificent wisdom and goodness. He livedfor the good of his country and the world. I love him for the tall angelof light that he now is, and the celestial richness of the glory thatstreams from his brow. I know I love him, and no philosophy orskepticism can cheat me out of that love. 

I could name a hundred characters that have lived in the past and nowlive in heaven that I know I love in the same way. I love them as reallyas I do my personal friends, and love them in proportion to thegreatness and goodness I see in them. I may say the same of many livingmen and women. Speaking from my own experience, I should say that I canlove goodness, worth, all that is lovable in character as well as in abeing that I have not seen as one that I have. I have known of peoplewho have an earthly father living that they have never seen, and whomthey love with a deep and rich fervency of affection. I have known ofchildren whom poverty or accident has separated in infancy from theirmother, and who cherished for that unknown, far-off maternal friend asacred and deathless love. They have meditated hours, days, and weeks onthe sad separation and the sweet, holy bosom from which they drew thebreath of life. In well-formed minds this love grows up with theirgrowth and strengthens with their strength. The idea of parentageawakens love in the heart. The relation is so near and dear it can notbe otherwise in good and cultured minds. Then we can love a father whomwe have not seen. We all know that the idea of God is a spontaneity inthe human mind. Though God may be incomprehensible and his ways pastfinding out, he is still so much within and around us that we can notkeep the thoughts of him out of our minds. We know, too, that thousandsdo love Him with a deathless love who can comprehend him no better thanwe. We may infer from this that we can love Him also. 

But when we think of His character, its infinite loveliness, itsunfathomable depth of love, and wisdom, and holiness, it seems to methat 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 wewere born, and that he loves us with an unspeakable and eternal love, and the attraction to love him becomes still stronger. Then think howmuch 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; andmore than this, has given us Jesus, and with him the glorious Gospel, revealing an immortal life and a glorious inheritance beyond the Jordanof death. These benefactions of His love make his character appearinfinitely attractive, so that the wonder would seem to be that anyshould fail to love him. 

It seems clear that the Father may be none the less loved on account ofhis being unseen. We are constituted to love things unseen. And if wescan 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 thatmakes us love him is unseen. Indeed, it is the unseen we love, andnothing 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 denyourselves as well as God when we do not love and adore him. Is it properfor youth to do so? By no means. All youth, and especially young women, should feel that so long as they neglect their religious duties theyneglect the most important concerns of their eternal existence. They arenot ephemeral, but eternal creatures. Their relation to God and eachother are eternal ones. They are on the sea of being--turn back they cannot. God is above and around them, and always will be. The sooner theylove 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 withoutreligion. Woman is scarcely woman unless the great principle of loveguides her. That principle, directed toward God and man, is the sumtotal of the Christian religion. Let every young woman so direct it thather 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 womento consider than this? It should be the highest ambition of every youngwoman to possess a true womanhood. Earth presents no higher object ofattainment. 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 somethingmore than to live eighteen or twenty years; something more than to growto 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 thesequalifications together, and they do but little toward making a truewoman. A true woman exists independent of outward attachments. It is notwealth, or beauty of person, or connection, or station, or power ofmind, or literary attainments, or variety and richness of outwardaccomplishments, that make the woman. These often adorn womanhood as theivy adorns the oak. But they should never be mistaken for the thing theyadorn. This is the grand error of womankind. They take the shadow forthe substance--the glitter for the gold--the heraldry and trappings ofthe world for the priceless essence of womanly worth which exists withinthe mind. Here is where almost the whole world has erred. Woman has beenregarded as an adornment. Because God has conferred upon her the charmof a beauty not elsewhere found in earth, the world has vainly imaginedshe was made to glory in its exhibition. Hence woman is too often avain, idle, useless thing. She stoops to be the plaything of man, theidol of his vanity, the victim of his lust. In stooping, she lays offher womanhood to pander to the low aims of a sensual life. In everycountry and in all ages woman has been thus abased. The history of theworld is all darkened by the awful shadow of woman's debasement. Whileman has admired and loved her, he has degraded her. Savage and civilizedman are not very dissimilar in this respect. They both woo, cajole, andflatter woman to oppress and degrade her. They both load her withhoneyed titles and flattering compliments, as though to sweeten withsugar-plum nonsense her bitter pressure of wrongs. It is the consent ofall historians that woman has been elevated in proportion as knowledgeand virtue have advanced among mankind. No one can read the history ofthe world without seeing that woman is upward bound. No one can look atwoman's present estate, her devotion to vanity, her meagre knowledge, her narrow culture, her circumscribed sphere of action, her monotonousand aimless life, without feeling that she has many long steps yet totake before she will attain to her true position, her full womanhood. Iwould not intimate that man's love for woman is not sincere, nor that hedesigns any harm to her. Nor would I intimate that woman purposelystoops to degrade herself. The Indian loves his dusky maid with a deepsincerity of heart; but that love does not prevent him from acquiescingin the common custom of his people, and making her his drudge, andregarding her as his inferior and his life-bound slave. So the civilizedman loves his wife with an ardency of devotion he feels for no otherobject; but that does not prevent him from subjecting her to the commonlot of woman, or from believing it right that woman should be deprivedby custom and law of that culture, those stimulants, and privileges, andrights which belong to her as an accountable being. Civilized men do notdemand that their women shall be trained to the highest culture--shallbe taught in the deepest wisdom--shall live for the broadest andgrandest purposes. No; they think it is enough if their women can have alittle smattering of knowledge so as to appear well in the drawing-roomparlor. Wisdom is for men. Man alone may draw from the _deep_ wells ofknowledge. Why have civilized men closed all their colleges anduniversities against women? Why have they shut almost every avenue topublic usefulness, to honorable distinction, to virtuous endeavor, against woman? Why have they deprived her of power, and compelled her tosubmit to man in all the relations of life? It is not for the want of asincere love for her. No; it is rather for a want of an enlightened viewof what woman should be. Men, as well as women, have failed tocomprehend the true idea of womanhood. Both have been satisfied with toolittle in woman. They have borne with the narrowness of woman's cultureand the aimlessness of her life, believing it all right. It is a fact--aglaring, 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 motheris called the maker of her children's characters. Is it so? See thedrunkards, tipplers, tobacco-mongers, libertines, gamblers, swearers, brawlers, robbers, murderers. There is a great army of them. They allconstitute 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 charactersof these people? Where are the mothers who teach their boys to chew, andsmoke, and swear? to drink, and brawl, and fight? to do those deeds ofdarkness which the sun refuses to shine upon? Somebody has taught themthese things. If their mothers did not, who did? If their mothers hadbeen wise and forcible, as they should have been, would the childrenhave been so easily led astray? If women had that influence which someattribute to them, would these things be so? If they had the influencethey ought to have, would they be so? Talk as we will about woman'sinfluence, it is not what it should be. We all know that if woman ruledthe world, she would have less low, drunken, rowdy, sensual men. It haslong been a hollow compliment which man has paid to woman to tell herthat she rules the world. But no man believes it when he says it. Everywoman should spurn the compliment as slanderous. Woman would rule theworld better if it was under her control. Why are so many young menreckless, drunken, profane, and lawless? It is not because young womenwould have them so. Far from it. Their female associates do not holdhalf the control over them that they ought. 

Young women ought to hold a steady moral sway over their maleassociates, so strong as to prevent them from becoming such lawlessrowdies. 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. Theirinfluence is not armed with executive power. Their goodness is not feltas an earnest force of benevolent purpose. Their moral convictions arenot regarded as solemn resolves to be true to God and duty, come whatmay. Their opinions are not esteemed as the utterances of wisdom. Theirlove is not accepted as the strong purpose of a devout soul to be trueto its highest ideas of affectionate life. In no particular do they makeimpressions of strong moral force. They do not exert the deep, resistless influence of full-grown womanhood. The great lack of youngwomen is a lack of _power_. They do not make themselves felt. They needmore force of character. It is not enough that they are _pure_. Theymust be virtuous; that is, they must possess that virtue which winslaurels in the face of temptation; which is backed by a mighty force ofmoral principle; which frowns on evil with a rebuking authority; whichwill not compromise its dignity, nor barter its prerogatives for thegold or fame of the world, the very frown of which would annihilate himwho would attempt to seduce it; which claims as its right such virtue inits associates. There is a virtue which commands respect; which awes byits dignity and strength; a virtue exhibited in such commanding strengthof moral purpose as silences every vile wish to degrade it; a virtuethat knows why it hates evil, why it loves right, why it cleaves toprinciple as to life; a virtue more mighty in its potency than any otherforce--which gives a sublime grandeur to the soul in which it dwells andthe life it inspires. This is the virtue that belongs to womanhood. Itis the virtue every young woman should possess. It is not enough to havean easy kind of virtue which more than half courts temptation; which ispure more from a fear of society's rebuke than a love of right; whichrebukes sin so faintly that the sinner feels encouraged to proceed;which smiles on small offenses, and kindly fondles the pet evils ofsociety out of which in the end grow the monsters. This is the virtue oftoo many women. They would not have a drunkard for a husband, but theywould drink a glass of wine with a fast young man. They would not useprofane language, but they are not shocked by its incipient language, and love the society of men whom they know are as profane as Lucifer outof their presence. They would not be dishonest, but they will use athousand deceitful words and ways, and countenance the society of menknown as hawkers, sharpers, and deceivers. They would not beirreligious, but they smile upon the most irreligious men, and even showthat they love to be wooed by them. They would not be licentious, butthey have no stunning rebuke for licentious men, and will even admitthem on parol into their society. This is the virtue of too manywomen--a virtue scarcely worthy the name--really no virtue at all--amilk-and-water substitute--a hypocritical, hollow pretension to virtueas unwomanly as it is disgraceful. This is not the virtue of truewomanhood. Do young women propose for themselves the strong virtue ofwomanhood, which is an impregnable fortress of righteous principle? Ifnot, they should do it. It should be their first work to conceive theidea of such a virtuous principle as an indwelling life, and whenconceived it should be sought as the richest wealth, as the grandesthuman 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 anadulterous love or a blind passion, which is little better, is onething; and to love righteously, nobly, steadily, is another thing. Womannaturally has great strength of affection. She loves by an irresistibleimpulse. But that love is not worthy unless it be directed to worthyobjects and swayed by high moral principles. The love of a woman shouldbe as the love of an angel. It should swell in her bosom as a great tideof 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 ofprinciple, a love of magnanimity, integrity, wisdom, affection, piety; alove of whatever may magnify and adorn a human soul. It is unwomanly towaste the high energies of her love on the material charms of an elegantperson, or the brilliant accomplishments of cultured manners, unlessthey are united with true worth of character. The love of womanhood isthe love of worth, the love of mental harmony and spiritual powers. True, woman may pity corruption, may sympathize with all manner ofoffenders; may give the force of her compassion to the erring andunrighteous; so she may admire genius, culture, the beauty of person, and the charms of manner; but her love is only for real worth, for thatwhich is enduring and Godlike. She may find pleasure in many things andpersons that she must not, can not love. Love is too precious to bewasted on any thing but its legitimate objects, wealth of mind and worthof character. 

Nor yet is it enough that young women _behave_ well. Something more isneeded than a correct outward life. Many behave well who have butlittle worth of character. They behave well because it is best for theirsocial standing because society loves good behavior and pays it thecompliment of respect. It is well to behave well. There is no true lifewithout becoming behavior. We have all praise for good behavior. Itshould be one great object in every young woman's life to study for abecoming and womanly behavior. Her manners should be agreeable; herconversation should be chaste and proper; her deportment should bedignified and easy; her regard for propriety and fitness in all she saysand does should be made manifest; and in all respects her behaviorshould be such as becomes womanhood. But while we recommend this as ofvery great importance, we say it is not enough. Good behavior mustspring from a good heart. If it is studied as an outside fitness, acloak, or a fashionable attire, it will not answer the purpose for whichit is intended. A purely outside life is a sham, and sooner or laterdefeats itself. There is no concealing a bad heart. It may be done for alittle while, but it can not be kept concealed. Like murder, it willout. So a heart that is not particularly bad, but only lacks trueprinciple, will soon expose its hollowness. Its want of moral power willbe felt. But even if it would not expose itself, it would be infinitelybest to imbue it with righteous principle. For itself, for its ownhappiness, it must be good. 

Genuine good behavior springs from an inward harmony of character whichblends all inward essences of good. It does not come from any one, nora 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 thatinward harmony can be enjoyed. The beauty of woman's life grows out ofthis harmony. A mind jarred by inward discord can never ultimate a goodlife. This discord will show itself in the life. Spiritual harmony isthe great attainment all should have in view. In this lies the charm ofwomanhood. Out from this goes the sweet influences of the outward life. The divine grace of womanly propriety is the fruit that grows from thiscombination of all excellences. 

To attain this, the first thing is self-control. How few women have anything like a respectable amount of self-control. The great majority arenervous, excitable, fidgety. They frighten at a spider, laugh at a sillyjoke, love at first sight, go into spasms at disappointment, cry abouttrifles, have a fit of admiration at the sight of a pretty dress, haveas many moods in a day as the wind, and in all respects exhibit everyindication of the most disorderly, uncontrolled mind. Talk about harmonyin such a character! We may as well look for wisdom in the house offolly. No mental habit is worse than that of giving the reins to ourimpulses. They are sure to lead us into difficulty. There is scarcely amore disgusting sight than a woman, well endowed, all given up to thesway 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 ofimpulse. And yet there are thousands of them. They keep themselves andthe 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. Andyet it is difficult of attainment in our order of society. Women are soshut up from healthy air and exercise, so excluded from ennoblingavocations, so hemmed in by conventional rules, so compelled to havewaiters, assistants, beaux, somebody to lead them, advise them, do forthem, think for them--are so annoyed by petty cares and triflingvexations, and so subjected to abuses, both of a private and publicnature, that self-control is a virtue harder of attainment than almostany 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 indespair. The power is in her if she will but use it. She may be thequeen of her own soul if she will. All depends upon the force of herwill. 

Young women have much to hope for, and the world much to hope for attheir hands. A better idea of womanhood is growing up in the minds ofmen. Woman's wrong, difficulties, and trials are being felt. Heraimless, hopeless life is being mourned over. The evils from a falsesociety preying upon all womankind are being felt; and almost everywoman is beginning to feel the approaching indications of a better timecoming. Women are asking, "What shall we do? We wish not to be idle. Wefeel too much shut out from useful avocations. We feel too littleopportunity to work out for ourselves such characters as we know weought to possess. We must, we will do something for our own elevation. "

Let every young woman determine to do something for the honor andelevation of her sex. At least let her determine that she will possessand 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 obstaclesin the way of her sisters, who are striving nobly to be useful, butrather help them with the weight of her encouragement and counsel. Lether determine that for herself she will do her own thinking; that shewill form her own opinions from her own investigations; that she willpersist in holding the highest principles of womanly morality and thevirtuous attainments which constitute a true womanhood. When she hasdone this, let her call to her aid all the force of character she cancommand to enable her to persist in being a woman of the true stamp. Inevery class of society the young women should awake to their duty. Theyhave a great work to do. It is not enough that they should be what theirmothers were. They must be more. The spirit of the times calls on womanfor a higher order of character and life. Will young women heed thecall? Will they emancipate themselves from the fetters of custom andfashion, and come up a glorious company to the possession of a vigorous, virtuous, noble womanhood--a womanhood that shall shed new light uponthe world, and point the way to a divine life? We wait to hear theanswer 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 tocircumstances. But this may well be questioned; for multitudes areintensely miserable under circumstances highly favorable to happiness. The high-born, the wealthy, the distinguished, and even the good, areoften unhappy. Many very excellent persons, whose lives are honorableand whose characters are noble, pass numberless hours of sadness andweariness of heart. The fault is not with their circumstances, nor yetwith their general characters, but with themselves, that they aremiserable. They have failed to adopt the true philosophy of life. Theywait for Happiness to come instead of going to work and making it; andwhile they wait they torment themselves with borrowed troubles, withfears, forebodings, morbid fancies and moody spirits, till they are allunfitted for Happiness under any circumstances. Sometimes they cherishunchaste ambition, covet some fancies or real good which they do notdeserve and could not enjoy if it were theirs, wealth they have notearned, honors they have not won, attentions they have not merited, lovewhich their selfishness only craves. Sometimes they undervalue the goodthey do possess; throw away the pearls in hand for some beyond theirreach, and often less valuable; trample the flowers about them undertheir feet; long for some never seen, but only heard or read of; andforget present duties and joys in future and far-off visions. Sometimesthey shade the present with every cloud of the past, and althoughsurrounded by a thousand inviting duties and pleasures, revel in sadmemories with a kind of morbid relish for the stimulus of theirmiseries. Sometimes, forgetting the past and present, they live in thefuture, not in its probable realities, but in its most improbablevisions and unreal creations, now of good and then of evil, whollyunfitting their minds for real life and enjoyments. These morbid andimproper states of mind are too prevalent among young women. They excitethat nervous irritability which is so productive of pining regrets andfretful complaints. They make that large class of fretters who enjoy nopeace themselves, nor permit others to about them. In the domesticcircle they fret their life away. Every thing goes wrong with thembecause they make it so. The smallest annoyances chafe them as thoughthey were unbearable aggravations. Their business and duties troublethem as though such things were not good. Pleasure they never seem toknow because they never get ready to enjoy it. Even the common movementsof Providence are all wrong with them. The weather is never as it shouldbe. The seasons roll on badly. The sun is never properly tempered. Theclimate is always charged with a multitude of vices. The winds areeverlastingly perverse, either too high or too low, blowing dust ineverybody's face, or not fanning them as they should. The earth is everout of humor, too dry or too wet, too muddy or dusty. And the people arejust about like it. Something is wrong all the time, and the wrong isalways just about them. Their home is the worst of anybody's; theirstreet and their neighborhood is the most unpleasant to be found; nobodyelse has so bad servants and so many annoyances as they. Their lot isharder than falls to common mortals; they have to work harder and alwaysdid; have less and always expect to. They have seen more trouble thanother folks know any thing about. They are never so well as theirneighbors, and they always charge all their unhappiness upon thosenearest connected with them, never dreaming that they are themselves theauthors of it all. Such people are to be pitied. Of all the people inthe world they deserve most our compassion. They are good people in manyrespects, very benevolent, very conscientious, very pious, but, withal, very annoying to themselves and others. As a general rule, theirgoodness makes them more difficult to cure of their evil. They can notbe led to see that they are at fault. Knowing their virtues they cannot see their faults. They do not perhaps over-estimate their virtues, but fail to see what they lack, and what they lack they charge uponothers, often upon those who love them best. They see others' actionsthrough the shadow of their own fretful and gloomy spirits. Hence it isthat they see their own faults as existing in those about them, as adefect in the eye produces the appearance of a corresponding defect inevery object toward which it is turned. This defect in character is moregenerally the result of vicious or improper habits of mind, than anyconstitutional idiosyncrasy. It is the result of the indulgence ofgloomy thoughts, morbid fancies, inordinate ambition, habitualmelancholy, a complaining, fault-finding disposition. It is generallyearly acquired, not in childhood, but in youth. Childhood is toobuoyant, fresh, and free for such indulgences. Early youth--when itspassions are developing, when the soul's bubbling springs are openingfresh and warm, when young hopes put out, to be blighted with a shade, young loves come to be disappointed with a frown, young desires aspireto be saddened with the first failure--is the season when the seeds ofdisquiet and unhappiness are sown in the soul. And in the most giftedand sensitive souls these seeds are oftenest sown. Those of highlypoetic temperaments, of delicate and almost divine psychology, in whomsome little constitutional unbalance existed at the beginning of life, and whose judgments developed slower than their passions, are oftenthose who drink the bitterest waters of life. Beautiful souls, sittingin the shadow of self-gathered clouds! We pity and love them. We neversee one without longing to bless it. Oh, could they but know howunbecoming 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 thesunshine of wisdom and love. Having tasted the bitter waters of sorrow, they may appreciate, perhaps all the better, the sweet nectar of lifewhich ought to flow from all our states of mind and outward actions. Wewere not made for sorrow, but for joy. Our souls were not so delicatelywrought to be wasted in fear and melancholy. Our minds were not sogifted to spend themselves on clouds and in darkness. Our hearts werenot so firmly strung to wail notes of grief and woe. This beautifulworld, so ever fresh and new about us, was not designed to imprisonself-convicted souls away from its sunshine and flowers. The bendingheavens arching so grandly over us, so studded with sparklingjoy-lights, and animated with the eternal cotillion of the skies, invites to no such irreverent repining. Creation's wide field ofanimated existence inspires no such moodiness and fretfulness of spirit. It is all wrong; it is absolutely sinful. We have no moral right to makeourselves or others so unhappy. We were made for happiness as well asholiness. All life's duties and experiences, when properly understood, are the steps that lead to the temple of eternal good. Disappointmentsand crosses may come, but let them come; they bring their lessons ofwisdom. Failures may crush our hopes and stop us on life's way; but wemay gather up and go on again rejoicing in what we have learned. Toilsmay demand our time and energies; let us give them; labor createsstrength and imparts knowledge. Others may use our earnings, and requireour care and support; let it be so: "It is more blessed to give than toreceive. "

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 itsuseful lessons when it is legitimate, and death is the gate that opensout 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 onthe willows, they tune theirs in the eternal orchestra above, rejoicingthat we shall soon be with them. Shall we not drown our sorrow in theflood of light let through the rent vail of the skies which Jesusentered, and, to cure our loneliness, gather to us other friends to walklife's way, knowing that every step brings us nearer the departed, andtheir sweet, eternal home, which death never enters, and where partingsare 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 toostrong for death's stroke. They are made for the joys of eternalfriendship. Other friendships on earth will not disturb these bonds thatlink with dear ones on high. Nor will our duties below interfere withthe sacredness of our relations with them. They wish not to see us insorrow. They doubtless sympathize with us; and could we hear their sweetvoices, they would tell us to dry our tears, and bind ourselves to otherfriends, and joyfully perform all duties on earth till our time toascend 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, ascompanions, as parents, as children; our avocations, our labors, sacrifices, hopes, trials, struggles, should administer to ourHappiness. And it is our business to see that they do. Is it a duty tobe good? It is just as much a duty to be happy, to train our minds topleasant moods, and our hearts to cheerful feelings. There is no dutymore sanctioned by every moral obligation than the duty to be happy. Wehave no moral right to make others miserable, or to permit them toremain so when we can help it. No more right have we to torment our ownsouls, or to permit habitual sadness and despondency to weigh down ourspirits. It is well for every young person to seek true moral light uponthis subject; and especially for young women, for their peculiarlysensitive and affectionate nature, their confined habits andemployments, their cares multiplying as they grow older, and theirbody-wearying and soul-trying experiences and labors demand the verybest philosophy and religion of life; and more so as the men with whomtheir lots will be likely to be cast appreciate so little the trials andexperiences of woman's life. They ought to start out resolutelydetermined to be happy, to seek the good of every thing. This should bethe first precept in their moral mode, the first article in their creed, the first resolution demanded by their religion. We have no confidencein a gloomy religion. Human souls were never made to do penance, tolacerate and torment themselves in worship or duty. Every truth in thetheology of the Bible beams with a glory that ought to illuminate ourminds with a light almost divine. Every principle of "the gloriousGospel of the blessed God" is benignant and smiling with the love of theFather, and ought to animate our souls with the joy of a steadyblessedness. Every duty demanded by the Christian religion is but therequirement of perfect love, and should quicken our consciences to themost lively satisfaction. To be desponding and gloomy is indeedirreligious. Hearty joy is the fruit of religion. Swelling gladness isthe praise-note of the truly Christian spirit. There are no possessionslike religious possessions to fill the soul with true enjoyment. Andwhat are they? They are, first: a mind in harmony with the works andways of God, which sees the Father in the daily movements of the spheresand the providential arrangements of the world; in the blossoming lifeof spring, and the withered death of winter; in the dear relations ofdomestic life, and the more showy fraternities of nations; in birth, andlife, and death; in every provision for happiness found in the widerange of the physical and spiritual universe; secondly, a consciencevoid of offense toward God and man; in love with right, bound torighteous principle in a wedlock that knows no breaking; devout, honest, kind, because it is right and Godlike so to be; which rules the mind andlife with a gentle but powerful sway, leading where angels walk in everypure and honest word and work; and thirdly, a heart swelling with loveto God and man; an earnest, warm, good-willing heart, lighting its facewith sunshine, and softening its hand with tenderness; a heart that canmelt in others' woes, and glow in others' joys, pure and chaste, subduedand calm. Such a mind, such a conscience, such a heart afford truereligious enjoyments. The more one has of such possessions, the happierhe must be. With such a mind, the true philosophy of life is clear--itis that we were made to be happy in righteousness and truth, and shouldbend all our energies to guard our hearts from every fretful anddesponding feeling, and make every experience in life bless and make ushappy. Oh, young woman! set your heart on Happiness; not on pleasurethat floats on the surface of life, but on that inward peace that dwellsin the soul devoted to all good. The things about us are designed toadminister to our Happiness, and we should _use_ them for this purpose. The world we live in is for our use. Food, raiment, money, wealth arefor use. They are adapted to good ends in life. They help us to comfort, convenience, beauty, and knowledge. Wisely used, they serve us well; butabused, they sting us with many poisoned darts. The most of us makeourselves miserable by a misuse of the world. We fret our soulswell-nigh to death about dress, food, houses, lands, goods, wealth. Welive for these things, as though serving them could give us Happiness. We are ambitious of gains and gold, as though these could answer thesoul's great wants, as though these could think and love, admire andworship. We chase the illusive glitter of fashion as though it was acrown of glory, and could impart dignity and peace to its wearer. Wehunt after pleasure as though it could be found by searching. Pleasurecomes of itself. It must never be wooed. She is a coy maid, and evereludes her flattering followers. She will come and abide with us when weuse wisely the world and its good things. But we must put things totheir true use, else pleasure will keep away. Oh, how much might weenjoy life if we would put things to their true use! When the sunshines, we must love it and think of its treasures of wealth to theworld. When the cloud rises, we must admire its somber glory, for it isbig with blessings. The morning must be accepted as a rosy blessing, theevening as a quiet prelude to repose; the day as an opportunity forachievements worthy of us, and the night for refreshing rest andrecruit. 

Our friends we must prize and appreciate while we are with them. It is ashame not to know how much we love our friends, and how good they aretill they die. We must seize with joy all our opportunities; our dutieswe must perform with pleasure; our sacrifices we must make cheerfully, knowing that he who sacrifices most is noblest; we must forgive with anunderstanding of the glory of forgiveness, and use the blessings wehave, realizing how great are small blessings when properly accepted. Ihave known men sit to a table comfortably spread with wholesome food andmake themselves and all with them miserable because it lacked somethingtheir 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 disquietbecause it was not so grand as their vanity desired; and others nevertire in their complaints against a very good house because it wasdestitute of a convenience or two that some other house had. I have seenyoung women completely miserable because some article of dress did notharmonize with the last fashioned plait, or some of their surroundingswere not quite so beautiful or agreeable as those of some wealthierfriend. Forgetting to use what they had to administer to theirHappiness, they tormented their souls because they had not somethingelse. All these repinings and complaints come from unchaste spirits. Wisdom dwells not in such souls. The little we have we should enjoy, andif we need or wish more we should labor cheerfully to obtain it, andrejoice in our labor and hope. We should seek to draw Happiness fromevery little incident in life, from every thing we have, and every thingby which we are surrounded. This is the secret of much Happiness. Ibelieve all desire to be happy. It seems to be the one great wish of thehuman soul in which all the others center. But desire is not enough. Wemust seek the Happiness we wish; seek it in the wisdom which openslife's mysteries plainly to our view; which reveals our present andeternal relations, and points out the ways of pleasantness and peace. Would we know the _truth_, the gemmy walks of knowledge, the flowerybowers of inward and joyous life, the teachings of nature, revelation, the Son and the Father? We must seek, else how shall we find them? Thesethings do not come of themselves. Our minds do not develop truth as theforest develops leaves or the prairie flowers, without effort. Truth iswithout, and must be sought. Would we find the path of _duty_? We mustseek it in earnest effort to find and enjoy. And we must seek it with afull determination to enjoy it when so found. We may seek gold, honor, worldly pleasures, and not enjoy them when we find them, because we donot seek them in the right spirit, with an enlightened view of theiruses and a determination to enjoy them in those uses. So we may seekGospel riches, divine light, the instructions of the Word, and find muchfor which we seek, and be but little benefited because we have notresolved to be guided by the light we find and blessed by its divinespirit. If we would be happy, then, we must _seek_ to be happy, notwithout the use of proper and ordained means--not without a thoroughconsecration of our souls to the good of what we seek, but with aresolute will and determination in the use of all proper means to moldour 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 findit, to make it out of what we find. We must seek it in domestic andbusiness life; in the relations we hold to our fellow-men; in theopportunities for discipline, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, resistance oftemptation; in the changes and vicissitudes of life; in nature, revelation, ourselves, and God. If we thus seek, we shall find. This isthe promise, and thousands have realized it. It is not a promise for thefuture world only, but for this also. We have the promise of this worldas well as that which is to come. We need not wait for the golden gateto 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 holyrelations. Our hearts, our homes, our lives may all glow with Happinesson earth. The means for it are all in our hands. The opportunities aredaily open to us. In the dear amenities of home and its dulcet loves; inthe elevating pleasures of society; in the instructing pursuits ofscience, duty, and daily life; in the cultivation of every personalvirtue and every Gospel grace, we may enjoy in this life a sweetantepast of heaven. Only put forth the effort in the right way and thehappy result will be ours. 

But we must not be too dictatorial as to how we enjoy life. We must notbe too positive as to the manner in which we must find Happiness. Wemust not determine that it must come in just the way we wish, or else wewill be miserable in the grief of disappointment. It is not for manwholly to direct his steps. Sometimes what he thinks for his good, turnsout ill; and what he thinks a great evil, develops a great blessing indisguise. It is folly, almost madness, to be miserable because thingsare not as we would have them, or because we are disappointed in ourplans. Many of our plans must be defeated. A multitude of little hopesmust every day be crushed, and now and then a great one. Besides, thesuccess of our plans is not always essential to our best interests orour Happiness. Sometimes success is our misery. Our plans are often ouridols, 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 ofoutward circumstances; nor in any definite kind of labor, or duty, orpleasure, that we must look positively for Happiness; nor yet in anychosen place or society, or surroundings, or under any particular classof influences. If we do, we shall be disappointed; for it is not in ourpower to have things just our way, or to control our outward orassociational life just as we would. We live amid a multitude ofinfluences we can not altogether control. Nor is it best we should. Ourvanity, or ignorance, or selfishness might do us great spiritual injury. We might soon become like spoiled children, or nerveless drones, orpampered aristocrats. What we are to control is ourselves, our minds. We must seek Happiness in the right state of mind, in the legitimatelabors, duties, and pleasures of life, and then we shall find what weseek; yet we may often find it under very different circumstances fromwhat we expected. We may look for it in one pursuit and find it inanother; 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 shallbe last and the last first. " We are short-sighted, and fail to see theend of things. There is not a little of the misery of life comes fromthis disposition to have things our own way, as though we could not behappy under any circumstances only just those we have framed to suit ourminds. Circumstances are not half so essential to our Happiness as mostpeople imagine. A cabin is often the theater of more true Happiness thana palace. The dunghill as often enthrones the true philosophy of life asthe seats which kings occupy. Women in humble circumstances oftenpossess richer minds, sweeter hearts, a nobler and profounder peace thanthose of magnificent surroundings. The disposition to make the best oflife is what we want to make us happy. Those who are so willful andseemingly perverse about their outward circumstances, are oftenintensely affected by the merest trifles. A little thing shadows theirlife for days. The want of some little convenience, some personalgratification, 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 thelatter without an effort to resist. Mole-hills are magnified intomountains, and in the shadow of these mountains they sit down and weep. The very things they ought to have sometimes come unasked, and becausethey are not ready for them, they will not enjoy them, but rather makethem the causes of misery. There is a disposition also in such minds tomultiply their troubles as well as magnify them. They make troubles ofmany things which should really be regarded as privileges, opportunitiesfor self-sacrifice, for culture, for improving effort. They maketroubles of the ordinary allotments of life, its duties, charities, changes, unavoidable accidents, reverses, and experiences. All this canbe considered in no other light than morally wrong, for these commonallotments and experiences were beyond all question ordained by InfiniteWisdom 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 unexpresseddisquietude, because things are not as they would have them; becausethey do not possess some fancied good, or do experience some fanciedmisfortune. There is a tendency in all our minds to such inwardmurmurings. 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 greatattachments to our own ideas of what we must have, to be happy. If wedo, we shall be very miserable, while we believe we are very good. Thetrouble is, we are too selfish, too unyielding in our arrangements forlife's best good. Because we can not find Happiness in our own way, wewill not accept it in any way, and so make ourselves miserable. I haveknown many very excellent people very unhappy from a kind of stubbornadherence to their settled convictions of just what they must have, howthey must live, and what they must do to be happy. They lose sight ofthe fact that God rules above them, and a thousand influences workaround them, partly, at least, beyond their control. They have notdetermined to accept life cheerfully in whatever form it may come, andseek for good--the "soul's calm sunshine and heartfelt joy"--under allcircumstances, believing that all things work together for good to thosewho truly seek a divine life. 

He who seeks a divine life and its pleasantness and peace in the rightspirit, humble, earnest, loving, and cheerful, full of faith and hope, will realize that all things work together for his good. He may engagein life's duties and pleasures in the fullest confidence of this. Evenhis trials and disappointments will discipline his mind for noblest joysin store. They will work out good for his soul, which he will bear withhim in life, and through the gate of death, as his crown and treasureabove. 

Thus far in the pursuit of this subject I have not considered Happinessas 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 thewicked while he remains wicked. I am not authorized to promise anyexcept to the righteous. Our hopes of Happiness for this world and thefuture must be founded in inward righteousness. 

Now it really seems to me that nothing is more wanted among young womenthan a sound philosophy of life, one that they can live by and be happyin. Their duties and trials are to be great. Their influences are tostrike into the hearts of the whole world. The generations to come areto be born of them. It is folly for them to expect to be happy by mereimpulse. They must seek the Happiness of principle. They must makeHappiness an object, and seek it with the use of all right means. 

One consideration more is worthy of a moment's notice. It relates tohealth, both bodily and spiritual. One essential of health ischeerfulness of spirits. The weaknesses and diseases among females ismost fearful. Only here and there is a healthy woman. And we attributeit in part to the great unrest and unspoken melancholy brooding in thegreat woman-soul of the world. Few, perhaps, fully realize the fearfultruth of this remark. Many a beautiful woman is pining under a gloom sheseldom expresses, and not more than half understands. Woman's confinedlife and nerve-distracting habits predispose her to revery, meditation, and morbid habits of mind and feeling. These shade her soul with gloomwhich slowly but surely sinks the tone of her health and shatters herconstitution. Many a young woman plants the seeds of consumption insome early sorrow, and many more sink the tone of their health to a lowdegree by desponding reveries and half-despairing longings for somethingthey have but half conceived in their own minds, and put forth noefforts to obtain. It is a burning shame to our nation and age that ourwomen are so impotent and sickly. We believe the best medicine for themwould be one that would set them all into a hearty laugh, taken once anhour through the day. They need more sprightly activity, moreexhilaration of mind and body, more sunshine and bird-song, moreexuberant freshness of life and Happiness. Every gloomy thought is a taxon health. Every desponding hour extracts a year's vitality from thesystem. A melancholy spirit is like a humor in the blood, breeding aperpetual disease. Doubts and fears are like chills and fevers, whichshake and shatter the vital economy to its center. No unhappy woman canenjoy perfect health. The most vigorous constitutions will quail andsink under the weight of a desponding mind. Health! what is all theworld without it? Who would sacrifice it for every earthly good? Thenlet young women beware how they tamper with it by giving way to orcherishing 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. Itunbalances all the mental powers, gives a morbid activity to some, and akind of reversed action to others. No gloomy spirit is beautiful orharmonious. 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 issinfulness. The piety of such a mind is of a questionable character, andits virtue is liable to be tinctured with selfishness or other evils. Its judgment is improved. God loves a cheerful spirit, a happy soul. Itis not only a duty we owe to ourselves, but to God, to be happy. Ourefforts to subdue every desponding tendency in our minds should be asgreat and as constant as to master our selfish passions or animaldesires. I fully believe we have the power to be happy if we will, or, at least, the most of us have. Some unfortunate minds areconstitutionally down in the mouth. Poor things! They suffer a greathereditary evil. They are too hopeless, from a defect in the structureof their minds; but these are few and far between. The rule is, that wemay be happy if we will. None of the common allotments and evils in lifeare 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 acheerful and useful life. Let no misfortune weigh you down, but riseabove all, and great will be your reward. 

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EXPERIENCE IN WATER-CURE; A Familiar Exposition of the Principles andResults of Water-Treatment in Acute and Chronic Diseases; an Explanationof Water-Cure Processes; Advice on Diet and Regimen, and ParticularDirections to Women in the Treatment of Female Diseases, Water-Treatmentin Childbirth, and the Diseases of Infancy. Illustrated by NumerousCases. By Mrs. Nichols. Price, 30 cents. 

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ERRORS OF PHYSICIANS AND OTHERS IN THE PRACTICE OF THEWATER-CURE. By J. H. Rausse. Translated from the German. Price, 30 cents. 

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HYDROPATHIC FAMILY PHYSICIAN. A Ready Prescriber and Hygienic Adviser, with reference to the Nature, Causes, Prevention and Treatment ofDiseases, Accidents, and Casualties of every kind; with a Glossary, Table of Contents, and Index. Illustrated with nearly Three HundredEngravings. By Joel Shew, M. D. One large volume of 820 pages, substantially bound, in library style. Price, with postage prepaid bymail, $2 50. 

 It possesses the most practical utility of any of the author's contributions to popular medicine, and is well adapted to give the reader an accurate idea of the organisation and functions of the human frame. --_New York Tribune. _

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HYDROPATHY FOR THE PEOPLE. With Plain Observations on Drugs, Diet, Water, Air, and Exercise. A popular Work, by Wm. Horsell, of London. With Notes and Observations by Dr. Trall. Muslin, 87 cents. 

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HYDROPATHY: OR, THE WATER-CURE. Its Principles, Processes and Modes ofTreatment. In part from the most Eminent Authors, Ancient and Modern. Together with an Account of the Latest Methods of Priessnitz. NumerousCases, with full Treatment described. By Dr. Shew. 12mo. Muslin, $1 25. 

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HOME TREATMENT FOR SEXUAL ABUSES. A Practical Treatise for both Sexes, on the Nature and Causes of Excessive and Unnatural Indulgence, theDiseases and Injuries resulting therefrom, with their Symptoms andHydropathic Management. By Dr. Trall. Price, 30 cents. 

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HYDROPATHIC ENCYCLOPĘDIA: A SYSTEM OF HYDROPATHY AND HYGIENE. Containing Outlines of Anatomy; Physiology of the Human Body; HygienicAgencies, and the Preservation of Health; Dietetics, and HydropathicCookery; Theory and Practice of Water-Treatment; Special Pathology, andHydro-Therapeutics, including the Nature, Causes, Symptoms, andTreatment of all known Diseases; Application of Hydropathy to Midwiferyand the Nursery. Designed as a Guide to Families and Students, and aText-Book for Physicians. By R. T. Trall, M. D. Illustrated with upwardsof Three Hundred Engravings and Colored Plates. Substantially bound, inone large volume, also in two 12mo. Vols. Price for either edition, prepaid by mail, in Muslin, $3 00; in Leather, $3 50. 

 This is the most comprehensive and popular work yet published on the subject of Hydropathy, with nearly one thousand pages. Of all the numerous publications which have attained such a wide popularity, as issued by Fowlers and Wells, perhaps none are more adapted to general utility than this rich, comprehensive, and well-arranged Encyclopędia. --_N. Y. Tribune. _

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HYDROPATHIC QUARTERLY REVIEW. A Professional Magazine, devoted toMedical Reform; embracing Articles by the best Writers on Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, Surgery, Therapeutics, Midwifery, etc. : Reportsof Remarkable Cases in General Practice, Criticisms on the Theory andPractice of the various Opposing Systems of Medical Science, Reviews ofNew Publications of all Schools of Medicine, Reports of the Progress ofHealth Reform in all its aspects, etc. , with appropriate EngravedIllustrations. Terms, a Year, in advance, Two Dollars. 

 Filled with articles of permanent value which ought to be read by every American. --_N. Y. Trib. _

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HYGIENE AND HYDROPATHY. THREE LECTURES. Full ofInterest and Instruction. By R. S. Houghton, M. D. Price, 30 cents. 

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INTRODUCTION TO THE WATER-CURE. Founded in Nature, andadapted to the Wants of Man. By Dr. Nichols. Price, 15 cents. 

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MIDWIFERY, AND THE DISEASES OF WOMEN. A Descriptive And Practical Work, showing the Superiority of Water-Treatment in Menstruation and itsDisorders, Chlorosis, Leucorrhoea, Fluor Albus, Prolapsis Uteri, Hysteria, Spinal Diseases and other Weaknesses of Females; in Pregnancyand its Diseases, Abortion, Uterine Hemorrhage, and the GeneralManagement of Childbirth, Nursing, etc. , etc. Illustrated with NumerousCases of Treatment. By Joel Shew, M. D. 12mo. 432 pp. Muslin, $1 25. 

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PARENTS' GUIDE FOR THE TRANSMISSION OF DESIRED QUALITIES TO OFFSPRING, AND CHILDBIRTH MADE EASY. By Mrs. Hester Pendleton, Price, 60 cents. 

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PRACTICE OF WATER-CURE. With Authenticated Evidence of its Efficacy andSafety. Containing a detailed account of the various processes used inthe Water-Treatment, etc. By James Wilson, M. D. , and James M. Gully, M. D. 30 cents. 

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PHILOSOPHY OF WATER CURE. A Development of the True Principles of Healthand Longevity. By John Balbirnie, M. D. With a Letter from Sir EdwardLytton Bulwer. From the Second London Edition. Paper. Price, 80 cents. 

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PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH. Illustrated With Cases, Showing the RemarkableEffects of Water in Mitigating the Pains and Perils of the ParturientState. By Dr. Shew. Paper. Price, 30 cents. 

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PRINCIPLES OF HYDROPATHY: Or, The Invalid's Guide To Health andHappiness. Being a plain, familiar Exposition of the Principles of theWater-Cure System. By David A. Harsha. Price, 15 cents. 

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RESULTS OF HYDROPATHY; Or, Constipation Not a Disease of the Bowels;Indigestion not a Disease of the Stomach; with an Exposition of the trueNature and Causes of these Ailments, explaining the reason why they areso certainly cured by the Hydropathic Treatment. By Edward Johnson, M. D. Muslin. Price, 87 cents. 

SCIENCE OF SWIMMING. Giving a History of Swimming, and Instructions toLearners. By an Experienced Swimmer. Illustrated with Engravings. 15cts. 

 Every boy in the nation should have a copy, and learn to swim. 

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WATER-CURE LIBRARY. (In Seven 12mo. Volumes. ) Embracing the most popularworks on the subject. By American and European Authors. Bound inEmbossed Muslin. Library Style. Price, prepaid by mail, only $7 00. 

 This library comprises most of the important works on the subject of Hydropathy. The volumes are of uniform size and binding, and the whole form a most valuable medical library. 

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WATER-CURE IN AMERICA. Over Three Hundred Cases of various Diseasestreated with Water by Drs. Wesselhoeft, Shew, Bedortha, Trall, andothers. With Cases of Domestic Practice. Designed for Popular as well asProfessional Reading. Edited by a Water Patient. Muslin, $1 25. 

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WATER AND VEGETABLE DIET IN CONSUMPTION, SCROFULA, CANCER, ASTHMA ANDOTHER CHRONIC DISEASES. In which the Advantages of Pure Water areparticularly considered. By William Lambe, M. D. With Notes and Additionsby Joel Shew, M. D. 12mo. 258 pp. Paper, 62 cents; Muslin, 87 cents. 

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WATER-CURE APPLIED TO EVERY KNOWN DISEASE. A New Theory. A CompleteDemonstration of the Advantages of the Hydropathic System of CuringDiseases; showing also the fallacy of the Allopathic Method, and itsUtter Inability to Effect a Permanent Cure. With Appendix, containingHydropathic Diet, and Rules for Bathing. By J. H. Rausse. Translatedfrom the German. Muslin, 87 cents. 

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WATER-CURE MANUAL. A Popular Work, Embracing Descriptions of the VariousModes of Bathing, the Hygienic and Curative Effects of Air, Exercise, Clothing, Occupation, Diet, Water-Drinking, etc. Together withDescriptions of Diseases, and the Hydropathic Remedies. By Joel Shew, M. D. Muslin. Price, 87 cents. 

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WATER-CURE ALMANAC. Published Annually, Containing Important andValuable Hydropathic Matter. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings, withcorrect calculations for all latitudes. 48 pp. Price, 6 cents. 

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WATER-CURE JOURNAL, AND HERALD OF REFORMS. Devoted To Physiology, Hydropathy, and the Laws of Life and Health. Illustrated with NumerousEngraving. Quarto. Published Monthly, at $1 00 a Year, in advance. 

 We know of no American periodical which presents a greater abundance of valuable information on all subjects relating to human progress and welfare. --_N. Y. Tribune. _

 This is, unquestionably, the most popular Health Journal in the world. --_N. Y. Evening Post. _

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FOWLER AND WELLS have all works on PHYSIOLOGY, HYDROPATHY, PHRENOLOGY, and the Natural Sciences generally. Booksellers supplied on the mostliberal terms. AGENTS wanted in every State, county, and town. Theseworks are universally popular, and thousands might be sold where theyhave never yet been introduced. 

Letters and other communications should, in ALL CASES, be post-paid, anddirected to the Publishers, as follows:

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BOOKS SENT BY MAIL TO ANY POST OFFICE IN THE UNITED STATES. 

WORKS ON PHYSIOLOGY, PUBLISHED BY

FOWLER and WELLS, BOSTON } { PHILADELPHIA: 142 Washington St. } 308 BROADWAY, New York. { 231 Arch Street. 

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ALCOHOL AND THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN. Illustrated by a beautifullyColored Chemical Chart. By Prof. E. L. Youmans. Paper, 30 cts. Muslin, 50 cts. 

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AMATIVENESS; Or, Evils and Remedies of Excessive and PervertedSexuality, including Warning and Advice to the Married and Single. Animportant little work, on an important subject. By O. S. Fowler. Price, 15 cents. 

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COMBE ON INFANCY; Or, the Physiological and Moral Management ofChildren. By Andrew Combe, M. D. With Illustrations. Muslin, 87 cents. 

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COMBE'S PHYSIOLOGY. Applied to the Preservation of Health, and to theImprovement of Physical and Mental Education. By Andrew Combe, M. D. WithNotes and Observations by O. S. Fowler. Muslin, 87 cents. 

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CHRONIC DISEASES: Especially the Nervous Diseases of Women. By D. Rosch. Translated from the German. Price, 30 cents. 

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DIGESTION, PHYSIOLOGY OF. Considered With Relation to the Principles ofDietetics. By A. Combe, M. D. Illustrated with Engravings. Price, 30 cts. 

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FRUITS AND FARINACEA THE PROPER FOOD OF MAN. WithNotes by Dr. Trall. Illustrated by numerous Engravings. Muslin. Price, $1 00. 

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FOOD AND DIET. With Observations on the Dietetic Regimen suited toDisordered States of the Digestive Organs; and an Account of theDietaries of some of the Principal Metropolitan and other Establishmentsfor Paupers, Lunatics, Criminals, Children, the Sick, etc. By J. Pereira, M. D. , F. R. S. Octavo. Muslin. Price, $1 25. 

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GENERATION, PHILOSOPHY OF. Its Abuses, With Their Causes, Prevention, and Cure. Illustrated. By John B. Newman, M. D. Price, 30 cents. 

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HEREDITARY DESCENT: Its Laws and Facts Applied to Human Improvement. ByO. S. Fowler. Paper. Price, 62 cents. Muslin, 87 cents. 

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MATERNITY; Or, The Bearing and Nursing of Children, including FemaleEducation. By O. S. Fowler. With Illustrations. Muslin, 87 cents. 

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NATURAL LAWS OF MAN. A PHILOSOPHICAL CATECHISM. By J. G. Spurzheim, M. D. An important work. Price, 30 cents. 

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NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN. SHOWING HIS THREE ASPECTS OF Plant, Beast, andAngel. Plant Life, comprising the Nutritive Apparatus. Beast Life, orSoul, the Phrenological Faculties. Angel Life, or Spirit, Jehovah'slikeness in Man. By John B. Newman, M. D. Illustrated with Engravings. Price, 87 cents. 

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PHYSIOLOGY, ANIMAL AND MENTAL. APPLIED TO THE PRESERVATION andRestoration of Health of Body and Power of Mind. By O. S. Fowler. Illustrated with Engravings. Price 87 cents. 

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REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS. THEIR DISEASES, CAUSES, AND CURE on HydropathicPrinciples. By James C. Jackson. Price 15 cents. 

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SEXUAL DISEASES; THEIR CAUSES, PREVENTION AND CURE, ON PhysiologicalPrinciples. Embracing Home Treatment for Sexual Abuses; ChronicDiseases, Especially the Nervous Diseases of Women; The Philosophy ofGeneration; Amativeness; Hints on the Reproductive Organs. In onevolume. Price, $1 25 cents. 

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SOBER AND TEMPERATE LIFE. THE DISCOURSES AND LETTERS OF Louis Cornaro. With a Biography of the Author. With Notes, and an Appendix. 80 cts. Twenty-five thousand copies have been sold. It is translated intoseveral languages. 

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TOBACCO: ITS HISTORY, NATURE, AND EFFECTS ON THE BODY and Mind. With theOpinions of the Rev. Dr. Nott, L. N. Fowler, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Horace Greeley, Dr. Jennings, O. S. Fowler, Dr. R. T. Trall, and others. By Joel Shew, M. D. Price, 30 cents. 

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TOBACCO. THREE PRIZE ESSAYS. BY DRS. SHEW, TRALL, ANDRev. D. Baldwin. Price, 15 cents. Per hundred, $8 00. 

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TEMPERANCE TRACTS. BY TRALL, GREELEY, BARNUM, FOWLER, and others. Price, per hundred, 75 cents. Per thousand, by Express, $4 00. 

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TEETH: THEIR STRUCTURE, DISEASE, AND TREATMENT. WITHnumerous Illustrations. By John Burdell. Price 15 cents. 

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TEA AND COFFEE. THEIR PHYSICAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND MORALEffects on the Human System. By Dr. William A. Alcott. Price, 15 cents. 

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USE OF TOBACCO; ITS PHYSICAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND MORALEffects on the Human System. By Dr. William A. Alcott. Price, 15 cents. 

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VEGETABLE DIET; AS SANCTIONED BY MEDICAL MEN, AND BY Experience in allAges. Including a System of Vegetable Cookery. By Dr. Alcott. 87 cts. 

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UTERINE DISEASES: OR, THE DISPLACEMENT OF THE UTERUS. A thorough andpractical treatise on the Malpositions of the Uterus and adjacentOrgans. Illustrated with Colored Engravings from Original Designs. By R. T. Trall. M. D. Price, $5 00. 

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EITHER OF THESE WORKS may be ordered and received by return of the FIRSTMAIL, postage prepaid by the Publishers. FOWLERS AND WELLS, 308Broadway, New York. 

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MESMERISM AND PSYCHOLOGY. 

A NEW AND COMPLETE LIBRARY OF MESMERISM AND Psychology, embracing themost popular works on the subject, with suitable Illustrations. In twovolumes of about 900 pp. Bound in Library Style. Price, $8 00. 

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BIOLOGY; OR, THE PRINCIPLES OF THE HUMAN MIND, DEDUCED from PhysicalLaws, and on the Voltaic Mechanism of Man. Illustrated. Price, 80 cents. 

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ELECTRICAL PSYCHOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY OF. IN A COURSE OFTwelve Lectures. By John Bovee Dods. Muslin. Price, 87 cents. 

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FASCINATION; OR, THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHARMING. Illustrating the Principlesof Life, in connection with Spirit and Matter. By J. B. Newman, M. D. 87cts. 

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MENTAL ALCHEMY. A TREATISE ON THE MIND, NERVOUS SYSTEM, Psychology, Magnetism, Mesmerism, and Diseases. By B. B. Williams, M. D. Price, 62cts. 

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MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM; OR, THE UNIVERSE WITHOUT AND the UniverseWithin: in the World of Sense, and the World of Soul. By Wm. Fishbough. Price, Paper, 62 cents. Muslin, 87 cents. 

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PHILOSOPHY OF MESMERISM. SIX LECTURES. WITH AN Introduction. By Rev. John Bovee Dods. Paper. Price, 30 cents. 

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PSYCHOLOGY; OR, THE SCIENCE OF THE SOUL. CONSIDERED Physiologically andPhilosophically. With an Appendix containing Notes of Mesmeric andPsychical Experience. By Joseph Haddock, M. D. With Engravings. Price, 30 cents. 

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SPIRITUAL INTERCOURSE, PHILOSOPHY OF. BEING AN Explanationof Modern Mysteries. By Andrew Jackson Davis. Price, 62 cents. 

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SUPERNAL THEOLOGY, AND LIFE IN THE SPHERES. DEDUCED from allegedSpiritual Manifestations. By Owen G. Warren. Octavo. Price 30 cents. 

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MISCELLANEOUS. 

BOTANY FOR ALL CLASSES. CONTAINING A FLORAL DICTIONARY, and a Glossaryof Scientific Terms. Illustrated By J. B. Newman, M. D. Price, 87 cents. 

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CHEMISTRY, AND ITS APPLICATIONS TO AGRICULTURE ANDCommerce. By Justus Liebig, M. D. , F. R. S. Price, 25 cents. 

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DELIA'S DOCTORS; OR, A GLANCE BEHIND THE SCENES. BYHannah Gardner Creamer. Paper. Price, 62 cents. Muslin, 87 cents. 

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FAMILIAR LESSONS ON ASTRONOMY: DESIGNED FOR THE USE of Children andYouth in Schools and Families. By Mrs. L. N. Fowler. Illustrated. 87cts. 

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FUTURE OF NATIONS: IN WHAT CONSISTS ITS SECURITY. A Lecture delivered inthe Tabernacle, New York. By Kossuth. With a Likeness. Price, 12 cts. WHAT THE SISTER ARTS TEACH AS TO FARMING. AN ADDRESS, By Horace Greeley. Price, 12 cents. TRUE BASIS OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. AN ADDRESS. ByHon. Wm. H. Seward. Price, 12 cents. ESSAY ON WAGES. The Means Employedfor Upholding Them. By P. C. Friese. Price, 15 cts. LABOR, ITS HISTORYAND PROSPECTS. By Robert Dale Owen. Price, 80 cents. 

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HINTS TOWARDS REFORMS; CONSISTING OF LECTURES, Essays, Addresses, andother Writings. With the Crystal Palace, and its Lessons. SecondEdition, Enlarged. By Horace Greeley. Price $1 25. 

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HOPES AND HELPS FOR THE YOUNG OF BOTH SEXES. RELATING to the Formationof Character, Choice of Avocation, Health, Amusement, Music, Conversation, Cultivation of Intellect, Moral Sentiments, SocialAffection, Courtship and Marriage. By Rev. G. S. Weaver. Price, inPaper, 62 cents. Muslin, 87 cents. 

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HUMAN RIGHTS, AND THEIR POLITICAL GUARANTIES. BY Judge Hurlbut. WithNotes, by George Combe. Price, Paper, 62 cents. Muslin, 87 cts. 

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HOME FOR ALL, A NEW, CHEAP, CONVENIENT, AND SUPERIOR Mode of Building, containing full Directions for Constructing Gravel Walls. With Views, Plans, and Engraved Illustrations. New Edition, Revised and Enlarged. Price, 87 cents. 

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IMMORTALITY TRIUMPHANT. THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD AND Human Immortality, Practically Considered, and the Truth of Divine RevelationSubstantiated. By Rev. John Bovee Dods. Price, Paper, 62 cents. Muslin, 87 cents. 

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LITERATURE AND ART. BY S. MARGARET FULLER. TWO PARTS in one volume. Withan Introduction, by Horace Greeley. Muslin. Price, $1 25. 

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PHONOGRAPHIC TEACHER. PRICE, 45 CENTS. REPORTERS' Manual. 75 cents. And all other Works on Phonography. Wholesale and Retail. 

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POWER OF KINDNESS; INCULCATING THE PRINCIPLES OF Benevolence and Love. By Charles Morley. Paper, 30 cents. Muslin, 50 cents. 

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POPULATION, THEORY OF. DEDUCED FROM THE GENERAL LAW of Animal Fertility. With an Introduction by R. T. Trall, M. D. Price, 15 cents. 

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WOMAN; HER EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE. BY MRS. HUGO Reid. With anIntroduction by Mrs. C. M. Kirkland. With Portraits. Price, 87 cents. 

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