Letters to Young Women

LETTER VIII.

THE BEAUTY AND BLESSEDNESS OF FEMALE PIETY.

The cross, if rightly borne, shall be
No burden, but support to thee,

Whittier.

YOUNG women, this is my last letter addressed specially to you; and as I take your hand, and give you my adieu, I wish to say a few words which shall be worth a great deal to you. It is my opinion that to a certain extent, in certain directions, God meant that you should be dependent upon men, and that in this dependence should exist some of your profoundest and sweetest attractions and your noblest characteristics. Your bodies are smaller than those of men. You were not made to wrestle with the rough forces of nature. You were not made for war, nor commerce, nor agriculture. In all these departments, the iron wills and the iron muscles of man are alone at home. The bread you eat, and the fabrics you wear, are to be gathered from the earth by men. You are to be protected by men. They build your houses; they guard your persons. It is entirely natural for you to rely upon them for much that you have. You give, or may give, great rewards for all this. It is not a menial relation, nor one which detracts from your dignity in the least. The circle of human duties is only complete by the union of those of man and woman. Man has his sphere — woman, hers. We cannot talk of superiority among spheres and duties that are alike essential. Suffice it that, in the degree in which you are dependent upon man for support and protection, does he owe support and protection to you. He is bound to do for you what you, through the peculiarities of your constitution, are unable to do for yourself. You are never to quarrel with this arrangement. You will only make yourself unhappy by it, because, by quarrelling with God’s plans, you essentially unsex yourself, and become a discord. Therefore, recognise your dependence gladly and gracefully. Be at home in it, for in it lies your power for influence and for good. This advances us a step towards the point to which I wish to lead you. Now, if you will go with me into a circle of praying Christians, or if you will take up with me a list of the members of any church, I will show you a fact which I wish to connect with the facts stated in the preceding paragraph. You will find, I suppose, that at least two-thirds of the members of the prayer-meeting are women, and that the church register will show a corresponding proportion of female names. Why is this? Is it because women are weaker than men, simply? Is it because women are subject to smaller temptations than men? Is it because their passions are less powerful than those of men? Not at all — or not in any important degree. It is because a feeling of dependence is native in the female heart. It is because the pride of independence has little or no place there. It is because the female mind has to undergo comparatively a small revolution to become religious. Rather, perhaps, I should say, that one powerful barrier that stands before the path of every man in his approach to the valley of humiliation does not oppose the passage of the true woman. I suppose it is very rare that those who are denominated “strong minded women” become religious. The pride of personal independence is built before them by their own hands,

So sweet and so natural a thing is piety among women that men have come to regard a woman with out it as strange, if not unhealthy. The coarsest and most godless men often select pious wives, because they see that piety softens, and deepens, and elevates every natural grace of person, and every accomplishment of mind. Now my opinion is that Heaven, seeing how important it is for you to be its own children, in profession and in spirit, has given special favors to your sex, through this simple fact or principle of dependence. It is your work to soften and refine men. Men living without you, by themselves, become savage and sinful. The purer you are, the more are they restrained, and the more are they elevated. It is your work to form the young mind — to give it direction and instruction — to develop its love for the good and the true. It is your work to make home happy — to nourish all the virtues, and instil all the sentiments which build men up into good citizens. The foundation of our national character is laid by the mothers of the nation. I say that Heaven, seeing the importance to the world of piety in you, has so modified your relations to man that it shall be comparatively easy for you to descend into that valley, over which all must walk, before their feet can stand upon the heights of Christian experience, between which and Heaven’s door the ascent is easy.

For my own part, I shrink with horror from a godless woman. There seems to be no light in her — no glory proceeding from her. There is something monstrous about her. I can see why men do not become religious. It is a hard thing — it is, at least, if experience and observation are to be relied on — for a man whose will has been made stern by encounters in the great battle of life, who is conscious of power and accustomed to have the minds around him bend to his, who possesses the pride of manhood and the self-esteem that springs naturally in the mind of one in his position, to become “as a little child.” Woman has only to recognise her dependences upon One higher than man, and, in doing this, is obliged to do but little violence to her habits of thought, and no violence at all to such sentiments of independence as stand most in the way of man. So I say that a godless woman is a monstrous woman. She is an unreasonable woman. She is an offensive woman. Even an utterly godless man, unless he be debauched and debased to the position of an animal, deems such a woman without excuse. He looks on her with suspicion. He would not have such an one to take the care of his children. He would not trust her.

I do not propose to offer you any incentives to piety drawn from a future condition of rewards and punishments. I leave it to the pulpits whose ministrations you attend to talk of this matter in their own way. My whole argument shall relate to the proprieties and necessities of the present life. It is proper that you serve the Being who made you, and that you love the One who redeemed you. It is proper that to all your graces you add that of unselfishness. It is proper that all the elements of your character be harmonized and sublimated by the tenderest devotion to the “One altogether lovely.” It is proper that your heart be purified, so that all the influence which goes out of it, through the varied relationships of life, be good, and only good. I mean by the word “proper” all that the word proper can mean. It is eternally and immutably fit. I mean that it is improper and unfit that you should fail of piety. I mean that by carrying with you a rebellious and cold and careless heart, you introduce among the sweet harmonies of the world, a harsh discord, which it is not fit and proper that you should introduce. You are a wandering star. You are a voiceless bird. You are a motionless brook. The strings of your soul are not in tune with those chords which the Infinite hand sweeps as he evolves the music of the universe. Your being does not respond to the touch of Providence; and if Beauty, and Truth, and Goodness, and Love, come down to you, like angels out of heaven, and sing you their sweetest songs, you do not see their wings, nor recognise their home and parentage. I say that it is not proper — it is inexpressibly unfit that you — a woman — with delicate sensibilities, and pure instincts and a dependent nature, should ignore the relations which exist between your soul and God, and put a veil of blackness between the light which he has lighted within you, and that Infinite fountain of light still open and ready to fill all your being with its divine radiance.

Then, as to your necessities: First, remember what you are. You are really the consolers of the world. You attend the world in sickness; you give all its medicines ; your society soothes the world after its toil, and rewards it for its perplexities; you receive the infant when it enters upon existence; you drape the cold form of the aged when life is past ; you settle the little difficulties, and assuage the sorrows of childhood; you minister to the poor and the distressed. Do you suppose that out of the resources of your poor heart, you can supply all the draughts that will be made upon your sympathies and their varied ministry? Do you believe that you carry within your own bosom light for the dying, hope for the despairing, consolation for the bereft, patience for the sick? Nay, do you believe that you have light and hope and consolation and patience sufficient for your own soul’s wants, while performing the ministries to which, in Heaven’s economy, you are appointed? Piety is, then, an absolute necessity to you. You can no more perform these offices to which you are called, properly and efficiently, without piety, than a bird can fly without wings, You would be trying to make bricks without straw. Think of a woman by the side of a dying sister, or a sick child, or a sorrowing friend, or a broken-hearted and broken-spirited man, without a word of heaven in her mouth — without so much as the ability to whisper “Our Father,” or even to point her finger hopefully towards the stars!

Again, your life and duties are peculiar, as your sphere is distinct. If you lead a worthy, womanly life, it will be a home life — free from great excitements. The current of your thoughts will flow in retired channels. You will hear, outside, the braying of trumpets, and the roll of drums, and the din of wheels, and the rush and roar of the world’s great business, Oftentimes, when you are busy with your modest affairs, and going through the wearying routine of your life, you will be tempted to repine at their quietness and insipidness. Many a woman does the work of her life without being seen or noticed by the world. The world sees a family reared to virtue — one child after another growing into Christian manhood and womanhood, and at last it sees them all gathered around a grave where the mother that bore them rests from her labors. But the world has never seen that quiet woman laboring for her children, making their clothes, providing their food, teaching them their prayers, and making their homes comfortable and happy.

The world knows nothing, or does not think, of the fears, the pains, and the anxieties inseparable from the mother’s office. She bears them alone, and discharges her peculiar responsibilities without assistance. No individual in the world can do a mother’s work for her. A family of young immortals is committed to her hands. The rearing and training of these form a business to which she has served no apprenticeship. If divine guidance and support be necessary to any one in the world, they are necessary to the wife and mother. It is a sad, sad thought to any son or daughter that his or her mother was not a woman of piety. The boy that feels that his name is mentioned in a good mother’s prayers, is comparatively safe from vice, and the ruin to which it leads, The sweetest thought that N. P. Willis ever penned grew out of a reference to his pious mother’s prayers for him. Tossed by the waves, in a vessel which was bearing him homeward, he wrote:

Sleep safe, O wave-worn mariner,
Nor fear to-night nor storm nor sea!
The ear of Heaven bends low to her;
He comes to shore who sails with me!

Will not piety be necessary to you? Will not your piety be necessary to your children?

And now, young women, a few closing words. I have no doubt many of you have read these letters with care, and with an earnest wish to profit by them. They have been written in all honesty and sincerity, and I leave them with you. The opinions I have given you have not been hastily formed, nor has the counsel I have urged upon you arisen from anything but a conscientious conviction of your wants, and a desire to help you to a womanhood, the noblest to be achieved in this world. Your happiness is very much in your own hands; so are your usefulness and your good name. I do not ask you to be anything but a glad, sunny woman. I would have no counsels of mine recommended by long faces and formal behavior. I would have you so at peace with Heaven, with the world and with yourself, that tears shall flow only at the call of sympathy. I would have you immaculate as light, devoted to all good deeds, industrious, intelligent, patient, heroic. And crowning every grace of person and mind, every accomplishment, every noble sentiment, every womanly faculty, every delicate instinct, every true impulse, I would see religion upon your brow — the coronet by token of which God makes you a princess in his family, and an heir to the brightest glories, the sweetest pleasures, the noblest privileges, and the highest honors of his kingdom.