and the principles of truth and beauty are the same as when the
everlasting Spirit from whom they come "brooded upon the face" of the
primeval seas.
But once more, we must and will by God's help try to realise the
purpose of this College, by boldly facing the facts of the age and of
our own office. And therefore we shall not shrink from the task,
however delicate and difficult, of speaking to our hearers as to
women. Our teaching must be no sexless, heartless abstraction. We
must try to make all which we tell them bear on the great purpose of
unfolding to woman her own calling in all ages--her especial calling
in this one. We must incite them to realise the chivalrous belief of
our old forefathers among their Saxon forests, that something Divine
dwelt in the counsels of woman; but, on the other hand, we must
continually remind them that they will attain that divine instinct,
not by renouncing their sex, but by fulfilling it; by becoming true
women, and not bad imitations of men; by educating their heads for
the sake of their hearts, not their hearts for the sake of their
heads; by claiming woman's divine vocation, as the priestess of
purity, of beauty, and of love; by educating themselves to become,
with God's blessing, worthy wives and mothers of a mighty nation of
workers, in an age when the voice of the ever-working God is
proclaiming through the thunder of falling dynasties, and crumbling
idols: "He that will not work, neither shall he eat."