E-text prepared by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/)
Note: Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
http://www.archive.org/details/hearthstonethoug00osgoiala
THE HEARTH-STONE:
Thoughts upon Home-Life in Our Cities.
by
SAMUEL OSGOOD,
Author of "Studies in Christian Biography,"
"God with Men, or Footprints of Providential Leaders," &C.
"This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold:
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told."
GEORGE HERBERT.
New-York:
D. Appleton and Company,
200 Broadway.
London: 10 Little Britain.
1854.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858 by
D. Appleton And Company,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern
District of New-York.
PREFACE.
These thoughts are published for the same reason that led the author from
time to time to put them upon paper,--a wish to meet a want in the sphere
of the affections rather than to claim any honor in the kingdom of ideas.
Wherever important questions have been at issue he has not avoided them,
however conspicuous or controverted; but the volume aims to breathe a
kindly spirit above the reach of sect and party. He is not ashamed to have
his style show something of the habit of his profession, and to use, in
part, ideas that he has expressed in the lyceum and the pulpit in a
different form.
It will be seen that the several subjects connect themselves more or less
closely with a year's life in the household, and that the light which
cheers the whole twelvemonth is kindled on the hearth-stone at Christmas
and New Year.
The state of things in our American cities is now so peculiar, so marked
by privilege and peril, that no earnest plea for home affections and
virtues can be wholly thrown away. To dedicate books to conspicuous names
is a custom now almost obsolete, and if the Author were to venture upon
any dedication of this little volume it would read somewhat thus:--
TO THOSE WHO HAVE EVER LOVED HOME,
AND WHO WISH TO LOVE IT ALWAYS.
NEW-YORK, _Oct. 22, 1853_.
CONTENTS.
Page
HOME VIEWS OF AMERICAN LIFE 7
THE IDEAL OF WOMANHOOD 27
THE HOPE OF CHILDHOOD 45
NEW THINGS 63
SOLICITUDE OF PARENTS 79
REVERENCE IN CHILDREN 91
BROTHERS AND SISTERS 105
MARRIAGE 119
OUR FRIENDS 135
MASTER AND SERVANT 151
THE DIVINE GUEST 167
THE ORPHAN 183
THE YOUNG PRODIGAL 199
EDUCATION OF DAUGHTERS 213
BUSINESS AND THE HEART 233
SUMMER IN THE COUNTRY 249
RETURNING HOME 265
THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 277
Home Views of American Life.
HOME VIEWS OF AMERICAN LIFE.
What day of all the year gives an American a happier sense of his civil
and domestic blessings, than the old feast of the ingathering--the
time-hallowed Thanksgiving? Once more it has come round; and our pen is
disposed to catch a little of its genial temper before the hearth-stone.
This is peculiarly the home festival of our people, and throughout all the
States of our republic it is affectionately cherished. As such, resting
upon a good old precedent, it appeals to a permanent want, and gains
interest with years. The character of the day has somewhat changed, and
the domestic element in its uses preponderates far over the
ecclesiastical. Yet much of the old feeling remains, and thousands gather
in the churches, all the better prepared by the hour of worship, for the
hours of fireside enjoyment. Large scope is usually given the preacher at
this time, and many a timid man ventures upon bold themes, quite free to
take the political, or social, or philanthropic, or ecclesiastical view of
the country or the world, as he may choose. The preacher may not
complain, then, of the essayist for taking something of the same liberty,
and trenching a little upon the prerogative of the pulpit. It is surely
not amiss to open this series of discursive papers with some thoughts upon
our home blessings, upon God's hand in giving them, and our work in
spreading them.
Our home blessings! Take first the most obvious view of them. Consider the
plenty that abounds. I speak not of the few affluent, but of the great
majority who enjoy the common lot. What abundance in their homes! Look at
the household of any unpretending citizen, and say what realm of earth,
what domain of nature, does not send its treasures thither? The orchards,
the fields, the pastures, the hills, the rivers, the mines, the oceans,
bring their tribute to the fireside. From the shores of the Mediterranean
come the olive, the grape, the orange, the fig, the date. The farther
Indies send their fragrant herbs and sweet spices. The repast of a frugal
family is rarely set forth without offerings from all quarters of the
globe. The cottager's lamp, that burns by night, is fed with oil from the
Arctic zone. The light of day shines through clear crystal, that shows the
perfection of the arts, and the cheapness of their most beautiful
products. In humble abodes the wonders of manufacture appear. Rich cotton
stuffs tell of the affluence of the Southern soil and the skill of the
Northern artisan. Luxuries, of old the prerogative of princes, are now
familiar things. The silks of France and Italy are worn by the wife and
daughters of the farmer and the mechanic. I will not try to describe the
mansions of the wealthy, although these, when graced by refinement, and
exalted by piety and charity, may give impressive views of the ample
bounty of Providence. It is better to contemplate the plenty within reach
of the common lot. Among what people, in what age, has the common lot been
so favored as with us? When in the earth's history have so many persons
had reason to be grateful at the feast of the ingathering as now? We boast
not of great banquets, in which the luxury of the few is wrung from the
misery of the many. We speak not of pearls dissolved in the wine cup, and
the price of cities thus quaffed at a draught. Our country, prouder than
the empire of a Caligula, or a Cleopatra, can point to the households of
her people, and in the amount of their combined blessings pity the poverty
of the builders of the Coliseum or the Pyramids. Other lands may have
prouder palaces and more princely fortunes. None can show so many favored
homes. Go to thy home, and tell how great things the Lord, the giver of
the harvests, hath done for thee in its plenty.
Consider too its peace as well as its plenty. No wars disturb it, nor
rumors of war. No civil strifes threaten its tranquillity. No tyrannical
powers intrude upon its freedom. Every household is better guarded than
any feudal castle. Equal laws make it more impregnable than walls or
moats. Public opinion is a host of defence stronger than an army with
banners. We do not indeed forget our own imperfections and failings. We do
not forget that millions are in bondage in our land, and that if they have
homes in favored cases, they have them by their owners' mercy, not by
their own legal right. Yet to-day the slave is somewhat a sharer in his
master's bounty, and this feast, that carries our thoughts back to the
time of the great Hebrew Exodus, allows us to enjoy the liberty that God
has bestowed upon us and these free States, and forbids us to despair of
the redemption of any of the races yet held in bondage. It is something to
boast of, that slavery is the exception now among civilized nations,
instead of being, as of old, the universal law for the weaker from the
stronger. For ourselves, we disclaim all share in its origin and
continuance, deeming it to be a local misfortune to be deplored, not a
national institution to be honored.
As a nation, we are lovers of equal law. The sober thought, nurtured by
the best experience of the Atlantic States, finds its response in the new
regions of the farthest West, and not even the mad thirst for gold has
made the restless people on our Pacific coast forgetful of their
birthright of liberty and law. A mighty habit of civil order has entered
into our national life. The strongholds of order are in our homes. There
each man finds the motive that leads him to resist alike the disorganizer
and the invader. Thence we derive the assurance of the best of standing
armies; for men that have households to defend, will be as little inclined
to yield to hostile invasion as to destructive revolution. How peaceful
our homes! As mighty is the power nurtured within them that makes them so.
Go home, and in addition to the blessings of plenty and of peace, consider
the means of intellectual and spiritual culture there. The laboring man
may own a better library than a prince or prelate of the olden time. For a
pittance trifling even to him, he may have tidings daily from all quarters
of his own country, and from foreign lands. His children bring with them
more learning from the common school, than would have sufficed of old to
constitute the wisdom of a sage. For a less sum than the tippler gives for
the draught that fevers his blood and crazes his brain, the artisan may
adorn his house with choice works of art, through the cheap and beautiful
products of the engraver's skill; and thus the beautiful from the hand of
man and of God, may refine and cheer the common lot. Music, that voice of
the beautiful arts, is becoming a familiar blessing, and a part of
ordinary education. Groups of children by the fireside, and in the field
and garden, sometimes at the corners of the streets or in their walk home
from school, are heard singing their songs and hymns together, thus
exchanging discord for peace, quarrels for harmony. Even the utilities
that are becoming the custom of our time, have their refining and exalting
influences. The light that streams up in our streets and houses, is the
handmaid of a light brighter than its own. The pure water that gushes up
in so many homes, has connections far more substantial than fanciful with
the living water of the divine word. Facts enough show that human
civilization needs, in the most literal sense, its water-baptism before
its spirit-baptism can be realized.
The spirit is not lost sight of even in this utilitarian age. In religion
the means of culture have their consummation. Within every home, in any
degree worthy the name, Christianity proves its power, whether the gospel
be nominally professed or not. The very unity of the family comes from
Him, who has decreed the purity of the home by his fundamental law, and
bound parents to each other and their offspring by a tie at once of
principle and affection. Greater still the blessing where Christianity is
fully known and practised in its truths and graces, where the pleasant
fireside is a consecrated altar, and the earthly mansion opens ever into
the heavenly.
Consider then the blessings of our homes--their plenty, their peace, their
means of intellectual and spiritual culture.
Consider them well, and moreover, own God's hand in them.
God is Creator and Lord of nature. From him comes the plenty of our homes.
Man does not create, he finds the bounties of his lot. His utmost industry
and skill but find the blessings stored up for him. We may look upon the
kingdom of nature from many points of view. We may consider the organism
of the heavens, the great periods of the earth's apparent formation, the
influence of climate and position upon the history of nations, and see
God's hand in natural laws. But what view of the universe is more sublime,
and at the same time more touching, than that from the home? The heavens
themselves help in keeping it upon its foundation by the force of the
great law of attraction, whilst every element and domain of the earth
conspires to give it blessing. Tenderly indeed does the Lord of this
great Cosmos care for the dwellings of men. His love looks down from the
stars of heaven that shine into the casement, and is reflected from the
little flower that blooms in the garden, or cheers the sick man's chamber.
To God, Creator and Preserver, be our thanksgiving.
God is in history, and to his hand we trace the peace of our homes. Our
familiar social blessings are not the exhalations of a day, but the growth
of ages. No clearer or more striking view of the development of the Divine
plans in the course of events can be given than the domestic view. All
that God has done for man as an individual soul or as a social being, thus
is made to appear. There is a providence in the development of liberty,
and so too in the progress of law, and in the combination of them both in
a true social order. What better symbol of their combination and proof of
providential guidance than the peaceful home? How vast the providential
agencies instrumental in framing that statute-book which, next to the
Bible, is the safeguard of the dwelling, and which bands the whole nation
together in defence of every citizen's right,--the constitution of our
country, to us the bequest of ages, guided by an arm mightier than man's,
and to issues beyond his dream. In two grand lines of influence it brings
to every household the co-ordinate powers which, from quarters once
antagonistic, unite in a true civilization. It guarantees to every family
the liberty so dearly prized by the old parent races of the Germanic
North, whilst it gathers them into a great nation under the guidance of
that law which was the bequest of the Roman empire to the world. These
and all the leading lines of history meet in the home, and in them we own
God's guiding hand. From the East with the Star of true empire, came the
benign power that united these two mighty agencies of our civilization.
Surely it was the religion of Jesus that wedded Roman law to Germanic
liberty, and laid the foundations of constitutional freedom and domestic
peace. Blessed indeed was that bridal, and the living Word that hallowed
the union still dispenses the blessing, and calls the children of its
lineage to a future brightening unto the perfect day.
The Constitution, and above it, the Bible! In this is the Word of God, and
the way of life, present and eternal. It is the chief agency in
intellectual and spiritual culture, giving the mind its true aim, the soul
its rightful dignity, life its highest grace. Where the Bible is held in
honor, the home has purity and elevation. Interesting indeed is the
ecclesiastical view of Christianity. For its priests and temples we have
no words of disparagement. Yet we most honor the church in honoring the
home, for where the family is most blessed, there the church is most
worthy. The history of the gospel neither ends nor begins with that of
cathedrals and priesthoods. Since God laid the foundation of domestic
purity on Sinai, since Jesus bore the grace of the gospel to the homes of
Judah and Galilee, the brightest illustrations of the beauty and power of
religion have been given in abodes far less stately than the temple, or
the cloister, or the palace. The end is not yet, not yet developed are our
grounds of gratitude to the Heavenly Father for the gospel in the
blessings of our homes. God's love in giving them, we own and adore.
Responsibility walks ever hand in hand with privilege, and human duty
follows in the path of Divine goodness. No topic of graver import can be
urged now, than that of the obligation of Christian people to diffuse
domestic blessings. This topic carries us into the heart of the momentous
social questions of our age. The Christian should have his answer ready,
an answer too which considers all the needs of man's being, and respects
alike his physical and moral wants.
The most obvious, certainly the most obtrusive evil in the homes of the
wretched, is poverty. The love of God, who has given for man's use the
earth and its fulness, the gospel of Him who fed the hungry and healed the
sick, teach us to look with tender interest upon the poor, and try to
redeem them from a lot as full of temptation as of suffering. Of public
and private almsgiving, I will not speak now, important in their places as
these are. There is a need far greater than these can alleviate, and I
cannot dwell upon them here, pertinent as it would be to urge the worth of
those benevolent schemes that aim to provide comfortable homes for the
poor, and commodious baths and wash-houses in their neighborhoods. These
charities appeal to enlightened self-interest, as well as humanity, and,
if we will not ask in kindness who is my neighbor, we shall ask in fear,
either of pestilent disease or aggressive violence. The springs of human
energy are to be moved as never before, and the wretched are to be made to
help themselves as never before; or our civilization, certainly European
civilization, will stand on the brink of an abyss fearful as at the
dissolution of the old Roman Empire. Poverty has, in some cases, made an
alliance that gives omens of a conspiracy worse than Catiline's, and, with
cunning quickened by want, sharpens its knife upon the stone which has
fallen to its lot instead of bread,--bent upon living by destruction, if
it is not taught to live by producing. It is an indisputable fact that in
many countries the majority are so ignorant and inefficient, that the
whole annual product of the land is not sufficient to provide for their
decent wants. The theorists of France, who have been losing their wits in
the airy heights of pantheistic socialism, hoping to find a way to plenty,
other than the old way of labor and frugality, may well remember the
answer of the admirable political economist, Chevalier, and look for
plenty rather in making property more desirable than less so, and giving
the whole people the desire and the opportunity of profitable labor. The
material product of France at the highest estimate, he declares, does not
exceed ten thousand millions of francs, and thus at this estimate, an
equal division would give each person 78 centimes, or about 14-1/2 cents
per day, for food, lodging, clothing, education, enjoyment. Thus, he adds,
even upon the supposition of an absolute distribution of products, France
is not in a condition to give the majority of her children a tolerable
subsistence. Of course millions of citizens now come far short of this
miserable pittance. What is the inference? Certainly the productive
industry of the nation must be increased, that there may be plenty in the
home. Let more wealth be produced, and each man be put in a position to
get a due share of it, and the misery is alleviated, and plenty in the
household stops the spirit of reckless revolution, and gives the spirit of
peace, and motive and time for the higher aims of life.
What shall increase the national wealth and distribute it with due justice
in the homes of the people? Communism? Not so; for destroying the very
idea of property is not the way to increase the aggregate of property. Who
will work, if his gains are not secured to him and his children? Who will
plant the grain or the vine, if the field or the vineyard is to be an open
pasture, which any idler may waste? The way to enlarge and distribute
wealth is rather to strengthen the foundations of property, and give all
motive to earn their share of it by labor, temperance, and economy.
Here we believe that every nation is bound to apply the force of law to
reach the root of the difficulty. I am not proposing to discuss the
various projects set on foot to insure the more equable distribution of
property--such as the homestead laws of some of our own States, or the
measures in train to redeem the peasants of Ireland from their slavish
penury. Very certain it is, that we need to watch jealously the
distribution of the public lands, to keep them from the grasp of avarice
and intrigue, and to hold out the utmost inducements to actual settlers to
till and own the soil. It is interesting to find that upon this one point,
the most sanguine of the Land Reformers have much countenance from the
most judicious conservatives, and the wary sagacity of Webster himself
saw no peril in securing a part of the national domain to every
persevering cultivator. It is also interesting to observe that, whilst the
ultraist advocates of a protective tariff have signally lowered their
tone, some of the most earnest advocates of free trade, as the only
philosophical theory, are favoring such judicious protective duties as
shall tend to bring the producer and consumer near together, check the
wastefulness of needless transportation, and thus prepare the way for the
final triumph of free trade by the action of associative industry. All
such expedients however good in themselves, are of no avail apart from a
broad and energetic policy that meets the difficulty in the face. We mean
the education of the entire people in schools open to all the children of
the nation. Thus we reach the home--thus we open the eyes and quicken the
energies of the people--thus we enlarge the products of intelligent labor,
and guard against the worst evils of human inequality. Thus we open the
way for a better social science and organization, and favor the associated
enterprise, which is the best safeguard against communism. The educated,
industrious population will take their own lot into their own hands, and
by practising a truer philosophy of accommodation, they will apply in
their home economy something of that wise policy which has been left too
exclusively to the use of the favored few. The architecture of the house,
and the arrangements of the neighborhood, will show the influence. Whilst
gardens, filled with rare exotics, and stately mansions adorned with the
graces of art, may still be the prerogative of affluence; we shall see the
comfortable and tasteful houses of the unpretending classes ranged about
pleasant and salubrious squares, with all the appliances of health and
order, usually deemed beyond their means. For my own part, I know no more
cheering aspect of our country and our age, than that which is furnished
by some of those villages, which have been built up in the vicinity of our
great cities by associations of mechanics, securing to each man an
independent home. The fact that a set of men, educated in our free
schools, and with no means but the fruit of their own honest toil, provide
such homes for themselves, must give a benevolent observer more genuine
satisfaction, and more encouraging hope, than any of the proudest triumphs
of capital, whether a palace in the city or a palace upon the water. It is
not out of place here to say, that the highest honor will belong to him
among our architects, who most skilfully plans a model house for the many
of us who have moderate or slender means--a house that shall for the least
outlay best secure the retirement, the refinement, and the health that
make a true home. Honor to the science that has busied itself with this
problem, and to the capital which has tried to carry the solution into
practice thus far!
A true system of popular education in connection with our laws regarding
inheritance, is raising up a generation which will not long be ignorant of
the power of intelligence, industry, and friendly accommodation, in
developing a social policy beyond the reach of the fanatical theorists of
the old world, who have impoverished the nations in their promise of
plenty, and shed blood in rivers in the name of fraternity. The great mass
of the people, it is to be hoped, will continue to have that home feeling,
which is as mighty in conservation as in defence. We shall remain as we
are in the best sense of the term--the most conservative nation on the
face of the earth. That race of Ishmaelites, the homeless, the desperate,
the Bedouins of civilization, whose hand is against every man's, whose
delight is in commotion, whose life is in destruction, whose hope is in
the despair of others, will disappear, kept down in their true place, or
what is better, transformed into intelligent, industrious citizens, lovers
of the state, the church, and the home.
Thus do we commend the worth of industry and the education upon which it
rests, in diffusing the household blessings that we enjoy. But we build
upon a sandy foundation without a positive religious basis. Upon that the
household rests for its primary dependence, and they that sustain and
practise Christian principles are benefactors alike of the dwelling and
the church. Not merely among the wretched and ignorant does the gospel
utter its rebukes, and urge its duties in reference to this point. It is
in quarters far different that the great wrong has been done, and a great
work is demanded. Errors of principle as errors of life, have power from
the station that renders them conspicuous, or the refinement that clothes
them with grace. Of errors of life in those who give to dissipation the
prestige of eloquence, and throw the grace of splendor around vices that
strike at the foundations of domestic purity, I will not now undertake to
treat. A passing word, however, upon certain modes of thinking and
talking, which sow the seeds of those vices in quarters the most opposite.
The pantheistic theories that confound all moral distinctions by
confounding the distinction between God and nature, and make of passion a
devotion, by calling all enthusiasm inspiration, have had their origin
chiefly among secluded dreamers, bent, perhaps, upon amusing leisure by
reckless speculation. Idly as the summer winds that float the thistle-down
on their breath, have they vented their speculations, until amazed that
their own fields and their neighbor's have been sown with tares by these
gossamer voyagers. Wherever pantheism goes, there license follows in its
train. More perilous than atheism, because more alluring, it defies
passion, and in the name of inspiration degrades man to the brute. It
blasts life with its torrid fires, as atheism freezes by its polar cold.
In the extremes of society--the affluent and the wretched--this tendency
is found, alike in its speculative and practical form, in its denial of
personal responsibility, its enthroning of indulgence in the place of
discipline. Many a stately home is desolate, many an humble dwelling
miserable, because the God of the gospel is denied, and that
uncompromising law which secures the home its purity, peace and power, has
been broken.
Chief among the blessings of the household, then, we name the gospel. It
gives the crown to industry and education. Crowning industry and education
thus alike by our personal bearing, our public policy, we give as we have
received, and acknowledge our duty, as we own God's love in our domestic
blessings.
* * * * *
Bring near to ourselves now, in its personal and cheering aspect, the
topic before us. To God, the Lord of nature, Ruler of events, Father of
our spirits, be all the glory. Be his love the spring of our humanity. In
the bounty of our hand, in the bounty of an example personal and domestic,
which in itself is a benefaction, in an enlarged public, nay Christian
spirit, let us freely give as we have received; that plenty, peace, piety,
may cheer the dwellings of men and regenerate the world. This day be our
thanksgiving at once a prayer of faith and a vow of humanity. It is the
old home festival of our fathers that we are to keep. Whose heart does not
yearn with sacred remembrances and affections to-day? The emigrant, the
traveller, the sailor, all turn their thoughts homeward as the day
approaches, and lament that their steps cannot follow their desires. Under
sunny skies, amid the balmy gales and luscious fruits of the tropics, the
wanderer yearns to cross the familiar threshold, and our bleak North in
her wintry robe is dearer than Italy or the Indies. Many an exile has
feelings that speak in such simple words as these:
"My father's bones, New England,
Sleep in thy hallowed ground,
My living kin, New England,
In thy precious paths are found;
And though my body dwelleth here,
And my weary feet here roam,
My spirit and my hopes are still
In thee, my own loved home."
Yet distance does not rob even the exile of all the blessings, and he
knows that he is not forgotten. Families separated throughout the year,
now gather together. Sons and daughters return to the parental fireside
and are children again. The patriarchal times, surely among all of the
Pilgrim race, and not among them alone, come back. The father stands as
head and minister of the family. Many a happy band of children rise up and
call the mother blessed. The absent are not forgotten--the departed are
tenderly remembered--seats vacant at the table have occupants in the
hearts of the survivors.
It is well--it is well--this home-festival of the ingathering. God gives
the abounding harvest, and our fellow-men are to us the stewards of his
bounty. Devoutly to Him, kindly to them, let the hours pass. Health to the
absent, a tear for the departed--a smile for the present--good will to all
on earth--glory to God in the highest.
Let the young rejoice, and the old be young again. Let memory solemnize us
by her images of scenes and days gone by, whilst hope cheers us by
auspicious promises of the future on earth, and of the heavenly mansions,
the soul's eternal home.
_Thanksgiving Day._
The Ideal of Womanhood.
THE IDEAL OF WOMANHOOD.
It is the Eve of Christmas, and above the cheerful family circle that
gathers about the hearth, the faces of the holy family look benignly down,
and Mary's own smile seems to brighten the genial light. All surely must
call that mother blessed, who celebrate the birth of the Holy Child. The
Angel of the annunciation seems always to be speaking anew in the anthem
of the Nativity as if the voice which told Mary of her high destiny
celebrated also its fulfilment, and the "Hail Mary" were but the prelude
of the "Glory to God in the Highest."
Our thought this evening turns upon the Mother of Christ, as illustrating
the ideal of woman and the sources of her power. In the manger at
Bethlehem, the mother and child were together--together during the years
of preparation for the public ministry--together at the cross. We honor
both in honoring either. Especially in calling Mary blessed, do we honor
Christ, for we remember not merely what she was to him, but what he has
been to her and her sex and her race.
* * * * *
Let us look at the subject from our own point of view, nor try to put on
the mask of affected sentiment or to stand on the stilts of borrowed
dogmas. There is much beauty and power in the Catholic notions of the
Blessed Virgin, but they are not our convictions. The sweetest hymns in
the Breviary are in her praise, and her heavenly face has been the chief
charm of Catholic art, else altogether too grim with spectral monks and
ghostly confessors. This one fact it is most interesting to remark, that
as Christianity was divested of its genial and humane graces, and our
Saviour himself was removed from the personal sympathies of men by a faith
too forgetful of his humanity in vindicating his divinity, the affections
of Christians sought in the Blessed Mother the solace denied them by
prevalent views of the Divine Son. As the monkish spirit grew darker, the
face of Mary beamed more brightly. The age that embodied its terrors in
the "Dies Irae," breathed its tenderness in the "Stabat Mater," the
exquisite hymn whose authorship, strange to say, has been with show of
reason ascribed to the most thorough-going of the Popes, Innocent the
Third, the man who dared to put England under an interdict. It is not for
such reasons that we are moved to speak of Mary now. We are not oppressed
by a religion that so crushes the natural affections and rebukes the
domestic feelings, that we need to look for solace to one taken
arbitrarily from her place among women and invoked as Queen of Heaven,
above all saints and angels, next to God. Looking upon our homes, so
pleasant and so genial with woman's graces and children's gladness, we
prefer to say the "Hail Mary" as the gospel gives it, and not as the
priest has understood it. We can say, "Blessed art thou _among_
women"--_among_ them, not _above_ them--among them to illustrate their
mission from God, their work on earth--their part in heaven.
* * * * *
Think of Mary first as illustrating true womanhood in its mission from
God. Fathers and sons, as well as mothers and daughters, think. In our
notions of education, society, reform, we are all afloat unless we start
with right ideas; and whence are they but from the Eternal Mind. We know
God as he reveals himself, and creation in its highest aspects reveals the
thought of God. The Divine Being is Self-Existent, Almighty, All-wise,
Ever-blessed, dwelling in light and love unspeakable. But the moment that
we pass from the contemplation of his attributes to the survey of his
works, we see every where partial manifestations of his fulness. Only as
we bring together the various elements and beings of nature, do we
comprehend the universe as expressing the mind of God. Throughout the
whole we observe a law of duality, a harmony of contrasts, the two
parallel footprints in the majestic march of Him who is the infinite
Wisdom and Love. We see this form of development from the lowest to the
highest plane of nature--in the affinities of the gases--in the strange
and mighty forces of electricity and magnetism--in the rays of light--in
the kingdom of plants--in the animated kingdom. In the human race it has
its fullest expression. There the Most High has left most clearly the
image of himself, and recorded the might and the loveliness of his own
attributes. To the one sex he has given, in largest measure, strength,--to
the other, beauty; to the one, aggressive force--to the other, winning
affections--to the one, the palm in the empire of thought--to the other,
the palm in the empire of feeling. We need not pursue the parallel, nor
rebuke the folly of those who would make the line of separation too sharp,
and deny heart to man or wisdom to woman, forgetting that in man thought
should be pervaded with feeling, and in woman feeling should be guided by
thought. It is enough to look to Mary as she stood in the hour of her joy,
and listen to what she said, who has been called beyond any other of her
sex, to be their benefactor and interpreter:--
My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit doth rejoice in God, my Saviour,
For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden;
For behold! from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
Various ages may have various degrees of culture, and in knowledge and
accomplishment the daughters of Christendom may now far surpass those
taught in the simpler homes of Israel. Yet where among those favored with
education or gifted with genius, shall we find a better interpreter of
womanhood in its mission from God, than that trusting Hebrew in her filial
faith and unwavering devotion. Of her, the Aspasias proud of the society
of sages and orators, might learn that there is a faith passing knowledge,
and a purity more refining than any literary taste; from her the Cornelias
might learn of a kingdom greater than that to which they vowed their sons;
from her the Sapphos might hear of a vision beyond that of any
impassioned fancy; and the Cleopatras of a gem brighter than any in their
crown. Her soul attuned to devotion by the Psalms of her great ancestor,
David, and inflamed with hope by the visions of prophets, and schooled to
patient charity by the choicest examples of the mothers in Israel, she
stands at the centre of Providential history, receiving from the former
ages their mantle of honor, and transmitting it to the new ages enriched
with a divine grace, destined to brighten with time.
* * * * *
Of Mary's life and work, few particulars are given--but those few are
expressive of her whole character. She who kept her faithful watch on the
night of the nativity, never belied the promise of that time. With mingled
solicitude and reverence, tenderness and fortitude, she guarded her child,
marked the gradual rising of the consciousness of Divinity within him, and
waited between hope and fear for the development of his mysterious life.
One of the most gifted women of our age, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, thus
portrays Mary's feelings as she looked upon her child sleeping:
"Sleep, sleep, mine Holy One.
* * * *
I am not proud--meek angels, put ye on
New meeknesses to hear such utterance rest
On mortal lips, 'I am not proud'--_not proud_!
Albeit in my flesh God sent His Son,
Albeit over Him my head is bowed,
As others bow before Him, still mine heart,
Bows lower then their knees! O centuries
That roll, in vision, your futurities
My grave athwart!
Whose murmurs seem to reach me while I keep
Watch o'er this sleep!
Say of me as the Heavenly said, 'Thou art
The blessedest of women!' blessedest,
Not holiest, not noblest--no high name,
Whose height misplaced may pierce me like a shame,
When I sit meek in heaven!--
For me--for me--
I often wandered forth, more child than maiden,
Among the lonely hills of Galilee,
Whose summits looked heaven-laden!
Listening to silentness, that seemed to be
God's voice, so soft, yet strong--so fain to press
Upon my heart, as Heaven did on the height,--
And waken up its shadows by a light,
And show its vileness by a holiness!
Then I knelt down, as silent as the night,
Too self-renounced for fears;
Raising my small face to the boundless blue,
Whose stars did mix and tremble in my tears!
God heard _them_ falling often--with his dew."
Think of the lot of Christ, and remember how closely another heart beat in
unison with his heart--how nearly parallel her life ran with his life.
Pass from the manger to the Cross, and those two scenes are enough to
suggest the outlines of her experience during that eventful interval.
Listen to the words--"Woman, behold thy son"--and to the disciple, "behold
thy mother." Think of what followed--the joy at Christ's rising to dwell
in visible presence with his own, and after his ascension to dwell with
them in his witnessing Spirit. Among those who remembered the promise: "Lo
I am with you always, even unto the end of the world," there was one who
added a mother's love to a disciple's faith, as in the coming of the
Comforter to her soul, she received her new birth into the kingdom of God,
through him who had his birth on earth from her. Confided as she had been
to the disciple whom Jesus so loved, a guest in his household, the
constant companion of the growing circle of believers, how could she be
without great influence on their faith and fellowship? When she passed
away, a new light rose for them in the heavens. Their religion was not a
code of moral precepts, or a set of theological propositions, but a gospel
of speaking facts and living words. Their religion was Christ and all that
is Christlike. Their heaven was no ethereal abstraction, no pantheistic
merging of spirits in infinity; but the home of true souls--the mansions
of the Father opened by Christ to all the faithful, and surely unto her
who guarded his infant weakness and wept over his dying agonies. On earth
and in heaven the blessed mother stood to them for the ideal of true
womanhood, and early Christian antiquity is full of traces of the tender
and beautiful affection felt for her, before superstition seized upon the
lovely sentiment and hardened it into a priestly dogma. Yet under the
dogma, the true feeling has never been wholly lost sight of, and with many
who are called idolatrous, the homage to St. Mary is but an exalted form
of reverence to a moral loveliness, now in heaven. Our own Germanic
ancestors shared more deeply in the sentiment probably than any other
people, as they came from their cold homes in northern Europe--received
the gospel of Christ from the missionaries of the church, and rejoiced to
find their national feeling of chivalrous respect for woman confirmed and
spiritualized by the honors paid to her, whom angels hailed as full of
grace, and whose name all Christendom spoke with blessing. This high
sentiment, somewhat sobered by our Protestant faith and our household
utilities, has come to us with our religion and our homes.
* * * * *
It is becoming a somewhat practical, and in both hemispheres, an agitating
question, how far the accepted Christian idea of true womanhood should be
enlarged or amended to meet the demands of our own age. The voice of Mary
Wolstoncroft, claiming masculine freedom for sex, has found a thousand
echoes, and assemblies of women, no strangers to Christian culture, clamor
for a new day of social and political emancipation. Their demands are not
to be treated with ridicule, for under all their extravagance lurk truths
of momentous import. Who can think of the thousands and hundreds of
thousands of the sex, whose utmost labors hardly keep off cold and
starvation--of the wretched notions of education and life, which so
enfeeble the poor and corrupt the affluent--of the false social system
which is so ready to smile upon the destroyer of innocence, and curse the
victim of his arts; who can think of the scenes in the hovels of innocent
poverty, the dens of loathsome vice, and the gilded saloons of painted
misery, upon which the shadows of this blessed eve are now falling, and
not be willing to pardon some thing to the spirit of mercy, even if its
tones seem to us too shrill for gentle lips? Who is not willing to
remember, moreover, that if they assert a folly, who claim for woman the
political offices that must rob the home of her fidelity; they assert, and
actually are diffusing a more dangerous error, who in more silken speech
brand the household virtues as servile drudgery, and whose lives are a
continued and studious round of elegant and jewelled vagrancy from the
sacred uses and blessed companionships of their own fireside; nay, whose
eyes seem only to open when the lights of the theatre and ball-room blaze,
and whose pulses really beat only in exciting assemblies under the
delirium of the wine-cup and the voluptuous dance. From both errors the
true idea of womanhood may save our time, and, nevertheless, confer upon
us the substantial good, which is so dimly seen by the rival schools of
culture--the fashionable and the masculine. Well taught and trained, our
daughters may have all true graces without Parisian levity, and all
intellectual discipline without Amazonian boldness.
No greater mistake can be made than that which would take woman from her
sphere of dignity and power, and make her the rival of man in pursuits
which require his ruder nature and sterner will. Mary, the wife of Godwin,
with her obtrusive band of far more extravagant followers, opens no path
of honor and power compared with that pointed out by Mary of Nazareth, the
light of her home, the guardian of her Holy Child; encouraging the
disciples by a voice, the mightier on account of its not being heard in
the streets, and to them and to all after them, a name for spiritual
loveliness, and all gentle and confiding graces, among the souls exalted
to heaven. Using present agencies, and following the guidance of the
gospel, the mothers and sisters in our Israel, may deal more wisely and
strongly with the social problems of our time, and do their part for the
kingdom of God--than by crowding to the ballot-box, screaming in the
caucus, or snatching at the staff of office. So deeply is this the
conviction of the most judicious of the sex, that many words on the
subject would be superfluous. Nor would we add any to the many words that
have been shed upon the question of the equality of the sexes. As well let
the rays of the solar light dispute for precedence, and the red ray, so
blazing, presume to deny the equal worth of the violet ray, which, science
teaches us, has power to make iron magnetic, and which more than its more
bold companion on the other side of the prism, makes the impression on the
silvered plate--itself the most magical pencil in the skilful hand of that
unrivalled painter, the sun. God has united both rays in the sweet light
of true humanity, and what He has joined together, let not man try to put
asunder.
The greater danger is in a servile acquiescence in prevalent worldliness
and mediocrity--a disposition to repeat the common pleas of precedent,
and to live solely in the externals of society. In our own beloved
country, where liberty, without example, is extended to woman, and a
courtesy, without limit, is shown her, they who hold in their keeping the
future of their sex should not be content to follow the rule of court
journals, or bow to the dicta of Parisian modists, who are fond of ruling
over morals, as over costume. Our liberty should give them a stronger and
more rational intellectual discipline than in the lands more enslaved by
precedent. Our courtesy, that national chivalry, which insists on
deference as much towards the rustic maiden as the city belle, will be
sadly abused if made the occasion of an obtrusive arrogance, which claims
precedence as a right, and elbows its way through crowds of men who are
more ready to yield by grace than by command.
Our country has from the first cherished a noble idea of womanhood, and
under its influence the strength of its sons, and the refinement of its
daughters have been nurtured. Kindly omens abounded in the first days of
its history. Our continent itself is one of the omens. That you may not
call me too fanciful or sentimental, let me quote from an eloquent writer
on the philosophy of geography, as he compares the Old and New Worlds.
"The number of the continents in the Old World," which is double that of
the New World, their grouping in a more compact and solid mass--make it
already and pre-eminently the continental world. It is a mighty oak, with
a stout and sturdy trunk, whilst America is the slender and flexible
palm-tree, so dear to this continent. The Old World, if it is allowable to
employ here comparisons of this nature, calls to mind the square, solid
figure of man; America the lithe shape and delicate form of woman.
So America stood like a fair bride in her ocean home, adorned for her
husband, that mighty race from the East, that came in the path of the
sunshine, as if following the lord of day, who is as a bridegroom coming
out of his chamber. Our heroes bore with them a Christian ideal of
womanhood, and by it were gentle as they were strong. It came with
Columbus in the cherished image of that noble queen, who gave gold and
hope to an enterprise elsewhere rejected with derision; and the thought of
Isabella mingled with that of the Blessed Mother, as he planted the cross
on the western shores. It came with the cavaliers who gave Virginia its
name and honor, and whose foremost and noblest chief found a counterpart
of his own ideal in the Indian girl, who saved his life by risking her
own, giving Christian mercy, to receive in return the Christian's faith
and home; owning, by the baptismal vow, the Great Spirit whom she had seen
in cloud and heard in the wind, thenceforth, as the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ. It came with the Huguenots of Carolina, the Catholics
of Maryland, the Friends of Pennsylvania, the Hollanders of Manhattan, and
not last nor least, with the Pilgrims of that Mayflower, whose seeds
struck deep into the New England soil, and whose scions have borne beauty
and fragrance to the hills and valleys, the farms and cities of our
motherland, making the wilderness blossom as the rose, when the sweet
Marys gave grace to Puritan homes.
Herein lies a great element of power and of hope for our country. Our soil
is rich, our lakes and rivers are vast, our strength is great, our courage
good, our schools are many, our wealth is unexampled. But these are not
all--nor are these the elements that are to tame our barbaric borders, and
lead to harmony our chaotic and scattered members. The church and home
must go together, and unite our nation under the empire of Christ, as
under the empire of civil law. The church and home are advancing together
from the Atlantic to the Pacific shore. The farmer of Oregon, the miner of
California, are not to be beyond the pale of Christian civilization. Even
they shall hear the chimes that tell of the nativity of the Saviour--they
shall find in their homes, rude cabins though they may be, pleasant faces,
whose womanly grace and childish confidence shall reveal a light kindled
of old by the Blessed Mother, and nurtured for ever by her Holy Child.