EDUCATION.

Life a School--Education a Work of Progress--Schools of Vice--Every

Circumstance a Teacher--Kinds of Education--Female Education--True

Womanly Ambition--Improve your Opportunities--Principles should be

Understood--Time Trifled Away--Some Excuses--Society Needs Woman's

Influence--Education as it is--Girls should have Something to Live

For.

"Life is real, life is earnest." To make life grand is the end of

living. God has a great purpose in every human soul; that purpose is its

_truthful education_. Life is God's school. He is its great

superintendent; his Son is prime instructor. The world is His primary

school-house, or, rather, our primary school-house built by him. Here we

learn the alphabet of things; and learn to spell and read a little from

the great book of God. Here we sit in our places and learn our first

lessons; stand in our classes and recite them. Here we get ready for

that college which God has built for us on the spiritual Mount Zion. In

this lower school we prepare for the department above. Our position in

that department must be determined by our dutifulness and progress in

this. Oh, solemn thought! We must be measured by our merit; we must

stand in our lot; "every man in his own order." The deeds done in the

body shall tell upon the life of the spirit. What we make for ourselves

now, shall be ours in the college-hall above. Wisdom gained in life

shall not be lost in death. It will live a halo of brightness, a crown

of glory, when "death, the last enemy, shall be destroyed." God did not

ask us whether we would come into this primary school or not; whether we

would take this lower-world life. Neither will He ask us whether we will

go into the higher department; whether we will take the upper-world

life. He gave the one; he will give the other. But the _use_ we make of

these lives He has put not a little into our own hands. What will be in

these lives He has left not a little with us. Our standings we are to

choose to a certain extent. Our characters are the workmanship of our

own hands. Our worth is of our own making. Our _Education_ is a personal

matter. God has given us minds, a school, a study-room, teachers, all

the books of nature, experience, revelation, reason, duty, affection,

and now commands us to _educate_ ourselves, promising to be with us and

assist us as our kind Superintendent in this grand work of life.

Education, strictly speaking, covers the whole area of life. It is the

word which means all God asks of us, all we owe to him, the world, and

ourselves--that great word which expresses the sum total of human duty.

Nor is it confined to this present period of life. To educate is the

work of Heaven. Time and eternity are the school periods of

intelligence. Reason may have an eternal growth. Conscience may widen

its powers and deepen its sanctities in heaven. Affection may grow in

beauty and fervor through immortal ages. Mind may expand and intensify

through eternity. To educate is to develop mind; to expand its

capacities; to strengthen its energies; to deepen its affections; to

elevate its aspirations; to sharpen its perceptions; to quicken its

actions; to intensify its emotions; to harmonize its powers; to empower

its will, and magnify its sweep of action.

Education is a work of progress. It begins in life and has no end. Death

does not terminate it. We learn the elements of things below. Above we

shall study their essences. We progress in proportion to our own

efforts. Education may be good or bad, right or wrong. Reason may grow

strong in error, may revel in falsities. The will may be mighty for

evil. The heart may grow in vice, and the passions expand in misrule.

The mind may be educated into terrible confusion, so that its passions

will clash in battle array, and its powers war with each other like

exterminating demons. The din of mental warfare and the clash of

spiritual arms are heard in almost every soul. Terrible conflicts are

within us. And whole fields of slaughtered virtues are swept over by

their death-dealing siroccos. Like nations of the earth our mental

powers are grouped together, and group confronts group like embattled

armies, sending their hissing arrows of fiery death into each other's

ranks. Power strikes at power, like single combatants on the field of

strife. Such is the awful sight seen by God in many a human soul. And

such to a greater or less extent is what He sees in each one of us; so

direful are the results of bad Education.

Few of us have been educated altogether aright. We have gained much

mental strength in wicked conflict. Our passions have expanded in

lawless riot. Our mental arms have grown strong in corrupting labors.

Our energies have been made vigorous in vicious employments. Our feet

have been made active in the dance of folly and the race of mammon. We

have risen to power in the service of a tyrant master. We have done the

bidding of sin, and made our soldiers broad to bear its Atlas burdens.

But Education has made us mighty in evil. Giants in vice stalk about us

daily who were sweet and beautiful in their babyhood as ever smiled in a

mother's face. On every hand we meet with the graduates of some school

of vice, in whom the powers of darkness are mighty for evil. Some come

out from the dark holes of intemperance; some from the luxurious saloons

of gambling; some from the gilded halls of fashion; some from those dark

places where virtue dies a bleeding sacrifice to sensuality. These are

the schools in which the mighty in wickedness are educated. And then we

have lesser schools all about us in which the young take lessons in

vice: schools on the street, schools at home, schools at the toilet,

schools in pleasure circles, schools in the market and counting-room,

where they take lessons in deception, slander, folly, anger, backbiting,

sensuality, and vice. Our schools for Education in evil are numerous,

and their teachers are legion. I believe much more in evil Education

than in innate depravity. The little cherubs that come into our arms

right from the hands of Deity are innocent and pure. The skies above us

and the flowers around us are not purer and sweeter than they. Their

little souls are immaculate. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." I can

not believe in depraved babyhood; but I must believe in depraved youth

and manhood. All about me are the sinful wrecks of once pure souls. It

is wrong Education that has made them the sad, pitiable things they are.

Oh, what wretched contortions of God's beautiful handiwork have men made

of themselves! Of all the things that God has made, the human soul is

most perfect and beautiful. The flower and trees and fields are

beautiful. The flashing aurora, the golden clouds, the sapphire sky, are

beautiful. The circling planets, the blazing sun, the starry canopy, are

beautiful. But what are they compared to a human soul? What is an

ephemeral flower or an age-lasting star compared with glorious reason,

with eternal love, with deathless benevolence, and conscience? What were

the material universe with all its sublime grandeur and awe-inspiring

magnificence with no soul to gaze upon it? And yet perfect and beautiful

as were our souls when God gave them to us, what unsightly, miserable,

demoniac things we have made of them! It is evil Education that has done

it all. We have trained our minds in wrong schools. We have educated our

powers at the feet of evil teachers. We have taken lessons in the

science of wickedness. We have followed bad examples and copied corrupt

manners. And we still do so. These things have made us what we are.

Our Education is not all got in our organized schools. Our hired

teachers and printed books are not all that act on our powers to develop

them. Life is one grand school, and its every circumstance a teacher.

Society pours in its influences upon us like the thousand streams that

flood the ocean. Scholastic men and women may speak of book Education;

it is mine to speak of life Education. Life is my field and my theme;

that great common arena where men and women do battle with the forces

about them.

We are educating all the time, and the question with us should be, How

do we educate ourselves? What manner of men and women do we make of

ourselves? The great question of life is an educational one. We all get

an Education; but the _kind_ is the point for us to determine. Some are

educated in vice, some in folly, some in selfishness, some in deception,

some in sensuality, some in nothing in particular and every thing in

general, some in goodness, some in truth and right, some in theology,

and some in religion. Our kinds of Education are legion. We can not live

without being educated some way. Every day gives us many lessons in

life. Every thought leaves its impression on the mind. Every feeling

weaves a garment for the spirit. Every passion plows a furrow into the

soul. All is motion in that mysterious, wonder-working house in which we

ourselves live--the mind.

Every hour of life has solemn, fearful results. The question should hang

all the time written in blazing capitals in the firmament of each soul,

"How am I educating?" It is wicked to let the crazy world educate us as

it will. It is awfully hazardous to yield ourselves up, as most people

do, to the circumstances of society about us. It is a fearful risk to

plunge into the stream of popular custom and float on like a dead sponge

drinking in its turbid water. Most people are like mocking-birds and

monkeys, repeating all they hear and mimicking all they see. Our duty

is to educate ourselves as we should.

Having hinted these general principles of Education, we may now address

ourselves especially to young women, and apply them to their life. The

daily life-education of the mass of young women is not what it should

be. It is much like the life-education of the mass of young men. It is

the Education of circumstances, custom, society, etc. Young women live,

think, and act just as society dictates. They wear what fashion says

shall be worn; they say what etiquette say is proper; they do what

custom dictates; their ideas of gracefulness, propriety, and life are

molded in the common mint of popular sentiment. They float on the stream

of society mere automatons in the great hand of the world. They do not

direct their own Education as though they had any object in life. They

seem to lay helpless in the hands of the world, the pets or playthings

of the day. These remarks are not very inapplicable to young men also.

There is a great body of young men who float on the stream of life with

no self-direction. Ask one of them what he lives for, and he will tell

you, "to chew tobacco, swear, be a man;" and his idea of being a man is

to be able to do these things with grace and dignity. To ask any one of

the mass of young women what she lives for, and if you can get her to

say it out, she will tell you, "to get married." Now it is certainly

right to get married, and to live with this object in view. But there is

a grand educational preparation needed for this. And this preparation is

the very thing most neglected. Every young woman should have some noble

purpose in life, some grand aim, grand in its character. She should, in

the first place, know what she is, what powers she possesses, what

influences are to go out from her, what position in life she was

designed to fill, what duties are resting upon her, what is she capable

of being, what fields of profit and pleasure are open to her, how much

joy and satisfaction she may find in a true life of womanly activity.

When she has duly considered these things, she should then form the high

purpose of being a true woman, and of making every circumstance bend to

her will for the accomplishment of this noble purpose. There is no

higher thing beneath the bending heavens than a true woman. There is no

nobler attainment this side of the spirit-land than lofty womanhood.

There is no purer ambition than that which craves this crown for her

mortal brow. To be a genuine woman, full of womanly instincts and power,

possessing the intuitive genius of her penetrating soul and the subduing

authority of her gentle, yet resolute will, is to be a peer of earth's

highest intelligence. All young women have this noble prize before them.

They may all put on the glorious crown of womanhood. They may make their

lives grand in womanly virtue. There is in every woman-child the seed of

womanhood. She may water and nourish that seed till it shall blossom in

her soul and make her spiritually beautiful. Woman has a power, a

woman-power, something peculiarly her own in her moral influences,

which, when duly developed, makes her queen over a wide realm of spirit.

This she can not exert only as her powers are cultivated. It is

cultivated woman that wields the scepter of authority among men.

Wherever cultivated woman dwells, there is refinement, intellectual and

moral power, life in its highest form. To be a cultivated woman, one

must commence early and make this the grand aim of her life. Whether she

work or play, travel or remain at home, converse with friends or study

books, gaze at flowers or toil in the kitchen, visit the pleasure party

or the sanctuary of God, she should keep her object before her mind and

tax all her powers for its attainment. She must learn to make the most

of opportunities. One fault with our young women is, that opportunities

avail them but little. They see much and perceive but little, talk much

and think but little, hear much and learn but little, read much and

acquire but little.

I suppose almost every young woman has seen many steamboats, yet it may

be doubtful whether one understands the mechanical principle by which

they are propelled and directed. They have seen the flowers and

vegetation, birds and beasts, of our region of country, and yet they

doubtless are about as ignorant of them as of the products of the torrid

zone. They live under our form of government, yet how many know wherein

it differs from other governments! They have heard or read of almost

every science, yet how little acquainted are they with the commonest

principles of science! They have all had their countenances

daguerreotyped, yet who knows how it is done? They all wear silk,

cotton, linen, yet who knows the history of either one of these articles

of apparel? They have bodies "fearfully and wonderfully made," yet how

little they know of their structure, laws, and uses! They have minds,

beautiful and immortal gifts of divine wisdom and goodness, yet how

little attention have they given to learn their principles of action!

All around them are little worlds of every-day things upon which they

have never bestowed a passing thought, things which are full of

interest; yet the common habit of seeing much and thinking little has

led them into this same superficial habit. It is like the young man of

whom I was told a few days since, who had traveled all over the world,

rode on every sea and ocean, and visited every principal seaport, and

yet knew nothing of any of them. It is a sad fault with us all, and

especially with women--we don't _think_ enough. The mass of young women

trifle a great portion of their life away on the smallest imaginable

things. They chatter like birds and gabble like geese, without the

trouble of _thinking_. The things they see and hear every day awaken no

consecutive thought. The stars shine above them, and they call them

pretty things, but never ask the astronomic story of their magnificence.

The world beats its great march of life around them, but they seek not

to know the rich lessons of human activity therein. I know that society

does not hold out so great inducements for woman to think and educate

herself as it ought. I know woman is oppressed with legal and customic

disabilities. I know she is shut out from many fields of activity and

industry for which she is eminently fitted by her natural endowments. I

know that her labor is not half rewarded, that her ambition is cramped

into a narrow field. I know that by custom and law she is the slave of

man, who holds her person, children, and property in his custody. I know

that men think they must be silly and simpering in woman's presence,

because they suppose she can appreciate and enjoy nothing higher. I know

that many men have an awful horror of "strong-minded women," really

educated women. I know that any thing beyond housewifery or parlor

gracefulness by many is considered unwomanly; yet woman may overcome all

the obstacles in her way if she will educate herself to _think_, and

think soundly and forcibly. She must be her own deliverer from these

barbaric customs and laws, and her own _thought_ must be the instrument

of delivery. Let women everywhere become solid thinkers so far as their

capacities will admit, instead of triflers; let their life-education be

deep, useful, and practical, instead of superficial and theoretical; let

them be as well acquainted with the principles of society as they are

with those of fashion; let them be as much interested in human progress

as they are in dress and gossip; let them take into their hands the keys

of knowledge and unlock the storehouses of practical wisdom all about

them, and go in and lay hold of the treasures, and human society would

soon blossom as the rose. The great thing needed now by our society is

more woman-influence--more woman-thought, character, and power. Our

female Education is too superficial, trifling, babyish. Our girls are

not half developed. Our young women do not exhibit one half their real

strength and beauty. Their minds are robbed of much of their natural

vigor. They are dwarfed by their delicate nutriment.

As soon as a little girl begins to be a young lady she must be shut up

in the house; talked to as though she did not know much; read novels; be

dressed up; go to parties; have suitors; take lessons in music; have a

dancing master; visit the theater; go a term or two to the young ladies'

seminary to practice calisthenics; study Botany without seeing a flower,

Astronomy without looking at a star or planet, Geology without stepping

into the dirt or putting her hand upon a rock; write a half-dozen

compositions on friendship, mother, and home; daub a little in

water-paints; receive a diploma, and then set up for matrimony. This is

female Education--without an object, without ambition, without point or

force, without strength, depth, or breadth. It is simply a little

outside polish. It does not teach how to _think_; it does not develop

mind; it does not confer power; it does not form character; it does not

fix the will, direct the life, establish opinion, deepen sentiment, or

do any thing to make a true woman.

Our young women want a more vigorous, practical, and useful Education,

one that shall develop strength, character and resolution; one that

shall give growth to the mind, power to the will, and efficiency to the

life; one that shall enable any woman to be independent, true to

herself, to entertain and maintain her own opinions, to get her own

living, to mark out her own course in life, to count one in any position

she may choose to occupy, to be all that may belong to a free,

independent, accountable, intelligent creature. They want to be educated

so they will know their own powers, understand their own duties, and

comprehend the value of life too well to waste it on trifles. They want

to be able to _know_ the world in which they move, to take an active

part in all life's duties, to converse intelligently upon all ordinary

subjects, and make a useful figure in the circles in which they move.

Woman's powers are eminently practical. She has a strong judgment, a

rich store of practical good sense, an ample fund of tact, skill,

shrewdness, inventiveness, and management. Women are the best managers

in the world so far as they have had experience and a field of action.

Not one whit behind are they in every department of life to which they

have had access.

Now if our girls were reared to the practical duties of life, trained to

some great and good end, taught to live for something, have some grand

and noble purpose in life, and live to that purpose, how much richer in

all that embellishes life and magnifies humanity would be our world!

Our boys have something to live for. Each one says, "I'll be this or

that; I'll do so and so when I'm a man. The world must know that I live.

I must hew out my way, make me a mark, tell a story that my fellows

shall hear." And so each one educates himself into his purpose. But how

is it with our girls? What do they live for? What do they expect to be

and do when they are women? They have powers equal to the boys--can play

as well, run as fast, learn as readily, manage as skillfully, perceive

as quickly, are as dutiful, useful, and efficient. Why should the boys

grow up with a great and good purpose before them, while the girls grow

up for nothing? See what a woman has to do, and what mighty springs of

action and influence she holds in her hands. She sits on a throne of

power at the very fountain of life. She is goddess of all the springs

and little rivulets of humanity. She makes men and trains them. As

mother, wife, and friend she wields a triune scepter of vast power. She

rears the twigs that grow into the oaks of the world. She may bend them

at her will. If woman was rightly educated, who could tell what a race

of men would grow up to people the coming ages? How can the woman-mind,

undeveloped, untrained, uninspired with great aims, grand and brave

resolutions and actions, impress the minds of the generation to come

with strength, power, activity, intellectual and moral vigor? It can

not. Oh, it is a burning shame that our women are not educated to a

greater vigor of body and mind! They should be strong in will thought,

action, love, resolution. They should be stout-hearted, high-souled,

brave-purposed, yet always womanly. If the world were mine, and I could

educate but one sex, it should be the girls. I could make a greater and

better world of the next generation by educating the girls of this. It

is not half so important that our legislators be wise, as that our

mothers be so. It is not half so important that our men be brave, as

that our women be so. Strengthen the women-heart, and you strengthen the

world. Give me a nation of noble women, and I will give you a noble

nation. Cultivate the woman-mind if you would cultivate the race.

Lecture Six.