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 weighty
importance. It relates to some of the dearest interests of our
earth-life, gathers within itself some of the holiest affections of our
hearts, and places before the bars of our consciences some of the most
serious questions of practical morality and religion. Man and woman are
a related pair. God has made them so. The relation they bear to each
other is a divine one. It takes hold of the heart of life. It spans our
whole manhood. It enters into our hopes, aims, and prospects. It holds
its scepter over our business, our amusements, our philosophy, and
religion. Its sphere is larger than we at first imagine. The relation is
deeper and broader than we have yet comprehended. It lies in the very
being of every man and every woman. There is in humanity two grand
primary and universal principles of being--the masculine and feminine.
They bear such a relation to each other that the one is essential to the
action of the other. They mutually electrify and empower each other. It
is in this mysterious relation that Infinite Wisdom has laid the springs
of animate being. If any one mystery of our existence is deeper than any
other, it is that which lies in the solemn depths of this relation. We
ought to approach it wrapt in reverential awe and wonder. We look out on
the earth in its brilliant beauty and teeming activity, and up to the
heavens in their gorgeous glory and magnificent movements, and are
oppressed with profound astonishment at what we behold. Yet all this we
can in a measure comprehend. At least the secondary causes of the
physical universe are clear to our minds. We can measure them with the
line of mathematics; we can weigh them in the balance of reason. But
when we turn in upon ourselves we meet a universe ten thousand times
more wonderful and glorious, yet wrapt in the deep mystery of spiritual
being. It is practical irreverence not to look upon our relations with
religious respect. Of all these relations, the one between man and woman
takes the most direct held of our practical life and enters most largely
into the details of our purposes and thoughts. Men and women live in and
for each other more than for any thing else. The fact stands out on the
face of human society. We must take the fact as we find it. We did not
make human nature; hence we have no right to complain of it. Our
business is to comprehend it so far as possible and seek to keep it in
the path of its design and destiny. Our morality and religion should be
adapted to our nature. They should meet the every-day wants of men.
The philosopher, the moralist, and the minister should aim at practical
utility in all their labors, and men and women should study carefully
the great book of every-day life. The relation of men and women to each
other is one of the most important lessons in that book. If we would be
wise, useful, or happy, we must understand at least the _duties_ growing
out of this relation. If we would bless mankind or please God, we must
fulfill these duties. I have but little faith in any philosophy or
religion that would shun the walks of practical life. We have too much
ethereal philosophy and spasmodic religion. Men reason profoundly about
etherealities, and go into ecstasies about glory and joy to come. This
may be all well enough, but I submit whether it would not be better to
reason how to live well the life that now is, and how to sanctify it
with the redeeming presence of the spirit of the lowly Jesus. Our chief
concern is with this life. If we make it right, no harm can come to us
in 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 of
them are to be performed with religious sincerity and joy. To me God is
in our present life, walking with us daily and entreating us to walk
with him. I see His arrangement in the relation of man and woman. I feel
his benediction in the joy and blessed influence that arise from this
relation. I can not consider it or enjoy it in any other than a
religious sense. Nor can I conceive of any true religion in the heart of
him who practically sinks this relation to a level with sensualism or
folly. I hear almost daily from the lips of professedly religious men
and women, language and thoughts on this subject which bespeak a carnal
heart and an unsanctified mind. They treat the relation with levity.
They make it a practical joke. They look at it through carnal eyes, and
listen to its language with carnal ears. Their whole conception and
practical understanding of it is sensuous. I have but little confidence
in their religion. It is only an emotion of the heart. It has never
sanctified the conscience nor consecrated the life.
With these introductory remarks let us observe in the first place, that
the most potent influence that bears on our earth-life grows out of this
relation. This is a fact standing out boldly on the face of life. And
this influence is more powerful in refined and cultured life than in
savage and primitive existence. As individuals, nations, and races
advance in the arts, principles, and culture of civilization, the
influence of the sexes becomes more general and irresistible. So far as
a people advance morally, religiously, and spiritually, this influence
becomes more direct, constant, and powerful. The truest men and the
truest women we have are most under each other's influence. They bow
most reverently in each other's presence and entertain the highest
opinions of each other. Their feelings toward each other are most pure
and truthful. One of the most intellectual, religious, and refined women
that it has been my privilege to meet in life's sequestered vale, while
speaking in a private conversation, made this significant remark: "Next
to my God do I adore man, for he is God's best image." She was a
matronly woman about sixty years of age, who had tasted life's full cup
and been blessed by its richest and most profound experiences, and who
said of her religion: "For twenty-five years it has been my meat and my
drink." It is a joy and a blessing never to be forgotten to have known
such a woman. The best men I have ever known, considered both in
relation to their spiritual experiences and their influence in life,
have joyfully and reverently expressed their feelings of profound
respect and sacred affection for woman, confessing that, under God, she
had wrought in them a mission of redeeming love. So frequent have been
similar expressions both from men and women in the highest spiritual and
practical walks in life, and so clear and strong has been their
experience, that it can not be doubted that the influence of man and
woman upon each other is potent and penetrating in proportion to their
degree of refinement and spiritual culture. The tendency of moral
training and religious discipline are to strengthen and elevate this
influence.
Woman improves in man's view as her nature is cultivated and her soul
blessed with sanctifying influences. Man grows in woman's sight as his
mind is developed and his heart subdued. They mutually exert a higher
and deeper influence over each other by their progress in things good
and true. If I am correct in this, it presents us with a strong
inducement to develop our best powers and live our best lives, that our
mental 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 they
would secure the deepest respect and holiest friendship of the young men
with whom they associate, they must themselves be refined, elevated, and
noble in their characters and lives. If they would exert their best
influence upon young men, and benefit them most by their association
with 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 a
depraved man _feel_ that he stands in the presence of pure, cultivated
womanhood, around which is wrapped the mantle of Jesus, and through
which breathes the spirit of his holy religion, and he will be ashamed
of himself, and long to be sufficiently pure and elevated to commune in
sacred friendship with her spirit. Oh, if young women could only realize
the moral powers which they could gather up within themselves, and wield
over their male associates in all the walks of life, by a proper
development of their minds and hearts, and a truthful submission to the
principles of moral right, how different would they be, and how changed
would be the face of young society! That young women do wield a mighty
influence over young men we admit; but it is not so great nor so good as
it 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 rebuke
but very little the evil doings of their male associates. They chide not
the waywardness of young men as they ought. They smile upon them in
their villainy. They court the society of young men they have every
reason to believe are corrupt. They will meet without a shudder or
disapproving frown, in the ball-room and the private circle, men whom
they know would glory in being the instrument of the moral ruin of any
woman. Young women who claim to be good, and who would not for a fortune
be guilty of a moral impropriety, often wreathe the villain's way in
smiles.
Young men in "high life" can smoke and chew, drink and swear, in woman's
presence, and she turns not away in disgust nor rebukes them with a cut
of their acquaintance. There are a large class of young women who only
ask 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 they
only keep straight in the ladies' presence, it is all that is asked. Now
there is by far too much of this low state of morality among young
women. I say among young women, because if their moral feelings were
what they should be, they would not associate with such young men. They
would not enroll them on their list of friends. They would not know
their names; would not recognize them when they met. I have no
confidence in the moral sense of young women who will acknowledge such
associates. The very first duty which women owe to young men is to
demand of them a higher standard of morality. I say _demand_. They
should peremptorily demand it. Young women should erect the standard for
young men which young men have erected for them. Young men who have any
respect for themselves will not associate with women that chew, and
smoke, and swear, and get drunk--those whose morals are low and base.
They spurn such associates from them. Let young women do the same. Let
them say to the young men, "You shall not do the things you prohibit us
from doing; you shall not, behind our backs, do things you would despise
us for doing; you shall not bring into our society characters from which
you know every honest and pure woman ought to recoil as she would from a
basilisk; you shall not breathe into our faces the pestiferous breath of
the drunkard, nor burden our ears with the hateful sound of the
blasphemer; you must be what you would have us, or you must be out of
our society." Let young women talk thus and act thus, and true young men
will respect them all the more. No woman is respected more for smiling
on the villain. He himself despises her for it. The truth is, our
society is corrupt on this subject. _Men_ are permitted to do with
impunity what would blast a woman's reputation for life. A man may be
coarse, vulgar, and wicked, and society admits him to all its
privileges, and good women will meet him on terms of equality. Society
can never be what it should be till the same standard of morality and
propriety is established for men and women. It is woman's duty to
establish such a standard--a duty she owes to man. She does man an act
of injustice when she accepts him as an associate at the sacrifice of
her moral dignity. It is her duty to rebuke his evil course. It is
kindness to him to do it.
Young women can not do a bad man a greater evil than to associate with
him on terms of moral equality. All young women should show by their
words and actions that they have a deep and holy respect for moral
worth; that they will demand it in their associates. Such a course would
inspire a greater respect for them in the minds of young men, and give a
higher tone to the moral feelings of our youth.
It is a well-settled conviction of my mind that society separates too
much its male and female youth. In our schools our boys and girls are
separated. Almost the entire course of education is pursued in sexual
isolation. The girls are taught that it is not pretty to be with the
boys, and the boys that is not manly to be with the girls; and yet both
are anxious for each other's society. In this unnatural and unhappy
state, their imaginations are left to fill up the void made by the
separation. Imagination seldom does such work well. I believe it is the
grand corrupter of youth. The brother and sister should grow up together
in the same family, be educated at the same school, engage in the same
sports, and, so far as practical, in the same labors. Their joys and
sorrows, tastes and aims, should be mutual so far as possible. The same
moral lessons, the same moral obligations and duties should bear upon
them. The moral standard for the girl should be the moral standard for
the boy, and he should be made to feel that the moment he falls below it
he is unworthy, and must not expect her confidence and society. It is a
sad error that the youth of our towns and country are separated in so
many of the most important duties of life. They are permitted to come
together only for sport and nonsense. Their study and work are separate.
Hence the good influence which they ought to have upon each other is in
a great measure lost. They are unacquainted with each other. They know
not each other's natures. They have but little interest in each other's
business and duties. They meet only to cajole and deceive each other.
They wear masks in each other's presence. For this state of things no
one in particular is to blame, but every one in general. It is the fault
of society. Now it seems to me to be a duty of every young woman to seek
to correct this state of things, by acquainting herself as far as
possible with the interests and business of young men that she may seek
to benefit them by her approval of what is right and condemnation of
what is wrong.
If woman was more intimately acquainted with the life, duty, hopes, and
aims of man, with his business, his education, his sharp encounters, his
trials and temptations, she could be of much more service to him
intellectually, morally, and socially. I do not believe in the present
isolation of woman from man's business, ambition, and hope. Woman might
be a perpetual inspiration to man to act nobly his part in the theater
of life if she knew that part and was more deeply interested in it. And
here is just where young women can be of great service to young men. In
nearly all young men there is more or less of noble ambition, of
praiseworthy aim for an active and useful life. Some wish to fill posts
of honor and trust in their country's service; some would win respect
and honor in some of the learned professions; some would seek esteem and
competency in the schools of art; some would lay the foundations of a
noble life in mechanism; some in agriculture; some in commerce. The
avocations are many, but the spirit, the aim, the ambition is one. In
these avocations young men expect to make their fortunes, win their
fame, work out their good, and do their life-work. If young women had
their hearts in these things, saw the true end of life, and would enter
into the young man's plans and hopes, they might cheer and animate,
encourage and empower, thousands of young men who otherwise will make
grand failures of life. How little encouragement, how little counsel and
cheer do young men now get from their young female associates! What
young woman enters heartily into the best aims and highest hopes of the
young man with whom she associates?
What young woman watches with anxious and benevolent solicitude the
young men about her, in relation to their success and progress in the
vocations and pursuits to which their lives are wedded, and from which
their fortunes, characters, and spiritual good are in no small degree to
be made? Our young women are too childish and trifling in their
thoughts and intercourse with young men. They seek to dissipate rather
than benefit them; or, if they do not seek it, their intercourse tends
to dissipation. It should not be so. All of woman's influence should
tend to elevate man. He is bad enough, do all she can for him. The hours
she spends with him should be for his inspiration; to make him more
active 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. It
injures both parties. Woman exerts a great influence over man. She
should see to it that that influence is good. She should encourage him
in all his intellectual pursuits, throw the whole weight of her
influence upon his moral nature, resolutely demand a good life at his
hands, and electrify his laudable purposes with the strength of her
holiest prayer. She may be to him an angel of redeeming mercy. She may
magnetize his soul with strength. She may gird him with the armor of
religion and make him a soldier of the Cross, braver than Cæsar and
mightier than Napoleon. But to do it she must herself be strong in the
right. She must be panoplied in the armor of spiritual warfare. She must
be a true woman, girded and crowned with the royalty of noble womanhood.
Being this, she must ask her brother to wear the royal badge of
high-toned manhood. Let young women learn how men are made; how, by
industry, labor, prudence, perseverance in the common vocations of life,
and by a strict adherence to rectitude and goodness they grow to be
useful and great, and then they may become ministers of good to the
rising manhood of our country.
I have great hopes in young woman. The destinies of the generations to
come are not a little in her hands. In the stirring times that are
before us she must act a noble part. Her pen, her voice, her power will
move upon the world. Every young woman will do something in this
movement. Let her determine to do her part well; to be a true woman; to
lead a true life; to exert a true influence on mankind in the fear of
God and the love of man.
Lecture Eleven.