Gift of
James H. Russell
Le
1421
M 83
1813
"ine 2009, which is 19" 20",
STRICTURES
ON THE
MODERN SYSTEM
ОТ
FEMALE EDUCATION.
WITH
A VIEW OF THE PRINCIPLES AND CONDUCT PREVALENT AMONG
WOMEN OF RANK AND FORTUNE.
BY HANNAH MORE.
May you so raise your character that you may help to make the next
age a better thing, and leave posterity in your debt, for the advantage it
shall receive by your example.
LORD-HALIFAX,
IN TWO VOLUME§.
VOL. I.
RI
*
NEW-YORK:
NUBLISHED BY S. À. EURTUS, 19 PECK-SLIF, CORNER OF WATER-STREET,
George Long, printer.
1813.
♫❤
14 14
15
747
CONTENTS
3. H. Non sa k
I
6-8-33
B
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME,
设
​INTRODUCTION
CHAP. I.
Address to women of rank and fortune, on the effects of their in-
fluence on society. Suggestions for the exertion of it in various
instances
CHAP. II.
On the education of women. The prevailing system tends to es-
tablish the errors which it ought to correct. Dangers arising
from an excessive cultivation of the arts
CHAP. III.
Children's balls.
Children's balls.
CHAP. IV.
External improvement.
French governesses
Comparison of the mode of female cducation in the last age with
the present
CHAP. V.
On the manner in which
On the religious employment of time.
holidays are passed. Selfishness and inconsideration consider-
ed. Dangers arising from the world
CHAP. VI.
Page
Filial obedience not the character of the age. A comparison
with the preceding age in this respect. Those who cultivate
the mind advised to study the nature of the soil Unpromising
children often make strong characters. Teachers too apt to
devote their pains almost exclusively to children of parts
CHAP. VII.
CHAP. VIII.
On the religious and moral use of history and geography
CHAP. IX.
1
On female study, and initiation into knowledge. Error of culti-
vating the imagination to the neglect of the judgment. Books
of reasoning recommended
A
(9
On the use of definitions, and the moral benefits of accuracy in
language
<
CHAP. X.
On religion. The necessity and duty of early instruction shewn
by analogy with human learning
CHAP. XI.
On the manner of instructing young persons in religion, general
remarks on the genius of christianity
CHAP. XII.
Thek
1
27
38
45
50
61
71
80
90
Mints suggested for furnishing young persons with a scheme of
prager
It
94
10
CONTENTS
THE SECOND VOLUME.
OF
CHAP. XIII.
Page
THE practical use of female knowledge, with a sketch of the
female character, and a comparative view of the sexes
CHAP. XIV.
Conversation. Hints suggested on the subject. On the tempers
and' dispositions to be introduced in it. Errors to be avoided.
Vanity under various shapes the cause of those errors
CHAP. XV.
On public amusements
On the danger of an ill directed sensibility
CHAP. XVI.
On dissipation, and the modern habits of fashionable life
CHAP. XVII.
-
CHAP. XVIIL
A worldly spirit incompatible with the spirit of christianity
CHAP. XIX.
On the duty and efficacy of prayer ·
A
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Ka
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20
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5B
75
36.
On the leading doctrines of christianity. The corruption of hu
man nature. The doctrine of redemption. The necessity of a
shange of heart, and of the divine influences to produce that
change. With a sketch of the christian character
100
CHAP. XX.
119
INTRODUCTION.
PAŽ
d
IT is a singular injustice which is often exercised to-
wards women, first to give them a very defective educa-
tion, and then to expect from them the most undeviating
purity of conduct; to train them in such a manner as shall
leave them open to the most dangerous faults; and then
to censure them for not proving faultless. Is it not un-
reasonable and unjust, to express disappointment if our
daughters should, in their subsequent lives, turn out pre-
cisely that very kind of character for which it would be
evident to an unprejudiced by-stander that the whole scope
and tenor of their instruction had been systematically pre
paring them?
✔
Some reflections on the present erroneous system arc
here with great deference submitted to public considera-
tion. The author is apprehensive that she shall be ac-
cused of betraying the interests of her sex by laying open
their defects: but surely, an earnest wish to turn their at-
tention to objects calculated to promote their true dignity,
is not the office of an enemy. So to expose the weakness
of the land as to suggest the necessity of internal improve-
ment, and to point out the means of effectual defence, is
not treachery, but patriotism.
Again, it may be objected to this little work, that many
crrors are here ascribed to women which by no means be-
long to them exclusively, and that it seems to confine to
the sex those faults which are common to the species:
but this is in some micasure unavoidable. In speaking on
the qualities of one sex, the moralist is somewhat in the
situation of the geographer, who is treating on the nature
of one country: the air, soil, and produce of the land which
he is describing, cannot fail in many essential points to re-
semble those of other countries under the same parallel;
yet
it is his business to descant on the one without advert-
ing to the other; and though in drawing his map he may
happen to introduce some of the neighbouring coast, yet
M
INTRODUCTION.
his principal attention must be confined to that country
which he proposes to describe, without taking into ac-
count the resembling circumstances of the adjacent shores.
K
T
It may be also objected, that the opinion here suggest-
ed on the state of manners among the higher classes of our
Country-women, may seem to controvert the just enco-
miums of modern travellers, who generally concur in as-
cribing a decided superiority to the ladies of this country
over those of every other. But such is the state of foreign
manners, that the comparative praise is almost an injury
to English women. To be flattered for excelling those
whose standard of excellence is very low, is but a degrad-
ing kind of commendation; for the value of all praise.
derived from superiority depends on the worth of the com-
petitor. The character of British ladies, with all the un-
paralled advantages they possess, must never be determin-
ed by a comparison with the women of other nations, but
by what they themselves might be if all their talents and
unrivalled opportunities were turned to the best account.
-
medy
Again, it may be said, that the author is less disposed
to expatiate on excellence than error; but the office of
the historian of human manners is delineation rather than
panegyric. Were the end in view eulogium and not im-
provement, eulogium would have been far more gratify-
ing, nor would just objects for praise have been difficult
10 find. Even in her own limited sphere of observation,
the author is acquainted with much excellence in the
class of which she treats; with women who, possessing
learning which would be thought extensive in the other
sex, set an example of deep humility to their own; wo-
men who, distinguished for wit and genius, are eminent
for domestic qualities; who, excelling in the fine arts,
have carefully enriched their understandings; who, en-
joying great affluence, devote it to the glory of God; who,
possessing elevated rank, think their noblest style and ti-
ale is that of a Christian.
1
and
That there is also much worth which is little known,
she is persuaded; for it is the modest nature of goodness
to exert itself quietly, while a few characters of the op-
posite cast, secm, by the rumour of their exploits, to fill
the world; and by their noise to multiply their numbers.
INTRODUCTION.
T
vii
It often happens that a very small party of people, by oc-
cupying the foreground, so seize the public attention, and
monopolize the public talk, that they appear to be the
great body: and a few active spirits, provided their acti-
vity take the wrong turn and support the wrong cause,
seem to fill the scene; and a few disturbers of order, who
have the talent of thus exciting a false idea of their mul-
titudes by their mischiefs, actually gain strength, and swell
their numbers by this fallacious arithmetic.
But the present work is no more intended for a panegy-
ric on those purer characters whe seek not human praise,
because they act from a higher motive, than for a satire
on the avowedly licentious, who, urged by the impulse of
the moment, or led away by the love of fashion, dislike not
censure, so it may serve to rescue them from neglect or
oblivion.
►
W
There are, however, multitudes of the young and the.
well-disposed, who have as yet taken no decided part, who
are just launching on the ocean of life, just about to lose
their own right convictions, and to counteract their better
propensities, unreluctantly yielding themselves to be car-
ried down the tide of popular practices, sanguine and con-
fident of safety. To these the author would gently hint,
that, when once embarked, it will be no longer easy to say
to their passions, or even to their principles, "Thus far.
shall ye go, and no further."
Should any reader revolt at what is conceived to be un-
warranted strictness in this little book, let it not be thrown
by in disgust before the following short consideration be
weighed. If in this Christian country we are actually be-
ginning to regard the solemn office of Baptism as mere-
ly furnishing an article to the parish register; if we are
learning from our indefatigable Teachers, to consider this
Christian rite as a legal ceremony retained for the sole
purpose of recording the age of our children; then, in-
deed, the prevailing System of Education and Manners
on which these volumes presume to animadvert, may be
adopted with propriety, and persisted in with safety, with-
out entailing on our children or on ourselves the peril of
broken promises, or the guilt of violated vows.
But, if
the obligation which Christian Baptism imposes be really
H
viii
INTRODUCTION.
{
Ja
binding; if the ordinance have, indeed, a meaning beyond
a mere secular transaction, beyond a record of names and
dates; if it be an institution by which the child is solemn-
ly devoted to God as his Father, to Jesus Christ as his
Saviour, and to the Holy Spirit as his Sanctifier; if there
be no definite period assigned when the obligation of ful-
filling the dutics it enjoins shall be superseded; if, hav-
Ing once dedicated our offspring to their Creator, we no
longer dare to mock Him by bringing them up in igno-
rance of His Will and neglect of His Laws; if, after hav-
ing enlisted them under the banners of Christ, to fight
manfully against the three great enemies of mankind, we
are no longer at liberty to let them lay down their arms;
much less to lead them to act as if in alliance instead of
hostility with these enemics; if after having promised
that they shall renounce the vanities of the world, we are
not allowed to invalidate the engagement; if after such a
covenant we should tremble to make these renounced va-
nities the supreme object of our own pursuit, or of their
instruction; if all this be really so, then the Strictures on
Modern Education, and on the Habits of polished Life,
will not be found so repugnant to truth, and reason, and
common sense, as may on a first view be supposed.
·
But if on candidly summing up the evidence, the design
and scope of the author be fairly judged, not by the cus-
toms or opinions of the worldly, (for every English sub-
ject has a right to object to a suspected or prejudiced jury)
but by an appeal to that divine law which is the only in-
fallible rule of judgment; if on such an appeal her views
and principles shall be found censurable for their rigour,
absurd in their requisitions, or preposterous in their re-
strictions, she will have no right to complain of such a
verdict, because she will then stand condemned by that
court to whose decision she implicitly submits.
A
Let it not be suspected that the author arrogantly con-
ceives herself to be exempt from that natural corruption
of the heart which it is one chief object of this slight work
to exhibit; that she superciliously erects herself into the
impeccable censor of her sex and of the world; as if from
the critic's chair she were coldly pointing out the faults
and errors of another order of beings, in whose welfare
1
INTRODUCTION.
t
she had not that lively interest which can only flow from
the tender and intimate participation of fellow-feeling.
With a deep self-abasement arising from a strong con
viction of being indeed a partaker in the same corrupt na-
ture, together with a full persuasion of the many and
great defects of these volumes, and a sincere conscious-
ness of her inability to do justice to a subject which, how-
ever a sense of duty impelled her to undertake, she com-
mits herself to the candour of that public which has so
frequently, in her instance, accepted a right intention as
a substitute for a powerful performance.
BATH,
MARCH 14, 1799. S
}
T
A 3
+
i
STRICTURES
ON THE
MODERN SYSTEM
OF
FEMALE EDUCATION.
CHAPTER I.
Address to women of rank and fortune, on the effects of their infier se
on society.-Suggestions for the exertion of it in ourious instances.
AMONG the talents for the application of which women
of the higher class will be peculiarly accountable, there is
one, the importance of which they can scarcely rate too
highly. This talent is influence. We read of the great-
est orator of antiquity, that the wisest plans which it had
cost him years to frame, a woman could overturn in a sin-
gle day; and when one considers the variety of mischiefs
which an ill-directed influence has been known to pro-
duce, one is led to reflect with the most sanguine hope on
the bencficial effects to be expected from the same pow-
erful force when excrted in its true direction.
The general state of civilized society depends, more
than thoscare aware, who are not accustomed to scrutinize
into the springs of human action, on the prevailing senti-
ments and habits of women, and on the nature and degree
of the estimation in which they are held. Even those who
admit the power of female elegance on the manners of men,
do not always attend to the influence of female principles
on their character. In the former case, indecd, women
are apt to be sufficiently conscious of their power, and not
backward in turning it to account. But there are noblé
objects to be effected by the exertion of their powers, and
unfortunately, ladies, who are often unreasonably confident.
where they ought to be diffident, are sometimes capri-
ON THE EFFECTS
ciously diffident just when they ought to feel where their
true importance lies; and, feeling, to exert it. To use
their boasted power over mankind to no higher purpose
than the gratification of vanity or the indulgence of plea-
sure, is the degrading triumph of those fair victims to
luxury, caprice, and despotism, whom the laws and the reli-
gion of the voluptuous prophet of Arabia exclude from
light, and liberty, and knowledge; and it is humbling to
reflect, that in those countries in which fondness for the
mere persons of women is carried to the highest excess,
they are slaves; and that their moral and intellectual de-
gradation increases in direct proportion to the adoration
which is paid to mere external charms.
But I turn to the bright reverse of this mortifying scene;
to a country where our sex enjoys the blessings of liberal
instruction, of reasonable laws, of a pure religion, and all
the endearing pleasures of an equal, social, virtuous, and
delightful intercourse I turn with an earnest hope, that
women, thus richly endowed with the bounties of Provi-
dence, will not content themselves with polishing, when
they are able to reform; with entertaining, when they may
awaken; and with captivating for a day, when they may
bring into action powers of which the effects may be com-
mensurate with eternity.
+7
**
In this moment of alarm and peril, I would call on them
with a แ warning voice," which would stir up every la-
tent principle in their minds, and kindle every slumbering
onergy in their hearts; I would call on them to come for-
ward, and contribute their full and fair proportion towards
the saving of their country. But I would call on them to
come forward, without departing from the refinement of
their character, without derogating from the dignity of
their rank, without blemishing the delicacy of their sex:
I would call them to the best and most appropriate exer-
tion of their power, to raise the depressed tone of public
morals, and to awaken the drowsy spirit of religious prin-
ciple. They know too well how arbitrarily they give the
law, to manners, and with how despotic a sway they fix the
standard of fashion. But this is not enough; this is a
low mark, a prize not worthy of their high and holy call-
ing. For, on the use which women of the superior class
P
OF INFLUENGE.
3
may be disposed to make of that power delegated to them
by the courtesy of custom, by the honest gallantry of the
heart, by the imperious control of virtuous affections, by
the habits of civilized states, by the usages of polished so-
eiety; on the use, I say, which they shall hereafter make
of this influence, will depend, in no low degree, the well-
being of those states, and the virtue and happiness, nay
perhaps the very existence of that society.
At this period, when our country can only hope to stand
by opposing a bold and noble unanimity to the most tre-
mendous confederacies against religion, and order, and
governments, which the world ever saw; what an acces-
sion would it bring to the public strength, could we pre-
vail on beauty, and rank, and talents, and virtue, confede-
rating their several powers, to come forward with a pa-
triotism at once firm and feminine for the general good!
I am not sounding an alarm to female warriors, nor excit-
ing female politicians: I hardly know which of the two
is the most disgusting and unnatural character. Proprie-
ty is to a woman what the great Roman critic says action
is to an orator; it is the first, the second, the third requi-
site. A woman may be knowing, active, witty, and amus-
ing; but without propriety she cannot be amiable. Pro-
priety is the centre in which all the lines of duty and of
agreeableness meet. It is to character what proportion
is to figure, and grace to attitude. It does not depend
on any one perfection; but it is the result of general ex-
cellence. It shews itself by a regular, orderly, undeviat-
ing course; and never starts from its sober orbit into any
splendid eccentricities; for it would be ashamed of such
praise as it might extort by any aberrations from its pro-
per path. It renounces all commendation but what is
characteristic; and I would make it the criterion of truc
taste, right principle, and genuine feeling, in a woman,
whether she would be less touched with all the flattery of
romantic and exaggerated panegyric than with that beau-
tiful picture of correct and elegant propriety, which Mil-
ton draws of our first mother, when he delineates
« Those thousand decencies which daily flow
From all her words and actions."
ܩ
C
4
ON THE EFFECTS
Even the influence of religion is to be exercised with
discretion. A female Polemic wanders almost as far from
the limits prescribed to her sex, as a female Machiavel
or warlike Thalestris. Fierceness has made almost as
few converts as the sword, and both are peculiarly un-
graceful in a female. Even religious violence has human
tempers of its own to indulge, and is gratifying itself when
it would be thought to be serving God. Let not the bi-
got place her natural passions to the account of Christian-
ity, or imagine she is pious when she is only passionate.
Let her bear in mind that a Christian doctrine is always
to be defended with a Christian spirit, and not make her-
self amends by the stoutness of her orthodoxy for the bad-
ness of her temper. Many, because they defend a doc-
trine with pertinacity, scem to fancy that they thereby ac-
quire a kind of right to withhold the obedience which
should be necessarily involved in the principle.
But the character of a consistent Christian is as care-
fully to be maintained, as that of a fiery disputant is to be
avoided; and she who is afraid to avow her principles, or
ashamed to defend them, has little claim to that honoura-
ble title. A profligate, who laughs at the most sacred in-
stitutions, and keeps out of the way of every thing which
comes under the appearance of formal instruction, may be
disconcerted by the modest, but spiritly rebuke of a deli-
cate woman, whose life adorns the doctrines which her
conversation defends: but she who administers reproof
with ill-breeding, defeats the effect of her remedy. On
the other hand, there is a dishonest way of labouring to
conciliate the favour of a whole company, though of cha-
racters and principles irreconcilably opposite. The words
may be so guarded as not to shock the believer, while the
eycand voice may be so accommodated, as not to discourage
the infidel. She who, with a half carnestness, trims be-
tween the truth and the fashion; who, while she thinks
it creditable to defend the cause of religion, yet does it in
a faint tone, a studied ambiguity of phrase, and a certain
expression in her countenance, which proves that she is not
displeased with what she affects to censure, or that she is
afraid to lose her reputation for wit, in proportion as she
advances her credit for piety, injures the cause more than
-
Path
N
OF INFLUENCE.
5
67
he who attacked it; for she proves, either that she
does not believe what she professes, or that she does
not reverence what fear compels her to believe. But
this is not all she is called on not barely to repress im-
picty, but to excite, to encourage, and to cherish every
tendency to serious religion.
Some of the occasions of contributing to the general
good which are daily presenting themselves to ladies, are
almost too minute to be pointed out. Yet of the good
which right-minded women, anxiously watching these
minute occasions, and adroitly seizing them, might ac-
complish, we may form some idea by the ill-effects which
we actually see produced, through the mere levity, care-
lessness, and inattention (to say no worse) of some of
those ladies, who are looked up to as standards in the
fashionable world.
J
I am persuaded if many a one, who is now disseminat-
ing unintended mischief, under the dangerous notion
that there is no harm in any thing short of positive vice,
and under the false colours of that indolent humility,
"What good can I do?" could be brought to see in its
collected force the annual aggregate of the random evil
she is daily doing, by constantly throwing a little casual
weight into the wrong scale, by mere inconsiderate and
unguarded chat, she would start from her self-compla-
cent dream. If she could conceive how much she may
be diminishing the good impressions of young men ; 'ang
if she could imagine how little amiable levity or irre-
ligion makes her appear in the eyes of those who are
older and abler, (however loose their own principles
may be) she would correct herself in the first instance,
from pure good nature; and in the second, from world-
ly prudence and mere self-love. But on how much
higher principles would she restrain herself, if she habit-
ually took into account the important doctrine of conse-
quences; and if she reflected that the lesser but more
habitual corruptions make up by their number, what they
nay seem to come short of by their weight: then per-
haps she would find that, among the higher class of wo-
men, inconsideration is adding more to the daily quantity
of evil than almost all other causes put together.
20
ma
ON THE EFFECTS
There is an instrument of inconceivable force, when
it is employed against the interests of Christianity. It is
not reasoning, for that may be answered; it is not learn-
ing, for luckily the infidel is not seldom ignorant; it is
not invective, for we leave so coarse an engine to the
hands of the vulgar; it is not evidence, for happily we have
that on our side. It is RIDICULE, the most deadly weap-
on in the whole arsenal of impiety, and which becomes
an almost unerring shaft when directed by a fair and
fashionable hand No maxim has been more readily
adopted, or is more intrinsically false, than that which
the fascinating eloquence of a noble skeptic of the last
age contrived to render so popular, that "ridicule is
the test of truth." It is no test of truth itself; but of
their firmness who assert the cause of truth, it is indeed
a severe test. This light, keen, missile weapon, the irres-
olute, unconfirmed Christian will find it harder to with-
stand than the whole heavy artillery of infidelity united.
A young man of the better sort, having just entered
upon the world, with a certain share of good dispositions
and right feelings, not ignorant of the evidences, nor
destitute of the principles of Christianity; without parting
with his respect for religion, he sets out with the too na-
tural wish of making himself a reputation, and of standing
well with the fashionable part of the female world. He
preserves for a time a horror of vice, which makes it not
difficult for him to resist the grosser corruptions of soci-
cty; he can as yet repel profaneness; nay, he can with-
stand the banter of a club. He has sense enough to see
through the miserable fallacies of the new philosophy, and
spirit enough to expose its malignity. So far he does
well, and you are ready to congratulate him on his secu-
rity. You are mistaken: the principles of the ardent,
and hitherto promising adventurer are shaken, just in that
very society where, while he was looking for pleasure, he
doubted not of safety. In the company of certain women
of good fashion and no ill fame, he makes shipwreck of
his religion. He sees them treat with levity or derision
subjects which he has been used to hear named with re-
spect. He could confute an argument, he could unravel
a sophistry; but he cannot stand a laugh. A sncer, not
diy
*
"
OF INFLUENCE.
AJ
/
at the truth of religion, for that perhaps is by none of the
party disbelieved, but at its gravity, its unseasonableness,
its dullness, puts all his resolution to flight. He feels his
mistake, and struggles to recover his credit; in order to
which he adopts the gay affectation of trying to seem worse
than he really is, he goes on to say things which he does
not believe, and to deny things which he does believe,
and all to efface the first impression, and to recover a
reputation which he has committed to their hands on
whose report he knows he shall stand or fall, in those cir-
cles in which he is ambitious to shine.
That cold compound of irony, irreligion, selfishness,
and sneer, which make up what the French (from whom
we borrow the thing as well as the word) so well express
by the term persistage, has of late years made an incrcd-
ible progress in blasting the opening buds of piety in
young persons of fashion. A cold pleasantry, a temporary
cant word, the jargon of the day (for the " great vulgar'
have their jargon) blights the first promise of seriousness.
The ladies of ton have certain watch-words, which may
be detected as indications of this spirit. The clergy are
spoken of under the contemptuous appellation of The
Parsons. Some ludicrous association is infallibly com-
bined with every idea of religion. If a warm hearted
youth has ventured to name with enthusiasm some cmi-
nently pious character, his glowing ardour is extinguish-
ed with a laugh; and a drawling declaration that the per-
son in question is really a mighty harmless good creature,
is uttered in a tone which leads the youth secretly to vow,
that whatever else he may be, he will never be a good
harmless creature.
ہے
Nor is ridicule more dangerous to true piety than to
true tuste. An age which values itself on parody, bur-
lesque, irony, and caricature, produces little that is sub-
lime, either in genius or in virtue; but they amuse, and
we live in an age which must be amused, though genius,.
feeling, truth, and principle, be the sacrifice. Nothing
chills the ardours of devotion like a frigid sarcasm; and,
in the season of youth, the mind should be kept particu-
larly clear of all light associations. This is of so much-
importance, that I have known persons who, having been.
B
8
OF THE EFFECTS
carly accustomed to certain ludicrous combinations, were
never able to get their minds cleansed from the impu-
rities contracted by this habitual levity, even after a tho-
rough reformation in their hearts and lives had taken place:
their principles became reformed, but their imaginations
were indelibly soiled. They could desist from sins which
the strictness of Christianity would not allow them to com-
mit, but they could not dismiss from their minds images,
which her purity forbade them to entertain.
-
There was a time when a variety of epithets were
thought necessary to express various kinds of excellence,
and when the different qualities of the mind were distin-
guished by appropriate and discriminating terms; when
the words venerable, learned, sagacious, profound, acute,
pious, ingenious, elegant, agreeable, wisc, or witty, were
used as specific marks of distinct characters. But the
legislators of fashion have of late years thought proper to
comprise all merit in one established epithet, and it must
be confessed to be a very desirable one as far as it goes.
This epithet is exclusively and indiscriminately applied.
wherever commendation is intended. The word pleasant
now serves to combine and express all moral and intel-
lectual excellence. Every individual, from the gravest
professors of the gravest profession, down to the trifler
who is of no profession at all, must earn the epithet of
pleasant, or must be contented to be nothing; and must
be consigned over to ridicule, under the vulgar and in-
expressive cant word of a bore. This is the mortifying
designation of many a respectable man, who, though of
much worth and much ability, cannot perhaps clearly
make out his letters patent to the title of pleasant. For,
according to this modern classification, there is no inter-
mediate state, but all are comprised within the ample
bounds of one or other of these two terms.
We ought to be more on our guard against this spirit of ri-
dicule, because, whatever may be the character of the pre-
sent day, its faults do not spring from the redundancies of
great qualities, or the overflowing of extravagant virtues.
It is well more correct views of life, a more regular ad-
ministration of laws, and a more settled state of society,
have helped to restrain the excesses of the heroic ages,
1
OF INFLUENCE.
1
when love and war were considered as the great and sole
business of human life. Yet, if that period was marked
by a romantic extravagance, and the present by an indo-
lent selfishness, our superiority is not so triumphantly de-
cisive, as, in the vanity of our hearts, we may be ready to
imagine.
I do not wish to bring back the frantic reign of chivalry,
nor to reinstate women in that fantastic empire in which
they then sat enthroned in the hearts, or rather in the im-
aginations of men. Common sense is an excellent mate-
rial of universal application, which the sagacity of latter
ages has seized upon, and rationally applied to the busi-
ness of common life. But let us not forget, in the inso-
lence of acknowledged superiority, that it was religion and
chastity, operating on the romantic spirit of those times,
which established the despotic sway of woman; and though
she now no longer looks down on her adoring votaries,
from the pedestal to which an absurd idolatry had lifted
her, yet let her remember that it is the same religion and
chastity which once raised her to such an elevation, that
Inust still furnish the noblest energies of her character.
While we lawfully ridicule the absurdities which we
have abandoned, let us not plume ourselves on that spirit
of novelty which glories in the opposite extreme. If the
manners of the period in question were affected, and if the
gallantry was unnatural, yet the tone of virtue was high;
and let us remember that constancy, purity, and honour,
are not ridiculous in themselves, though they may un-
luckily be associated with qualities which are so: and
women of delicacy would do well to reflect, when descant-
ing on those exploded manners, how far it be decorous to
deride with too broad a laugh, attachments which could
subsist on remote gratification; or grossly to ridicule the
taste which led the admirer to sacrifice pleasure to
respect, and inclination to honour; to sncer at that pu-
rity which made self-denial a proof of affection, and to
call in question the sound understanding of him who pre-
ferred she fame of his mistress to his own indulgence.
One cannot but be struck with the wonderful contrast
exhibited to our view, when we contemplate the manners
of the two periods in question. In the former, all the flow
• 60
Ca
Ph
10
ON THE EFFECTS
4
:
er of Europe smit with a delirious gallantry; all that was
young and noble, and brave and great, with a fanatic fren-
zy and preposterous contempt of danger, traversed scas,
and scaled mountains, and compassed a large portion of
the globe, at the expense of case, and fortune, and life,
for the unprofitable project of rescuing, by force of arms,
from the hands of infidels, the sepulchre of that Saviour,
whom, in the other period, their posterity would think it
the height of fanaticism so much as to name in good com-
pany whose altars they desert, whose temples they neg-
lect; and though in more than one country at least they
still call themselves by his name, yet too many, it is to be
feared, contemn his precepts, still more are ashamed of
his doctrines, and not a few rejcct his sacrifice. Too
many consider Christianity rather as a political than a re-
ligious distinction; too many claim the appellation of Chris-
tians, in mere opposition to that Democracy with which
they conceive infidelity to be associated, rather than from
an abhorrence of impicty for its own sake; and dread ir-
religion as the badge of a reprobated party, more than on
account of that moral corruption which is its inseparable
concomitant.
val
S
But in an age when inversion is the order of the day,
the modern idea of improvement does not consist in alter-
ing, but extirpating. We do not reform, but subvert. We
do not correct old systems, but demolish them; fancy ng
that when every thing shall be new it will be perfect.
Not to have been wrong, but to have been at all, is the
crime. Excellence is no longer considered as an experi-
mental thing which is to grow gradually out of observation
and practice, and to be improved by the accumulating ad-
ditions brought by the wisdom of successive ages.
wisdom is not slowly perfected by age and gradual growth,
but a goddess which starts at once, full grown, mature,
armed cap-à-pic, from the heads of our modern thunder-
Or rather, if I may change the allusion, a perfect
system is now expected inevitably to spring at once like
the fabled bird of Arabia, from the ashes of its parent
and, like that, can receive its birth no other way but by the
destruction of its predecessor.
Our
ers.
{
OF INFLUENCE.
11
Instead of clearing away what is redundant, pruning
what is cumbersome, supplying what is defective, and
for
amending what is wrong, we adopt the indefinite rage
radical reform of Jack, who in altering Lord Peter's* coat,
shewed his zeal by crying out, "Tear away, brother Mar-
tin, for the love of heaven; never mind, so you do but tear
away."
This tearing system has unquestionably rent away some
valuable parts of that strong, rich, native stuff, which form-
ed the ancient texture of British manners.
That we
have gained much I am persuaded; that we have lost no-
thing I dare not therefore affirm. But though it fairly ex-
hibits a mark of our improved judgment to ridicule the
fantastic notions of love and honour in the heroic ages;
let us not rejoice that that spirit of generosity in sentiment,
and of ardour in piety, the cxuberancies of which were
then so inconvenient, are now sunk as unreasonably low.
That revolution of manners which the unparalleled wit
and genius of Don Quixote so happily effected, by abolish-
ing extravagancies the most absurd and pernicious, was
so far imperfect, that some virtues which he never meant
to expose, fell into disrepute with the absurdities which
he did and it is become the turn of the present taste to
attach in no small degree that which is ridiculous to that
which is serious and heroic. Some modern works of wit
have assisted in bringing piety and some of the noblest
virtues into contempt, by studiously associating them.
with oddity, childish simplicity, and ignorance of the world:
and unnecessary pains have been taken to extinguish that
zeal and ardour, which, however liable to excess and cr-
ror, are yet the spring of whatever is great and excellent
in the human character. The novel of Cervantes is in-
comparable; the Tartuffe of Moliere is unequalled; but
truc generosity and true religion will never lose any
thing of their intrinsic value, because knight-errantry and
hypocrisy are legitimate objects for satire.
But
But to return from this too long digression, to the sub-
ject of female influence. Those who have not watched
the united operation of vanity and feeling on a youthful
mind, will not conceive how much less formidable the ri,
* Swift's "Tale of a Tub?”
ے
B 2
12
OF THE EFFECTS
dicule of all his own sex will be to a very young man, than
that of those women to whom he has been taught to look
up as the arbitresses of elegance. Such an one I doubt
not, might be able to work himself up, by the force of ge-
nuine christian principle, to such a pitch of true heroism,
as to refuse a challenge, (and it requires more real cou-
rage to refuse a challenge than to accept one) who would
yet be in danger of relapsing into the dreadful pusillani-
mity of the world, when he is told that no woman of fa-
shion will hereafter look on him but with contempt. While
we have cleared away the rubbish of the Gothic ages, it
were to be wished we had not retained the most criminal
of all their institutions. Why chivalry should indicate a
madman, while its leading object, the singal combat, should
designate a gentleman, has not yet been explained. Nay
the original motive is lost, while the sinful practice is
continued; for the fighter of the duel no longer pretends
to be a glorious, redresser of the wrongs of strangers; no
longer considers himself as piously appealing to heaven
for the justice of his cause; but from the slavish fear of
unmerited reproach, often selfishly hazards the happiness.
of his nearest connexions, and always comes forth in di
rect defiance of an acknowledged command of the Al-
mighty. Perhaps there are few occasions in which fe-
male influence might be exerted to a higher purpose than
in this, in which laws and conscience have hitherto effect-
od so little. But while the duellist (who perhaps becomes
a duellist only because he was first a seducer) is welcom-
ed with smiles; the more hardy youth, who, because he
fears not man but God, declines a challenge; who is resolv-
ed to brave disgrace rather than commit sin, would be
treated with cool contempt by those very persons to whose
esteem he might reasonably look, as one of the rewards
of his true and substantial fortitude.
How then is it to be reconciled with the decisions of
principle, that delicate women should receive with com-
placency the successful libertine, who has been detected
by the wretched father or the injured husband in a crim-
inal commerce, the discovery of which has tco justly
banished the unhappy partner of his crime from virtuous
society? Nay, if he happen to be very handsome, or very
-
OF INFLUENCE.
13
brave, or very fashionable, is there not sometimes a kind
of dishonourable competition for his favour? But, wheth-
er his popularity be derived from birth, or parts, or per-
son, or (what is often a substitute for all) from his having
made his way into good company, women of distinction
sully the sanctity of virtue by the too visible pleasure
they sometimes express at the attentions of such a pop-
ular libertine, whose voluble small-talk they admire, and
whose sprightly nothings they quote, and whom perhaps
their very favour tends to prevent from becoming a bet-
ter character, because he finds himself more acceptable
as he is.
<
May I be allowed to introduce a new part of my sub-
ject by remarking that it is a matter of inconceivable im-
portance, though not perhaps sufficiently considered,
when any popular work, not on a religious topic, but on
any common subject, such as politics, history, or science,
has happened to be written by an author of sound Chris-
tian principles? It may not have been necessary, nor pru-
dently practicable, to have a single page in the whole
work professedly religious: but still, when the living
principle informs the mind of the writer, it is almost
impossible but that something of its spirit will diffusc
itself even into subjects with which it should seem but
remotely connected. It is at least a confort to the rea-
der, to feel that honest confidence which results from
knowing that he has put himself into safe hands; that he
has committed himself to an author, whose known prin.
ciples are a pledge that his reader need not be driven to
watch himself at every step with anxious circumspection;
that he need not be looking on the right hand and on the
left, as if he knew there were pitfalls under the flowers.
which are delighting him. And it is no small point gain-
ed, that on subjects in which you do not look to improvs
your religion, it is at least secured from deterioration. If
the Athenian laws were so delicate that they disgraced
any one who shewed an inquiring traveller the wrong
road, what disgrace, among Christians, should attach to
that author, who, when a youth is inquiring the road to
history or philosophy, directs him to blasphemy and un-
belief.
p
JA
+
ON THE EFFECTS
14
In animadverting farther on the reigning evils which
the times more particularly demand that women of rank
and influence should repress, Christianity calls upon them
to bear their decided testimony against every thing which
is notoriously contributing to the public corruption. It
calls upon them to banish from their dressing rooms,
(and oh, that their influence could banish from the libra-
ries of their sons and husbands!) that sober and unsus-
pected mass of mischief, which, by assuming the plausi-
ble names of Science, of Philosophy, of Arts, of Belles
Lettres, is gradually administering death to the princi-
ples of those who would be on their guard, had the poi-
son been labelled with its own pernicious title. Avowed
attacks upon revelation are more easily resisted, be-
cause the malignity is advertised. But who suspects the
destruction which lurks under the harmless or instruc-
tive names of General History, Natural History, Travels
Voyages, Lives, Encyclopedias, Criticism, and Romance?
Who will deny that many of these works contain much
admirable matter; brilliant passages, important facts,
just descriptions, faithful pictures of nature, and valuable
illustrations of science? But while "the dead fly lies at
the bottom," the whole will exhale a corrupt and pesti-
lential stench.
$
Novels which chiefly used to be dangerous in one res-
pect, are now become mischievous in a thousand. They
are continually shifting their ground, and enlarging their
sphere, and are daily becoming vehicles of wider mischief.
Sometimes they concentrate their force, and are at once
employed to diffuse destructive politics, deplorable pro-
fligacy, and impudent infidelity. Rousseau was the first
popular dispenser of this complicated drug, in which the
deleterious infusion was strong, and the effect propor-
tionably fatal. For he does not attempt to seduce the af-
fections but through the medium of the principles. He
does not paint an innocent woman, ruined, repenting, and
restored; but with a far more mischievous refinement,
he annihilates the value of chastity, and with pernicious.
subtlety attempts to make his heroine appear almost more
amiable without it. He exhibits a virtuous woman, the
victim not of temptation but of reason, not of vice but of
act
O
OF INFLUENCE.
15
sentiment, not of passion but of conviction; and strikes.
at the very root of honour by elevating a crime into a
principle. With a metaphysical sophistry the most plau-
sible, he debauches the heart of woman, by cherishing
her vanity in the erection of a system of male virtucs, to
which, with a lofty dereliction of those that are her more
peculiar and characteristic praise, he tempts her to as-
pire; powerfully insinuating, that to this splendid system
chastity does not necessarily belong: thus corrupting the
judgment and bewildering the understanding, as the most.
effectual way to inflame the imagination and deprave the
heart.
20
The rare mischief of this author consists in his power
of seducing by falsehood those who love truth, but whose
minds are still wavering, and whose principles are not yet
formed. He allures the warm-hearted to embrace vice,
not because they prefer vice, but because he gives to vice
so natural an air of virtue : an ardent and enthusiastic
youth, too confidently trusting in their integrity and in
their teacher, will be undone, while they fancy they are
indulging in the noblest feelings of their nature. Many
authors will more infallibly complete the ruin of the loose
and ill-disposed; but perhaps (if I may change the figure)
there never was a net of such exquisite art and inextri-
cable workmanship, spread to entangle innocence and
ensnare inexperience, as the writings of Rousseau: and,
unhappily, the victim does not even struggle in the toils,
because part of the delusion consists in imagining that he
is set at liberty.
Some of our recent popular publications have adopted
and enlarged all the mischiefs of this school, and the
principal evil arising from them is, that the virtues they
exhibit are almost more dangerous than the vices. The
chief materials out of which these delusive systems are
framed, are characters who practise superfluous acts of
generosity, while they are trampling on obvious and
commanded dutics; who combine inflated sentiments of
honour with actions the most flagitious; a high tone of
self-confidence, with a perpetual neglect of self-denial a
pathetic apostrophes to the passions, but no attempt to
resist them. They teach, that chastity is only individual
16
OF THE EFFECTS
attachment; that no duty exists which is not prompted
by feeling, that impulse is the main spring of virtuous ac-
tions, while laws and religion are only unjust restraints;
the former imposed by arbitrary men, the latter by the
absurd prejudices of timorous and unenlightened con-
science. Alas! they do not know that the best creature
of impulse that ever lived is but a wayward, unfixed, un-
principled being! that the best natural man requires a
curb; and needs that balance to the affections which
Christianity alone can furnish, and without which bene-
volent propensities are no security to virtue. And per-
haps it is not too much to say, in spite of the monopoly
of benevolence to which the new philosophy lays claim,
that the human duties of the second table have never once
been well performed by any of the rejectors of that pre-
vious portion of the Decalogue which enjoins duty to God.
In some of the most splendid of these characters compas-
sion is erected into the throne of justice, and justice is
degraded into the rank of plebeian virtues. Creditors are
defrauded, while the money due to them is lavished in
dazzling acts of charity to some object that affects the
senses; which fits of charity are made the sponge of every
sin, and the substitute of every virtue: the whole in-
directly tending to intimate how very benevolent people
ure who are not Christians. From many of these compo-
sitions, indeed, Christianity is systematically, and always
virtually excluded; for the law, and the prophets, and
the gospel can make no part of a scheme in which this
world is looked upon as all in all; in which want and
misery are considered as evils arising solely from human
governments, and not from the dispensations of God; in
which poverty is represented as merely a political evil,
and the restraints which tend to keep the poor honest, as
the most flagrant injustice. The gospel can make no part
of a system in which the chimerical project of consum-
mate earthly happiness (founded on the pretence of lov-
ing the poor better than God loves them) would defeat
the divine plan, which meant this world a scene of dis-
cipline, not of remuneration. The gospel can have noth-
ing to do with a system in which sin is reduced to a little
human imperfection, and Old Bailey crimes arc softened
I
ang
VOI
OF INFLUENCE.
17
down into a few engaging weaknesses; and in which the
turpitude of all the vices a man himself commits, is done
away by his candour in tolerating all the vices committed
by others.
But the part of the system the most fatal to that class
whom I am addressing is, that even in those works which
do not go all the length of treating marriage as an unjust
infringement on liberty, and a tyrannical deduction from
general happiness; yet it commonly happens that the
hero or heroine, who has practically violated the letter of
the seventh commandment, and continues to live in the
allowed violation of its spirit, is painted as so amiable
and so benevolent, so tender or so brave; and the temp-
tation is represented as so irresistible, (for all these phi-
losophers are fatalists) the predominant and cherished sin
is so filtered and purged of its pollutions, and is so shel-
tered and surrounded, and relieved with shining qualities,
that the innocent and impressible young reader is brought
to lose all horror of the awful crime in question, in the
complacency she feels for the engaging virtues of the
criminal.
But there is another object to which I would direct the
excrtion of that power of female influence of which I am
speaking. Those ladies who take the lead in society are
loudly called upon to act as the guardians of the public.
taste as well as of the public virtue. They are called
upon therefore, to oppose with the whole weight of their
influence, the irruption of those swarms of publications
now daily issuing from the banks of the Danube, which,
like their ravaging predecessors of the darker ages,
though with far other arms, are over running civilized
society. Those readers, whose purer taste has been
formed on the correct models of the old classic school,
sec with indignation and astonishment the Huns and Van-
dals once more overpowering the Greeks and Romans.
They behold our minds, with a retrograde but rapid mo-
tion, hurried back to the reign of “chaos and old night,”
by terrific and unprincipled compositions, which unite
the taste of the Goths with the morals of Bagshot,*
*The newspapers announce that Schiller's Tragedy of the Robbers,
which inflamed the young nobility of Germany to enlist themselves into
18
OF THE EFFECTS
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire!
and by wild and mis-shapen superstitions, in which, with
that consistency which forms so striking a feature of the
new philosophy, those who deny the immortality of the
soul are most eager to introduce the machinery of ghosts.
The writings of the French infidels were some years
ago circulated in England with uncommon industry and
with some effect: but the plain sense and good princi-
ples of the far greater part of our countrymen resisted
the attack, and rose superior to the trial. Of the doc-
trines and principles here alluded to, the dreadful conse-
quences, not only in the unhappy country where they ori-
ginated and were almost universally adopted, but in every
part of Europe where they have been received, have been
such as to serve as a beacon to surrounding nations, if
any warning can preserve them from destruction. In
this country the subject is now so well understood, that
every thing that issues from the French press is received
with jealousy; and a work on the first appearance of its
exhibiting the doctrines of Voltaire and his associates, is
rejected with indignation.
But let us not on account of this victory repose in con-
fident security. The modern apostles of infidelity and
immorality, little less indefatigable in dispersing their
pernicious doctrines than the first apostles were in pro-
pagating gospel truths, have indeed changed their wea-
pons, but they have by no means desisted from the attack.
To destroy the principles of Christianity in this island,
appears at the present moment to be their grand aim.
Deprived of the assistance of the French press, they are
now attempting to attain their object under the close and
more artificial veil of German literature. Conscious
that religion and morals will stand or fall together, their
attacks are sometimes levelled against the one and some-
times against the other. With strong occasional pro-
fessions of general attachment to both of these, they en-
deavour to interest the feelings of the reader, sometimes
in favour of some one particular vice, at other times on
•
a band of highwaymen to rob in the forest of Buliemia, is now acting
in Englund by persons of quality!
OF INFLUENCE.
19.
the subject of some one objection to revealed religion.
Poetry as well as prose,, romance as well as history, writ
ings on philosophical as well as on political subjects, have
thus been employed to instil the principles of Illumina-
tism, while incredible pains have been taken to obtain
able translations of every book which was supposed like-
ly to be of use in corrupting the heart or misleading the
understanding. In many of these translations, certain
stronger passages, which, though well received in Ger-
many, would have excited disgust in England, are whol-
ly omitted, in order that the mind may be more certainly,
though more slowly, prepared for the full effect of the
same poison to be administered in a stronger degree at
another period.
J
Let not those to whom these pages are addressed de-
ceive themselves, by supposing this to be a fable; and
let them inquire most scriously whether I speak truth in
asserting that the attacks of infidelity in Great-Britain arc
at this moment principally directed against the female
breast. Conscious of the influence of women in civil so-
ciety, conscious of the effect which female infidelity pro-
duced in France, they attribute the ill success of their
attempts in this country, to their having been hitherto
chiefly addressed to the male sex. They are now sedu-
lously labouring to destroy the religious principles of
women, and in too many instances have fatally succeeded.
For this purpose not only novels and romances have been
made the vehicles of vice and infidelity, but the same al-
lurement has been held out to the women of our country,
which was employed by the first philosophist to the first
sinner--Knowledge. Listen to the precepts of the new
German enlighteners, and you need no longer remain in
that situation in ich Providence has placed you! Fol-
low their exampies, and you shall be permitted to indulge
in all those gratifications which custom, not religion, has
tolerated in the male sex!
Let us jealously watch every deepening shade in the
change of manners; let us mark every step, however in-
considerable, whose tendency is downwards. Corrup-
tion is neither stationary nor retrograde; and to have de-
parted from modesty, is already to have made a progress.
с
20
OF THE EFFECTS
It is not only awfully true, that since the new principles
have been afloat, women have been too eagerly inquisi-
tive after these monstrous compositions; but it is true al-
so that, with a new and offensive renunciation of their
native delicacy, many women of character make little
hesitation in avowing their familiarity with works abound-
ing with principles, sentiments, and descriptions, "which
should not be so much as named among them."
By al-
lowing their minds to come in contact with such conta-
gious matter, they are irrecoverably tainting them; and
by acknowledging that they are actually conversant with
such corruptions, (with whatever reprobation of the au-
thor they may qualify their perusal of the book,) they are
exciting in others a most mischievous curiosity for the
same unhallowed gratification. Thus they are daily di-
minishing in the young and the timid those wholesome
scruples, by which, when a tender conscience ceases to
be intrenched, all the subsequent stages of ruin are gra-
dually facilitated.
Ja
We have hitherto spoken only of the German writings ;
but because there are multitudes who seldom read, equal
pains have been taken to promote the same object through
the medium of the stage; and this weapon is, of all others,
that against which it is, at the present moment, the most
important to warn the more inconsiderate of my country-
ܩܚܫ
women.
As a specimen of the German drama, it may not be un-
scasonable to offer a few remarks on the admired play of
the Stranger. In this piece the character of an adultress,
which, in all periods of the world, ancient as well as mo-
dern, in all countries, heathen as well as christian, has hi-
therto been held in detestation, and has never been intro-
duced but to be reprobated, is for the first time presented
to our view in the most pleasing and fasciting colours.
The heroine is a woman who forsook a hutoand the most
affectionate and the most amiable, and lived for some time
in the most criminal commerce with her seducer. Re-
penting at length of her crime, she buries herself in re-
tirement. The talents of the poet during the whole piece
are exerted in attempting to render this woman the object
not only of the compassion and forgiveness, but of the es-
O
OF INFLUENCE.
21
teem and affection of the audience. The injured husband,
convinced of his wife's repentance, forms a resolution,
which every man of truc fecling and christian piety will
probably approve. He forgives her offence, and promises
her through life his advice, protection, and fortune, toge-
ther with every thing which can alleviate the misery of
her situation, but refuses to replace her in the situation of
his wife. But this is not sufficient for the German author.
His efforts are employed, and it is to be feared but too suc-
cessfully, in making the audience consider the husband as
an uurelenting savage, while they are led by the art of the
poet anxiously to wish to see an adultress restored to that
rank of women who have not violated the most solemn co-
venant that can be made with man, nor disobeyed one of
the most positive laws which has been enjoined by God.
About the same time that this first attempt at repre-
senting an adultress in an exemplary light was made by
a German dramatist, whi.h forms an era in manners; a
direct vindication of adultery was for the first time attempt-
ed by a woman, a professed admirer and imitator of the
German suicide Werter. The female Werter, as she is
styled by her biographer, asserts, in a work intitled “The
Wrongs of Women," that adultery is justifiable, and that
the restrictions placed on it by the laws of England con-
stitute one of the Wrongs of Women.
And this leads me to dwell a little longer on this most
destructive class in the whole wide range of modern cor-
ruptors, who effect the most desperate work of the pas-
sions, without so much as pretending to urge their violence
in extenuation of the guilt of indulging them. They so-
licit this very ulgence with a sort of cold-blooded spe-
culation, and invite the reader to the most unbounded gra-
tifications, with all the saturnine coolness of a geometrical
calculation. Theirs is an iniquity rather of phlegm than
of spirit and in the pestilent atmosphere they raise about
them, as in the infernal climase described by Milton,
The parching air*
Burns frore, and frost performs th' effect of fire.
"When the north-wind bloweth it devouréth the mountains, and
burneth the wilderness, and consumeth the grass as fire."
Eccles. xl. 20,
22
OF THE EFFECTS
This cool, calculating, intellectual wickedness eats out
the very heart and core of virtue, and like a deadly mildew
blights and shrivels the blooming promise of the human
spring. Its benumbing touch communicates a torpid
sluggishness, which paralyzes the soul. It descants on
depravity, and details its grossest acts as frigidly as if its
object were to allay the tumult of the passions, while it is
letting them loose on mankind, by "plucking off the muz
zle" of present restraint and future accountableness. The
system is a dire infusion compounded of bold impicty,
brutish sensuality, and exquisite folly, which creeping fa-
tally about the heart checks the moral circulation, and to-
tally stops the pulse of goodness by the extinction of the
vital principle. Thus not only choking the stream of ac-
tual virtue, but drying up the very fountain of future re-
morse and remote repentance.
A
The ravages which some of the old offenders against
purity made in the youthful heart, by the exercise of a fer-
vid but licentious imagination the passions, was like the
mischief effected by floods, cataracts, and volcanos. The
desolation indeed was terrible, and the ruin was tremen-
dous: yet it was a ruin which did not infallibly preclude
the possibility of recovery. The country, though deluged
and devastated, was not utterly put beyond the power of
restoration. The harvests indeed were destroyed, and all
was wide sterility. But, though the crops were lost, the
seeds of vegetation were not absolutely eradicated; so that,
after a long and barren blank, fertility might finally return.
But the heart once infected with this newly medicated
venom, subtil though sluggish in its operation, resembles
what travellers relate of that blasted spot the dead-sea,
where those devoted cities once stood which for their pol-
lutions were burnt with fire from heaven. It continues a
stagnant lake of putrifying waters. No wholesome blade
ever more shoots up; the air is so tainted that no living
thing subsists within its influence. Near the sulphureous
pool the very principle of life is annihilated. All is death,
Death, unrepealable eternal death!
But let us take comfort. These projects are not yet
generally realized. These atrocious principles are not yet
OF INFLUENCE.
23
adopted into common practice. Though corruptions seem
with a confluent tide to be pouring in upon us from every
quarter, yet there is still left among us a discriminating
judgment. Clear and strongly marked distinctions be-
tween right and wrong still subsist. While we continue
to cherish this sanity of mind, the case is not desperate.
Though that crime, the growth of which always exhibits.
the most irrefragable proof of the dissoluteness of public
manners; though that crime, which cuts up order and vir-
tue by the roots, and violates the sanctity of vows, is awful-
ly increasing,
'Till senates seem
For purposes of empire less conven'd
Than to release the adult'ress from her bonds;
123
yet, thanks to the surviving efficacy of a holy religion, to
the operation of virtuous laws, and to the energy and un-
shaken integrity with which these laws are now adminis-
tered; and most of all perhaps to a standard of morals
which continues in force, when the principles which sanc-
tioned it are no more this crime, in the female sex at
least, is still held in just abhorrence; if it be practised, it
is not honourable; if it be committed, it is not justified;
we do not yet affect to palliate its turpitude; as yet it hides
its abhorred head in lurking privacy; and reprobation
hitherto follows its publicity.
But on YOUR exerting your influence, with just appli-
cation and increasing energy, may in no small degree de-
pend whether this corruption shall still continue to be re-
sisted. For, from admiring to adopting, the step is short,
and the progress rapid; and it is in the moral as in the
natural world; the motion, in the case of minds as well
as of bodies, is accelerated as they approach the centre to
which they are tending.
+4
Oye to whom this address is particularly directed! an
awful charge is, in this instance, committed to your hands;
as you discharge it or shrink from it, you promote or in-
jure the honour of your daughters and the happiness of
your sons, of both which you are the depositaries. And,
while you resolutely persevere in making a stand against
the encroachments of this crime, suffer not your firmness
to be shaken by that affectation of charity, which is grow.
C 2
24
ON THE EFFECTS
ing into a general substitute for principle. Abuse not so
noble a quality as Christian candour, by mis-employing it
in instances to which it does not apply. Pity the wretched
woman you dare not countenance; and bless HIM who has
"made you to differ." If unhappily she be your relation
or friend, anxiously watch for the period when she shall be
deserted by her betrayer; and sec if, by your Christian
offices, she can be snatched from a perpetuity of vice. But
if, through the Divine blessing on your patient endeavours,
she should ever be awakened to remorse, be not anxious
to restore the forlorn penitent to that society against whose
laws she has so grievously offended; and remember, that
her soliciting such a restoration, furnishes but too plain a
proof that she is not the penitent your partiality would be-
lieve; since penitence is more anxious to make its peace
with Heaven than with the world. Joyfully would a tru-
ly contrite spirit commute an earthly for an everlasting
reprobation! To restore a criminal to public society, is
perhaps to tempt her to repeat her crime, or to deaden her
repentance for having committed it, as well as to injure
that society; while to restore a strayed soul to God will
add lustre to your Christian character, and brighten your
eternal crown.
In the mean time, there are other evils, ultimately per-
haps tending to this, into which we are falling, through
that sort of fashionable candour which, as was hinted above,
is among the mischievous characteristics of the present
day; of which period perhaps it is not the smallest evil,
that vices are made to look so like virtues, and are so assi-
milated to them, that it requires watchfulness and judg-
ment sufficiently to analyze and discriminate. There are
certain women of good fashion who practise irregularities
not consistent with the strictness of virtue; while their
good sense and knowledge of the world make them at
the same time keenly alive to the value of reputation.
They want to retain their indulgencies, without quite for-
feiting their credit; but finding their fame fast declining,
they artfully cling, by flattery and marked attentions, to a
few persons of more than ordinary character; and thus,
till they are driven to let go their hold, continue to prop a
falling fame.
-
V
OF INFLUENCE.
63
>>
On the other hand, there are not wanting women of dis-
tinction, of very correct general conduct, and of no ordi-
nary sense and virtue, who, confiding with a high mind on
what they too confidently call the integrity of their own
hearts; anxious to deserve a good fame on the one hand,
by a life free from reproach, yet secretly too desirous on
the other of securing a worldly and fashionable reputation ;
while their general associates are persons of honour, and
their general resort places of safety; yet allow themselves
to be occasionally present at the midnight orgies of revel-
ry and gaming, in houses of no honourable estimation;
and thus help to keep up characters, which, without their
sustaining hand, would sink to their just level of contempt
and reprobation. While they are holding out this plank to
a drowning reputation, rather, it is to be feared, shewing
their own strength than assisting another's weakness, they
value themselves, perhaps, on not partaking of the worst
parts of the amusements which may be carrying on; but
they sanction them by their presence; they lend their coun-
tenance to corruptions they should abhor, and their example
to the young and inexperienced, who are looking about for.
some such sanction to justify them in that which they were
before inclined to, but were too timid to have ventured up-'
on without the protection of such unsullied names. Thus
these respectable characters, without looking to the ge-
neral consequences of their indiscretion, are thoughtless-
ly employed in breaking down, as it were, the broad fence
which should ever separate two very different sorts of so-
ciety, and arc becoming a kind of unnatural link between
vice and virtue.
There is a gross deception which even persons of re-
putation practise on themselves. They loudiy condemn
vice and irregularity as an abstract principle; nay, they
stigmatize them in persons of an opposite party, or in those
from whom they themselves have no prospect of personal
advantage or amusement, and in whom therefore they have
no particular interest to tolerate evil. But the same dis-
orders are viewed without abhorrence when practised by
those who in any way minister to their pleasures. Refin
ed entertainments, luxurious decorations, select music,
whatever furnishes any delight, rare and exquisite to the
96
ON THE EFFECTS
senses, these soften the severity of criticism; these pal-
liate sins, varnish over the flaws of a broken character, and
extort not pardon merely but justification, countenance,
intimacy! The more respectable will not, perhaps, go
all the length of vindicating the disreputable vice, but they
affect to disbelieve its existence in the individual instance;
or, failing in this, they will bury its acknowledged turpi-
tude in the seducing qualities of the agreeable delinquent.
Talents of every kind are considered as a commutation
for a few vices, and such are made a passport to introduce
into honourable society characters whom their profligacy
ought to exclude from it.
M
Mag
But the great object to which you who are, or may be
mothers, are more especially called, is the education of
your children. If we are responsible for the use of in-
fluence in the case of those over whom we have no im-
mediate control, in the case of our children we are re-
sponsible for the exercise of acknowledged power: a pow-
er wide in its extent, indefinite in its effects, and inesti-
mable in its importance. On You, depend in no small de-
gree the principles of the whole rising generation. To
your direction the daughters are almost exclusively com-
mitted; and until a certain age, to you also is consigned
the mighty privilege of forming the hearts and minds of
your infant, sons. By the blessing of God on the princi-
ples you shall, as far as it depends on you, infuse into both
sons and daughters, they will hereafter "arise and call
you blessed." And in the great day of general account,
may every Christian mother be enabled through divine
grace to say, with humble confidence, to her Maker and
Redeemer, "Behold the children whom thou hast given
me !"
katal
Christianity, driven out from the rest of the world, has
still, blessed be God! a "strong hold" in this country.
And though it be the special duty of the appointed "watch-
man, now that he seeth the sword come upon the land, to
blow the trumpet and warn the people, which if he neg-
lect to do, their blood shall be required of the watchman's
hand :"* yet, in this sacred garrison, impregnable but by
* Ezekiel xxxiii. 6.
OF INFLUENCE.
27
neglect, you too have an awful post, that of arming the
minds of the rising generation "with the shield of faith,
whereby they shall be able to quench the fiery darts of the
wicked;" that of girding them with "that sword of the
spirit which is the word of God." If you neglect this
your bounden duty, you will have effectually contributed
to expel Christianity from her last citadel. And, remem-
ber, that the dignity of the work to which you are called,
is no less than that of preserving the ark of the Lord.
CHAPTER II.
On the education of women.-The prevailing system tends to estab
the errors which it ought to correct.-Dangers arising from an
cessive cultivation of the arts.
GAR

IT is far from being the object of this slight work to of
fer a regular plan of female education, a task which has
been often more properly assumed by far abler writers ;
but it is intended rather to suggest a few remarks on the
reigning mode, which, though it has had many panegyrists,
appears to be defective, not only in a few particulars, but
as a general system. There are indeed numberless hon-
ourable exceptions to an observation which will be thought
severe; yet the author questions if it be not the natural
and direct tendency of the prevailing and popular system,
to excite and promote those very defects, which it ought
to be the main end and object of Christian education to
remove; whether, instead of directing this important en-
gine to attack and destroy vanity, selfishness, and incon-
sideration, that tripple alliance in league against female
virtue; the combined pow of instruction are not sed-
ulously confederated in confirming their strength and es-
tablishing their empire?
W
If indeed the material substance, if the body and limbs,
with the organs and senses, be really the more valuable
objects of attention, then there is little room for animad-
version and improvement. But if the immaterial and im-
mortal mind; if the heart, "out of which are the issues
of life" be the main concern; if the great business of
•
1
28
ON THE EDUCATION
•
:
education be to implant ideas, to communicate knowl-
edge, to form a correct state and a sound judgment, to
resist evil propensities, and, above all, to seize the fav-
ourable season for infusing principles and confirming
habits; if education be a school to fit us for life, and life
be a school to fit us for eternity; if such, I repeat it, be
the chief work and grand ends of education, it may then
be worth inquiring how far these ends are likely to be ef-
fected by the prevailing system.
Is it not a fundamental error to consider children as
innocent beings, whose little weaknesses may perhaps
want some correction, rather than as beings who bring
into the world a corrupt nature and evil dispositions,
hich it should be the great end of education to rectify?
his appears to be such a foundation truth, that if I were
asked what quality is most important in an instructor of
youth, I should not hesitate to reply, such a strong im-
pression of the corruption of our nature, as should insure.
a disposition to counteract it; together with such a deep
view and thorough knowledge of the human heart, as should
be necessary for developing and controlling its most secret
und complicated workings. And let us remember that to
know the world, as it is called, that is, to know its local
manners, temporary usages, and evanescent fashions, is
not to know human nature and where this prime knowl-
edge is wanting, those natural evils which ought to be
counteracted will be fostered.
Vanity, for instance, is reckoned among the light and
venial crrors of youth; nay, so far from being treated as
a dangerous enemy, it is often called in as an auxiliary.
At worst, it is considered as harmless weakness, which
subtracts little from the value of a character; as a natural
effervescence, which will side of itself, when the first
ferment of the youthful passions shall have done working.
But those know little of the conformation of the human,
and especially of the female heart, who fancy that vanity ·
is ever exhausted, by the mere operation of time and
events. Let those who maintain this opinion look into
our places of public resort, and there behold if the ghost
of departed beauty is not to its last flitting fond of haunt-
ing the scenes of its past pleasures; the soul, unwilling
OF WOMEN.
29
(if I may borrow an allusion from the Platonic mythology)
to quit the spot in which the body enjoyed its former de-
lights, still continues to hover about the same place,
though the same pleasures are no longer to be found
there. Disappointments indeed may divert vanity into a
new direction; prydence may prevent it from breaking
out into excesses, and age may prove that it is "vexation
of spirit" but neither disappointment, prudence, nor
age can cure it; for they do not correct the principle.
Nay, the very disappointment itself serves as a painful
evidence of its protracted existence.
Since then there is a season when the youthful must
cease to be young, and the beautiful to excite admiration ;
to grow old gracefully is perhaps one of the rarest and
most valuable arts which can be taught to woman. It is
for this sober season of life that education should lay up
its rich resources. However disregarded they may hith-
erto have been, they will be wanted now. When admi-
rers fall away, and flatterers become mute, the mind will
be driven to retire into itself, and if it find no entertain-
mcnt at home, it will be driven back again upon the world
with increased force. Yet forgetting this, do we not
scem to educate our daughters, exclusively, for the
transient period of youth, when it is to maturer life we
ought to advert? Do we not educate them for a crowd,
forgetting that they are to live at home? for the world,
and not for themselves? for show, and not for use? for
time, and not for eternity?
•
M
Vanity (and the same may be said of selfishness) is
not to be resisted like any other vice, which is sometimes
busy and sometimes quiet; it is not to be attacked as a
single fault, which is indulged in opposition to a single
virtue; but it is uniformly to be controlled, as an active,
a restless, a growing principle, at constant war with all
the Christian graces; which not only mixes itself with
all our faults, but insinuates itself into all our virtues too;
and will, if not checked effectually, rob our best actions
of their reward. Vanity, if I may use the analogy, is,
with respect to the other vices, whe feeling is in regard
to the other senses; it is not confined in its operation to
the eye, or the ear, or any single organ, but diffused
30.
ON THE EDUCATION
through the whole being, alive in every part, awakened
and communicated by the slightest touch.
Not a few of the evils of the present day arise from a
new and perverted 'application of terms; among these,
perhaps, there is not one more abused, misunderstood, or
misapplied, than the term accomplishments. This word
in its original macaning, signifies completeness, perfection.
But I may safely appeal to the observation of mankind,
whether they do not meet with swarms of youthful fe-
males, issuing from our boarding schools, as well as
emerging from the more private scenes of domestic ed-
ucation, who are introduced into the world, under the
broad and universal title of accomplished young ladies, of
all of whom it cannot very truly and correctly be pro-
nounced, that they illustrate the definition by a complete-
ness which leaves nothing to be added, and a perfection
which leaves nothing to be desired.
This frenzy of accomplishments, unhappily, is no
longer restricted within the usual limits of rank and for-
tune; the middle orders have caught the contagion, and
it rages downward with increasing violence, from the el-
egantly dressed but slenderly portioned curate's daugh-
ter, to the equally fashionable daughter of the little trades-
man, and of the more opulent but not more judicious far-
mer. And is it not obvious, that as far as this epidemi-
cal mania has spread, this very valuable part of society is
declining in usefulness, as it rises in its unlucky preten-
sions to elegance? And this revolution of the manners of
the middle class has so far altered the character of the
agc, as to be in danger of rendering absolete the hereto-
fore common saying, "that most worth and virtue are to
be found in the middle station." For I do not scruple to
assert, that in general, as far as my little observation has
extended, this class of females, in what relates both to
religious knowledge and to practical industry, falls short
both of the very high and the very low. Their new course
of education, and the habits of life and elegance of dress
connected with it, peculiarly unfits them for the active
duties of their own very important condition; while, with
frivolous cagerness and secondhand opportunities, they'
run to snatch a few of those showy acquirenicnts which
W
g)
OF WOMEN.
31
*
M
decorate the great. This is done apparently with one or
other of these views; cither to make their fortune by
marriage, or if that fail, to qualify them to become teach-
ers of others: hence the abundant multiplication of su-
perficial wives, and of incompetent and illiterate gover-
nesses. The use of the pencil, the performance of ex-
quisite but unnecessary works, the study of foreign lan-
guages and of music, require (with some exceptions which
should always be made in favour of great natural genius)
a degree of leisure which belongs exclusively to afflu-
ence. One use of learning languages is, not that we
may know what the terms which express the articles of
our dress and our table are called in French or Italian ;
not that we may think over a few ordinary phrases in En-
glish, and then translate them, without one foreign idi-
om; for he who cannot think in a language cannot be said
to understand it but the great use of acquiring any fo-
reign language is, either that it enables us occasionally to
converse with foreigners unacquainted with any other, or
that it is a key to the literature of the country to which it
belongs; and those humbler females, the chief part of
whose time is required for domestic offices, are little
likely to fall in the way of foreigners; and so far from
enjoying opportunities for the acquisition of foreign lite-
rature, they have seldom time to possess themselves of
all that valuable knowledge which the books of their own
country so abundantly furnish; and the acquisition of
which would be so much more useful and honourable
than the paltry accessions they make, by hammering out.
the meaning of a few passages in a tongue they but im-
perfectly understand, and of which they are likely to
:
-
make no usc.
It would be well if the reflection how cagerly this re-
dundancy of accomplishments is seized on by their infe-
riors, were to operate as in the case of other absurd fa-
shions which the great can seldom be brought to renounce
from any other consideration than that they are adopted
by the vulgar.
*Those among the class in question, whose own good sense leads
them to avoid these mistaken pursuits, cannot be offended at a reproof
which does not belong to them.
D
92
ON THE EDUCATION
jri
"
But to return to that more elevated, and, on account of
their more extended influence only, that more important
class of females, to whose use this little work is more im-
mediately dedicated. Some popular authors, on the sub-
ject of female instruction, had for a time established a fan-
tastic code of artificial manners. They had refined ele-
gance into insipidity, frittered down delicacy into frivolous-
ness, and reduced manner into minauderie. But "to lisp,
and to amble, and to nickname God's creatures," has no-
thing to do with true gentleness of mind; and to be silly
makes no necessary part of softness. Another class of
cotemporary authors turned all the force of their talents
to excite emotions, to inspire sentiment, and to reduce all
mental and moral excellence into sympathy and feeling.
These softer qualities were elevated at the expense of
principle; and young women were incessantly hearing
unqualified sensibility extolled as the perfection of their
nature; till those who really possessed this amiable qua-
lity, instead of directing, and chastising, and restraining
it, were in danger of fostering it to their hurt, and began
to consider themselves as deriving their excellence from
its excess; while those less interesting damsels, who hap-
pened not to find any of this amiable sensibility in their
hearts, but thought it creditable to have it somewhere,
fancied its seat was in the nerves; and here indeed it was
easily found or feigned; till a false and excessive display
of feeling became so predominant, as to bring in question
the actual existence of that true tenderness, without which,
though a woman may be worthy, she can never be amiable.
Fashion then, by one of her sudden and rapid turns, in-
stantaneously struck out real sensibility and the affectation
of it from the standing list of female perfections; and, by
a quick touch of her magic wand, shifted the scene, and
at once produced the bold and independent beauty, the in-
trepid female, the hoyden, the huntress, and the archer;
the swinging arms, the confident address, the regimental,
and the four-in-hand. These self-complacent heroines
made us ready to regret their softer predecessors, who had
aimed only at pleasing the other sex, while these aspiring
fairones struggled for the bolder renown of rivalling them;
The project failed: for, whereas the former had sued for
M
OF WOMEN.
$3
admiration, the latter challenged, seized, compelled it;
but the men, as was natural, continued to prefer the niorc
modest claimant to the sturdy competitor.
It were well if we, who have the advantage of contem-
plating the errors of the two extremes, were to look for
truth where she is commonly to be found, in the plain and
obvious middle path, equally remote from cach excess;
and, while we bear in mind that helplessness is not deli-
cacy, let us also remember that masculine manners do not
necessarily include strength of character nor vigour of in-
tellect. Should we not reflect also, that we are neither to
train up Amazons nor Circassians, but to form Christians?
that we have to educate not only rationable but accounta-
ble beings and, remembering this, should we not be so-
licitous to let our daughters learn of the well-taught, and
associate with the well-bred? In training them, should we
not carefully cultivate intellect, implant religion, and che-
rish modesty then, whatever is delicate in manners,
would be the natural result of whatever is just in senti-
ment, and correct in principle: then, the decorums, the
propricties, the elegancies, and even the graces, as far as
they are simple, pure, and honest, would follow as an al-
most inevitable consequence; for to follow in the train
of the Christian virtues, and not to take the lead of them,
is the proper place which religion assigns to the graces.
-
Whether we have made the best use of the errors of
our predecessors, and of our own numberless advantages,
and whether the prevailing system be really consistent
with sound policy, or with Christian principle, it may be
worth our while to inquire.
Would not a stranger be led to imagine by a view of
the reigning mode of female education, that human life
consisted of one universal holiday, and that the grand con-
test between the several competitors was, who should be
most eminently qualified to excel, and carry off the prize,
in the various shows and games which were intended to
be exhibited in it? And to the exhibitors themselves,
would he not be ready to apply Sir Francis Bacon's obser-
vation on the Olympian victors, that they were so excellent
in these unnecessary things, that their perfection must
-
**
34
ON THE EDUCATION
needs have been acquired by the neglect of whatever was
necessary?
p
What would the polished Addison, who thought that
one great end of a lady's learning to dance was, that she
might know how to sit still gracefully; what would even
the Pagan historian* of the great Roman conspirator, who
could commemorate it among the defects of his hero's ac-
complished mistress, "that she was too good a singer and
dancer for a virtuous woman ;" what would these refined
critics have said, had they lived as we have done, to see
the art of dancing lifted into such importance, that it can-
not with any degree of safety be confided to one instruc-
tor, but a whole train of successive masters are considered
as absolutely essential to its perfection? What would
these accurate judges of female manners have said, to sec
a modest young lady first delivered into the hands of a
military serjeant to instruct her in the feminine art of
marching? and when this delicate acquisition is attained,
to see her transferred to a professor, who is to teach her
the Scotch steps; which professor, having communicated
his indispensable portion of this indispensable art, makes
way for the professor of French dances; and all perhaps,
in their turn, either yield to or have the honour to co-ope-
rate with a finishing master; each probably receiving a
stipend which would make the pious curate or the learned
chaplain rich and happy?
The science of music, which used to be communicat-
ed in so competent a degree to a young lady by one able
instructor, is now distributed among a whole band. She
now requires, not a master, but an orchestra. And my
country readers would accuse me of exaggeration were
I to hazard enumerating the variety of musical teachers
who attend in the same family; the daughters of which
are summoned, by at least as many instruments as the
subjects of Nebuchadnezzar, to worship the idol which
fashion has set up. They would be incredulous were I
to produce real instances, in which the delighted mother
has been heard to declare, that the visits of masters of
every art, and the different masters for various gradations
of the same art, followed each other in such close and
* Sallust.
OF WOMEN.
કર
rapid succession during the whole London residence,
that her girls had not a moment's interval to look into a
book; nor could she contrive any method to introduce
one, till she happily devised the scheme of reading to
them herself for half an hour while they were drawing,
by which means no time was lost.*
Before the evil is past redress, it will be prudent to re-
flect that in all polished countries an entire devotedness
to the fine arts has been one grand source of the corrup-
tion of the women; and so justly were these pernicious
consequences appreciated by the Greeks, among whom
these arts were carried to the highest possible perfection,
that they seldom allowed them to be cultivated to a very
exquisite degree by women of great purity of character.
And if the ambition of an elegant British lady should be
fired by the idea that the accomplished females of those
polished states were the admired companions of the phi-
losophers, the poets, the wits, and the artists of Athens;
and their beauty or talents the favourite subjects of the
muse, the lyre, the poncil, and the chisel; so that their
pictures and statues furnished the most consummate mo-
dels of Grecian art: if, I say, the accomplished females
of our days are panting for similar renown, let their mod-
esty chastize their ambition, by recollecting that these
celebrated women are not to be found among the chaste
wives and the virtuous daughters of the Aristides', the
Agis', and the Phocions; but that they are to be looked for
among the Phrynes, the Lais', the Aspacias, and the
Glyceras. I am persuaded the Christian female, what-
ever be her talents, will renounce the desire of any cele-
brity when attached to impurity of character, with the
Ont
14
* Since the first edition of this Work appeared, the author has re-
ccived from a person of great eminence the following statement, ascer-
taining the time employed in the acquisition of music in one iustanee.
As a general calculation it will perhaps be found to be far from exag-
gerated. The statement concludes with remarking, that the individual
who is the subject of it is now married to a man who dislikes music.
ឌ
Suppose your pupil to begin at six years of age, and to continue at the
average of four hours a day only, Sunday excepted, and thirteen days
allowed for travelling annually, till she is eighteen, the state stands thus
300 days multiplied by four, the number of hours amount to 1200; that
number multiplied by twelve, which is the number of years, umoquis
to 14,400 hours!
D 2
36
UCAT
ON THE EDUCATION
+
1
same noble indignation with which the virtuous biographer
of the above-named heroes renounced all dishonest fame,
by exclaiming, "I had rather it should be said there
never was a Plutarch, than that they should say Plutarch
was malignant, unjust, or envious."*
And while this corruption, brought on by an excessive
cultivation of the arts, has contributed its full share to the
decline of states, it has always furnished an infallible
symptom of their impending fall. The satires of the
most penetrating and judicious of the Roman poets cor-
roborating the testimonies of the most accurate of their
historians, abound with invectives against the depravity
of manners introduced by the corrupt habits of female ed-
ucation. The bitterness and gross indelicacy of some of
these satirists (too gross to be either quoted or referred
to) make little against their authority in these points;
for how shocking must those corruptions have been, and
how obviously offensive their causes, which could have
appeared so highly disgusting to minds not likely to be
scandalized by slight deviations from decency! The fa
mous ode of Horace, attributing the vices and disasters
of his country to the same cause, might, were it quite
free from the above objections, be produced, I will not
presume to say as an exact picture of the existing man-
ners of this, country; but may I not venture to say, as a
prophecy, the fulfilment of which cannot be very remote?
It may however be observed, that the modesty of the Ro-
man matron, and the chaste demeanor of her virgin daugh-
ters, which amidst the stern virtues of the state were as
immaculate and pure as the honour of the Roman citizen,
fell a sacrifice to the luxurious dissipation brought in by
their Asiatic conquests; after which the females were
soon taught a complete change of character. They were
instructed to accommodate their talents of pleasing to
the more vitiated tastes of the other sex; and began to
study every grace and every art which might captivate
the exhausted hearts, and excite the wearied and capri-
cious inclinations of the men till by a rapid and at length
*No censure is levelled at the exertions of rcal genius, which is as
valuable as it is rare; but at the absurdity of that system which is erect,
ing the whole sex into artists.
OF WOMEN.
37
complete enervation, the Roman character lost its signa-
ture, and through a quick succession of slavery, effemi-
nacy, and vice, sunk into that degeneracy of which some
of the modern Italian states serve to furnish a too just
specimen.
-
It is of the essence of human things that the same ob-
jects which are highly useful in their season, measure, and
degree, become mischievous in their excess, at other pe-
riods, and under other circumstances. In a state of bar-
barism, the arts are among the best reformers; and they
go on to be improved themselves, and improving those
who cultivate them, till, having reached a certain point,
those very arts which were the instruments of civilization
and refinement, become instruments of corruption and de-
cay; enervating and depraving in the second instance as
certainly as they refined in the first. They become agents
of voluptuousness. They excite the imagination; and
the imagination thus excited, and no longer under the go-
vernment of strict principle, becomes the most dangerous
stimulant of the passions; promotes a too keen relish for
pleasure, teaching how to multiply its sources, and in-
venting new and pernicious modes of artificial gratifica-
tion.
S
May we not rank among their present corrupt conse-
quences, the unchaste costume, the impure style of dress,
and that indelicate statue-like exhibition of the female
figure, which by its artfully disposed folds, its wet and
adhesive drapery, so defines the form as to prevent cov-
ering itself from becoming a veil? This licentious mode,
as the acute Montesquieu observed on the dances of the
Spartan virgins, has taught us to strip chastity itself of
modesty."
ul.
May the author be allowed to address to our own coun-
try and our own circumstances, to both of which they seem
peculiarly applicable, the spirit of that beautiful apostro-
phe of the most polished poet of antiquity to the most vic-
torious nation? Let us leave to the inhabitants of con-
quered countries the praise of carrying to the very highest
degree of perfection, sculpture and the sister arts; but
let this country direct her own exertions to the art of go-
verning mankind in equity and peace, of shewing mercy
ล
38
CHILDREN'S BALLS.
编
​to the submissive, and of abasing the proud among sur
rounding nations."*
1
CHAPTER III.
External improvement.-Children's Balls.-French Governesscs.
LET me not however be misunderstood. The customs
which fashion has established, when not in direct opposi-
tion to what is right, should unquestionably be pursued in
the education of ladies. Piety maintains no natural war
with elegance, and Christianity would be no gainer by
making her disciples unamiable. Religion does not forbid
that the exterior be made to a certain degree the object of
attention. But the admiration bestowed, the sums expend-
ed, and the time lavished on arts which add little to the in-
trinsic value of life, should have limitations. While these
arts should be admired, let them not be admired above
their just value: while they are practised, let it not be
to the exclusion of higher employments: while they are
cultivated, let it be to amuse leisure, but not to engross life.
<
M
But it happens unfortunately, that to ordinary observ-
crs, the girl who is really receiving the worst education oft-
en makes the best figure. The outward accomplishments
have the dangerous advantage of addressing themselves
more immediately to the senses, and of course ineet eve-
ry where with those who can in some measure appreciate
as well as admire them; for all can see and hear, but all
vikt
S
* Let me not be suspected of bringing into any sort of comparison the
gentleness of British government with the rapacity of Roman conquests,
or the principles of Roman dominion. To spoil, to butcher, and to com-
mit every kind of violence, they call, says one of the ablest of their his-
torians, by the lying name of government, and when they have spread
a general desolation they call it peace. (1)
(1) Tacitus' Life of Agricola, speech of Galgacus to his Soldiers.
With such dictatorial, or, as we might now read directorial inquisi-
tors, we can have no point of contact; and if I have applied the servile
flattery of a delightful poct to the purpose of English happiness, it was
only to show wherein true national grandeur consists, and that every
country pays too dear a price for those arts and embellishments of socię›
ty which endanger the loss of its morals and manners.
CHILDREN'S BALLS
cannot scrutinize and discriminate. External acquire-
ments too recommend themselves the more because they
are more rapidly as well as more visibly progressive.
While the mind is led on to improvement by slow motions
and imperceptible degrees; while the heart must now be
admonished by reproof, and now allured by kindness; its
liveliest advances being suddenly impeded by obstinacy,
and its brightest prospects often obscured by passion; it
is slow in its acquisitions of virtue, and reluctant in its ap-
proaches to piety. The unruly and turbulent propensities
of the mind are not so obedient to the forming hand as
defects of manner or awkwardness of gait. Often when
we fancy that a troublesome passion is completely crushed,
we have the mortification to find that we have "scotch'd
the snake, not killed it." One evil temper starts up, be-
fore another is conquered. The subduing hand cannot
cut off the ever-sprouting heads so fast as the prolific Hy-
dra can re-produce them, nor fell the stubborn Antæus so
often as he can recruit his strength, and rise in vigorous
and repeated opposition.
J
Hired teachers are also under a disadvantage resem-
bling tenants at rack-rent; it is their interest to bring in
an immediate revenue of praise and profit, and for the sake
of the present rich crop, those who are not strictly con-
scientious, do not care how much the ground is impover-
ished for future produce. But parents, who are the lords
of the soil, must look to permanent value, and to continu-
ed fruitfulness. The best effects of a careful education
are often very remote: they are to be discovered in fu-
ture scenes, are exhibited in as yet untried connexions.
Every event of life will be putting the heart in fresh situa-
tions, and making new demands on its prudence, its firm-
ness, its integrity, or its forbearance. Those whose busi-
ness it is to form and model it, cannot foresce those con-
tingent situations specifically and distinctly; yet, as far
as human wisdom will allow, they must enable it to pre-
pare for them all by general principles, correct habits,
and an unremitted sense of dependence on the Great Dis-
poser of events. The young Christian militant must learn
and practise all his evolutions; though he does not know
on what service his leader may command him, by what
Vậ
Tamil
10
CHILDREN'S BALLS.
particular foe he shall be most assailed, nor what mode of
attack the enemy may employ.
But the contrary of all this is the case with external ac-
quisitions. The master, it is his interest, will industrious-
ly instruct his young pupil to set all her improvements
in the most immediate and conspicuous point of view.
To attract admiration is the great principle sedulously in-
culcated into her young heart; and is considered as the
fundamental maxim; and, perhaps, if we were required
to condense the reigning system of the brilliant education
of a lady into an aphorism, it might be comprised in this
short sentence, Toallure and to shine. This system however
is the fruitful germ, from which a thousand yet unborn vani-
ties, with all their multiplied ramifications, will spring. A
tender mother cannot but feel an honest triumph in com-
pleting those talents in her daughter which will necessa-
rily excite admiration; but she will also shudder at the
vanity that admiration may excite, and at the new ideas it
will awaken; and, startling as it may sound, the labours
of a wise mother anxious for her daughter's best interests,
will seem to be at variance with those of all her teachers.
She will indeed rejoice at her progress, but she will re-
joice with trembling; for she is fully aware that if all
possible accomplishments could be bought at the price
of a single virtue, of a single principle, the purchase would
be infinitely dear, and she would reject the dazzling but
destructive acquisition. She knows that the superstruc-
ture of the accomplishments can be alone safely erected
on the broad and solid basis of Christian humility: nay
more, that as the materials of which that superstructure is
to be composed, are in themselves of so unstable and tot-
tering a nature, the foundation must be deepened and en-
larged with more abundant care, otherwise the fabric will
be overloaded with its own ornaments, and what was in-
tended only to embellish the building, will prove the oc-
casion of its fall.
BEN
MA
2
"To every thing there is a season, and a time for eve-
ry purpose under heaven," said the wise man; but he
said it before the invention of baby-balls. This modern
device is a sort of triple conspiracy against the innocence,
the health, and the happiness of children: thus by facti-
4
CHILDREN'S BALLS.
Ai
tious amusements, to rob them of a relish for the simple
joys, the unbought delights, which naturally belong to
their blooming season, is like blotting out spring from
the year. To sacrifice the truc and proper enjoyments of
sprightly and happy children, is to make them pay a dear
and disproportioned price for their artificial pleasures.
They step at once from the nursery to the ball-room;
and, by a preposterous change of habits, are thinking of
dressing themselves, at an age when they used to be
dressing their dolls. Instead of bounding with unre-
strained freedom of little wood-nymphs, over hill and dale,
their cheeks flushed with health, and their hearts over-
flowing with happiness, these gay little creatures are
shut up all the morning, demurely practising the past
grave, and transacting the scrious business of acquiring
a new step for the evening, with more cost of time and
pains than it would have taken them to acquire twenty
new ideas.
they live and move,
And feel that they are happier than they know.
Joe
INA
Thus they lose the amusements which naturally be-
long to their smiling period, and unnaturally anticipate
these pleasures (such as they are) which would come in,
too much of course, on their introduction into fashiona-
ble life. The true pleasures of childhood are cheap and
natural; for every object teems with delight to eyes and
hearts new to the enjoyment of life; nay, the hearts of
healthy children abound with a general disposition to mirtl
and joyfulness, even without a specific object to excite
it; like our first parent, in the world's first spring, when
all was new, and fresh, and gay about him,
*
Only furnish them with a few simple and harmless ma-
terials, and a little, but not too much, leisure, and they
will manufacture their own pleasures with more skill,
and success, and satisfaction, than they will receive from
all that your money can purchase. Their bodily recrea-
tions should be such as will promote their health, quicken
their activity, enliven their spirits, whet their ingenuity,
and qualify them for their mental work. But if you be-
gin thus carly to create wants, to invent gratifications, to
42
CHILDREN'S BALLS.
I
multiply desires, to awaken dormant sensibilities, to stir
up hidden fires, you are studiously laying up for your
children a store of premature caprice, and irritability,
and discontent.
While childhood preserves its native simplicity, every
little change is interesting, every gratification is a luxu-
ry; a ride or a walk will be a delightful amusement to a
child in her natural state; but it will be dull and tasteless
to a sophisticated little creature, nursed in these forced,
and costly, and vapid pleasures. Alas! that we should
throw away this first grand opportunity of working into.
a practical habit the moral of this important truth, that
the chief source of human discontent is to be looked for,
not in our real but in our factitious wants; not in the
demands of nature, but in the artificial cravings of de-
sire!
•
When one sees the growing zcal to crowd the mid-
night ball with these pretty fairies, one would be almost
tempted to fancy it was a kind of pious emulation among
the mothers to cure their infants of a fondness for
vain and foolish pleasures, by tiring them out by this pre-
mature familiarity with them; and that they were actua-
ted by something of the same principle which led the
Spartans to introduce their sons to scenes of riot, that
they might conceive an early disgust at vice! or possibly,
that they imitated those Scythian mothers who used to
plunge their new born infants into the flood, thinking
none to be worth saving who could not stand this early
struggle for their lives: the greater part indeed, as it
might have been expected, perished; but the parents.
took comfort, that if many were lost, the few who escap-
ed would be the stronger for having been thus exposed.
JOR
To behold lilliputian coquettes, projecting dresses,
studying colours, assorting ribbands and feathers, their
little hearts beating with hopes about partners and fears
about rivals; and to see their fresh cheeks pale after the
midnight supper, their aching heads and unbraced nerves,
disqualifying the little languid beings for the next day's
task; and to hear the grave apology, "that it is owing to
the wine, the crowd, the heated room of the last night's
ball;" all this, I say, would really be as ludicrous, if the
CHILDREN'S BALLY.
4.
mischief of the thing did not take off from the merriment
of it, as any of the ridiculous and preposterous dispro-
portions in the diverting travels of Captain Lemuel
Gulliver.
Under a just impression of the evils which we are sus-
taining from the principles and the practices of modern
France, we are apt to lose sight of those deep and lasting
mischiefs which so long, so regularly, and so systemati-
cally, we have been importing from the same country,
though in another form and under another government.
In one respect, indeed, the first were the most formida-
ble, because we embraced the ruin without suspecting it;
while we defeat the malignity of the latter, by detecting
the turpitude, and defending ourselves against it. This
is not the place to descant on that levity of manners, that
contempt of the sabbath, that fatal familiarity with loose
principles, and those relaxed notions of conjugal fidelity,
which have often been transplanted into this country by
women of fashion, as a too common cffect of a long resi-
lence in that but it is peculiarly suitable to my subject
to advert to another domestic mischief derived from the
same foreign extraction: I mean, the risks that have been
run, and the sacrifices which have been made, in order
to furnish our young ladies with the means of acquiring
the French language in the greatest possible purity. Per-
fection in this accomplishment has been so long estab
lished as the supreme object; so long considered as the
predominant excellence to which all other excellencies
nust bow down, that it would be hopeless to attack a law
which fashion has immutably decreed, and which has re-
ceived the stamp of long prescription. We must there-
fore be contented with expressing a wish, that this indis-
pensable perfection could have been attained at the ex-
pense of sacrifices less important. It is with the greater
regret I animadvert on this and some other prevail-
ing practices, as they are errors into which the wise and
respectable have, through want of consideration, or ra-
ther through want of firmness to resist the tyranny of
fashion, sometimes fallen. It has not been unusual when
mothers of rank and reputation have been asked how
they ventured to intrust their daughters to foreigners, of
By
E
CA
44
FRENCH GOVERNESSES.
whose principles they knew nothing, except that they
were Roman Catholics, to answer, "That they had taken
care to be secure on that subject; for that it had been
stipulated that the question of religion should never be
agitated between the teacher and pupil." This, it must
be confessed, is a most desperate remedy; it is like starv-
ing to death, to avoid being poisoned. And one cannot
help trembling for the event of that education, from which
religion, as far as the governess is concerned, is thus for-
inally and systematically excluded. Surely it would not
be exacting too much to suggest at least that an attention
no less scrupulous should be exerted to insure the cha-
racter of our children's instructor for piety and know-
ledge, than is thought necessary to ascertain that she has
nothing patois in her dialect.
•
wh
I would rate a correct pronunciation and an elegant
phraseology at their just price, and I would not rate
them low; but I would not offer up principle as a victim
to sounds and accents. And the matter is now made
more easy; for whatever disgrace it might once have
brought on an English lady to have had it suspected from
her accent that she had the misfortune not to be born in
a neighbouring country; some recent events may serve
to reconcile her to the suspicion of having been bred in
her own: a country to which, (with all its sins, which
are many!) the whole world is looking up with envy and
admiration, as the seat of true glory and of comparative
happiness; a country in which the exile, driven out by
the crimes of his own, finds a home! a country, to obtain
the protection of which it was claim enough to be unfor-
tunate; and no impediment to have been the subject of
his direst foe! a country, which in this respect humbly
imitating the Father of compassion, when it offered mer-
cy to a suppliant enemy, never conditioned for merit, nor
insisted on the virtues of the miserable as a preliminary
to its own bounty!
CHAPTER IV.
Comparison of the Mode of Female Education in the lust age with the
present.
Mind
To return, however, to the subject of general educa
tion. A young lady may excel in speaking French and
Italian, may repeat a few passages from a volume of ex-
tracts; play like a professor, and sing like a syren; have
her dressing room decorated with her own drawings, ta-
bles, stands, screens, and cabinets; nay, she may dance
like Sempronia* herself, and yet may have been very
badly educated. I am far from meaning to set no value
whatever on any or all of these qualifications; they are all
of them elegant, and many of them properly tend to the
perfecting of a polite education. These things in
their measure and degree, may be done, but there are
others which should not be left undone. Many things
are becoming, but "one thing is needful." Besides, as
the world seems to be fully apprized of the value of what-
ever tends to embellish life, there is less occasion here
to insist on its importance.
But, though a well-bred young lady may lawfully learn
most of the fashionable arts, yet it does not seem to be
the true end of education, to make women of fashion
dancers, singers, players, painters, actresses, sculptors,
gilders, varnishers, engravers, and embroiderers. Most
men are commonly destined to some profession, and their
minds are consequently turned each to its respective ob-
ject. Would it not be strange if they were called out to
exercise their profession, or to set up their trade, with
only a little general knowledge of the trades of all other
men, and without any previous definite application to their
own peculiar calling? The profession of ladies, to which
the bent of their instruction should be turned, is that of
daughters, wives, mothers, and mistresses of families.
They should be therefore trained with a view to thesc
several conditions, and be furnished with a stock of ideas,
and principles, and qualifications, and habits, ready to be
applied and appropriated, as occasion may demand, to
each of these respective situations: for though the arts
* Sce Cataline's Conspiracy.
46
EDUCATION OF THE LAST AGE
2
+
which merely embellish life must claim admiration; yet
when a man of sense comes to marry, it is a companion
whom he wants, and not an artist. It is not merely a
creature who can paint, and play, and dress, and dance;
it is a being who can comfort and counsel him; one who
can reason and reflect, and feel, and judge, and act, and
discourse, and discriminate; one who can assist him in
his affairs, lighten his cares, sooth his sorrows, purify his
joys, strengthen his principles, and educate his children.
Almost any ornamental talent is a good thing, when it
is not the best thing a woman has; and talents are admi-
rable when not made to stand proxy for virtues. The wri-
ter of these pages is intimately acquainted with several
ladies who, excelling most of their sex in the art of music,
but excelling them also in prudence and piety, find little
leisure or temptation, amidst the delights and duties of a
large and lovely family, for the exercise of this talent, and
regret that so much of their own youth was wasted in ac-
quiling an art which can be turned to so little account in.
harried life; and are now conscientiously restricting
their daughters in the portion of time allotted to its acqui-
sition.
M
Far be it from me to discourage the cultivation of any
cxisting talent; but may it not be suggested to the fond
believing mother, that talents, like the spirit of Ower
Glendower, though conjured by parental partiality with
ever so loud a voice,
Yet will not come when you do call for them ?
That injudicious practice, therefore, cannot be too much
discouraged, of endeavouring to create talents which do
not exist in nature. That their daughters shall learn every
thing, is so general a maternal maxim, that even unborn
daughters, of whose expected abilities and conjectured
faculties, it is presumed, no very accurate judgment can
previously be formed, are yet predestined to this univer-
Sality of accomplishments. This comprehensive maxim,
thus almost universally brought into practice, at once wea-
kens the general powers of the mind, by drawing off its
strength into too great a variety of directions; and cuts up
time into too many portions, by splitting it into such an
▸
COMPARED WITH THE PRESENT.
47
เ
endless multiplicity of employments. I know that I am
treading on tender ground; but I cannot help thinking.
that the restless pains we take to cram up every little va-
cuity of life, by crowding one new thing upon another, ra-
ther creates a thirst for novelty than knowledge; and is
but a well-disguised contrivance to keep us in after-life
more effectually from conversing with ourselves. The
care taken to prevent ennui is but a creditable plan for
promoting self-ignorance. We run from one occupation
oanother (I speak of those arts to which little intellect is
applied) with a view to lighten the pressure of time;
above all, we fly to them to save us from our own thoughts;
whereas were we thrown a little more on our own hands,
we might at last be driven, by way of something to do, to
try to get acquainted with our own hearts; and though
our being less absorbed by this busy trifling, which digni-
fies its inanity with the imposing name of occupation,
might render us somewhat more sensible of the tedium
of life; might not this very sensation tend to quicken our
pursuit of a better? For an awful thought here suggests
itself. If life be so long that we are driven to set at work
every engine to pass away the tediousness of time; how
shall we do to get rid of the tediousness of eternity? an
eternity in which not one of the acquisitions which life
has been exhausted in acquiring, will be of the least use?
Let not then the soul be starved by feeding it on these
empty husks, for it can be no more nourished by thema
than the body can be fed with ideas and principle
Among the boasted improvements of the present age,
none affords more frequent matter of peculiar exultation,
than the manifest superiority in the employments of the
young ladies of our time over those of the good house-
wives of the last century. They glory that they are at
present employed in learning the polite arts, or in acquir-
ing liberal accomplishments; while the others wore out
their joyless days in adorning the mansion-house with
hangings of hideous tapestry and disfiguring tentstitch.
Most cheerfully do I allow to the reigning modes their
boasted superiority; for certainly there is no piety in bad
taste. Still, granting all the deformity of the exploded
ornaments, one advantage attended them: the walls and
Ang
E 2
48
EDUCATION OF THE LAST AGE
1
floors were, not vain of their decorations; and it is to be
feared that the little person sometimes is. The flattery
bestowed on the obsolete employments, for probably even
they had their flatterers, furnished less aliment and less
gratification to vanity, and was less likely to impair the
delicacy of modesty, than the exquisite cultivation of per-
sonal accomplishments or personal decorations; and every
mode which keeps down vanity and keeps back self, has
at least a moral use. And while one admires the elegant
fingers of a young lady, busied in working or painting
her ball dress, one cannot help suspecting that her alacri-
ty may be a little stimulated by the animating idea how
very well she shall look in it. Nor was the industrious
anatron of Ithaca more soothed at her solitary loom with
the sweet reflection that by her labour she was gratifying
her filial and conjugal feelings,* than the pleasure-loving
damsel, by the anticipated admiration which her ingenuity
is procuring for her beauty.
Might not this propensity be a little checked, and an
înteresting feeling combined with her industry, were the
fair artist habituated to exercise her skill in adorning
some one else rather than herself? For it will add no
lightness to the lightest head, nor vanity to the vainest
heart, to take pleasure in reflecting how exceedingly the
gown she is working will become her mother. This
suggestion, trifling as it may seem, of habituating young
ladies to exercise their taste and devote their leisure, not
to the decoration of their own persons, but to the service
of those to whom they are bound by every tender tie,
would not only help to repress vanity, but by thus asso-
ciating the idea of industry with that of filial affection,
would promote, while it gratified, some of the best affec-
tions of the heart. The Romans (and it is mortifying on
the subject of Christian education to be driven so often to
refer to the superiority of Pagans) were so well aware of
the importance of keeping up a sense of family foudness
and attachment by the very same means which promoted
simple and domestic employment, that no citizen of note
* This web a robe for poor Ulysses' sire. ODYSSEY,
1
COMPARED WITH THE PRESENT.
49
over appeared in public in any garb but what was spun by
his wife and daughter; and this virtuous fashion was not
confined to the days of republican severity, but even in all
the pomp and luxury of imperial power, Augustus pre-
served in his own family this simplicity of manners,
C
Let me be allowed to repeat, that I mean not with pre-
posterous praise to descant on the ignorance or the pre-
judices of past times, nor absurdly to regret that vulgar
system of education which rounded the little circle of fe-
male acquirements within the limits of the sampler and
the receipt book. Yet if a preference almost exclusive
was then given to what was increly useful, a preference
almost exclusive also is now assigned to what is merely
ornamental. And it must be owned, that if the life of a
young lady, formerly, too much resembled the life of a
confectioner, it now too much resembles that of an actress ;
the morning is all rehearsal, and the evening is all per-
formance and those who are trained in this regular rou-
tine, who are instructed in order to be exhibited, soon
learn to feel a sort of impatience in those societies in which
their kind of talents are not likely to be brought into play:
the task of an auditor becomes dull to her who has been
used to be a performer. Esteem and kindness become
but cold substitutes to her who has been fed with plaudits
and acclamations. And the excessive commendation
which the visitor is expected to pay for his entertain-
ment not only keeps alive the flame of vanity in the artist
by constant fuel, but is not seldom exacted at a price which
a veracity at all strict would grudge; but when a whole
circle are obliged to be competitors who shall flatter most,
it is not easy to be at once very sincere and very civil. And
unluckily, while the age is become so knowing and so
fastidious, that if a young lady does not play like a public
performer, no one thinks her worth attending to; yet if
she does so excel, some of the soberest of the admiring
circle feel a strong alloy to their pleasure, on reflecting
at what a vast expense of time this perfection must pro-
bably have been acquired.*
A
-
*That accurate judge of the human heart, Madam de Maintenon,
was so well aware of the danger resulting from some kinds of excellence,
that after the young ladies of the Court of Louis Quatorze had distin
R
50
i ON SELFISHNESS.
مجھے
May I venture, without being accused of pedantry, to
conclude this chapter with another reference to Pagan
examples? The Hebrews, Egyptians, and Greeks, be-
lieved that they could more effectually teach their youth
maxims of virtue, by calling in the aid of music and poe-
try; these maxims, therefore, they put into verses, and
these again were set to the most popular and simple tunes,
which the children sang; thus was their love of goodness
excited by the very instruments of their pleasure; and
the senses, the taste, and the imagination, as it were,
pressed into the service of religion and morals. Dare I
appeal to Christian parents, if these arts are commonly
used by them as subsidiary to religion and to a system of
morals much more worthy of every ingenious aid and as-
sociation, which might tend to recommend them to the
youthful mind? Dare I appeal to Christian parents, whe-
ther music, which fills up no trifling portion of their
daughter's time, does not fill it without any moral end, or
even specific object? Nay, whether some of the favourite
songs of polished societies are not amatory, are not Ana-
creontic, more than quite become the modest lips of in-
nocent youth and delicate beauty?
CHAPTER V.
On the religious employment of time.-On the manner in which holidays
are passed. Selfishness and inconsideration.-Dangers arising
from the world.
THERE are many well-disposed parents who, while
they attend to these fashionable acquirements, do not neg-
lect to infuse religious knowledge into the minds of their
daughters; and having done this are but too apt to con-
clude that they have fully acquitted themselves of the im-
portant duties of education. For having, as they think,
sufficiently grounded them in religion, they do not scru-
guished themselves by the performance of some dramatic pieces of Ra-
ine, when her friends told her how admirably they had played their
parts; "Yes," answered this wise woman, so admirably that they
Shall never play again."
THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.
51
ple to allow their daughters to spend almost the whole of
their time exactly like the daughters of worldly people.
Now, though it be one great point gained, to have imbued
their young minds with the best knowledge, the work is
not therefore accomplished. "What do ye more than-
others?" is a question which, in a more extended sense,
religious parents must be prepared to answer.
Such parents should go on to teach children the reli-
gious use of time, the duty of consecrating to God every
talent, every faculty, every possession, and of devoting
their whole lives to his glory.
They should be more peculiarly on their guard against
a spirit of idleness, and a slovenly habitual wasting of
time, because this practice, by not assuming a palpable
shape of guilt, carries little alarm to the conscience.
Even religious characters are in danger on this side; for
not allowing themselves to follow the world in its excesses
and diversions, they have consequently more time upon
their hands; and instead of dedicatingle tinie so rescued
toits true purposes, they sometimes make as it were com-
pensation to themselves for their abstinence from dange-
rous places of public resort, by an habitual frivolousness
at home; by a superabundance of unprofitable small-talk,
idle reading, and a quiet and dull frittering away of time.
Their day perhaps has been more free from actual evil;
but it will often be found to have been as unproductive as
that of more worldly characters; and they will be found
to have traded to as little purpose with their master's ta-
lents. But a Christian must take care to keep his con-
science peculiarly alive to the unapparent, though formi-
dable, perils of unprofitableness.
To these, and to all, the author would earnestly recom-
mend to accustom their children to pass at once from sc-
rious business to active and animated recreation; they
should carefully preserve them from those long and tor-
pid intervals between both, that languid indolence and
spiritless trifling, which wears out such large portions
of life in both young and old. It has indeed passed into
an aphorism, that activity is necessary to virtue, even
among those who are not apprized that it is also indis-
pensable to happiness. So far are many parents from bc
*)
52
ON SELFISHNESS.
I
ing sensible of this truth, that vacations from school art
not merely allowed, but appointed to pass away in weari-
some sauntering and indeterminate idleness; and this by
way of converting the holidays into pleasure! Nay, the
idleness is specifically made over to the child's mind, as
the strongest expression of the fondness of the parent!
A dislike to learning is thus systematically excited by
preposterously erecting indolence into a reward for appli
cation! And the promise of doing nothing is held out as
the best recompense for having done well!
These and such like errors of conduct arise from the
latent but very operative principle of selfishness. This
principle is obviously promoted by many habits and prac-
tices seemingly of little importance; and indeed selfish-
ness is so commonly interwoven with vanity and incon-
sideration, that I have not always thought it necessary
to mark the distinction. They are alternately cause and
effect; and are produced and re-produced by reciprocal
operation. They are a confederacy who are mutually
promoting each other's strength and interest. Il-judg-
ing tenderness is in fact only a concealed self-love, which
cannot bear to be witness to the uneasiness which a pres-
ent disappointment, or difficulty, or vexation, would
cause to a darling child, yet does not scruple by im-
proper gratification to store up for it future miseries,
which the child will infallibly suffer, though it may be
at a distant period which the mother will be saved the
pain of beholding.
Another principle something different from this, though
it may properly fall under the head of selfishness, seems
to actuate some parents in their conduct towards their
children: I mean, a certain slothfulness of mind, a love
of case, which imposes a voluntary blindness, and makes
them not choose to see what will give them trouble to
combat. From such persons we frequently hear such
expressions as these: "Children will be children :"
"My children I suppose are much like those of other
people," &c. Thus we may observe this dangerous and
delusive principle frequently turning off with a smile
from the first indications of those tempers, which from
their fatal tendency ought to be very seriously taken up.
}
THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.
53
***
I would be understood now as speaking to conscientious
parents, who consider it as a duty to correct the faults of
their children, but who, from this indolence of mind, are
extremely backward in discovering such faults, and not
very well pleased when they are pointed out by others.
Such parents will do well to take notice, that whatever
they consider it as a duty to correct, must be equally a du-
ty to endeavour to find out.
And this love of ease is the
more to be guarded against, as it not only leads parents
into erroneous conduct towards their children, but is pe-
culiarly dangerous to themselves. It is a fault frequent-
ly cherished from ignorance of its real character; for,
not bearing on it the strong features of deformity which
mark many other vices, but on the contrary bearing some
resemblance to virtue, it is frequently mistaken for the
Christian graces of patience, meekness, and forbearance,
than which nothing can be more opposite; these proceed-
ing from the Christian principle of self-denial, the other
from self-indulgence.
In this connexion may I be permitted to remark on the
practice at the tables of many families, when the children.
are at home for the holidays; every delicacy is forced up-
on them, with the tempting remark, "that they cannot
have this or that dainty at school ;" and they are indulg-
ed in irregular hours for the same motive, "because they
cannot have that indulgence at school." Thus the natu-
ral seeds of idleness, sensuality, and sloth, are at once
cherished, by converting the periodical visit at home into
a season of intemperance, late hours, and exemption from
study; so that children are habituated, at an age when
lasting associations are formed in the mind, to connect
the idea of study with that of hardship, of happiness with
gluttony, and of pleasure with loitering, feasting, or sleep-
ing. Would it not be better to make them combine the
delightful idea of home, with the gratification of the so-
cial affections, the fondness of maternal love, the kindness
and warmth and confidence of the sweet domestic attach-
ments,
And all the charities
Of father, son, and brother?
BA
+000
54
THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.
1
I will venture to say, that those listless and vacant days,
when the thoughts have no precise object; when the im-
agination has nothing to shape: when industry has no
definite pursuit; when the mind and the body have no
exercise, and the ingenuity no acquisition cither to anti-
cipate or to enjoy, are the longest, the dullest, and the
least happy, which children of spirit and genius ever
pass. Yes! it is a few short but keen and lively intervals
of animated pleasure, snatched from between the suc-
cessive labours and duties of a busy day, looked forward
to with hope, enjoyed with taste, and recollected without
remorse, which, both to men and to children, yield the
truest portions of enjoyment. O snatch your offspring
from adding to the number of those objects of supreme
commiseration, who seek their happiness in doing no-
thing? Life is but a short day; but it is a working day.
Activity may lead to evil; but inactivity cannot be led
to good.
Young ladies should also be accustomed to set apart a
fixed portion of their time, as sacred to the poor,* wheth-
er in relieving, instructing, or working for them; and
the performance of this duty must not be left to the event
of contingent circumstances, or the operation of acciden-
tal impressions; but it must be established into a princi-
ple, and wrought into a habit. A specific portion of
time must be allotted to it, on which no common engage-
ment must be allowed to entrench. This will help to fur-
nisha powerful remedy for that selfishness, whose strong
holds, the truth cannot be too often repeated, it is the
grand business of Christian education perpetually to at-
tack. If we were but aware how much better it makes
ourselves to wish to see others better, and to assist in
←
*It would be a noble employment and well becoming the tenderness
of their sex, if ladies were to consider the superintendance of the poor
as their immediate office. They are peculiarly fitted for it; for from
their own habits of life they are more intimately acquainted with domes-
tic wants than the other sex; and in certain instances of sickness
and suffering peculiar to themselves, they should be expected to have
more sympathy; and they have obviously more leisure. There is a
certain religious society, distin,,uished by the simplicity of their dress,
manners, and language, whose poor are perhaps better taken care of
than any other; and one reason may be, that they are immediately
under the inspection of the women.
ON INCONSIDERATION.
55
making them so, we should find that the good done would
be of as much importance by the habit it would induce
in our own minds, as by its beneficial effects on others.*
In what relates to pecuniary bounty, it will be requiring
of children a very small sacrifice, if you teach them mere-
ly to give that money to the poor which properly belongs
to the parent; this sort of charity commonly subtracts
little from their own pleasures, especially when what they
have bestowed is immediately made up to them, as a re-
ward for their little fit of generosity. They will, on this
plan, soon learn to give not only for praise but for profit.
The sacrifice of an orange to a little girl, or a feather to a
great one, given at the expense of their own gratification,
would be a better lesson of charity on its right ground,
than a considerable sum of money to be presently replaced
by the parent. And it would be habituating them early
to combine two ideas which ought never to be separated,
charity and self-denial.
As an antidote to selfishness, as well as pride and indo-
lence, they should also very early be taught to perform
all the little offices in their power for themselves; not to
be insolently calling for servants where there is no real
occasion; above all, they should be accustomed to consi-
der the domestics' hours of meals and rest as almost sa-
cred, and the golden rule should be practically and uni-
formly enforced, even on so trifling an occasion as ringing
a bell through mere wantonness, or self love, or pride.
To check the growth of inconsiderateness, young ladies
should early be taught to discharge their little debts with
punctuality. They should be made sensible of the cru-
clty of obliging trades-people to call often for the money
due to them; and of hindering and detaining those whose
time is the source of their subsistence, under pretence of
some frivolous engagement, which ought to be made to
bend to the comfort and advantage of others. They should
* In addition to the instruction of the individual poor, and the super-
intendance of charity schools, ladies might be highly useful in assisting
the parochial clergy in the adoption of that excellent plan for the in-
struction of the ignorant suggested by the Bishop of Durham in his last
admirable charge to his clergy. It is with pleasure the author is enabled
to add that the scheme has actually been adopted with good effect in
that extensive diocese.
F
.50
ON INCONSIDERATION.
conscientiously allow sufficient time for the execution of
their orders; and with a Christian circumspection, be
careful not to drive work-people, by needless hurry, into
losing their rest, or breaking the Sabbath. I have known
a lady give her gown to a mantua-maker on the Saturday
night, to whom she would not for the world say in so
many words, "You must work through the whole of Sun-
day," while she was virtually compelling her to do so, by
an injunction to bring the gown home finished on the
Monday morning, on pain of her displeasure. To these
hardships numbers are continually driven by good-natured
but inconsiderate employers. As these petty exactions of
inconsideration furnish also a constant aliment to selfish-
ness, let not a desire to counteract them be considered as
leading to too minute details; nothing is too frivolous for
animadversion, which tends to fix a bad habit in the supe-
rior, or to wound the feelings of the dependant.
Would it not be turning those political doctrines, which
are now so warmly agitating, to a truly moral account, and
give the best practical answer to the popular declamations
on the inequality of human conditions, were the rich care-
fully to instruct their children to soften that inevitable in-
equality by the mildness aud tenderness of their behaviour
to their inferiors? This dispensation of God, which ex-
cites so many murmurs, would, were it thus practically
improved, tend to establish the glory of that Being who is
now so often reviled for his injustice; for God himselfis
covertly attacked in many of the invectives against laws
and governments, and the disproportion of ranks.
Kul
This dispensation, thus properly improved, would at
once call into exercise the generosity, kindness, and for-
bearance of the superior; and the patience, resignation,
and gratitude of the inferior: and thus, while we were
vindicating the ways of Providence, we should be accom-
plishing his plan, by bringing into action those virtues of
both classes which would have had little exercise had
there been no inequality in fortune. Those who are so
zealously contending for the privileges of rank and pow-
er, should never lose sight of the religious duties and
considerate virtues which the possession of these imposes
on themselves; duties and virtues which should ever be
-
Whe
THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.
57
N
inseparable from those privileges. As the inferior class-
es have little real right to complain of laws, in this respect
let the great be watchful to give them as little cause to
complain of manners; by carefully training up their chil
dren to supply by individual kindness those cases of hard-
ship which laws cannot reach: by such means every les-
son of politics may be converted into a lesson of piety;
and a spirit of condescending love might win over some
whom a spirit of invective will only inflame.
HO
It can never be too often repeated, that one of the great ob-
jects of education is the forming of habits. Among the
instances of negligence into which even religiously dis-
posed parents and teachers are apt to fall, one is, that they
are not sufficiently attentive in finding interesting em-
ployment for the Sunday. They do not make a scruple of
sometimes allowing their children to fill up the intervals
of public worship with their ordinary employments and
common school exercises. They are not aware that they
are thus training their offspring to an early and a systema-
tic profanation of the Sabbath by this habit; for to chil-
dren, their tasks are their business; to them a French or
Latin exercise is as serious an occupation as the exercise
of a trade or profession is to a man; and if they are allow-
ed to think the one right now, they will not be brought
hereafter to think that the other is wrong; for the opi-
nions and practices fixed at this early season are not ea-
sily altered. By this oversight even the friends of reli-
gion may be contributing eventually to that abolition of the
Sabbath, so devoutedly wished by its enemics, as the de-
sired preliminary to the destruction of whatever is most
dear to Christians. What obstruction would it offer to
the general progress of youth, if all their Sunday exercises.
(which, with reading, composing, transcribing, and get-
ting by heart, might be extended to an entertaining va-
riety) were adapted to the peculiar nature of the day? It
is not meant to impose on them such rigorous study as
shall convert the day they should be taught to love inela
day of burdens and hardships, or to abrufge peu ANTO-
cent enjoyments; but is indo,dad increly to sug, st
that there should be a muted Astracinio ke tuwe narue at
their employments and studies; lur on the observanco or
.
wh
58
THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.
-
neglect of this, as was before observed, their future no-
tions and principles will in a good degree be formed. The
gospel, in rescuing the Lord's day from the rigorous bon-
dage of the Jewish Sabbath, never lessened the obligation
to keep it holy, nor meant to sanction any secular occu-
pation.
Y
Though the author chiefly writing with a view to do-
mestic instruction, has purposely avoided entering on the
disputed question, whether a school or home education
be best; a question which perhaps must generally be de-
cided by the state of the individual home, and the state of
the individual school; yet she begs leave to suggest one
remark, which peculiarly belongs to a school education;
namely, the general habit of converting the Sunday into a
visiting day, by way of gaining time; as if the appropriate
instructions of the Sunday were the cheapest sacrifice
which could be made to pleasure. Even in those schools,
in which religion is considered as an indispensable part of
instruction, this kind of instruction is almost exclusively
limited to Sundays: how then are girls ever to make any
progress in this most important article, if they are habitual-
ed to lose the religious advantages of the school, for the
sake of having more dainties for dinner abroad? This re-
mark cannot be supposed to apply to the visits which chil-
dren make to religious parents, and indeed it only applies
to those cases where the school is a conscientious school,
and the visit a trifling visit.
F
A
Among other subjects which engross a good share of
worldly conversation, one of the most attracting is beauty.
Many ladies have often a random way of talking rapturous-
ly on the general importance of beauty, who are yet pru-
dent enough to be very unwilling to let their own daugh-
ters find out they are handsome. Perhaps the contrary
course might be safer. If the little listener were not con-
stantly hearing that beauty is the best gift, she would not
be so vain from fancying herself to be the best gifted. Be
less solicitous, therefore, to conceal from her a secret,
which with all your watchfulness she will be sure to find
out, without your telling; but rather seek to lower the
general value of beauty in her estimation. Use your
daughter in all things to a different standard from that of
Vận
THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.
59
I
the world. It is not by vulgar people and servants only
that she will be told of her being pretty. She will be hear-
ing it not only from gay ladies, but from grave men; she
will be hearing it from the whole world around her. The
antidote to the present danger is not now to be searched
for; it must be already operating; it must have been pro-
vided for in the foundation laid in the general principle
she had been imbibing, before this particular temptation
of beauty came in question. And this general principle
is an habitual indifference to flattery. She must have
learnt not to be intoxicated by the praise of the world. She
must have learnt to estimate things by their intrinsic worth,
rather than by the world's estimation. Speak to her with
particular kindness and commendation of plain but amia-
ble girls; mention with compassion such as are handsome
but ill-educated; speak casually of some who were once
thought pretty, but have ceased to be good; make use of
the shortness and uncertainty of beauty, as strong addi-
tional reasons for making that which is little valuable in
itself, still less valuable. As it is a new idea which is al-
ways dangerous, you may thus break the force of this dan-
ger by allowing her an early introduction to this inevita-
ble knowledge, which would become more interesting,
and of course more perilous by every additional year and
if you can guard against that fatal error of letting her see
that she is more loved on account of her beauty, her fami--
liarity with the idea may be less than its novelty after-
wards would prove
15 ~
}
Batt
nic
av
But the great and constant danger to which young per-
sons in the higher walks of life are exposed, is the pre-
vailing turn and spirit of general conversation. Even the
children of better families, who are well instructed when
at their studies, are yet at other times continually behold-
ing the WORLD set up in the highest and most advanta-
geous point of view. Secing the world! knowing the
world! standing well with the world! making a figure in
the world is spoken of as including the whole sum and
substance of human advantages. They hear their edu-
cation almost exclusively alluded to with reference to the
figure it will enable them to make in the world. In al-
most all companies, they hear all that the world admires
F2
Cand
.
60
THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.
A
spoken of with admiration; rank flattered, fame covet-
ed, power sought, beauty idolized, money considered as
the one thing needful, and as the atoning substitute for
the want of all other things; profit held up as the re-
ward of virtue, and worldly estimation as the just and
highest prize of lawful ambition; and after the very
spirit of the world has been thus habitually infused into
them all the week, one cannot expect much effect from
their being coldly told now and then on Sundays, that they
must not "love the world, nor the things of the world."
To tell them once in seven days that it is a sin to gratify
an appetite which you have been whetting and stimulating
the preceding six, is to require from them a power of self-
control, which our knowledge of the impetuosity of the
passions, especially in early age, should have taught us
is impossible.
Kat
This is not the place to animadvert on the usual misap-
plication of the phrase, "knowing the world;" which
term is commonly applied in the way of panegyric, to
kcen, designing, selfish, ambitious men, who study man-
kind in order to turn it to their own account. But in the
true sense of the expression, the sense which Christian
parents would wish to impress on their children, to know
the world, is to know its emptiness, its vanity, its futili-
ty, and its wickedness. To know it, is to despise it
and in this view, an obscure Christian in a village may be
said to know it better than a hoary courtier or wily poli-
tician; for how can they be said to know it, who go on
to love it, to value it, to be led captive by its allurements,
to give their soul in exchange for its lying promises?
But while so false an estimate is often made in fashion-
able society of the real value of things; that is, while
Christianity does not furnish the standard, and human
opinion does while the multiplying our desires is con-
sidered as a symptom of elegance, though to subdue them
is made the grand criterion of religion; while modera-
tion is beheld as indicating a poorness of spirit, though
to that very poverty of spirit the highest promise of the
gospel is assigned; while worldly wisdom is enjoined by
worldly friends, in contradiction to that assertion, “that
the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God;" while
THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT.
63
*
the praise of man is to be sought in opposition to that as-
surance, that "the fear of man worketh a snare :" while
these things are so, and that they are so in a good de-
gree who will deny? may we not venture to affirm that a
Christian education, though not an impossible, is yet a
very difficult work?
W
CHAPTER VI.
d
Filial obedience not the character of the age. A comparison with the
preceding age in this respect.—Those who cultivate the mind advised
to study the nature of the soil.-Unpromising children often make
strong characters.-Teachers too apt to devote their pains almost ex-
clusively to children of parts.
AMONG the real improvements of modern times, and
they are not a few, it is to be feared that the growth of
filial obedience cannot be included. Who can forbear ob-
serving and regretting, in a variety of instances, that not
only sons but daughters have adopted something of that
spirit of independence, and disdain of control, which cha-
racterize the times? And is it not obvious that domestic
manners are not slightly tinctured with the hue of public
principles? The rights of man have been discussed,
till we are somewhat wearied with the discussion. To'
these have been opposed, with more presumption than
prudence, the rights of woman. It follows, according
to the natural progression of human things, that the next
stage of that irradiation which our enlighteners are pour-
ing in upon us will produce grave descants on the rights
of children.
This revolutionary spirit in families suggests the re-
mark, that among the faults with which it has been too
much the fashion of recent times to load the memory of
the incomparable Milton, one of the charges brought
against his private character (for with his political char-
acter we have here nothing to do) has been, that he was
so severe a father as to have compelled his daughters, af-
ter he was blind, to read aloud to him, for his sole plea-
sure, Greek and Latin authors of which they did not
What
!
"
THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT.
62
•
understand a word. But this is in fact nothing more than
an instance of the strict domestic regulations of the age
in which Milton lived; and should not be brought forward
as a proof of the severity of his individual temper. Nor
indeed in any case should it ever be considered as an hard-
ship for an affectionate child to amuse an afflicted parent,
though it should be attended with a heavier sacrifice of
her own pleasure than in the present instance.*
Is the author then inculcating the harsh doctrine of
parental austerity? By no means. It drives the gentle
spirit to artifice, and the rugged to despair. It gener-
ates deceit and cunning, the most hopeless and hateful in
the whole catalogue of female failings. Ungoverned an-
ger in the teacher, and inability to discriminate between
venial errors and premeditated offence, though they may
lead a timid creature to hide wrong tempers, or to conceal
bad actions, will not help her to subdue the one or cor-
rect the other. Severity will drive terrified children to
seek, not for reformation, but for impunity. A readiness.
to forgive them promotes frankness. And we should,
above all things, encourage them to be frank, in order to
come at their faults. They have not more faults for being
open, they only discover more.
Discipline, however, is not cruelty, and restraint is not
severity. We must strengthen the feeble, while we repel
the bold. The cultivator of the human mind must, like
the gardener, study diversities of soil. The skilful la-
bourer knows that even where the surface is not particu-
larly promising, there is often a rough strong ground
which will amply repay the trouble of breaking it up;
yet we are often most taken with the soft surface, though
it conceal a shallow depth, because it promises present
reward and little trouble. But strong and pertinacious
J
* In spite of this too prevailing spirit, numberless instances. might be
adduced of filial affection truly honourable to the present period. And
the author records with pleasure, that she has seen amiable young la-
dies of high rank conducting the steps of a blind but illustrious parent
with truc filial fondness; and has often contemplated, in another fami-
ly, the interesting attentions of daughters who were both hands and eyes
to an infirm and nearly blind father. It is but justice to add, that these
examples are not taken from that middle rank of life which Milton fill-
ed, but from the daughters of the highest officers in the state.
1
THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT.
63
tempers, of which perhaps obstinacy is the leading vice,
under skilful management often turn out steady and ster-
ling characters; while from softer clay a firm and vigo-
rous virtue is but seldom produced.
But these revolutions in character cannot be effected
by mere education. Plutarch has observed, that the me-
dical science would never be brought to perfection till
poisons should be converted into physic. What our late
improvers in natural science have done in the medical
world, by converting the most deadly ingredients into in-
struments of life and health, Christianity with a sort of
divine Alchymy has effected in the moral world, by that
transmutation which makes those passions which have
been working for sin become active in the cause of reli-
gion. The violent temper of Saul of Tarsus, which was
"exceedingly mad" against the saints of God, did God see
fit to convert into that burning zeal which enabled Paul
the Apostle to labour so unremittingly for the conversion
of the gentile world. Christianity indeed does not so
much give us new affections or faculties, as give a new
direction to those we already have. She changes that
sorrow of the world which worketh death, into "godly
sorrow which worketh repentance." She changes our
anger against the persons we dislike, into hatred of their
sins. "The fear of man which worketh a snare," she
transmutes into "that fear of God which worketh salva-
tion." That religion does not extinguish the passions,
but alters their object, the animated expressions of the
fervid Apostle confirm-" Yea, what fearfulness; yea,
what clearing of yourselves; yea, what indignation;
yea, what fear; yea, what vehement desire; yea, what
zeal; yea, what revenge !”*.
3 Corinthians vii. 11.
Gy
Thus, by some of the most troublesome passions of
our nature being converted by the blessing of God on a
religious education to the side of virtue, a double purpose
is effected. Because, if I may be allowed to change the
metaphor, it is the character of the passions never to ob-
serve a neutrality. If they are no longer rebels, they
become auxiliaries; and a foe subdued is an ally obtin-
64
THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT.
ed. And it is the effect of religion on the passions, that
when she seizes the enemy's garrison, she does not des-
troy the works, she does not burn the arsenal and spike
the cannon; but the artillery she seizes, she turns to her
own use, and plants its whole force against the enemy
from whom she has taken it.
But while I would depreciate hardness, I would en-
force discipline; and that not merely on the ground of
religion, but of happiness also. One reason not seldom
brought forward by tender but mistaken mothers as an
apology for their unbounded indulgence, especially to
weakly children, is. that they probably will not live to
enjoy the world when grown up, and that therefore they
will not abridge the little pleasure they may enjoy at
present. But a slight degree of observation would prove
that this is an error in judgment as well as in principle.
For, omitting any considerations respecting their future
welfare, and entering only into their immediate interests ;
it is an indisputable fact that children who know no con-
trol, whose faults encounter no contradiction, and whose
humours experience constant indulgence, grow more ir-
ritable and capricious, invent wants, create desires, lose
all relish for the pleasures which they know they may
reckon upon; and become perhaps more miserable than
even those children who labour under the more obvious
and more commiserated misfortune of suffering under
the tyranny of unkind parents.
An carly habitual restraint is peculiarly important to the
future character and happiness of women. They should
when very young be inured to contradiction. Instead of
hearing their bon-mots treasured up and repeated to the
guests till they begin to think it dull, when they them-
selves are not the little heroine of the theme, they should
be accustomed to receive but little praise for their vivaci~
ty or their wit, though they should receive just commen-
dation for their patience, their industry, their humility,
and other qualities which have more worth than splen-
dour. They should be led to distrust their own judg-
ment; they should learn not to murmur at expostulation;
but should be accustomed to expect and endure opposi-
tion. It is a lesson with which the world will not fail to
a
cha
THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT.
65
furnish them; and they will not practise it the worse for
having learnt it the sooner. It is of the last importance
to their happiness in life that they should early acquire a
submissive temper and a forbearing spirit. They must
even endure to be thought wrong sometimes, when they
cannot but feel they are right. And while they should be
anxiously aspiring to do well, they must not expect al-
ways to obtain the praise of having done so. But while
a gentle demeanor is inculcated, let them not be instruct-
ed to practise gentleness merely on the low ground of its
being decorous, and feminine, and pleasing, and calculat-
ed to attract human favour: but let them be carefully
taught to cultivate it on the high principle of obedience
to Christ; on the practical ground of labouring after
conformity to HIM, who, when he proposed himself as a
perfect pattern of imitation, did not say, Learn of me, for
I am great, or wise, or mighty, but, "Learn of me, for I
"am meek and lowly:" and graciously promised that the
reward should accompany the practice, by encouragingly
adding, “and ye shall find rest to your souls." Do not
teach them humility on the ordinary ground that vanity is
unamiable, and that no one will love them if they are
proud; for that will only go to correct the exterior, and
make them soft and smiling hypocrites. But inform
them, that “God resisteth the proud," while them that
are meek he will guide in judgment, and such as are
gentle, them shall he teach his way." In these, as in
all other cases, an habitual attention to the motives should
be carefully substituted in their young hearts, in the
place of too much anxiety about the event of actions, and
too much solicitude for that human praise which attaches
to appearances as much as to realities, to success more
than to desert.
>>
ness.
Let me repeat, that it will be of vast importance not to
let slip the carliest occasions of working gentle manners
into an habit on their only true foundation, Christian meek-
For this purpose I would again urge your calling
in the example of our Redeemer in aid of his precepts.
Endeavour to make your pupil feel that all the wonders
exhibited in his life do not so overwhelm the awakened
heart with rapture, love, and astonishment, as the perpc-
KON
22
66
THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT.
-
tual instances of his humility and meekness. Stupendous
miracles, exercises of infinite power prompted by infinite
mercy, are actions which we should naturally enough con-
ceive as growing out of the divine perfections: but silence
under cruel mockings, patience under reproach, gentle-
ness of demeanor under unparalleled injures: these are
perfections of which unassisted nature not only has no con-
ception in a Divine Being, but at which it would revolt,
had not the reality been exemplified by our perfect pat-
tern. Healing the sick, feeding the multitude, restoring
the blind, raising the dead, are deeds of which we could
form some adequate idea, as necessarily flowing from Al-
mighty goodness: but to wash his disciples' feet; to
preach the gospel to the poor; to renounce not only ease,
(for that heroes have done on human motives) but to re-
nounce praise, to forgive his persecutors, to love his enc-
mies, to pray for his murderers with his last breath:
these are things which, while they compel us to cry out
with the Centurion, "Truly this was the Son of God,"
should remind us also, that they are not only adorable but
imitable parts of his character. These are perfections
which we are not barely to contemplate with holy awe and
distant admiration, as if they were restricted to the divine
nature of our Redeemer; but we must consider them as
suited to the human nature also, which he condescended
to participate; in contemplating, we must imitate; and
în our measure and degree go and do likewise. Elevate
your thoughts for one moment to this standard, and then
go, if you can, and teach your children to be mild, and soft,
and gentle on worldly grounds, on human motives, and as
an external attraction.
There is a custom among teachers, which is not the
more right for being common; they are apt to bestow an
undue proportion of pains on children of the best capacity,
as if only geniuses were worthy of attention. They should
reflect that in moderate talents, carefully cultivated, we
are perhaps to look for the chief happiness and virtue of
society. If superlative genius had been generally neces-
sary, its existence would not have been so rare; for Om-
nipotence could have made those talents common which
we now consider as extraordinary. Besides, while wo
THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT.
67
--
are conscientiously instructing children of moderate ca-
pacity, it is a comfort to reflect, that if no labour will raise
them to a high degree in the scale of intellectual excel-
lence, yet they may be led on to perfection in that road in
which "a way-faring man, though simple, shall not err.”
And when a mother feels disposed to repine that her fa-
mily is not likely to exhibit a group of future wits and
growing beauties, let her console herself by looking abroad
into the world, where she will quickly perceive that the
monopoly of happiness is not engrossed by beauty, nor that
of virtue by genius.
مد
M
Perhaps mediocrity of parts was decreed to be the or-
dinary lot, by way of furnishing a stimulus to industry,
and strengthening the motives to virtuous application.
For is it not obvious that moderate abilities, carefully car-
ried to that measure of perfection of which they are ca-
pable, often enable their possessors to outstrip, in the race
of knowledge and of usefulness, their more brilliant but
less persevering competitors? It is with mental endow-
ments, as with other rich gifts of Providence: the inhabi-
tant of the luxuriant southern clime, where nature has
done every thing in the way of vegetation, indolently lays
hold on this very fertility as a plea for doing nothing him-
self; so that the soil which teems with such encouraging
abundance leaves the possessor idle: while the native of
the less genial region supplying by his labours the defi-
ciencies of his lot, overtakes his more favoured competi-
tor; by substituting industry for opulence, he improves
the riches of his native land beyond that which is blessed
with warmer suns, and thus vindicates Providence from
the charge of partial distribution.
gbe
A girl who has docility will seldom be found to want
understanding sufficient for all the purposes of a useful,
a happy, and a pious life. And it is as wrong for parents
to set out with too sanguine a dependance on the figure
their children are to make in life, as it is unreasonable to
be discouraged at every dissappointment. Want of suc-
cess is so far from furnishing a motive for relaxing their
energy, that it is a reason for redoubling it. Let them
suspect their own plans, and reform them; let them dis-
trust their own principles, and correct them. The gene-
G
•
68
THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT,
-
:
rality of parents do too little; some do much, and miss
their reward, because they look not to any strength be-
yond their own: after much is done, much will remain
undone for the entire regulation of the heart and affec-
tions is not the work of education alone, but the opera-
tion of divine grace. Will it be accounted enthusiasm
to suggest that the fervent effectual prayer of a right-
cous parent availeth much?" and perhaps the reason
why so many anxious mothers fail of success is,, because
they repose with confidence in their own skill and labour,
without looking to HIM without whose blessing they do
but labour in vain.
On the other hand, is it not to be feared that some pi-
ous parents have fallen into an error of an opposite kind?
From a full conviction that human endeavours are vain,
and that it is God alone who can change the heart, they
are carnest in their prayers, but not so carnest in their
endeavours. Such parents should be reminded, that if
they do not add their exertions to their prayers, their chil-
dren are not likely to be more benefited than the children
of those who do not add their prayers to their exertions.
What God has joined, let not man presume to separate.
It is the work of God, we readily acknowledge, to im-
plant religion in the heart, and to maintain it there as a
ruling principle of conduct. And is it not the same God
which causes the corn to grow? Are not our natural lives
constantly preserved by his power? Who will deny that
în him we live, and move, and have our being? But how
are these works of God carried on? By means which he
has appointed. By the labour of the husbandman the
corn is made to grow. By food the body is sustained:
and by religious instruction God is pleased to work upon
the human heart. As far as we see of the ways of God,
all his works are carried on by means. It becomes there-
fore our duty to use the means and trust in God; to remem-
ber that God will not work without the means; and that
the means can effect nothing without his blessing. "Paul
may plant and Apollos water, but it is God must give
the increase." But to what does he give the increase?
To the exertions of Paul and Apollos. It is never said,
*1
PH
THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT.
69-
I
because God only can give the increase, that Paul and
Apollos may spare their labour.
It is one grand object to give the young probationer
just and sober views of the world on which she is about
to enter. Instead of making her bosom bound at the near
prospect of emancipation from her instructors; instead
of teaching her young heart to dance with premature flut-
terings as the critical winter draws near in which she is
to come out; instead of raising a tumult in her busy ima..
gination at the approach of her first grown up ball; en-
deavour to convince her, that the world will not turn out
to be that scene of unvarying and never-ending delights
which she has perhaps been led to expect, not only from
the sanguine temper and warm spirits natural to youth,
but from the valuc she has seen put on those showy ac-
complishments which have too probably been fitting her
for her exhibition in life. Teach her that this world is
not a stage for the display of superficial talents, but for
the strict and sober exercise of fortitude, temperance,
meekness, faith, diligence, and self-denial; of her duc
performance of which Christian graces, angels will be
spectators, and God the judge. Teach her that human
life is not a splendid romance, spangled over with bril-
liant adventures, and enriched with extraordinary occur-
rences, and diversified with wonderful incidents; lead
her not to expect that it will abound with scenes which
will call shining qualities and great powers into perpe-
tual action; and for which if she acquit herself well she
will be rewarded with proportionate fame and certain
commendation. But apprize her that human life is a true
history, many passages of which will be dull, obscurc,
and uninteresting; some perhaps tragical; but that what-
ever gay incidents and pleasing scenes may be inter-
spersed in the progress of the piece, yet finally "onc
event happeneth to all;" to all there is one awful and
infallible catastrophe. Apprize her that the estimation
which mankind forms of merit is not always just, nor its
praise exactly proportioned to desert; that the world
weighs actions in far different scales from "the balance
of the sanctuary," and estimates worth by a far different
standard from that of the gospel apprize her that while
my
✔
}
70
THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT.
INT.
Ma
her best intentions may be sometimes calumniated, and
her-best actions misrepresented, she will be liable to re-
ceive commendation on occasions wherein her conscience
will tell her she has not deserved it.
Do not however give her a gloomy and discouraging
picture of the world, but rather seck to give her a just
and sober view of the part she will have to act in it. And
humble the impetuosity of hope, and cool the ardour of
expectation, by explaining to her, that this part, even in
her best estate, will probably consist in a succession of
petty trials, and a round of quict duties which, however
well performed, though they will make little or no figure
in the book of Fame, will prove of vast importance to
her in that day when another "book is opened, and the
judgment is set, and every one will be judged accord-
ing to the deeds done in the body, whether they be
good or bad."
!
Say not that these just and sober views will cruelly
wither her young hopes, and deaden the innocent satis-
factions of life. It is not true. There is, happily, an ac-
tive spring in the mind of youth which bounds with fresh
vigour and uninjured elasticity from any such temporary
depression. It is not meant that you should darken her
prospect, so much as that you should enlighten her un-
derstanding to contemplate it. And though her feelings,
tastes, and passions, will all be against you, if you set be-
fore her a faithful delineation of life, yet it will be some-
thing to get her judgment on your side. It is no unkind
office to assist the short view of youth with the aids of
long-sighted cxperience, to enable them to discover spots
in the brightness of that life which dazzles them in pros-
pect, though it is probable they will after all choose to
believe their own cyes rather than the offered glass.
1
CHAPTER VII.
On female study, and initiation into knowledge.-Error of cultivating
the imagination to the neglect of the judgment. Books of reasoning
recommended.
As this little work by no means assumes the character
of a general scheme of education, the author has pur-
posely avoided expatiating largely on any kind of instruc
tion; but so far as it is connected, either immediately or
remotely, with objects of a moral or religious nature.
Of course she has been so far from thinking it necessary
to enter into the enumeration of those books which are use-
ful in general instruction, that she has forborne to mention
any. With such books the rising generation is far more
copiously and ably furnished than any preceding period
has been; and out of an excellent variety the judicious
instructor can hardly fail to make such a selection as shall
be beneficial to the pupil.
-
But while due praise ought not to be withheld from
the improved methods of communicating the elements
of general knowledge; yet is there not some danger that
our very advantages may lead us into error, by causing
us to repose so confidently on the multiplied helps which
facilitate the entrance into learning, as to render our pu-
pils superficial through the very facility of acquirement?
Where so much is done for them, may they not be led
to do too little for themselves? May there not be a moral
disadvantage in possessing them with the notion that
learning may be acquired without diligence and labour?
Sound education never can be made a "primrose path of
dalliance." Do what we will, we cannot cheat children
into learning, or play them into knowledge, according
to the smoothness of the modern creed. There is no
idle way to any acquisitions which really deserve the
name. And as Euclid, in order to repress the impetu-
ous vanity of greatness, told his Sovereign that there
was no royal way to geometry, so the fond mother may
be assured that there is no short cut to any other kind of
learning. The tree of knowledge, as a punishment, per-
haps, for its having been at first unfairly tasted, cannot
now be climbed without difficulty; and this very circum-
G 2
79
ON FEMALE STUDY.
J
1
}
stance serves afterwards to furnish not only literary plea-
sures, but moral advantages: for the knowledge which
is acquired by unwearied assiduity is lasting in the pos-
session, and sweet to the possessor; both perhaps in pro-
portion to the cost and labour of the acquisition. And
though an able teacher ought to endeavour, by improv-
ing the communicating faculty in himself, (for many
know what they cannot teach,) to soften every difficulty;
yet in spite of the kindness and ability with which he will
smooth every obstruction, it is probably among the wise
institutions of Providence, that great difficulties should
still remain. For education is but an initiation into that
life of trial to which we are introduced on our entrance into
this world. It is the first breaking in to that state of toil
and labour to which we are born, and to which sin has
made us liable; and in this view of the subject the ac-
quisition of learning may be converted to higher uses
than such as are purely literary.
'
Will it not be ascribed to a captious singularity if I
venture to remark that real knowledge and real piety,
though they may have gained in many instances, have
suffered in others from that profusion of little, amusing,
sentimental books with which the youthful library over-
flows? Abundance has its dangers as well as scarcity. In
the first place may not the multiplicity of these alluring
little works increase the natural reluctance to those more
dry and uninteresting studies, of which, after all, the ru-
diments of every part of learning must consist? And,
secondly, is there not some danger (though there are
many honourable exceptions) that some of those engag-
ing narratives may serve to infuse into the youthful heart
a sort of spurious goodness, a confidence of virtue, a
parade of charity? And that the benevolent actions with
the recital of which they abound, when they are not made
to flow from any source but feeling, may tend to inspire
a self complacency, a self gratulation, a "stand by, for I
am holier than thou?" May they not help to infuse a love
of popularity and an anxiety for praise, in the place of
that simple and unostentatious rule of doing whatever
good we do, because it is the will of God? The universal
substitution of this principle would tend to purify the
J
ON FEMALE STUDY.
73
worldly morality of many a popular little story. And
there are few dangers which good parents will more
carefully guard against than that of giving their ciìdren
a mere political piety; that sort of religion winch just
goes to make people more respectable, on to stand well
with the world; a religion which is to save appearances
without inculcating realities.*
There is a certain precocity of mind which is much
helped on by these superficial modes of instruction ; for
frivolous reading will produce its correspondent effect,
in much less tinic than books of solid instruction, the
imagination being liable to be worked upon, and the feel-
ings to be set a-going, much faster than the understand-
ing can be opened and the judgment enlightened. A
talent for conversation should be the result of education,
not its precursor; it is a golden fruit when suffered to
ripen gradually on the tree of knowledge; but if forced
in the hot-bed of a circulating library, it will turn out
worthless and vapid in proportion as it was artificial and
premature. Girls who have been accustomed to devour
frivolous books, will converse and write with a far greater
appearance of skill as to style and sentiment at twelve or
fourteen years old, than those of a more advanced age
who are under the discipline of severer studies; but the
former having early attained to that low standard which
has been held out to them, become stationary; while the
latter, quietly progressing, are passing through just gra-
dations to a higher strain of mind; and those who early
begin with talking and writing like women, commonly
end with thinking and acting like children.
The swarms of Abridgments, Beauties, and Compendi-
ums, which form too considerable a part of a young lady's
library, may be considered in many instances as an infal-
lible receipt for making a superficial mind. The names
of the renowned characters in history thus become fa-
* An ingenious (and in many respects useful) French Treatise on
Education, has too much encouraged this political piety: by consider.
ing religion as a thing of human couvention, rather than of divine in-
stitution; as a thing creditable, rather than commanded: by erecting
the doctrine of expediency in the place of Christian simplicity; and
wearing away the spirit of truth, by the substitution of occasional do
ceit, equivocation, subterfuge, and mental reservation.
74
ON FEMALE STUDY.
and
miliar in the mouths of those who can neither attach to
the ideas of the person, the series of his actions, nor the
peculiarities of his character A few fine passages from
the poets (passages perhaps which derived their chief
beauty from their position and connexion) are huddled to-
gether by some extract-maker, whose brief and discon-
nected patches of broken and discordant materials, while
they inflame young readers with the vanity of reciting,
neither fill the mind nor form the taste: and it is not dif-
ficult to trace back to their shallow sources the hackney-
ed quotations of certain accomplished young ladies, who.
will be frequently found not to have come legitimately by
any thing they know I mean, not to have drawn it from
its true spring, the original works of the author from
which some beauty-monger has served it. Human incon-
sistency in this, as in other cases, wants to combine two
irreconcileable things; it strives to unite the reputation
of knowledge with the pleasures of idleness, forgetting
that nothing that is valuable can be obtained without sacri-
fices, and that if we would purchase knowledge we must
pay for it the fair and lawful price of time and industry. For
this extract-reading, while it accommodates itself to the
convenience, illustrates the character of the age in which
we live. The appetite for pleasure, and that love of ease and
indolence which is generated by it, leave little time ortaste
for sound improvement; while the vanity which is equally
a characteristic of the existing period, puts in its claim al-
so for indulgence, and contrives to figure away by these
little snatches of reading, caught in the short intervals
of successive amusements.
Ind
Besides, the taste, thus pampered with delicious mor-
sels, is carly vitiated. The young reader of these clus-
tered beauties conceives a disrelish for every thing which
is plain, and is impatient if obliged to get through those
equally necessary though less showy parts of a work, in
which perhaps the author gives the best proof of his
judgment by keeping under that occasional brilliancy of
which these superficial students are in constant pursuit.
In all well-written books, there is much that is good
which is not dazzling; and these shallow critics should
be taught, that it is for the more tame and uninteresting
ON TEMALE STUDY.
75
F
parts of his work, that the judicious poet commonly re-
serves those flowers, whose beauty is defaced when they
are plucked from the garland into which he had so skil-
fully woven them.
tut
Jaka
The remark, however, is by no means of general ap-
plication; there are many valuable works which from
their bulk would be almost inaccessible to a great number
of readers, and a considerable part of which may not be
generally useful. Even in the best written books there
is often superfluous matter; authors are apt to get en-
amoured of their subject, and to dwell too long`on it :
every person cannot find time to read a longer work on
any subject, and yet it may be well for them to know
something on almost every subject; those, therefore,
who abridge voluminous works judiciously, render ser-
vice to the community. But there seems, if I may ven-
ture the remark, to be a mistake in the use of abridg-
ments. They are put systematically into the hands of
youth, who have, or ought to have, leisure for the works
at large; while abridgments seem more immediately cal-
culated for persons in more advanced life, who wish to
recall something they had forgotten; who want to restore
old ideas rather than acquire new ones; or they are use-
ful for persons immersed in the business of the world,
who have little leisure for voluminous reading. They
are excellent to refresh the mind, but not competent to
form it.
+
than
Perhaps there is some analogy between the mental and
bodily conformation of women. The instructor there-
fore should imitate the physician. If the latter prescribe
bracing medicines for a body of which delicacy is the
disease, the former would do well to prohibit relaxing
reading for a mind which is already of too soft a tex-
ture, and should strengthen its feeble tone by invigorat
ing reading.
ے
By softness, I cannot be supposed to mean imbecility
of understanding, but natural softness of heart, together
with that indolence of spirit which is fostered by indulg-
ing in seducing books, and in the general habits of fash-
ionable life.
And
་
76
ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS.
هه
*.
on this subject, and the plan they will consequently adopt,
will depend much on the clearness or obscurity of their
religious views; and on the greater or less progress they
have made in their Christian course. It is in their choice
of amusements that you get in some measure to know the
real dispositions of mankind. In their business, in the
leading employments of life, their path is in a good degree
chalked out for them: there is, in this respect, a sort of
general character, wherein the greater part, more or less,
must coincide. But in their pleasures the choice is vo-
luntary, the taste is self-directed, the propensity is inde-
pendent; and of course the habitual state, the genuine bent
and bias of the temper are most likely to be seen in those
pursuits, whichevery man is at liberty to choose for himself.
;
་
When a truly religious principle shall have acquired
such a degree of force as to produce that conscientious
and habitual improvement of time before recommended,
it will discover itself by an increasing indifference and
even deadness to those pleasures which are interesting to
the world at large. A woman under the predominating
influence of such a principle, will begin to discover that
the same thing which in itself is innocent may yet be
comparatively wrong. She will begin to feel that there
are many amusements and employments which, though
they have nothing censurable in themselves, yet if they
be allowed to entrench on hours which ought to be dedi-
cated to still better purposes; or if they are protracted
to an undue length; or, above all, if by softening and re-
laxing her mind, and dissipating her spirits, they so in-
dispose her for better pursuits as to render subsequent
duties a burden, become in that case clearly wrong for
her, whatever they may be for others. Now as tempta-
tions of this sort are the peculiar dangers of better kind
of characters, the sacrifice of such little gratifications as
may have no great harm in them, come in among the
daily calls to self-denial in a Christian.
·
The fine arts, for instance, polite literature, elegant so-
ciety, these are among the lawful, and liberal. and becom-
ing recreations of higher life; yet if even these be culti-
vated to the neglect or exclusion of severer duties; if
they interfere with serious studies, or disqualify the mind
for religious exercises, it is an intimation that they have
been too much indulged; and, under such circumstances,
it might be the part of Christian circumspection to
inquire if the time devoted to them ought not to be abridg-´
OX PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS.
77
ed. Above all, a tender conscience will never lose sight
of one safe rule of determining in all doubtful cases; if
the point be so nice that though we hope upon the whole
there may be no harm in engaging in it, we may at least
be always quite sure that there can be no harm in letting
it alone. The adoption of this simple rule would put a
period to much unprofitable casuistry.
The principle of being responsible for the use of time
once fixed in the mind, the conscientious Christian will
be making a continual progress in the great art of turning
time to account. In the first stages of her religion she
will have abstained from pleasures which began a little to
wound the conscience, or which assumed a questionable
shape; but she will probably have abstained with regret,
and with a secret wish that conscience could have permit-
ted her to keep well with pleasure and religion too. But
you may discern in her subsequent course that she has
reached a more advanced stage, by her beginning to neg-
lect even such pleasures or employments as have no moral
turpitude in them, but are merely what are called in-
nocent. This relinquishment arises, not so much from
her feeling still more the restraints of religion, as from
the improvement in her religious taste. Pleasures cannot
now attach her merely from their being innocent, unless.
they are interesting also; and to be interesting they must
be consonant to her superinduced views. She is not con-
tented to spend a large portion of her time harmlessly, it
must be spent profitably also. Nay, if she be indeed ear-
nestly "pressing towards the mark," it will not be even
enough for her that her present pursuit be good, if she be
convinced that it might be still better. Her contempt of
ordinary enjoyments will increase in a direct proportion
to her increased relish for those pleasures which religion
enjoins and bestows. So that at length, if it were possi-
ble to suppose that an angel could come down to take off
as it were the interdict, and to invite her to resume all
the pleasures she had renounced, and to resume them
with complete impunity, she would reject the invitation,
because she would despise, from an improvement in her
spiritual taste, those delights from which she had at first
abstained through fear. Till her will and affections come
heartily to be engaged in the service of God, the progress
will not be comfortable; but when once they are so en-
gaged, the attachment to this service will be cordial, and
her heart will not desire to go back and toil again in the
A
78
ON FEMALE STUDY.
powers of the human mind, you will bring them to see
the littleness of their own; and to get acquainted with
the mind, and to regulate and inform it, does not seem
the way to puff it up. But let her who is disposed to be
elated with her literary acquisitions, check her vanity by
calling to mind the just remark of Swift," that after all
her boasted acquirements, a woman will, generally speak-
ing, be found to possess less of what is called learning
than a common school-boy."
Neither is there any fear that this sort of reading will
convert ladies into authors. The direct contrary effect
will be likely to be produced by the perusal of writers
who throw the gencrality of readers at such an unap-
proachable distance as to check presumption, instead of
exciting it. Who are those ever multiplying authors,
that with unparalleled fecundity are overstocking the
world with their quick-succeeding progeny? They are
novel-writers; the easiness of whose productions is at
once the cause of their own fruitfulness, and of the al-
most infinitely numerous race of imitators to whom they
give birth. Such is the frightful facility of this species.
of composition, that every raw girl, while she reads, is
tempted to fancy that she can also write. And as Alex-
ander, on perusing the Iliad, found by congenial sympa-
thy the image of Achilles in his own ardent soul, and felt
himself the hero he was studying; and as Corregio, on
first beholding a picture which exhibited the perfection
of the Graphic art, prophetically felt all his own future
greatness, and cried out in rapture, " And I too am a
painter!" so a thorough paced novel-reading Miss, at the
close of every tissue of hackneyed adventures, feels with-
in herself the stirring impulse of corresponding genius,
and triumphantly exclaims, "And I too am an author!
The glutted imagination soon overflows with the redun-
dance of cheap sentiment and plentiful incident, and by a
sort of arithmetical proportion, is enabled by the perusal
of any three novels to produce a fourth; till every fresh
production, like the progeny of Banquo, is followed by
Another, and another, and another !*
W
WÊ
*It is surely not necessary to state, that no disrespect can be here
intended to those females of real genius and correct character, some of
ON FEMALE STUDY.
79
Is a lady, however destitute of talents, education, or know-
ledge of the world, whose studies have been completed by
a circulating library, in any distress of mind? the writing
a novel suggests itself as the best soother of her sorrows!
Does she labour under any depression of circumstances?
Writing a novel occurs as the readiest receipt for mend-
ing them! And she solaces herself with the conviction
that the subscription which has been given to her impor-
tunity or her necessities has been offered as an homage
to her genius. And this confidence instantly levies a fresh
contribution for a succeeding work. Capacity and cul-
tivation are so little taken into the account, that writing a
book seems to be now considered as the only sure resource
which the idle and the illiterate have always in their power.
May the author be indulged in a short digression while
she remarks, though rather out of its place, that the cor-
ruption occasioned by these books has spread so wide,
and descended so low, that not only among milliners, man-
tua-makers, and other trades where numbers work tage-
ther, the labour of one girl is frequently sacrificed, that
she may be spared to read those mischievous books to the
others; but she has been assured by clergymen, who have
witnessed the fact, that they are procured and greedily
read in the wards of our Hospitals! an awful hint, that
those who teach the poor to read, should not only take
care to furnish them with principles which will lead them
to abhor corrupt books, but should also furnish them with
such books as shall strengthen and confirm their princi-
ples.* And let every Christian remember, that there is
whose justly admired writings in this kind are accurate histories of life
and manners, and striking delineations of character. It is not their fault
if their works have been attended with the consequences which usually
attend good originals, that of giving birth to a multitude of miserable
imitations.
*The above facts furnish no argument on the side of those who
would keep the poor in ignorance. Those who cannot read can hear,
and are likely to hear to worse purpose than those who have been
better taught. And that ignorance furnishes no security for integrity
either in morals or politics, the late revolts in more than one country,
remarkable for the ignorance of the poor, fully illustrate. It is earnest.-
ly hoped that the above facts may tend to impress ladies with the impor-
tance of superintending the instruction of the poor, and of making it an
indispensable part of their charity to give them moral and religious books.
H
80
ON THE RELIGIOUS
no other way of entering truly into the spirit of that divine
prayer, which petitions that the name of God may be
hallowed," that " his kingdom (of grace) may come," and
that his will may be done on earth as it is in heaven,"
than by each individual contributing according to his nea-
sure to accomplish the work for which he prays; for to
pray that these great objects may be promoted, without
contributing to their promotion by our exertions, our
money, and our influence, is a palpable inconsistency.
CHAPTER VIII
1
On the religious and moral use of History and Geography.
BUT while every sort of useful knowledge should be
carefully imparted to young persons, it should be impart
ed not merely for its own sake, but also for the sake of
its subserviency to higher things. All human learning
should be taught, not as an end, but a means; and in
this view even a lesson of history or geography may be
converted into a lesson of religion. In the study of his-
tory, the instructor will accustom the pupil not merely
to store her memory with facts and anecdotes, and to as-
certain dates and epochas; but she will accustom her also
to trace effects to their causes, to examine the secret
springs of action, and accurately to observe the operation
of the passions. It is only meant to notice here some few
of the moral benef ich may be derived from a judi-
cious perusal of hi ; and from among other points of
instruction, I select the following.
f
F
The study of history may serve to give a clearer in-
sight into the corruption of human nature:
It may show the plan of Providence in the direction of
events, and in the use of unworthy instruments :
It may assist in the vindication of Providence, in the
common failure of virtue and success of vice:
It may lead to a distrust of our own judgment :
It may contribute to our improvement in self-know-
ledgc.
USE OF HISTORY.
81
M
But to prove to the pupil the important doctrine of hu-
man corruption for the study of history, will require a
truly Christian commentator; for, from the low standard
of right established by the generality of historians, who erect
so many persons into good characters who fall short of the
true idea of Christian virtue, the unassisted reader will
be liable to form very imperfect views of what is real
goodness; and will conclude, as his author sometimes
does, that the true idea of human nature is to be taken from
the medium between his best and his worst characters;
without acquiring a just notion of that prevalence of evil,
which in spite of those few brighter luminaries that hero
and there just serve to gild the gloom of history, tends
abundantly to establish the doctrine. It will indeed be con-
tinually establishing itself by those who, in perusing the
history of mankind, carefully mark the progress of sin,
from the first timid irruption of an evil thought, to the fear-
less accomplishment of the abhorred crime in which that
thought has ended: from the indignant question, "Is
thy servant a dog that he should do this great thing !"*
to the perpetration of that very enormity of which he
could not endure the slightest suggestion.
In this connexion may it not be observed, that young
persons should be put on their guard against a too impli-
cit belief in the flattering accounts which some voyage-
writers are fond of exhibiting of the virtue, amiableness,
and benignity of some of the countries newly discovered
by our circumnavigators, the superior goodness ascribed
to the Hindoos, and particularly the account of the inhabi-
tants of the Pelew Islands? These last indeed have been
almost represented as having escaped the universal taint
of our common nature, and would seem by their purity to
have sprung from another ancestor than Adam.
-
One cannot forbear suspecting that these pleasing but
somewhat overcharged portraits of man, in his natural
state, arc drawn with the invidious design, by counter-
acting the doctrine of human corruption, to degrade the
value and even destroy the necessity of the Christian re-
2 Kings viii. 13.
S
ON THE RELIGIOUS
ligion. That in countries professing Christianity, very
many are not Christians will be too readily granted. Yet,
to say nothing of the vast superiority of goodness in the
lives of those who are really governed by Christianity, is
there not something even in her reflex light which guides
to greater purity many of those who do not profess to walk
by it? I doubt much, if numbers of the unbelievers of a
Christian country, from the sounder views and better ha-
bits derived incidentally and collaterally, as it were, from
the influence of a Gospel, the truth of which however
they do not acknowledge, would not start at many of the
actions which these heathen perfectionists daily commit
without hesitation.
The religious reader of general history will observe
the controlling hand of Providence in the direction of
events, and in turning the most unworthy actions and in-
struments to the accomplishment of his own purposes.
She will mark infinite Wisdom directing what appears to
be casual occurrences, to the completion of his own plan.
She will point out how causes seemingly the most uncon-
nected, events seemingly the most unpromising, circum-
stances seemingly the most incongruous, are all working
together for some final good. She will mark how na-
tional as well as individual crimes are often overruled to
some hidden purpose far different from the intention of the
actors: how Omnipotence can and often does, bring about
the best purposes by the worst instruments: how the
bloody and unjust conqueror is but "the rod of HIS wrath,"
to punish or to purify his offending children: how "the
Jury of the oppressor," and the sufferings of the oppres-
sed, will one day vindicate His righteous dealings. She
will unfold to the less enlightened reader how infinite
Wisdom often mocks the insignificance of human great-
ness, and the shallowness of human ability, by setting
aside instruments the most powerful, while he works by
agents comparatively contemptible. But she will care-
fully guard this doctrine of Divine Providence, thus work-
ing out his own purposes through the sins of his creatures,
and by the instrumentality of the wicked, by calling to
mind, that while the offender is but a tool in the hands of
the great artificer, " yet woe be to him by whom the of-
-
USE OF HISTORY.
83
fence cometh!" She will explain how all the mutations
and revolutions in states which appear to us so unaccount-
able, and how those operations of Providence which seem
to us so entangled and complicated, all move harmonious-
ly and in perfect order: that there is not an event but has
its commission; not a misfortune which breaks its allotted
rank; not a trial which moves out of its appointed track.
While calamities and cries seem to fly in casual confusion,
all is commanded or permitted; all is under the control
of a wisdom which cannot err, of a goodness which can-
not do wrong.
To explain my meaning by a few instances. When the
spirit of the youthful reader rises in honest indignation at
that hypocritical piety which divorced an unoffending
Queen to make way for the lawful crime of our eighth
Henry's marriage with Ann Boleyn; and when that in-
dignation is increased by the more open profligacy which
brought about the execution of the latter; the instructor
will not lose so fair an occasion for unfolding how in the
councils of the Most High the crimes of the king were
overruled to the happiness of the country; and how, to
this inauspicious marriage, from which the heroic Eliza-
beth sprung, the protestant religion owed its firm stability.
403
m
She will explain to her, how even the conquests of am-
bition, after having deluged a land with blood, and involv-
ed the perpetrator in guilt, and the innocent victim in ruin,
may yet be made the instruments of opening to future ge-
nerations the way to commerce, to civilization, to Chris-
tianity. She may remind her, as they are following Cæsar
in his invasion of Britain, that whereas the conqueror fan-
cied he was only gratifying his own inordinate ambition,
extending the flight of the Roman Eagle, immortalizing.
his own name, and proving that this world was made
for Cæsar," he was in reality becoming the effectual
though unconscious instrument of leading a land of bar-
barians to civilization and to science and was in fact pre-
paring an island of Pagans to embrace the religion of
Christ. She will inform her, that when the above-named
victorious nation had made Judea a Roman province, and
the Jews had become their tributaries, the Romans did
not know, nor did the indignant Jews suspect, that this
*
C
20
H 2
84
ON THE RELIGIOUS
circumstance was confirming an event the most impor
tant the world ever saw.
For when "Augustus sent forth a decree that all the
world should be taxed;" he thought he was only enlarg-
ing his own imperial power, whereas he was acting in un-
conscious subservience to the decree of a higher Sover-
eign, and was helping to ascertain by a public act the ex-
act period of Christ's birth, and furnishing a record of his
extraction from that family from which it was predicted
by a long line of Prophets that he should spring. Herod's
atrocious murder of the innocents has added an additional
circumstance for the confirmation of our faith; nay, the
treachery of Judas, and the injustice of Pilate, were the
human instruments employed for the salvation of the world.
The youth that is not armed with Christian principles,
will be tempted to mutiny not only against the justice, but
the very existence of a superintending Providence, in con-
templating those frequent instances which occur in his-
tory of the ill success of the more virtuous cause, and the
prosperity of the wicked. He will see with astonishment
that it is Rome which triumphs, while Carthage, which
had clearly the better cause, falls. Now and then indeed
a Cicero prevails, and a Cataline is subdued: but often, it
is Cæsar successful against the somewhat juster preten-
sions of Pompey, and against the still clearer cause of Cato.
It is Octavius who triumphs, and it is over Brutus that he
triumphs! It is Tiberius that is cathroned, while Ger-
manicus falls!
Thus his faith in a righteous Providence at first view
is staggered, and he is ready to say, Surely it is not God
that governs the earth! But on a fuller consideration,
(and here the suggestions of a Christian instructor are pes
culiarly wanted,) there will appear great wisdom in this
very confusion of vice and virtue; for it is calculated to
send one's thoughts forward to a world of retribution, the
principle of retribution being so imperfectly established
in this. It is indeed so far common for virtue to have the
advantage here, in point of happiness at least, though not
of glory, that the course of Providence is still calculated
to prove that God is on the side of virtue; but still, vir
tue is so often unsuccessful, that clearly the God of vir-
}
85
USE OF HISTORY.
tue, in order that his work may be perfect, must have in
reserve a world of retribution. This confused state of
things therefore is just that state which is most of all cal-
culated to confirm the deeply considerate inind in the be-
lief of a future state: For if all were even here, or very
nearly so, should we not say "Justice is already satisfied,
and there needs no other world?" On the other hand, if
vice always triumphed, should we not then be ready to
argue in favour of vice rather than virtue, and to wish for
no other world?
It seems so very important to ground young persons in
the belief that they will not inevitably meet in this world
with reward and success according to their merit, but to
habituate them to expect even the most virtuous attempts
to be often, though not always disappointed, that am in
danger of tautology on this point. This fact is precisely
what history teaches. The truth should be plainly told to
the young reader; and the antidote to that evil, which
mistaken and worldly people would expect to arise from
divulging this discouraging doctrine is faith. The im-
portance of faith therefore, and the necessity of it to real,
unbending, and persevering virtue, is surely made plain by
profane history itself. For the same thing which happens
to states and kings, happens to private life and to indivi-
duals.
Distrust and diffidence in our own judgment seems to
be also an important instruction to be learnt from history.
How contrary to all expectation do the events therein re-
corded commonly turn out? and yet we proceed to fore-
tel this and that event from the appearances of things un-
der our own observation, with the same arrogant certainty
as if we had never been warned by the monitory annals of
mankind.
There is scarcely one great event in history which
does not, in the issue, produce effects upon which hu-
man foresight could never have calculated. The success
of Augustus against his country produced peace in many
distant provinces, who thus ceased to be barrassed and
tormented by this oppressive republic. Could this effect
have been forescen, it might have sobered the despair
of Cato, and checked the vehemence of Brutus. In po
$6
ON THE RELIGIOUS
litics, in short in every thing except in morals and reli-
gion, all is, to a considerable degree, uncertain. This
reasoning is not meant to shew that Cato. ought not to
have fought, but that he ought not to have desponded even
after the last battle; and certainly, even upon his own
principles, ought not to have killed himself. It would
be departing too much from my object to apply this argu-
ment against those who were driven to unreasonable dis-
trust and despair by the late successes of a neighbouring
nation.
But all knowledge will be comparatively of little val-
uc, if we neglect self-knowledge; and of self-knowledge
history and biography may be made successful vehicles.
It will be to little purpose that our pupils become accu-
rate critics on the characters of others, while they re-
main ignorant of themselves; for while to those who ex-
ercise a habit of self-application a book of profane history
may be made an instrument of improvement in this diffi-
cult science; so without this habit the Bible itself may,
in this view, be read with little profit.
It will be to no purpose that the reader weeps over the
fortitude of the Christian hero, or the constancy of the
martyr, if she do not bear in mind that she herself is call-
ed to endure her own common trials with something of
the same temper: if she do not bear in mind that, to con-
trol irregular humours and to submit to the daily vexa-
tions of life, will require, though in a lower degree, the
exertion of the same principle, and supplication for the
aid of the same spirit which sustained the Christian hero
in the trying conflicts of life, or the martyr in his agony
at the stake.
-
W
May I be permitted to suggest a few instances, by way
of specimen, how both sacred and common history may
tend to promote self-knowledge? And let me again re-
mind the warm admirer of suffering picty under extraor-
dinary trials, that if she now fail in the petty occasions to
which she is actually called out, she would not be likely
to have stood in those more trying occasions which ex-
cite her admiration.
While she is applauding the self-denying saint who re-
nounced his ease, or chase to embrace death, rather than
USE OF HISTORY,
87
violate his duty, let her ask herself if she has never refused
to submit to the paltry inconvenience of giving up her com-
pany, or even altering her dinner hour on a Sunday, by
which trifling sacrifice her family might have been ena-
bled to attend the public worship in the afternoon.
While she reads with horror that Belshazzar was riot-
ing with his thousand nobles at the very moment when
the Persian army was bursting through the brazen gates.
of Babylon; is she very sure that she herself, in an al-
most equal imminent moment of public danger, has not
been nightly indulging in every species of dissipation ?
When she is deploring the inconsistency of the hu-
man heart, while she contrasts Mark Anthony's bravery
and contempt of ease at one period, with his licentious
indulgencies at another; or while she laments over the
intrepid soul of Cæsar, whom she had been following in
his painful marches, or admiring in his contempt of
death, dissolved in dissolute pleasures with the ensnaring
Queen of Egypt; let her examine whether she herself has
never, though in a much lower degree, evinced something
of the same inconsistency? whether she who lives per-
haps an orderly, sober, and reasonable life during her
summer residence in the country, does not plunge with
little scruple in the winter into all the most extravagant
pleasures of the capital? whether she never carries about
with her an accommodating kind of religion, which can be
made to bend to places and seasons, to climates and cus-
toms; which takes its tincture from the fashion without,
and not its habits from the principle within ?
By
—
While she is admiring the generosity of Alexander in
giving away kingdoms and provinces, let her, in order to
ascertain whether she could imitate this magnanimity,
take heed if she herself is daily seizing all the little oc-
casions of doing good, which every day presents to the
affluent? Her call is not to sacrifice a province; but does
she sacrifice an opera ticket? She who is not doing all
the good she can under her prescnt circumstances, would
not do all she foresees she should, in imaginary ones,
were her power enlarged to the extent of her wishes.
While she is inveighing with patriotic indignation,
that in a neighbouring mctropolis thirty theatres were
88
ON THE RELIGIOUS
open every night in time of war and public calamity, is
she very clear, that in a metropolis which contains only
three, she was not almost constantly at one of them in
time of war and public calamity also? For though in a
national view it may make a wide difference whether
there be in the capital three theatres or thirty, yet, as the
same person can only go to one of them at once, it makes
but little difference as to the quantum of dissipation in
the individual. She who rejoices at successful virtue in
a history, or at the prosperity of a person whose interests
do not interfere with her own, may exercise her self-
knowledge, by examining whether she rejoices equally at
the happiness of every one about her; and let her re-
member she does not rejoice at it in the true sense, if she
does not labour to promote it. She who glows with rap-
ture at a virtuous character in history, should ask her
own heart, whether she is equally ready to do justice
to the fine qualities of her acquaintance, though she may
not particularly love them; and whether she takes un-
feigned pleasure in the superior talents, virtues, fame,
and fortune of those whom she professes to love, though
she is eclipsed by them?
*
*
In like manner, in the study of geography and natural
history, the attention should be habitually turned to the
goodness of Providence, who commonly adapts the va-
rious productions of climates to the peculiar wants of the
respective inhabitants. To illustrate my meaning by one
or two instances out of a thousand. The reader may be
led to admire the considerate goodness of Providence in
having caused the spiry fir, whose slender foliage does
not obstruct the beams of the sun, to grow in the dreary
regions of the north, whose shivering inhabitants could
spare none of its scanty rays; while in the torrid zone, the
palm-tree, the plantain, and the banana, spread their um-
brella leaves to break the almost intolerable fervors of a
verticle sun. How the camel, who is the sole carrier of
all the merchandize of Turkey, Persia, Egypt, Arabia,
and Barbary, who is obliged to transport his incredible
burthens through countries in which pastures is so rare,
1
USE OF HISTORY.
89
can subsist twenty-four hours without food, and can tra-
vel, loaded, many days without water, through dry and
dusty deserts, which supply none; and all this not from
the habit but from the conformation of the animal: for
naturalists make this conformity of powers to climates a
rule of judgment in ascertaining the native countries of
animals, and always determine it to be that to which their
powers and properties are most appropriate.
Thus the writers of natural history are perhaps unin-
tentionally magnifying the operations of Providence,
when they insist that animals do not modify and give way
to the influence of other climates; but here they too com-
monly stop; and here the pious instructor will come in, in
aid of their deficiency; for philosophers too seldom trace
up causes, and wonders, and blessings to their Author.
And it is peculiarly to be regretted that such a writer as
Buffon, who, though not famous for his accuracy, pos-
sessed such diversified powers of description that he had
the talent of making the driest subjects interesting; to-
gether with such a liveliness of delineation, that his cha-
racters of animals are drawn with a spirit and variety rather
to be looked for in an historian of men than of beasts: it
is to be regretted that this writer is absolutely inadmissi-
ble into the library of a young lady, both on account of his
immodesty and his impiety; and if, in wishing to exclude
him, it may be thought wrong to have given him so much
commendation, it is only meant to show that the author is
not led to reprobate his principles from insensibility to his
talents.*
* Goldsmith's History of Animated Nature has many references to a
Divine Author. It is to be wished that some judicious person would pub-
lish a new edition of this work, purified from the indelicate and offen
sive parts.
1
CHAPTER IX.
On the use of definitions, and the moral benefits of accuracy in lan-
guage.
"PERSONS having been accustomed from their cradles
to learn words before they knew the ideas for which they
stand, usually continue to do so all their lives, never tak-
ing the pains to settle in their minds the determined ideas
which belong to them. This want of a precise significa-
tion in their words, when they come to reason, especially
in moral matters, is the cause of very obscure and uncer-
tain notions. They use these undetermined words confi-
dently, without much troubling their heads about a cer-
tain fixed meaning, whereby, besides the ease of it, they
obtain this advantage, that as in such discourse they
are seldom in the right, so they are as seldom to be con-
vinced that they are in the wrong, it being just the same
to go about to draw those persons out of their mistakes,
who have no settled notions, as to dispossess a vagrant of
his habitation who has no settled abode. The chief end
of language being to be understood, words serve not for
that end when they do not excite in the hearer the same
idea which they stand for in the mind of the speaker."*
I have chosen to shelter myself under the broad sanc-
tion of the great author here quoted, with a view to ap-
ply this rule in philology to a moral purpose; for it ap-
plies to the veracity of conversation as much as to its cor-
rectness; and as strongly recommends unequivocal and
simple truth, as accurate and just expression. Scarcely
any one perhaps has an adequate conception how much
clear and correct expressions favour the elucidation of
truth; and the side of truth is obviously the side of mo-
rals; it is in fact one and the same cause; and it is of
course the same cause with that of true religion also.
It is therefore no worthless part of education to study
the precise meaning of words, and the appropriate signi-
fication of language. To this end I know no better me-
thod than to accustom young persons very early to define
common words and things; for, as definition seems to lic
at the root of correctness, to be accustomed to define
* Locke.
1
ON DEFINITIONS.
$1
English words in English, would improve the understand-
ing more than barely to know what those words are call-
ed in French or Italian. Or rather, one use of learning
other languages is, because definition is often involved
in etymology; that is, since many English words take
their derivation from foreign languages, they cannot be
so accurately understood without some knowledge of
those languages: but precision of any kind too seldom
finds its way into the education of women.
1
It is perhaps going out of my province to observe, that
it might be well if young men also, before they entered
on the world, were to be furnished with correct defini-
tions of certain words, the use of which is become ra-
ther ambiguous. For instance; they should be provided
with a good definition of the word honour in the fashion-
able sense, shewing what vices it includes and what vir-
tues it does not include: the term good company, which
even the courtly Petronius of our days has defined as
sometimes including not a few immoral and disreputable
characters: religion, which in the various senses assign-
ed it by the world, sometimes means superstition, some-
times fanaticism, and sometimes a mere disposition to at-
tend on any kind of form of worship: the word goodness,
which is made to mean every thing that is not notoriously
bad; and sometimes even that too, if what is notoriously
bad be accompanied by good humour, pleasing manners,
and a little alms-giving. By these means they would go
forth armed against many of the false opinions which
through the abuse or ambiguous meaning of words pass
so current in the world.
-
But to return to the youthful part of that sex which
is the more immediate object of this little work. With
correct definition they should also be taught to study the
shades of words, and this not merely with a view to ac-
curacy of expression, but to moral truth.
It may be thought ridiculous to assert. that morals
have any connexion with the purity of language, or that
the precision of truth may be violated through defect of
critical exactness in the three degrees of comparison s
yet how frequently do we hear from the dealers in super-
iatives, of" most admirable," super-excellent, and "quite
I
92*
ON DEFINITIONS.
perfect" people, who to plain persons, not bred in the
school of exaggeration, would appear more common cha-
racters, not rising above the level of mediocrity! By this
negligence in the just application of words, we shali be
as much misled by these trope and figure ladies, when
they degrade as when they panegyrize; for to a plain and
sober judgment, a tradesman may not be "the most good-
for nothing fellow that ever "existed," merely because
it was impossible for him to execute in an hour an order
which required a week; a lady may not be "the most
hideous fright the world ever saw, though the make of her
gown may have been obsolete for a month; nor may one's
young friend's father be "a monster of cruelty," though
he may be a quiet gentleman who does not choose to live
at watering-places, but likes to have his daughter stay at
home with him in the country.
But of all the parts of speech the interjection is the
most abundantly in use with the hyperbolical fair ones.
Would it could be added that these emphatical expletives
(if I may make use of a contradictory term) were not
sometimes tinctured with profaneness! Though I am
persuaded that idle habit is more at the bottom of this
deep offence than intended impiety, yet there is scarcely
any error of youthful talk which wants severer castiga-
tion. And an habit of exclamation should be rejected by
polished people as vulgar, even if it were not abhorred
us profane.
The habit of exaggerating trifles, together with the
grand female failing of mutual flattery, and elaborate ge-
neral profession of fondness and attachment, is inconceiv
ably cherished by the voluminous private corresponden-
ces in which some girls are indulged. A facility of style,
and an easy turn of expression, are dearly purchased by
the sacrifice of that truth, sobriety, and correctness of lan-
guage, and that ingenious simplicity of character and man-
ners so lovely in female youth.
But antecedent to this epistolary period of life, they
should have been accustomed to the most scrupulous ex-
actness in whatever they relate. They should maintain
the most critical accuracy in facts, in dates, in numbering,
in describing, in short, in whatever pertains, either direct-
ON DEFINITIONS.
93
ly or indirectly, closely or remotely, to the great funda-
mental principle, Truth.
season
The conversation of young females is also in danger of
being overloaded with epithets. As in the warm
of youth hardly any thing is seen in the true point of vi-
sion, so hardly any thing is named in naked simplicity;
and the very sensibility of the feelings is partly a cause
of the extravagance of the expression. But here, as in
other points, the sacred writers, particularly of the New
Testament, present us with the purest model; and its na-
tural and unlaboured style of expression is perhaps not the
meanest evidence of the truth of the gospel. There is
throughout the whole narratives, no overcharged charac-
ter, no elaborate description, nothing studiously empha-
tical, as if truth of itself were weak, and wanted to be
helped out. There is little panegyric, and less invective ;
none but on great, and awful, and justifiable occasions.
The authors record their own faults with the same hones-
ty as if they were the faults of other men, and the faults
of other men with as little amplification as if they were
their own. There is perhaps no book in which adjectives
are so sparingly used. A modest statement of the fact,
with no colouring and little comment, is the example held
out to us for correcting the exuberances of passion and of
language, by that divine volume which furnishes us with
the still more important rule of faith and standard of prac-
tice. Nor is the truth lowered by any feebleness; for
with all this plainness there is so much force, that a few
simple touches and artless strokes of Scripture characters
convey a stronger outline of the person delincated, than is
sometimes given by the most elaborate portrait of more
artificial historians.
If it be objected to this remark, that many parts of the
sacred writings abound in a lofty, figurative, and even hy-
perbolical style; this objection applies chiefly to the wri-
tings of the Old Testament, and to the prophetical and
poetical parts ofthat. But this metaphorical and florid style is
distinct from the inaccurate and overstrained expression
we have been censuring; for that only is inaccuracy
which leads to a false and inadequate conception in the
reader or hearer. The lofty style of the Eastern, and of
1
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ANALOGY OF RELIGION
other heroic poetry does not so mislead, for the metaphor
is understood to be a metaphor, and the imagery is un-
derstood to be ornamental. The style of the Scriptures of
the Old Testament is not, it is true, plain in opposition
to figurative, nor simple in opposition to florid; but it is
plain and simple in the best sense; it raises no false idea;
it gives an exact impression of the thing it means to con-
vey; and its very tropes and figures, though bold, are ne-
ver unnatural or affected. Even when it exaggerates, it
does not misrepresent; if it be hyperbolical, it is so either
in compliance with the genius of Oriental language, or in
compliance with contemporary customs, or because the
subject is one which will be most forcibly impressed by a
bold figure. The loftiness of the expression deducts no-
thing from the truth of the circumstance, and the imagery
animates the reader without misleading him.
CHAPTER X.
On Religion.—The necessity and duty of early instruction shewn by
analogy with human learning.
IT has been the fashion of our late innovators in philo-
sophy, who have written some of the most brilliant and
popular treatises on education, to decry the practice of
carly instilling religious knowledge into the minds of
children: it has been alledged that it is of the utmost
importance to the cause of truth, that the mind of man
should be kept free from prepossessions; and in partic
ular, that every one should be left to form such judgment
on religious subjects as may seem best to his own reason
in maturer years.
This sentiment has received some countenance from
those who have wished, on the fairest principle, to en-
courage free inquiry in religion; but it has been pushed
to the blameable excess here censured, chiefly by the new
philosophers; who, while they profess only an ingenu-
ous zeal for truth, are in fact slily endeavouring to de-
stroy Christianity itself, by discountenancing, under the
}
T
WITH HUMAN LEARNING.
95
plausible pretence of free inquiry, all attention whatever
to the religious education of our youth.
It is undoubtedly our duty, while we are instilling
principles into the tender mind, to take peculiar care that
those principles be sound and just; that the religion we
teach be the religion of the Bible, and not the inventions
of human error or superstition: that the principles we
infuse into others, be such as we ourselves have well
scrutinized, and not the result of our credulity or bigot-
ry; nor the mere hereditary, unexamined prejudices of
our own undiscerning childhood. It may also be grant-
ed, that it is the duty of every parent to inform the youth,
that when his faculties shall have so unfolded themselves
as to enable him to examine for himself those principles
which the parent is now instilling, it will be his duty so
to examine them.
But after making these concessions, I would most se-
riously insist that there are certain leading and funda-
mental truths; that there are certain sentiments on the
side of Christianity, as well as of virtue and benevolence,
in favour of which every child ought to be prepossessed;
and may it not be also added, that to expect to keep the
mind void of all prepossession, even upon any subject,
appears to be altogether a vain and impracticable at-
tempt? an attempt which argues much ignorance of hu-
man nature.
Let it be observed here that we are not combating the
infidel; that we are not producing evidences and argu-
ments in favour of Christianity, or trying to win over the
assent of the reader to that which he disputes; but that
we are taking it for granted, not only that Christianity is
true, but that we are addressing those who believe it to
be true. Assuming, therefore, that there are religious
principles which are true, and which ought to be com-
municated in the most effectual manner, the next ques-
tion which arises seems to be, at what age and in what
manner these ought to be inculcated? That it ought to
be at an early period we have both the example and the
command of Christ; for he himself attended his parents
in their annual public devotions at Jerusalem during his
wn infancy; and afterwards in his public ministration
P
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96
ANALOGY OF RELIGION
encouragingly said, "Suffer little children to come unto
But here conceding, for the sake of argument, what
yet cannot be conceded, that some good reasons may be
brought in favour of delay; allowing that such impres-
sions as are communicated early may not be very deep;
allowing them even to become totally effaced by the sub-
sequent corruptions of the heart and of the world; still
I would illustrate the importance of early infusing reli-
gious knowledge, by an allusion drawn from the power
of early habit in human learning. Put the case, for in-
stance, of a person who was betimes initiated in the ru-
diments of classical studies. Suppose him after quitting
school to have fallen, either by a course of idleness or of
vulgar pursuits, into a total neglect of study. Should
this person at any future period happen to be called to
some profession, which would oblige him, as we say, to
rub up his Greek and Latin; his memory still retaining
the unobliterated though faint traces of his early pursuits,
he will be able to recover his neglected learning with less
difficulty than he could now begin to learn; for he is not
again obliged to set out with studying the simple elements;
they come back on being pursued; they are found on being
searched for; the decayed images assume shape, and
strength, and colour; he has in his mind firs: principles
to which to recur; the rules of grammar which he has
allowed himself to violate, he has not however forgotten;
he will recall neglected ideas, he will resume slighted
habits far more easily than he could now begin to acquire
new ones. I appeal to Clergymen who are called to al~
tend the dying beds of such as have been bred in gross
and stupid ignorance of religion, for the justness of this
comparison. Do they not find that these unhappy people
have no ideas in common with them? that they possess
no intelligible medium by which to make themselves un-
derstood? that the persons to whom they are addressing
themselves have no first principles to which they can be
referred? that they are ignorant not only of the science,
but the language of Christianity?
me."
But at worst, whatever be the event to the child, though
în general we are encouraged, from the tenor of Scrip-
WITH HUMAN LEARNING.
97
ture and the course of experience, to hope that that event
would be favourable, is it nothing for the parent to have
acquitted himself of his prime duty? And will not the
parent who so acquits himself, with better reason and
more lively hope, supplicate the Father of mercies for
the reclaiming of a prodigal, who has wandered out of
that right path in which he had set him forward, than for
the conversion of a neglected creature, to whose feet the
Gospel had never been offered as a light? And how dif-
ferent will be the dying reflections even of that parent
whose earnest endeavours have been unhappily defeated
by the subsequent and voluntary perversion of his child,
from his who will reasonably aggravate his pangs by trans-
ferring the sins of his neglected child to the number of
his own transgressions.
And to such well-intentioned but ill-judging parents as
really wish their children to be hereafter pious, but er-
roneously withhold instruction till the more advanced pe-
riod prescribed by the great master of splendid paradox-
es* shall arrive; who can assure them that while they are
withholding the good seed, the great and ever vigilant.
enemy, who assiduously seizes hold on every opportuni-
ty which we neglect, may not be stocking the fallow
ground with tares? Nay, who in this fluctuating scene of
things can be assured, even if this were not certainly to
be the case, that to them the promised period ever shall
arrive at all? Who shall ascertain to them that their now
neglected child shall certainly live to receive the delayed
instruction? Who can assure them that they themselves.
will live to communicate it?
Car
It is almost needless to observe that parents who are
indifferent about religion, much more those who treat it
with scorn, are not likely to be anxious on this subject;
it is therefore the attention of religious parents which is
here chiefly called upon; and the more so, as there seems,
on this point, an unaccountable negligence in many of
these, whether it arise from indolence, false principles,
or whatever other motive.
But independent of knowledge, it is something, nay,
let philosophers say what they will, it is much, to give
* Rousseau
1
98
ANALOGY OF RELIGION
youth prepossessions in favour of religion, to secure their
prejudices on its side before you turn them adrift into the
world; a world in which, before they can be completely
armed with arguments and reasons, they will be assailed
by numbers whose prepossessions and prejudices, far
more than their arguments and reasons, attach them to
the other side.
Why should not the Christian youth furnish himself
in a good cause with the same natural armour which the
enemies of religion wear in a bad one? It is certain that
to set out with sentiments in favour of the religion of our
country is no more an error or a weakness, than to grow
up with a fondness for our country itself. Nay, if the
love of our country be judged a fair principle, surely a
Christian, who is "a citizen of no mean city," may lawfully
have his attachments too. If patriotism be an honest pre-
judice, Christianity is not a servile one. Nay, let us
teach the youth to hug his prejudices rather than to ac-
quire that versatile and accommodating citizenship of the
world, by which he may be an Infidel in Paris, a Papist at
Rome, and a Mussulman at Cairo.
Let me not be supposed so to elevate politics, or so to
depress religion, as to make any comparison of the value
of the one with the other, when I observe, that between
the true British patriot and the true Christian, there will
be this common resemblance the more deeply each of
them inquires, the more will he be confirmed in his re-
spective attachment, the one to his country, the other to
his religion. I speak with reverence of the immeasura-
ble distance; but the more the one presses on the firm
arch of our constitution, and the other on that of Christia-
nity, the stronger he will find them both. Each challenges
scrutiny; each has nothing to dread but from shallow po-
liticians, and shallow philosophers; in each intimate know-
ledge justifies prepossession; in each investigation con-
firms attachment.
If we divide the human being into three component
parts, the bodily, the intellectual, and the spiritual, is it
not reasonable that a portion of care and attention be as-
signed to each in some degree adequate to its importance?
Should I venture to say a due portion, a portion adapted
Kdy
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WITH HUMAN LEARNING.
99
to the real comparative value of each, would not that con-
demn in one word the whole system of modern education?
Yet the rational and intellectual part being avowedly more
valuable than the bodily, while the spiritual and immortal
part exceeds even the intellectual still more than that sur-
passes what is corporeal; is it then acting according to
the common rules of proportion; is it acting on the prin-
ciples of distributive justice; is it acting with that good
sense and right judgment with which the ordinary busi-
ness of this world is usually transacted, to give the larger
proportion of time and care to that which is worth the
least? Is it fair that what relates to the body and the or-
gans of the body, I mean those accomplishments which
address themselves to the eye and the car, should occupy
almost the whole thoughts; that the intellectual part should
be robbed of its due proportion, and that the spiritual part
should have almost no proportion at all? Is not this pre-
paring your children for an awful disappointment in the
tremendous day when they shall be stripped of that body,
of those senses and organs, which have been made almost
the sole objects of their attention, and shall feel themselves
left in possession of nothing but that spiritual part which
in education was scarcely taken into the account of their
existence?
Surely it should be thought a reasonable compromise
(and I am in fact undervaluing the object for the impor-
tance of which I plead) to suggest, that at least two-thirds
of that time which is now usurped by externals, should
be restored to the rightful owners, the understanding and
the heart; and that the acquisition of religious know-
ledge in early youth, should at least be no less an object of
sedulous attention than the cultivation of human learning
or of outward embellishments. It is also reasonable to
suggest, that we should in Christianity, as in arts, scien-
ces, or languages, begin with the beginning, set out with
the simple elements, and thus "go on unto perfection."
Why in teaching to draw do you begin with straight
lines and curves, till by gentle steps the knowledge of
outline and proportion be attained, and your picture be
completed; never losing sight, however, of the clemén-
tary lines and curves? why in music do you set out with
Ja
roo
ANALOGY OF RELIGION
K
W
the simple notes, and pursue the acquisition through all
its progress, still in every stage recurring to the notes ?
why in the science of numbers do you invent the simplest
methods of conveying just ideas of computation, still re-
ferring to the tables which involve the fundamental rules?
why in the science of quantity do men introduce the pupil
at first to the plainest diagrams, and clear up one difficulty
before they allow another to appear? why in teaching lan-
guages to the youth do you sedulously infuse into his mind
the rudiments of syntax? why in parsing is he led to re-
fer every word to its part of speech, to resolve every sen-
tence into its clements, to reduce every term to its origi-
nal, and from the first case of nouns, and the first tense of
verbs, to explain their formations, changes, and dependen-
cies, till the principles of language become so grounded,
that, by continually recurring to the rules, the speaking
and writing correctly are fixed into a habit? why all this,
but because you uniformly wish him to be grounded in
cach of his acquirements? why, but because you are per-
suaded that a slight, and slovenly, and superficial, and ir-
regular way of instruction, will never train him to excel-
lence in any thing?
"
Do young persons then become musicians, and paint-
ers, and linguists, and mathematicians, by early study and
regular labour; and shall they become Christians by ac-
cident? or rather, is not this acting on that very princi-
ple of Dogberry, at which you probably have often laugh-
ed? Is it not supposing that religion, like "reading
and writing, comes by nature?" Shall all those accom-
plishments "which perish in the using" be so assiduous-
ly, so systematically taught? Shall all these habits be so
carefully formed, so persisted in, as to be interwoven with
our very make, so as to become as it were a part of our-
selves, and shall that knowledge which is to make us
"wise unto salvation" be picked up at random, cursorily,
or perhaps not picked up at all? Shall that difficult di-
vine science which requires "line upon line, and pre-
cept upon precept," here a little and there a little; which
parents, even under a darker dispensation, were required
"to teach their children diligently, and to talk of it when
they sat down in their house, and when they walked by
CU
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101
ور
the way, and when they lay down, and when they rose up ;
shall this knowledge be by Christian parents deferred, or
taught slightly; or be superseded by things of little com-
parative worth?
A
see
Shall the lively period of youth, the soft and impressi-
ble season when lasting habits are formed, when the seal
cuts deep into the yielding wax, and the impression is
more likely to be clear and strong; shall this warm and
favourable season be suffered to slide by, without being
turned to the great purpose for which not only youth, but
life, and breath, and being, were bestowed? Shall not that
"faith without which it is impossible to please God;"
shall not that "holiness without which no man can
the Lord;" shall not that knowledge which is the foun-
dation of faith and practice; shall not that charity without
which all knowledge is sounding brass and a tinkling cym-
bal, be impressed, be inculcated, be inforced, as early, as
constantly, as fundamentally, with the same carnest push-
ing on to continual progress, with the same constant re-
ference to first principles, as are used in the case of those
arts which merely adorn human life? Shall we not seize
the happy period when the memory is strong, the mind
and all its powers vigorous and active, the imagination
busy and all alive, the heart flexible, the temper ductile,
the conscience tender, curiosity awake, fear powerful,
hope eager, love ardent; for inculcating that knowledge,
and impressing those principles which are to form the
character, and fix the destination for eternity?
·
Or, if I may be allowed to address another and a still
more dilatory class, who are for procrastinating all con-
cern about religion till we are driven to it by actual dis-
tress, like the sailor who said, "he thought it was always
time enough to begin to pray when the storm began.”
Of these I would ask, shall we, with an unaccountable de-
liberation, defer our anxiety about religion till the man and
woman are become so immersed in the cares of life, or so
entangled in its pleasures, that they will have little heart
or spirit to embrace a new principle? a principle whose
precise object it will be to condemn that very life into
which they have already embarked; pay to condemn al-
most all that they have been doing and thinking ever since
:
102
ANALOGY OF RELIGION
J
they began to act or think? Shall we, I say, begin now?
or shall we suffer those instructions, to receive which re-
quires all the concentrated powers of a strong and healthy
mind, to be put off till the day of excruciating pain, till the
period of debility and stupefaction? Shall we wait for
that season, as if it were the most favourable for religious
acquisitions, when the senses shall have been palled by
excessive gratification, when the eye shall be tired with
seeing, and the ear with hearing? Shall we, when the
whole man is breaking up by disease or decay, expect that
the dim apprehension will discern a new science, or the
obtuse feelings delight themselves with a new pleasure?
a pleasure too, not only incompatible with many of the bi-
therto indulged pleasures, but one which carries with it
a strong intimation that those pleasures terminate in the
death of the soul.
But, not to lose sight of the important analogy on
which we have already dwelt so much; how preposter-
ous would it seem to you'to hear any one propose to an
illiterate dying man, to set about learning even the plain-
est and easiest rudiments of any new art; to study the
musical notes; to conjugate an auxiliary verb; to learn,
not the first problem in Euclid, but even the numeration
table; and yet you do not think it absurd to postpone re-
ligious instruction, on principles which, if admitted at
all, must terminate either in ignorance, or in your propo-
sing too late to a dying man to begin to learn the totally
unknown scheme of Christianity. You do not think it
impossible that he should be brought to listen to the
"voice of this charmer," when he can no longer listen to
"the voice of singing men and singing women." You
do not think it unreasonable that immortal beings should
delay to devote their days to Heaven, till they have " no
pleasure in them" themselves. You will not bring them
to offer up the first fruits of their lips, and hearts, and
lives, to their Maker, because you persuade yourselves
that he who has called himself a " jealous God," may
however be contented hereafter with the wretched sacri-
fice of decayed appetites, and the worthless leavings of
almost extinguished affections,
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103
For one cannot believe that there is scarcely any one,
except he be a decided infidel, who does not consider re-
ligion as at least a good reversionary thing; as an object.
which ought always to occupy a little remote corner of his
map of life; the study of which, though it is always to
be postponed, is however not to be finally rejected; which,
though it cannot conveniently come into his present
scheme of life, it is intended somehow or other to take
up before death. This awful deception arises, partly
from the bulk which the objects of time and sense acquire
in our eyes by their nearness; while the invisible reali-
ties of eternity are but faintly discerned by a feeble faith,
through a dim and distant medium; and partly from a
totally false idea of the nature of Christianity, from a fa-
tal fancy that we can repent at any future period, and that
as amendment will always be in our own power, it will
be time enough to think of reforming our life, when we
should only think of closing it.
3
But depend upon it, that a heart long hardened, I do
not mean by gross vices merely, but by a fondness for the
world, by an habitual and excessive indulgence in the
pleasures of scnse, is by no means in a favourable state to
admit the light of divine truth, or to reccive the impres-
sions of divine grace. God indeed sometimes shows us
by an act of his sovereignty, that this wonderful change,
the conversion of a sinner's heart, may be produced with-
out the intervention of human means, to show that the
work is HIS. But as this is not the way in which the
Almighty usually deals with his creatures, it would be
nearly as preposterous for men to act on this presump-
tion, as it would be to take no means for the preservation
of our lives, because Jesus Christ raised Lazarus from
the dead.
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1997
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}
CHAPTER XI.
On the manner of instructing young persons in Religion. General
remarks on the genius of Christianity.
I WOULD now with great deference address those res-
pectable characters who are really concerned about the
best interests of their children; those to whom Chris-
tianity is indeed an important consideration, but whose
habits of life have hindered them from giving it its due
degree in the scale of education.
Begin then with considering that religion is a part, and
the most prominent part, in your system of instruction.
Do not communicate its principles in a random, desultory
way; nor scantily stint this business to only such scraps
and remnants of time as may be casually picked up from
the gleanings of other acquirements.
"Will you bring
to God for a sacrifice that which costs you nothing?"
Let the best part of the day, which with most people
is the earliest part, be steadily and invariably dedicated
to this work by your children, before they are tired with
their other studies, while the intellectis clear, the spirits
light, and the attention unfatigued.
Confine not your instructions to mere verbal rituals.
and dry systems; but instruct them in a way which shall
interest their feelings; by lively images, and by a warm
practical application of what they read to their own hearts
and circumstances. There seems to be no good reason
that while every other thing is to be made amusing, reli-
gion alone must be dry and uninviting. Do not fancy
that a thing is good merely because it is dull. Why
should not the most entertaining powers of the mind be
supremely consecrated to that subject which is most wor-
thy of their full exercise? The misfortune is, that reli-
gious learning is too often rather considered as an act of
the memory than of the heart and feelings; and that
children are turned over to the dry work of getting by
rote as a task that which they should get from example
and animated conversation. Teach them rather, as their
blessed Saviour taught, by interesting parables, which
while they corrected the heart, left some exercise for the
ingenuity in their solution, and for the feelings in their
|
ON THE MANNER OF, &c.
105
application. Teach, as He taught, by seizing on sur-
rounding objects, passing events, local circumstances, pe-
culiar characters, apt allusions, just analogy, appropriate
illustration. Call in all creation, animate and inanimate,
to your aid, and accustom your young audience to
Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
Do, according to your measure of ability, what the Holy
Spirit which indited the Scriptures has done, always take
the sensibility of the learner into your account of the fa-
culties which are to be worked upon. "For the doc-
trines of the Bible," as the profound and enlightened
Bacon observes, "are not proposed to us in a naked logi-
cal form, but arrayed in the most beautiful and striking
colours which creation affords." By those illustrations
used by him "who knew what was in man," and there-
fore best knew how to address him, it was, that the unlet-
tered audiences of Christ and his Apostles were enabled
both to comprehend and relish doctrines, which would
not readily have made their way to their understandings,
had they not first touched their hearts; and which would
have found access to neither the one nor the other, hac
they been delivered in dry, scolastic disquisitions. Now
these audiences not being learned, may be supposed to
have been nearly in the state of children, as to their re-
ceptive faculties, and to have required nearly the same
sort of instruction; that is, they were more capable of
being affected with what was simple, and touching, and
lively, than what was elaborate, abstruse, and unaffecting..
Heaven and earth were made to furnish their contribu-
tion, when man was to be taught that science which was
to make him wise unto salvation. If that be the purest
eloquence which most persuades, then no eloquence is
so powerful as that of Scripture; and an intelligent
Christian teacher will be admonished by the mode of
Scripture itself, how to communicate its truths with life
and spirit; "while he is musing, the fire burns ;" that
are which will preserve him from an insipid and freezing
mode of instruction. He will moreover, like his great
Master, always carefully keep up a quick sense of the
shai
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106
ON THE MANNER OF
!
-
personal interest the pupil has in every religious instruc-
tion which is impressed upon him. He will teach as
Paul prayed," with the spirit, and with the understanding
also ;" and in imitating this great model he will necessa-
rily avoid the opposite faults of two different sort of in-
structors for while some of our divines of the higher
class have been too apt to preach as if mankind had only
intellect, and the lower and more popular sort as if they
had only passions, do you borrow what is good from both,
and address your pupils as beings compounded of both
understanding and affections.*
<<
Fancy not that the Bible is too difficult and intricate to
be presented in its own naked form, and that it puzzles
and bewilders the youthful understanding. In all need-
ful and indispensable points of knowledge the darkness of
Scripture, as a great Christian philosophert has observ-
ed, is but a partial darkness, like that of Egypt, which
benighted only the enemies of God, while it left his chil-
dren in clear day." And if it be really the appropriate
character of Scripture, as it tells us itself that it is, "to
enlighten the eyes of the blind," and "to make wise the
simple," then it is as well calculated for the youthful and
uninformed as for any other class; and as it was never
expected that the greater part of Christians should be
learned, so is learning, though of inestimable value in a
teacher of thcology, no essential qualification for a com-
mon Christian; for which reason Scripture truths are
expressed with that clear and simple evidence adapted to
the kind of assent which they require. He who could bring
an unprejudiced heart and an unperverted will would bring
to the Scriptures the best qualification for understanding
and receiving them. And though they contain things
which the pupil cannot comprehend, (as what ancient
1
* The zeal and diligence with which the Bishop of London's weekly
lectures have been attended by persons of all ranks and descriptions,
but more especially by that class to whom this little work is addressed,
is a very promising circumstance for the age. And while one considers
with pleasure the advantages peculiarly to be derived by the young frona
so interesting and animated an exposition of the Gospel, one is further
led to rejoice at the countenance given by such high authority to the re-
vival of that excellent, but too much neglected, practice of lectures.
† Mr. Boyle.
2
1
1
INSTRUCTING IN RELIGION.
107
poet, historian, or orator does not,) the teacher may ad-
dress to him the words which Christ addressed to Peter,
"What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know
hereafter."
Young people who have been taught religion in a dry
and superficial way, who have had all its drudgeries and
none of its pleasures, will probably have acquired so lit-
tle relish for it, as to consider the continued prosecution
of their religious studies as a badge of their tutelage, as
a mark that they are still under subjection; and will look
forward with impatience to the hour of their emancipa-
tion from the lectures on Christianity. They will long
for the period when its lessons shall cease to be deliver-
ed; will conclude that, having once attained such an age,
and arrived at the required proficiency, the object will be
accomplished, and the labour at an end. But let not your
children "so learn Christ." Apprize them, that no spe-
cific day will ever arrive on which they shall say, I have
attained; but inform them, that every acquisition must
be followed up; knowledge must be increased; prejudi-
ces subdued; good habits rooted; evil ones eradicated;
dispositions strengthened; principles confirmed; till,
going on from strength to strength, they come "to the
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."
But though serious instruction will not only be unin-
teresting but irksome if conveyed to youth in a mere di-
dactic way, yet if their affections are suitably engaged,
their hearts, so far from necessarily revolting, as some
insist they will, often receive the most solemn truths with
alacrity. It is the manner which revolts them, and not
the thing.
As it is notorious that men of wit and imagination have
been the most formidable enemies to Christianity; while
men, in whom those talents have been consecrated to
God, have been some of her most useful champions, take
particular care to press that ardent and ever-active pow-
er, the imagination, into the service of religion; this
bright and busy faculty will be leading its possessor into
perpetual peril, and is an enemy of peculiar potency till
it come to be employed in the cause of God. It is a li-
on, which though worldly prudence indeed may chain so
wh
<<<
no
K 2
108
ON THE MANNER OF
?
as to prevent outward mischief, yet the malignity remains
within; but when sanctified by Christianity, the imagi-
nation is a lion tamed; you have all the benefit of its
strength and its activity, divested of its mischief. God
never bestowed that noble but restless. faculty, without in-
tending it to be an instrument of his own glory; though
it has been too often set up in rebellion against him: be-
cause, in its youthful stirrings, while all alive to evil, it
has not been seized upon to fight for its rightful Sove-
reign, but was early enlisted with little opposition under
the banners of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Reli-
gion is the only subject in which, under the guidance of
an holy and sober-minded prudence, this discursive fa-
culty can safely stretch its powers and expand its ener-
gies. But let it be remembered, that it must be a sound
and genuine Christianity which can alone so chastise and
regulate the imagination, as to restrain it from those er-
rors and excesses into which a false, a mistaken, an ir-
regular religion, has too often plunged its injudicious.
and ill-instructed professor. To secure the imagination
therefore on the safe side, and, if I may change the me-
taphor, to put it under the direction of its true pilot in
the stormy voyage of life, is like engaging those potent
elements, the wind and tide, in your favour.
I
❤
-
GŲ
In your communications with young people, take care
to convince them that as religion is not a business to be
laid aside with the lesson, so neither is it a single branch
of duty; some detached thing, which like an art or a
language is to be practised separately, and to have its
distinct periods and modes of operation. But let them
understand, that common acts, by the spirit in which,
they are to be performed, are to be made acts of religion,
that Christianity may be considered as having something
of that influence over the conduct which external grace
has over the manners; for as it is not the performance of
some particular act which denominates any one to be
graceful, grace being a spirit diffused through the whole
system which animates every sentiment, and informs.
every action; as she who has true personal grace has it
uniformly, and is not sometimes awkward and sometimes
elegant; does not sometimes lay it down and sometimes
INSTRUCTING IN RELIGION.
109
take it up; so religion is not an occasional act, but an
indwelling principle, an inwrought habit, a pervading
and informing spirit, from which indeed every act derives
all its life, and energy, and beauty.
Give them clear views of the broad discrimination be-
tween practical religion and worldly morality. Show them
that no good qualities are genuine but such as flow from
the religion of Christ. Let them learn that the virtues
which the better sort of people, who yet are destitute of
true Christianity, inculcate and practise, resemble those
virtues which have the love of God for their motive, just
as counterfeit coin resembles sterling gold; they may
have, it is true, certain points of resemblance with the
others; they may be bright and shining; they have per-
haps the image and the superscription, but they ever
want the true distinguishing properties; they want ster-
ling value, purity, and weight. They may indeed pass.
current in the traffic of this world, but when brought to
the touchstone, they will be found full of alloy; when
weighed in the balance of the sanctuary, "they will be
found wanting;" they will not stand that final trial which
is to separate the precious from the vile;" they will
not “abide the day of his coming who is likę a refiner's
fire."
One error into which even some good people are apt to
fall, is that of endeavouring to deceive young minds by
temporising expedients. In order to allure them to be
come religious, they exhibit false, or faint, or inadequate
views of Christianity; and while they represent it as it
really is, as a life of superior happiness and advantage,
they conceal its difficulties, and like the Jesuitical Chi-
nese missionaries, extenuate, or sink, or deny, such
parts of it as are least alluring to human pride. But be-
sides that, the project fails with them as it did with the
Jesuits; all fraud is bad; and a pious fraud is a contra¬
diction in terms which ought to be buried in the rubbish
of papal desolation.
Instead of representing to the young Christian that it
may be possible by a prudent ingenuity at once to pursue,
with equal ardour and success, worldly fame and eternal
glory, would it not be more honest to tell him fairly and
Mo
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110
ON THE MANNER OF
F
unambiguously that there are two distinct roads, between
which there is a broad boundary line? that there are two
irreconcileable interests; that he must forsake the one if
he would cleave to the other? that there are two sorts of
characters at eternal variance? that nothing short of ab-
solute decision can make a confirmed Christian? Point
out the different sorts of promises annexed to these dif
ferent sorts of characters. Confess in the language of
Christ how the man of the world often obtains (and it is
the natural course of human things) the recompense hé
sedulously seeks. "Verily I say unto you they have their
reward." Explain the beatitudes on the other hand, and
unfold what kind of specific reward is there individually
promised to its concomitant virtue. Show your pupil
that to that "poverty of spirit" to which the kingdom of
heaven is promised, it would be inconsistent to expect
that the recompense of human commendation should be
also attached; that to that "purity of heart" to which
the beatific vision is annexed, it would be unreasonable
to suppose you can unite the praise of licentious wits, or
the admiration of a catch club. These will be bestowed
on their appropriate and corresponding merits. Do not
enlist them under false colours. Different sorts of re-
wards are attached to different sorts of services; and
while you truly assert that religion's ways are 40 ways of
'pleasantness, and all her paths are peace," take care
that you do not lead them to depend too exclusively on
worldly happiness and earthly peace, for these make no
part of the covenant; they may be superadded, but they
were never stipulated in the contract.
But if, in order to attract the young to a religious
course, you disingenuously conceal its difficulties, while
you are enlarging upon its pleasures, you will tempt them
to distrust the truth of Scripture itself. For what will
they think, not only of a few detached texts, but of the
general cast and colour of the Gospel when contrasted
with your representation of it? What notion will they
conceive of "the strait gait" and "narrow way
" of the
amputation of a "right hand?" of the excision of a "right
eye ?" of the other strong metaphors by which the Chris-
tían warfare is shadowed out? of "crucifying the flesh ?”
INSTRUCTING IN RELIGION.
of "mortifying the old man?" of "dying unto sin?" of
"overcoming the world?" Do you not think their mcek
and compassionate Saviour who died for your children
loved them as well as you love them? And if this were
his language, ought it not to be yours? It is the language
of true love. of that love with which a merciful God
loved the world, when he spared not his own Son. Do
not then try to conceal from them, that the life of a
Christian is necessarily opposite to the life of the world;
and do not seek, by a vain attempt at accommodation, to
reconcile that difference which Christ himself has pro-
nounced to be irreconcileable.
May it not be partly owing to the want of a due intro-
duction to the knowledge of the real nature and spirit of
religion, that so many young Christians, who set out in a
fair and flourishing way, decline and wither when they
come to perceive the requisitions of experimental Chris-
tianity requisitions which they had not suspected of ma-
king any part of the plan.
People are no more to be cheated into religion than inte
learning. The same spirit which influences your oath in
a court of justice should influence your discourse in that
court of equity-your family. Your children should be
told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
It is unnecessary to add, that it must be done gradually and
discreetly. We know whose example we have for post-
poning that which the mind is not yet prepared to receive:
"I have many things yet to say to you, but ye cannot
bear them now." Accustom them to reason by analogy.
Explain to them that great worldly attainments are never
made without great sacrifices; that the merchant cannot
become rich without industry; the statesman eminent
without labour; the scholar learned without study; the
hero renowned without danger: would it not then, on
human principles, be unreasonable to think that the Chris-
tian alone should obtain a triumph without a warfare? the
highest prize with the lowest cxertions? an eternal crown
without a present cross? and that heaven is the only re-
ward which the idle may reckon upon? No: though sal-
vation "be the gift of God,” yet it must be worked out?
Convince your young friends, however, that in this case
V
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La
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112
ON THE GENIUS
the difficulty bears no proportion to the prize; though in
one respect the point of resemblance fails, and that most
advantageously for the Christian; for while, even by the
most probable means, which are the union of talents with
diligence, no human prosperity can be insured to the
worldly candidate; while the most successful adventurer
may fail by the fault of another; while the best concerted
project ofthe statesman may be crushed; the bravest hero
lose the battle; the brightest genius fail of getting bread;
and while, moreover, the pleasure arising from success in
these may be no sooner tasted than it is poisoned by a more
prosperous rival; the persevering Christian is safe and
certain of attaining his object: no misfortunes can defeat
his hope; no competition can endanger his success; for
though another gain, he will not lose. Nay, the success
of another, so far from diminishing his gain, is an addi-
tion to it; the more he diffuses, the richer he grows;
and that mortal hour which cuts off for ever the hopes of
worldly men, crowns and consummates his.
Beware at the same time of setting up any act of self-
denial or mortification as the procuring cause of salvation.
This would be a presumptuous project to purchase that
eternal life which is declared to be the "free gift of God.”
This would be to send your children, not to the Gospel to
learn their Christianity, but to the Monks and Acetics of
the middle ages; it would be sending them to Peter the
Hermit, and the holy fathers of the Desert, and not to Pe-
ter the Apostle and his Divine Master. Mortification is
not the price; it is nothing more than the discipline of a
soul of which sin is the disease, the diet prescribed by the
great physician. Without this guard the young devout
Christian would be led to fancy that abstinence, pilgri-
mage, and penance might be adopted as the cheap substi-
tute for the subdued desire, the conquered temptation,
and the obedient will; and would be almost in as much
danger, on the one hand, of self-righteousness arising from
austerities and mortification, as she would be, on the other,
from self-gratification in the indulgences of the world.
And while you carefully impress on her the necessity of
living a life of strict obedience if she would please God,
do not neglect to remind her also that a complete renun-
OF CHRISTIANITY.
113
ciation of her own performances as a ground of merit
purchasing the favour of God by their own intrinsic worth
is included in that obedience.
It is of the last importance, in stamping on young minds
a true impression of the genius of Christianity, to possess
them with a conviction that it is the purity of the motive
which not only give worth and beauty, but which, in a
Christian sense, gives life and soul to the best action: nay,
that while a right intention will be acknowledged and ac-
cepted at the final judgment, even without the act, the act
itself will be disowned which wanted the basis of a pure
design. "Thou didst well that it was in thy heart to
build me a temple," said the Almighty to that Monarch
whom yet he permitted not to build it. How many splen-
did actions will be rejected in the great day of retribution,
to which statues and monuments have been raised on earth,
while their almost deified authors shall be as much con-
founded at their own unexpected reprobation, as at the
acceptance of those "whose life the world counted mad-
ness." "Depart from me, I never knew you," is not the
malediction denounced on the sceptic or the scoffer, but
on the unfruitful worker of "miracles," on the unsancti-
fied utterer of "prophecies;" for even acts of piety want-
ing the purifying principle, however they may dazzle men,
offend God. Cain sacrificed, Balaam prophecied, Rosseau
wrote the most sublime panegyric on the Son of Mary,
VOLTAIRE BUILT A CHURCH! nay, so superior was hi s
affectation of sanctity, that he ostentatiously declared, that
while others were raising churches to Saints, there was
one man at least who would erect his church to God: that
God whose altars he was overthrowing, whose name he
was villifying, whose gospel he was exterminating, and
the very name of whose Son he had solemnly pledged him-
self to blot from the face of the earth!
Though it is impossible here to enumerate all those
Christian virtues which should be impressed in the pro-
gress of a Christian education, yet in this connexion I can-
not forbear mentioning one which more immediately grows
out of the subject; and to remark that the principle which
should be the invariable concomitant of all instruction, and
especially of religious instruction, is humility. As this tem-
peris inculcated in every page of the Gospel; as it is deduci-
<
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:
;
}
114
ON THE GENIUS
ble from every precept and every action of Christ; that
is a sufficient intimation that it should be made to grow
out of every study, that it should be grafted on every ac-
quisition. It is the turning point, the leading principle
indicative of the very genius of Christianity. This chas-
tising quality should therefore be constantly made in edu-
cation to operate as the only counteraction of that "know-
ledge which puffeth up." Youth should be taught that
as humility is the discriminating characteristic of our re-
ligion, therefore a proud Christian, a haughty disciple of
a crucified Master, furnishes perhaps a stronger opposition
in terms than the whole compass of language can exhibit.
They should be taught that humility being the appropi-
ate grace of Christianity, is what makes Christian and Pa-
gan virtues essentially different. The virtues of the Ro-
mans, for instance, were obviously founded in pride; as a
proof of this, they had not even a word in their copious
language to express humility, but what was used in a bad
sense, and conveyed the idea of meanness or vileness. Chris-
tianity so stands on its own single ground, is so far from
assimilating itself to the spirit of other religions, that, un-
like the Roman Emperor, who though he would not be-
come a Christian, yet ordered that the image of Christ
should be set up in the Pantheon with those of the hea-
then gods, and be worshipped in common with them;
Christianity not only rejects all such partnerships with
other religions, but it pulls down their images, defaces
their temples, tramples on their honours, founds its own
existence on the ruins of spurious religions and spurious
virtues, and will be every thing when it is admitted to be
any thing.
Will it be going too much out of the way to observe,
that Christian Britain retaliates upon Pagan Rome? For
if the former used humility in a bad sense, has not the
latter learnt to use pride in a good one? May we, with-
out impertinence, venture to remark, that, in the delibe-
rations of as honourable and upright political assemblics
as ever adorned, or, under Providence, upheld a country;
in orations which leave us nothing to envy in Attic or
Roman eloquence in their best days; it were to be wished
that we did not borrow from Rome an epithet which suit-
พ
OF CHRISTIANITY.
113
ed the genius of her religion, as much as it militates against
that of ours? The panegyrist of the battle of Marathon,
of Platea, or of Zama, might with propriety speak of a
"proud day," or a "proud event," or a "proud success."
But surely the Christian encomiast of the battle of the
Nile may, from their abundance, select an epithet better ·
appropriated to such a victory-a victory which, by pre-
serving Europe, has perhaps preserved that religion
which sets its foot on the very neck of pride, and in which
the conqueror himself, even in the first ardors of triumphs,
forgot not to ascribe the victory to ALMIGHTY GOD. Let
us leave to the enemy both the term and the thing; ar-
ogant words being the only weapons in which we must
ever vail to their decided superiority.
A
Above all things then you should beware that your pu-
pils do not take up with a vague, general, and undefined
religion; but look to it that their Christianity be really
the religion of Christ. Instead of slurring over the doc-
trines of the Cross, as disreputable appendages to our re-
ligion, which are to be got over as well as we can, but
which are never to be dwelt upon, take care to make these
your fundamental articles. Do not explain away these
doctrines, and by some elegant periphrasis hint at a Sa-
viour, instead of making him the foundation stone of
your system. Do not convey primary, and plain, and
awful, and indispensable truths elliptically, I mean as
something that is to be understood without being express-
ed; nor study fashionable circumlocutions to avoid names
and things on which our salvation hangs, in order to pre-
vent your discourse from being offensive. Persons who
are thus instructed in religion with more good breeding
than seriousness and simplicity, imbibe a distaste for
plain scriptural language; and the Scriptures themselves
are so little in use with a certain fashionable class of rea-
ders, that when the doctrines and language of the Bible
occasionally occur in other authors, they present a sort of
novelty and peculiarity which offend; and such readers.
as disuse the Bible are apt to call that precise and puri-
tanical which is in fact sound and scriptural. Nay, it has
several times happened to the author to hear persons of
sense and learning ridicule insulated sentiments and ex-
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116
A SCHEME OF PRAYER.
J
pressions that have fallen in their way, which they would
have treated with decent respect had they known them
to be, as they really were, texts of Scripture. This ob-
servation is hazarded with a view to enforce the impor-
tance of early communicating religious knowledge, and
of infusing an early taste for Scripture phraseology.
The persons in question are apt to acquire a kind of
Pagan Christianity, which just enables them to hear with
complacency of the "Deity," of a "first cause," and of
"conscience." Nay, some may even go so far as to talk
of "the Founder of our religion," of the "Author of
Christianity," in general terms, as they would talk of the
prophet of Arabia, or the law-giver of China, of Athens,
or of the Jews. But their refined ears revolt not a little
at the unadorned name of Christ; and even the naked
and unqualified term of our Saviour, or Redeemer, car-
rics with it a quecrish, inelegant, not to say a suspicious
sound. They will express a serious disapprobation of
what is wrong under the moral term of vice, or the foren-
sic term of crime; but they are apt to think that the
Scripture term of sin has something fanatical in it: and,
while they discover a great respect for morality, they do
not much relish holiness, which is indeed the specific
morality of a Christian. They will speak readily of a
inan's reforming, or leaving off a vicious habit, or grow-
ing more correct in some individual practice; but the ex-
pression of a total change of heart, they would stigma-
tize as the very shibboleth of a sect, though it is the lan-
guage of a Liturgy they affect to admire, and of a Gos-
pel which they profess to receive.
A
T
S
CHAPTER XII
„Hints suggested for furnishing young persons with a scheme of prayer,
THOSE who are aware of the inestimable value of pray-
er themselves, will naturally be anxious not only that this
duty should be earnestly inculcated on their children, but
-
STRICTURES
ON THE
MODERN SYSTEM
OF
FEMALE EDUCATION.
WITH
A VIEW OF THE PRINCIPLES AND CONDUCT PREVALENT AMONG
WOMEN OF RANK AND FORTUNE.
BY HANNAH MORE.
K
May you so raise your character that you may help to make the next
age a better thing, and leave posterity in your debt, for the advantage it
shail receive by your example.
LORD HALIFAX.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
NEW-YORK:
PUBLISHED BY S. A. BURTUS, 19 PECK-SLIP, CORNER OF WATER-STREET
George Long, printer.
1813.
A SCHEME OF PRAYER.
117
!
that they should be taught it in the best manner; and
such parents need little persuasion or counsel on the sub-
ject. Yet children of decent and orderly (I will not say
of strictly religious) families are often so superficially in-
structed in this important business, that it is not unusual,
when they are asked what prayers they use, to answer,
"the Lord's Prayer and the Creed." And even some
who are better taught, are not always made to understand
with sufficient clearness the specific distinction between
the two; that the one is the confession of their faith,
and the other the model for their supplications. By this
confused and indistinct beginning, they set out with a per-
plexity in their ideas, which is not always completely
disentangled in more advanced life.
"
S
An intelligent mother will seize the first occasion
which the child's opening understanding shall allow, for
making a little course of lectures on the Lord's Prayer,
taking every division or short sentence separately; for
each furnishes valuable materials for a distinct lecture.
The child should be led gradually through every part of
this divine composition; she should be taught to break
it into all the regular divisions, into which indeed it so
naturally resolves itself. She should be made to com-
prehend one by one each of its short but weighty senten-
ces; to amplify and spread them out for the purpose of
better understanding. them, not in their most extensive
and critical, but in their most simple and obvious mean-
ing. For in those condensed and substantial expressions,
overy word is an ingot, and will bear beating out; so
that the teacher's difficulty will not so much be what she
shall say as what she shall suppress; so abundant is the
expository matter which this succinct pattern suggests.
When the child has a pretty good conception of the
meaning of each division, she should then be made to
observe the connexion, relation, and dependence of the
several parts of this prayer one upon another; for there
is great method and connexion in it. We pray that the
"kingdom of God may come," as the best means to
"hallow his name " and that by us, the obedient subjects
of this kingdom, "his will may be done." A judicious
interpreter will observe how logically and consequent-
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A SCHEME OF PRAYER.
#
ly one clause grows out of another, though she will
use neither the word logical nor consequence for all ex-
planations should be made in the most plain and familiar
terms, it being words, and not things, which commonly
perplex children, if, as it sometimes happens, the teach-
er, though not wanting sense, want perspicuity and sim
plicity.
The young person, from being made a complete mis-
tress of this short composition, (which as it is to be her
guide and model through life, too much pains cannot be
bestowed on it,) will have a clearer conception, not only
of its individual contents, but of prayer in general, than
many ever attain, though their memory has been perhaps
loaded with long and unexplained forms, which they have
been accustomed to swallow in the lump without scruti-
ny. Prayer should not be so swallowed. It is a regular
prescription, which should stand analysis and examina-
tion it is not a charm, the successful operation of which
depends on your blindly' taking it, without knowing what
is in it, and in which the good you receive is promoted
by your ignorance of its contents.
I would have it understood that by these little com-
ments, I do not mean that the child should be put to learn
dry, and to her, unintelligible, expositions; and here I
must remark in general, that the teacher is sometimes apt to
relieve herself at the child's expense, by loading the mem-
ory of a little creature on occasions in which far other fa-
culties should be put in exercise. The child herself
should be made to furnish a good part of the commentary
by her answers; in which answers she will be much assist-
ed by the judgment the teacher uses in her manner of
questioning. And the youthful understanding, when its
powers are properly set at work, will soon strengthen by
exercise so as to furnish reasonable if not very correct
answers.
Written forms of prayer are not only useful and pro-
per, but indispensably necessary. But I will hazard the
remark, that if children are thrown exclusively on the best
forms, if they are made to commit them to memory like
a copy of verses, and to repeat them in a dry, customary
way, they will produce little effect on their minds. They
A SCHEME OF PRAYER.
119
will not understand what they repeat, if we do not early
open to them the important scheme of prayer. Without
such an elementary introduction to this duty,they will after-
wards be either ignorant or enthusiasts, or both. Wc
should give them knowledge before we can expect them
to make much progress in piety, and as a due preparative
to it: Christian instruction in this resembling the sun,
who, in the course of his communications, gives light
before he gives heat. And to excite a spirit of devotion
without infusing that knowledge out of which it is to
grow, is practically reviving the popish maxim, that Igno-
rance is the mother of Devotion, and virtually adopting
the popish rule, of praying in an unknown tongue.
Children, let me again observe, will not attend to their
prayers if they do not understand them; and they will
not understand them, if they are not taught to analyse, to
dissect them, to know their component parts, and to me-
thodise them.
It is not enough to teach them to consider prayer un-
der the general idea that it is an application to God for
what they want, and an acknowledgment for what they
have. This, though true in the gross, is not sufficiently
precise and correct. They should learn to define and to
arrange all the different parts of prayer.
And as a pre-
parative to prayer itself, they should be impressed with
as clear an idea as the nature of the subject admits, of
"HIM with whom they have to do." His omnipresence
is perhaps, of all his attributes, that of which we may
make the first practical use, Every head of prayer is
founded on some great scriptural truths, which truths the
little analysis here suggested will materially assist to fix
in their minds.
KOJ
On the knowledge that "God is," that he is an infinite-
ly holy being, and that "he is the rewarder of all them
that diligently seck him," will be grounded the first part
of prayer, which is adoration. The creature devoting it-
self to the Creator, or self-dedication, next presents itself.
And if they are first taught that important truth, that as
needy creatures they want help, which may be done by
some easy analogy, they will easily be led to understand
how naturally petition forms a most considerable branch
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A SCHEME OF PRAYEH.
of prayer: and divine grace being among the things for
which they are to petition, this naturally suggests to the
mind the doctrine of the influences of the Spirit. And
when to this is added the conviction, which will be readi-
ly worked into an ingenious mind, that as offending crea-
tures they want pardon, the necessity of confession will
easily be made intelligible to them. But they should be
brought to understand that it must not be such a general
and vague confession as awakens no sense of personal
humiliation, as excites no recollection of their own more
peculiar and individual faults. But it must be a confes-
sion founded on self-knowledge, which is itself to arise
out of the practice of self-examination: for want of this
sort of discriminating habit, a well-meaning but ill-instruct-
ed girl may catch herself confessing the sins of some
other person, and omitting those which are more especi-
ally her own. On the gladness of heart natural to
youth, it will be less difficult to impress the delightful
duty of thanksgiving, which forms so considerable a
branch of prayer. In this they should be habituated to
recapitulate not only their general, but to enumerate their
peculiar, daily, and incidental mercies, in the same spe-
rific manner as they should have been taught to detail
their wants in the petitionary, and their faults in the con-
fessional part. The same warmth of feeling which will
more readily dispose them to express their gratitude to
God in thanksgiving, will also lead them more gladly to
express their love to their parents and friends, by adopting
another indispensable, and to an affectionate heart, pleas-
ing part of prayer, which is inter cession.
When they have been made, by a plain and perspicuous
mode of instruction, fully to understand the different
nature of all these; and when they clearly comprehend
that adoration, self-dedication, confession, petition, thanks-
giving, and intercession, are distinct heads, which must
not be involved in each other, you may exemplify the rules
by, pointing out to them these successive branches in any
well written form. And they will easily discern, that as-
cription of glory to that God to whom we owe so much,
and on whom we so entirely depend, is the conclusion
into which a Christian's prayer will naturally resolve it.
ht
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A SCHEME OF PRAYER.
121
It is hardly needful to remind the teacher that our truly
Scriptural Liturgy invariably furnishes the example of
presenting every request in the name of the great Medi-
ator. In the Liturgy too they will meet with the best
exemplifications of prayers, exhibiting separate speci-
mens of each of the distinct heads we have been suggest-
ing.
But in order that the minds of young persons may,
without labour or difficulty, be gradually brought into
such a state of preparation as to be benefited by such a
little course of lectures as we have recommended; they
should, from the time when they were first able to read,
have been employing themselves at their leisure hours,
in laying in a store of provision for their present de-
mands. And here the memory may be employed to
good purpose; for being the first faculty which is ripen-
ed, and which is indeed perfected when the others are
only beginning to unfold themselves, this is an intima-
tion of Providence that it should be the first seized on for the
best uses.
It should therefore be devoted to lay in a
stock of the more easy and devotional parts of Scripture.
The Psalms alone are an inexhaustible store-house of
rich materials.* Children whose minds have been early
well furnished from these, will be competent at nine or
ten years old to produce from them, and to select with
no contemptible judgment suitable examples of all the
parts of prayer; and will be able to extract and appropri-
ate texts under each respective head, so as to exhibit,
without help, complete specimens of every part of pray-
er. By confining them entirely to the sense, and nearly
to the words of Scripture, they will be preserved from
enthusiasm, from irregularity, and conceit. By being
obliged continually to apply for themselves, they will get
a habit in all their difficulties, of "searching the Scrip-
tures," which may be useful to them on future and more
*This will be so far from spoiling the cheerfulness, or impeding
the pleasures of childhood, that the author knows a little girl who, be-
fore she was seven years old, had learnt the whole Psalter throngh a
second time; and that without any diminution of uncommon gaiety of
spirits, or any interference with the elegant acquirements suited to ber
station.
1
1
1
122
A SCHEME OF PRAYER.
trying occasions. But I would confine them to the Bible;
for were they allowed with equal freedom to ransact
other books with a view to get helps to embellish
their little compositions, or rather compilations, they
might be tempted to pass off for their own what they pick
up from others, which might tend at once to make them
both vain and deceitful. This is a temptation to which
they are too much laid open when they get commended
for any pilfered passage with which they decorate their
little themes and letters. But in the present instance
there is no danger of any similar deception, for there is
such a sacred signature stamped on every Scripture phrase,
that the owner's name can never be defaced or torn off
from the goods, either by fraud or violence.
喜
​It would be well, if in those Psalms which children
were first directed to get by heart, an eye were had to
this their future application; and that they were employ-
ed, but that without any intimation of your subsequent
design, in learning such as may be best turned to this ac-
count. In the 139th the first great truth to be imprint-
ed on the young heart, as was before observed, is un-
folded with such a mixture of majestic grandeur, and
such an interesting variety of intimate and local circum-
stances, as is likely to seize on the quick and lively feel-
ings of youth. The awful idea that that Being whom
she is taught to reverence, is not only in general “ac-
quainted with all her ways," but that," he is about
her path, and about her bed," bestows such a sense of
real and present existence on him of whom she is apt to
conceive as having his distant habitation only in Heaven,
as will help her to realize the sense of his actual presence.
vours.
The 103d Psalm will open to the mind rich and abun-
dant sources of expression for gratitude and thanks-
giving, and it includes spiritual as well as temporal fa-
It illustrates the mercies of God, by familiar
and domestic images, of such peculiar tenderness and en-
dearment, as are calculated to strike upon every chord
of filial fondness in the heart of an affectionate child.
The 51st supplies an infinite variety of matter in what-
ever relates to confession of sin, or to supplication for
the aids of the Spirit. The 23d abounds with captivat
A SCHEME OF PRAYER.
123
ing expressions of the protecting goodness of their heav-
enly Father, conveyed by pastoral imagery of uncom-
mon sweetness: in short, the greater part of these beau-
tiful compositions overflow with materials for every head
of prayer.
m
The child who, while she was engaged in learning
these Scriptures, was not aware that there was any spe-
cific object to be answered by it, will afterwards feel an
unexpected pleasure arising from the application of her
petty labours, when she is called to draw out from her
little treasury of knowledge the stores she has been col-
lecting; and will be pleased to find that without any
fresh application to study, for she is now obliged to ex-
ercise a higher faculty than memory, she has lying ready
in her mind the materials with which she is now called
upon to work. Her judgment must be set about se-
lecting one or two, or more texts which shall contain
the substance of every specific head of prayer before no-
ticed; and it will be a farther exercise to her understand-
ing to concatenate the detached parts into one regular
whole, occasionally varying the arrangement as she likes;
that is, changing the order, sometimes beginning with
invocation, sometimes with confession; sometimes dwell-
ing longer on one part, sometimes on another. As the
hardships of a religious Sunday are often so pathetical-
ly pleaded, as making one of the heavy burdens of reli-
gion; and as the friends of religion are so often called
upon to mitigate its rigours, aight not such an exer-
cise as has been here suggested help to vary its occupa-
tions?
1
A
The habits of the pupil being thus early formed, her
memory, attention, and intellect being bent in a right
direction, and the exercise invariably maintained, may
one not reasonably hope that her affections also, through
divine grace, may become interested in the work, till
she will be enabled" to pray with the spirit and with
the understanding also?" She will now be qualified
to use a well composed form with scriousness and ad-
vantage; for she will now use it not mechanically, but
rationally. That which before appeared to her a mere
mass of good words, will now appear a significant com-
C
124
A SCHEME OF PRAYER.
position, exhibiting variety, and order, and beauty; and
she will have the farther advantage of being enabled by
her improved judgment to distinguish and select for her
own purpose such as are more judicious and more scrip-
tural.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
A
VIEW
OF THE
PRINCIPLES AND CONDUCT
/
PREVALENT AMONG
WOMEN OF RANK AND FORTUNE.
CHAPTER XIII.
The practical uses of female knowledge.-Sketch of the female char
racter. A comparative view of both sexes.
THE chief end to be proposed in cultivating the under-
standings of women, is to qualify them for the practical
purposes of life. Their knowledge is not often like the
learning of men, to be reproduced in some literary com-
position, nor ever in any learned profession; but it is to
come out in conduct. A lady studies, not that she may
qualify herself to become an orator or a pleader; not that
she may learn to debate, but to act. She is to read the
best books, not so much to enable her to talk of them, as
to bring the improvement which they furnish, to the rec-
tification of her principles, and the formation of her ha-
bits. The great uses of study are to enable her to regu-
late her own mind, and to be useful to others.
A
To woman therefore, whatever be her rank, I would
recommend a predominance of those more sober studies,
which, not having display for their object, may make her
wise without vanity, happy without witnesses, and content
without panegyrists; the exercise of which will not bring
celebrity, but improve usefulness. She should pursue
every kind of study which will teach her to elicit truth;
which will lead her to be intent upon realitics; will give
precision to her ideas; will make an exact mind; every
study which, instead of stimulating her sensibility, will
chastise it; which will give her definite notions; will
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A
PRACTICAL USE OF
bring the imagination under dominion; will lead her to
think, to compare, to combine, to methodise, which will
confer such a power of discrimination, that her judg-
ment shall learn to reject what is dazzling if it be not so-
lid; and to prefer, not what is striking, or bright, or new,
but what is just. That kind of knowledge which is ra-
ther fitted for home consumption than foreign exporta-
tion, is peculiarly adapted to women.
w
It is because the superficial nature of their education
furnishes them with a false and low standard of intellec-
tual excellence, that women have sometimes become ri-
liculous by the unfounded pretensions of literary vanity :
, for it is not the really learned but the smatterers, who
have generally brought their sex into discredit, by an ab-
surd affectation, which has set them on despising the du-
ties of ordinary life. There have not indeed been want-
ing (but the character is not now common) precieuses ri-
licules, who, assuming a superiority to the sober cares
which ought to occupy their sex, have claffèd a lofty
and supercilious exemption from the dull and plodding
drudgeries
PAL
Of this dim speck called earth !
who have affected to establish an unnatural separation be-
tween talents and usefulness, instead of bearing in mind
that talents are the great appointed instruments of useful-
ness; who have acted as if knowledge were to confer on
woman a kind of fantastic sovereignty, which should ex-
onerate her from female duties; whereas it is only
meant the more cminently to qualify her for the perform-
ance of them. For a woman of real sense will never
forget, that while the greater part of her proper duties
are such as the most moderately gifted may fulfil with "
credit, (since Providence never makes that to be very
difficult, which is generally necessary,) yet the most high-
ly endowed are equally bound to fulfil them; and the
humblest of these offices, performed on Christian princi-
ples, arc wholesome for the minds even of the most en-
lightened, and tend to the casting down of those high im-
aginations which women of genius are too much tempted
to indulge.
M
JA
FEMALE KNOWLEDGE.
In
For instance: ladies whose natural vanity has been ag-
gravated by a false education, may look down on economy
as a vulgar attainment, unworthy of the attention of an
highly cultivated intellect; but this is the false estimate
of a shallow mind. Economy, such as a woman of for-
tune is called on to practise, is not merely the petty de-
tail of small daily expenses, the shabby curtailments and
stinted parsimony of a little mind operating on little con-
cerns; but it is the exercise of a sound judgment exert-
ed in the comprehensive outline of order, of arrangement,
of distribution; of regulations by which alone well go-
verned societies, great and small, subsist. She who has
the best regulated mind will, other things being equal,
have the best regulated family. As in the superinten-
dance of the universe, wisdom is seen in its effects; and
as in the visible works of Providence, that which goes on
with such beautiful regularity is the result not of chance
but of design; so that management which seems the
most easy is commonly the consequence of the best con-
certed plan. A sound economy is a sound understanding
brought into action: it is calculation realized; it is the
doctrine of proportion reduced to practice; it is foresee-
ing consequences and guarding against them; it is ex-
pecting contingencies and being prepared for them. The
difference is, that to a narrow minded vulgar economist
the details are continually present; she is overwhelmed
by their weight, and is perpetually bespeaking your pity
for her labours and your praise for her exertions; she is
afraid you will not see how much she is harrassed. Little
events, and trivial operations, engross her whole soul;
while a woman of sense, having provided for their pro-
bable recurrence, guards against the inconveniences,
without being disconcerted by the casual obstructions-
which they offer to her general scheme.
Superior talents however are not so common, as, by
their frequency, to offer much disturbance to the general
course of human affairs; and many a lady, who tacitly
accuses herself of neglecting her ordinary dutics because
she is a genius, will perhaps be found often to accuse her-
self as unjustly as good St. Jerome, when he laments
6
FRACTICAL USE OF
that he was beaten by the Angel for being too Ciceropi
an in his style.*
The truth is, women who are so puffed up with the
conceit of talents as to neglect the plain duties of life,
will not frequently be found to be women of the best abil-
ities. And here may the author be allowed the gratifica-
tion of observing, that those women of real genius and
extensive knowledge, whose friendships have conferred
honour and happiness on her own life, have been in gen-..
eral eminent for economy, and the practice of domestic
virtues and greatly superior to the poor affectation of
despising the duties and the knowledge of common life.
<<
A romantic girl with a pretension to sentiment, which
her still more ignorant friends mistake for genius, (for in
the empire of the blind the one-eyed are kings) and pos-
sessing something of a natural ear, has perhaps in her
childhood exhausted all the images of grief and love, and
fancy, picked up in her desultory poetical reading, in an el-
egy on a sick linnet or a dead lap-dog; she begins thence-
forward to be considered as a prodigy in her little circle ;
surrounded with flatterers, she has no opportunity of get-
ing to know that her fame is derived not from her pow-
ers, but her positions; and that when an impartial critic
shall have made all the necessary deductions, such as-
that she is a neighbour, that she is a relation, that she is
a female, that she is young, that she has had no advan-
tages, that she is pretty perhaps-when her verses como
to be stripped of all their extraneous appendages, and the
fair author is driven off her 'vantage ground of partiality,
sex, and favour, she will commonly sink to the level of
ordinary capacities; while those quieter women, who
have meekly sat down in the humble shades of prose and
prudence, by a patient perseverance in rational studies,
rise afterwards much higher in the scale of intellect, and
acquire a stock of sound knowledge for far better purpo-
ses than mere display. And, though it may seem a con-
tradiction, yet it will generally be found true, that girls
who take to scribbling are the least studious. They early
acquire a false confidence in their own unassisted powers;
it becomes more gratifying to their natural vanity to be
* See Dr. Owen.
B
"
NO
FEMALE KNOWLEDGE.
always pouring out their minds on paper, than to be draw-
ing into them fresh ideas from richer sources. The ori-
ginal stock, small perhaps at first, is soon spent; and the
subsequent efforts grow more and more faint, if the mind,
which is continually exhausting itself, be not also con-
tinually replenished; till the latter compositions become
little more than reproductions of the same images, a little
varied and modified perhaps, and not a little diluted and
enfeebled.
1
These self-taught, and self-dependent scribblers pant
for the unmerited praise of fancy and of genius, while
they disdain the commendation of judgment, knowledge,
and perseverance which would be within their reach. To
extort admiration they are accustomed to boast of an im-
possible rapidity in composing; and while they insinuate
how little time their performances cost them, they in-
tend you should infer how perfect they might have made
them had they condescended to the drudgery of applica-
tion. They take superfluous pains to convince you that
there was neither learning nor labour employed in the
work for which they solicit your praise: the judicious.
eye too soon perceives it! though it does not perceive.
that native strength and mother-wit, which in works of
real genius make some amends for the negligence, which
yet they do not justify. But instead of extolling these cf-
fusions for their facility, it would be kind in friends ra-
ther to blame them for their crudeness: and when the
young pretenders are eager to prove in how short a time
such a poem has been struck off, it would be well to re-
gret that they had not either taken a longer time, or
forborn from writing at all; as in the former case the
work would have been less defective, and in the latter
the writer would have discovered more humility and self-
distrust.
1
悠
​mala
A general capacity for knowledge, and the cultivation.
of the understanding at large, will always put a woman in-
to the best state for directing her pursuits into those par-
ticular channels which her destination in life may after-
wards require. But she should be carefully instructed
that her talents are only means to a still higher attain-
ment, and that she is not to rest in them as an end; that
/
M 2
$
PRACTICAL USE OF
•
I
merely to exercise them as instruments for the acquisition
of fame and the promoting of pleasure, is subversive of
her delicacy as a woman, and contrary to the spirit of a
Christian.
Study, therefore, is to be considered as the means of
strengthening the mind, and of fitting it for higher du
ties, just as exercise is to be considered as an instrument
for strengthening the body for the same end. And the
valetudinarian, who is religiously punctual in the obser-
vance of his daily rides to promote his health, and rest in
that as an end, without so much as intending to make his
improved health an instrument of increased usefulness,
acts on the same low and selfish principle with her who
reads merely for pleasure and for fame, without any de-
sign of devoting the more enlarged and invigorated mind
to the glory of the Giver.
Auth
But there is one human consideration, which would
perhaps more effectually tend to damp in,an aspiring wo-
nan the ardours of literary vanity (I speak not of real
genius) than any which she will, derive from motives of
humility, or propriety, or religion; which is, that in the
judgment passed on her performances, she will have to
encounter the mortifying circumstance of having her sex
always taken into account, and her highest exertions will
probably be received with the qualified approbation, that
it is really extraordinary for a woman. Men of learning,
who are naturally inclined to estimate works in proportion
us they appear to be the result of art, study, and institution,
are apt to consider even the happier performances of the
other sex as the spontaneous productions of a fruitful but
shallow soil; and to give them the same sort of praise
which we bestow on certain sallads, which often draw
from us a sort of wondering commendation; not indeed
as being worth much in themselves, but because by the
tightness of the earth, and a happy knack of the gardener,
these indifferent cresses spring up in a night, and there
fore one is ready to wonder they are no worse.
As to men of sense, however, they need be the less in-
linical to the improvement of the other sex, as they them-
selves will be sure to be gainers by it; the enlargement
of the female understanding being the most likely means
FEMALE KNOWLEDGE.
8
to put an end to those petty cavils and contentions for
equality, which female smatterers so anxiously maintain.
I say smatterers, for between the first class of both sexes
the question is much more rarely and always more tem-
perately agitated. Co-operation and not competition is
indeed the clear principle we wish to see reciprocally
adopted, by those higher minds in each sex which really
approximate the nearest to each other. The more a wo-
man's understanding is improved, the more obviously she
will discern that there can be no happiness in any society
where there is a perpetual struggle for power; and the more
her judgment is rectified, the more accurate views will
she take of the station she herself was born to fill, and the
more readily will she accommodate herself to it; while
the most vulgar and ill-informed women are ever most
inclined to be tyrants, and those always struggle most
vehemently for power who would not fail to make the
worst use of it when attained. Thus the weakest rea-
soners are always the most positive in debate; and the
cause is obvious, for they are unavoidably driven to main-
tain their pretension by violence, who want arguments
and reasons to prove that they are in the right.
There is this singular difference between a woman vain
of her wit, and a woman vain of her beauty; that the beau-
ty, while she is anxiously alive to her own fame, is often
indifferent enough about the beauty of other women;
and provided she herself is sure of your admiration, she
does not insist on your thinking that there is another
handsome woman in the world: while she who is vain of
her genius, more liberal at least in her vanity, is jealous
for the honour of her whole sex, and contends for the
equality of their pretensions, in which she feels that her
own are involved. The beauty vindicates her own rights,
the wit, the rights of women; the beauty fights for her-
self, the wit, for a party; and while the more selfish
though moderate beauty
would but be queen for life,
the public spirited wit struggles to abrogate the Salique
law of intellect, and to enthrone
a whole sex of queens,
10
COMPARATIVE VIEW
甲
​1
At the revival of letters in the sixteenth and the fol
lowing century, the controversy about this equality was
agitated with more warmth than wisdom; and the process
was instituted and carried on, on the part of the female
complainant, with that sort of acrimony which always.
raises a suspicion of the justice of any cause. The no-
velty of that knowledge which was then bursting out
from the dawn of a long dark night, kindled all the ar-
dours of the female mind, and the ladies fought zealously
for a portion of that renown which the reputation of learn-
ing was beginning to bestow. Besides their own pens,
they had for their advocates all those needy authors who
had any thing to hope from their power, their riches, or
their influence; and so giddy did some of these literary
ladies become by the adulation of their numerous pane-
gyrists, that through these repeated draughts of inebria-
ting praise, they grew to despise the equality for which
they had before contended, as a state below their merit
and unworthy of their acceptance. They now scorned to
litigate for what they already thought they so obviously
possessed, and nothing short of the palm of superiority
was at length considered as adequate to their growing
claims. When court-ladies and princesses were the can-
didates, they could not long want champions to support
'their cause; by these champions female-authorities were
produced as if paramount to facts; quotations from these
female authors were considered as proofs, and their point-
blank assertions stood for solid and irrefragable argu-
ments. In those parasites who offered this homage to
female genius, the homage was therefore the effect nei-
ther of truth, nor of justice, nor of conviction. It arosc
rather out of gratitude, or it was a reciprocation of flat-
tery; it was sometimes vanity, it was often distress,
which prompted the adulation; it was the want of a pa-
troness; it was the want of a dinner. When a lady, and
especially as it then often happened, when one who was
noble or royal, sat with gratifying docility at the foot of a
professor's chair; when she admired the philosopher, or
took upon her to protect the theologian, whom his rivals
among his own sex were tearing to pieces, what could
the grateful professor or delighted theologian do less in
A/L
1
}
OF THE SEXES.
Fl
*
7
return, than make the apotheosis of her who had had the
penetration to discern his merit, and the spirit to reward
it? Thus in fact it was not so much her vanity as his own
that he was often flattering, though she was the dupe of
her more deep and designing panegyrist.
1
But it is a little unlucky for the perpetuity of that fame.
which the encomiast had made over to his patroness, in
the never-dying records of his verses and orations, that in
the revolution of a century or two, the very names of the
flattered are now almost as little known as the works of
the flatterers. Their memorial has perished with them :*
an instructive lesson, that whoever bestows, or assumes a
reputation disproportioned to the merit of the claimant,
will find it as little durable as solid. For this literary war-
fare which engaged such troops of the second-hand au-
thors of the age in question in such continual skirmishes,
and not a few pitched battles; which provoked so much
rancour, so many volumes, and as little wit; so much van-
ity and so much flattery, produced no useful or lasting ef-
fect. Those who promised themselves that their names
would outlive "one half of round eternity," did not reach
the end of the century in which the boast was made; and
those who offered the incense, and those who greedily
snuffed up its fumes, are buried in the same blank obli-
vion!
But when the temple of Janus seemed to have been
closed, or when at worst the peace was only occasionally
broken by a slight and randoni shot from the hand of some
single straggler; it appears that though open rebellion
had ceased, yet the female claim had not been renounced;
it had only (if we may change the metaphor) lain in abey-
ance. The contest has recently been revived with added
fury, and with multiplied exactions; for whereas the an-
cient demand was merely a kind of imaginary prerogative,
a speculative importance, a mere titular right, a shadowy
claim to a few unreal acres of Parnassian territory; the
revived contention has taken a more serious turn, and
brings forward political as well as intellectual pretensions :
and among the innovations of this innovating period, the
f
Sce Brantome, Pere le Moine, Mons. Thomas, &9.
+
12
COMPARATIVE VIEW
imposing term of rights has been produced to sanctify the
claim of our female pretenders, with a view not only to
rekindle in the minds of women a presumptuous vanity
dishonourable to their sex, but produced with a view to
excite in their hearts an impious discontent with the post
which God has assigned them in this world.
<
But they little understand the true interests of woman,
who would lift her from the important duties of her allot-
ted station, to fill with fantastic dignity a loftier but less
appropriate niche. Nor do they understand her true hap-
piness, who seek to annihilate distinctions from which she
derives advantages, and to attempt innovations which
would depreciate her real valuc. Each sex has its pro-
per excellencies, which would be lost were they melted
down into the common character by the fusion of the
new philosophy. Why should we do away distinctions
which increase the mutual benefits, and enhance the sa-
tisfactions of life? Whence, but by carefully preserving
the original marks of difference stamped by the hand of
the Creator, would be derived the superior advantage of
mixed society? Have men no need to have their rough
angles filed off, and their harshnesses and asperities smooth-
ed and polished by assimilating with beings of more soft-
ness and refinement? Are the ideas of women naturally
so very judicious, are their principles so invincibly firm,
are their views so perfectly correct, are their judgments
so completely exact, that there is occasion for no addition-
al weight, no superadded strength, no increased clearness,
none of that enlargement of mind, none of that additional
invigoration, which may be derived from the aids of the
stronger sex? What identity could advantageously su-
persede an enlivening opposition and an, interesting va-
riety of character? Is it not then more wise as well as
more honourable to move contentedly in the plain path
which Providence has obviously marked out to the sex,
and in which custom has, for the most part, rationally con-
firmed them, than to stray awkwardly, unbecomingly, and
unsuccessfully, in a forbidden road? Is it not desirable to
be the lawful possessors of a lesser domestic territory, ra-
ther than the turbulent usurpers of a wider foreign em-
pire? to be good originals, rather than bad imitators? to
a
4
}
OF THE SEXLS.
be the best thing of one's own kind, rather than an inſe-
rior thing even if it were of an higher kind? to be ex-
cellent women, rather than indifferent men?
AN
+
13
Is the author then undervaluing her own sex?-No.
It is her zeal for their true interests which leads her to
oppose their imaginary rights. It is her regard for their
happiness which makes her endeavour to cure them of a
feverish thirst for fame. A little Christian humility and
sober-mindedness are worth all the wild metaphysical dis-
cussion, which has unsettled the peace of vain women, and
forfeited the respect of reasonable men. And the most
elaborate definition of ideal rights, and the most hardy
measures for attaining them, are of less value in the eyes
of a truly amiable woman, than "that meek and quiet
spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price."
Natural propensities best mark the designations of Pro
vidence as to their application. The fin was not more
clearly bestowed on the fish that he should swim, nor the
wing given to the bird that, he should fly, than superior
strength of body and a firmer texture of mind was given
to man, that he might preside in the deep and daring
scenes of action and of council; in government, in arms,
in science, in commerce, and in those professions which
demand a higher reach, and a wider range of powers. The
true value of woman is not diminished by the imputation
of inferiority in these respects; she has other requisites,
better adapted to answer the ends and purposes of her be-
ing, by Him who does all things well," who suits the
agent to the action; who accommodates the instrument
to the work.
Let her not then view with pining envy the keen satir-
ist, hunting vice through all the doublings and windings
of the heart; the sagacious politician, leading senates, and
directing the fate of empires; the acute lawyer, detecting
the obliquities of fraud; and the skilful dramatist, expos-
ing the pretensions of folly but let her ambition be con-
soled by reflecting, that those who thus excel, to all that
nature bestows and books can teach, must add, besides,
that consummate knowledge of the world to which a deli-
cate woman has no fair avenues, and which even if she
•
2
COMPARATIVE VIEW
gu
could attain she would never be supposed to have come
honestly by.
In almost all that comes under the description of polite
letters, in all that captivates by imagery or warms by just
and affecting sentiment, women are excellent. They pos-
sess in a high degree that delicacy and quickness of per-
ception, and that nice discernment between the beautiful
and defective, which comes under the denomination of
taste. Both in composition and action they excel in de-
tails; but they do not so much generalize their ideas as
men, nor do their minds seize a great subject with so large
a grasp. They are acute observers, and accurate judges
of life and manners, as far as their own sphere of observa-
tion extends; but they describe a smaller circle. A wo-
man sees the world, as it were, from a little elevation in
her own garden, whence she makes an exact survey of
home scenes, but takes not in that wider range of distant
prospects, which he who stands on a loftier eminence
commands. Women have a certain tact, which often ena-
bles them to feel what is just more instantaneously than
they can define it. They have an intuitive penetration into
character bestowed on them by Providence, like the sen-
sitive and tender organs of some timid animals, as a kind
of natural guard, to warn of the approach of danger, be-
ings who are often called to act defensively.
In summing up the evidence, if I may so speak, of the
different powers of the sexes, one may venture, perhaps,
to assert, that women have equal parts, but are inferior in
wholeness of mind, in the integral understanding; that
though a superior woman may possess single faculties in
equal perfection, yet there is commonly a juster propor-
tion in the mind of a superior man; that if women have
in an equal degree the faculty of fancy, which creates ima-
ges, and the faculty of memory, which collects and stores
ideas, they seem not to possess in qual measure the fa-
culty of comparing, combining, analysing, and separating
these ideas; that deep and patient thinking which goes to
the bottom of a subject; nor that power of arrangement
which knows how to link a thousand connected ideas in
one dependent train, without losing sight of the original
idea, out of which the rest grow, and on which they all
MO
A
OF THE SEXES.
15
ang. The female too, wanting steadiness in her intellec-
tual pursuits, is perpetually turned aside by her charac-
teristic tastes and feelings. Woman, in the career of ge-
nius, is the Atalanta, who will risk losing the race by run-
ning out of her road to pick up the golden apple; while
her male competitor, without, perhaps, possessing great-
er natural strength or swiftness, will more certainly at-
tain his object, by direct pursuit, by being less exposed to
the seductions of extraneous beauty, and will win the race,
not by excelling in speed, but by despising the bait.*
✔
Here it may be justly enough retorted, that, as it is al
lowed the education of women is so defective, the alleged
inferiority of their minds may be accounted for on that
ground more justly than by ascribing it to their natural
make. And, indeed, there is so much truth in the re-
mark, that till women shall be more reasonably educated,
and till the native growth of their minds shall cease to be
stinted and cramped, we have no juster ground for pro-
nouncing that their understanding has already reached its
highest attainable point, than the Chinese would have for
affirming that their women have attained to the greatest
possible perfection in walking, while the first care is, du-
ring their infancy, to cripple their feet. At least, till the
female sex are more carefully instructed, this question
will always remain as undecided as to the degree of differ-
ence between the masculine and feminine understanding,
as the question between the understandings of blacks and
whites; for until Africans and Europeans are put more
nearly on a par in the cultivation of their minds, the shades
of distinction, if any there be, between their native
pow
ers, can never be fairly ascertained.
And when we see (and who will deny that we see it
frequently ?) so many women nobly rising from under all
the pressure of a disadvantageous education and a defect-
ive system of society, and exhibiting the most unamby
gu-
ous marks of a vigorous understanding, a correct judg-
-
gha
AD
pla
* What indisposes even reasonable women to concede in these points
is, that the weakest man instantly lays hold on the concession; and, on
the mere ground of sex, plumes himself on his own individual superiority;
inferring, that the silliest man is superior to the first-rate woman.
N
16
COMPARATIVE VIEW
ment, and a sterling piety, it reminds one of those shining
lights, which have now and then burst out through all
the "darkness visible" of the Romish church, have dis-
encumbered themselves from the gloom of ignorance,
and shaken off the fetters of prejudice, and risen superior
to all the errors of a corrupt theology.
1
But whatever characteristical distinctions may exist;
whatever inferiority may be attached to woman from the
slighter frame of her body, or the more circumscribed
powers of her mind, froni a less systematic education, and
from the subordinate station she is called to fill in life;
there is one great and leading circumstance which raises
her importance, and even establishes her equality. Chris-
tianity has exalted women to true and undisputed dignity
in Christ Jesus, as there is neither "rich nor poor,"
"bond nor free," so there is neither "male nor female."
In the view of that immortality, which is brought to light
by the gospel, she has no superior. Women (to borrow
the idea of an excellent prelate) make up one half of the
human race; equally with men redeemed by the blood of
Christ. In this their truc dignity consists; here their best
pretensions rest, here their highest claims are allowed.
All disputes then for pre-eminence between the sex-
es have only for their object the poor precedence for
a few short years, the attention of which would be better
levoted to the duties of life and the interest of eternity.
*
sex.
And as the final hope of the female sex is equal, so are
their present means, perhaps, more favourable, and their
opportunities, often, less obstructed than those of the other
In their Christian course women have every supe-
rior advantage, whether we consider the natural make of
their minds, their leisure for acquisition in youth, or their
subsequently less exposed mode of life. Their hearts
arc naturally soft and flexible, open to impressions of
love and gratitude; their feelings tender and lively: all
these are favourable to the cultivation of a devotional spi-
rit. Yet while we remind them of these benefits, they
will do well to be on their guard lest this very softness
and ductility lay them more open to the seductions of
temptation and error.
They have in the native constitution of their minds, as
well as from the relative situations they are called to fill, a
+
OF THE SEXES.
་
17
certain sense of attachment and dependance, which is pe-
culiarly favourable to religion. They feel, perhaps, more
Intimately, the want of a strength which is not their own.
Christianity brings that superinduced strength; it comes
in aid of their conscious weakness, and offers the only
truc counterpoise to it. "Woman, be thou healed of
thine infirmity," is still the heart cheering language of a
gracious Saviour.
w
Women also bring to the study of Christianity fewer of
those prejudices which persons of the other sex too often
carly contract. Men, from their classical education, ac-
quire a strong partiality for the manners of pagan antiqui-
ty, and the documents of Pagan philosophy: this, togeth-
er with the impure taint caught from the loose descrip-
tions of their poets, and the licentious language even of
their historians, (in whom we reasonably look for more
gravity,) often weakens the good impressions of young
men, and at least confuses their ideas of picty, by mixing
them with so much heterogenous matter.
Their very
spirits are embued all the week with the impure follies
of a depraved mythology; and it is well if even on Sundays
they get to hear of the "true God, and Jesus Christ whom
he has sent." While women, though struggling with
the same natural corruptions, have commonly less knowl-
edge to unknow, and fewer schemes to unlearn; they
have not to shake off the pride of system, and to discn-
sumber their minds from the shackles of favourite theo-
ries; they do not bring from the porch or the academy
any "oppositions of science" to obstruct their reception
of those pure doctrines taught on the Mount: doctrines
which ought to find a readier entrance into minds unin-
fected with the pride of the school of Zeno, or the liber-
tinism of that of Epicurus.
العيد
And as women are naturally more affectionate than fas-
tidious; they are likely both to read and to hear with a
less critical spirit than men : they will not be on the watch
to detect errors, so much as to gather improvement; they
have seldom that hardness which is acquired by dealing
deeply in books of controversy, but are more inclined to
works which quicken the devotional feelings, than to such
as awaken a spirit of doubt and skepticism. They are
dess disposed to consider the compositions they poruse,
48
COMPARATIVE VIEW
as materials on which to ground objections and answers,
than as helps to faith and rules of life. With these ad-
vantages, however, they should also bear in mind that
their impressions being often less abiding, and their rea-
son less open to conviction, by means of the strong evi-
dences which exist in favour of the truth of Christianity,
"they ought therefore, to give the more earnest heed to
the things which they have heard, lest at any time they
should let them slip." Women are also from their do-
mestic habits. in possession of more leisure and tranquilli-
ty for religious pursuits, as well as secured from those
difficulties and temptations to which men are exposed in
the tumult of a bustling world. Their lives are more
uniform, less agitated by the passions, the businesses,
the contentions, the shock of opinions and of interests
which convulse the world.
→
If we have denied them the talents which might lead
them to excel as lawyers, they are preserved from the
peril of having their principles warped by that too indis-
criminate defence of right and wrong, to which the pro-
fessors of the law are exposed. If we should question
their title to eminence as mathematicians, they are happi-
ly exempt from the danger to which men devoted to that
science are said to be liable; namely, that of looking for
demonstration on subjects, which, by their very nature,
are incapable of affording it. If they are less conversant
in the powers of nature, the structure of the human frame,
and the knowledge of the heavenly bodies, than philoso-
phers, physicians, and astronomers; they are, however,
delivered from the error into which many of each of these
have sometimes fallen, I mean from the fatal habit of rest-
ing in second causes, instead of referring all to the first;
instead of making "the heavens declare the glory of God,
and proclaim his handy work;" instead of concluding,
when they observe, "how fearfully and wonderfully we
are made, marvellous are thy works, O Lord, and that my
soul knoweth right well."
And let the weaker sex take comfort, that in their
very exemption from privileges, which they are some-
times disposed to envy, consists their security and their
happiness. If they enjoy not the distinctions of public.
រ
OF THE SEXES.
19
life and high offices, do they not escape the responsibility at-
tached to them, and the mortification ofbeing dismissed from
them? If they have no voice in deliberative assemblies, do
they not avoid the load of duty connected with such privile-
ges? Preposterous pains have been taken to excite in women
an uneasy jealousy, that their talents are neither rewarded
with public honours nor emoluments in life; nor with inscrip-
tions, statues, and mausoleums after death. It has been ab-
surdly represented to them as a hardship, that while they are
expected to perform duties, they must yet be contented to re-
linquish honours, and must unjustly be compelled to re-
nounce fame while they must sedulously labour to deserve it.
But for christian women to act on the low views sug-
gested to them by their ill-judging panegyrists, and to look
up with a giddy head and a throbbing heart to honours and
remuncrations, so little suited to the wants and capacities
of an immortal spirit, would be no less ridiculous than if
Christian heroes should look back with envy on the pagan
rewards of ovations, oak garlands, parsley crowns, and
laurel wreaths. The Christian hope more than recon-
ciles Christian women to these petty privations, by sub-
stituting a nobler prize for their ambition, "the prize of
the high calling of God in Christ Jesus;" by substituting,
for that popular and fluctuating voice, which may cry
"Hosanna" and "crucify" in a breath, that" favour of
God which is eternal life."
If women should lament the disadvantages attached to
their sex, that their character is of so delicate a texture
as to be sullied by the slightest breath of calumny, and that
the stain is indelible; yet are they not led by that very
circumstance more instinctively to shrink from all those
irregularities to which the loss of character is so much ex-
pected to be attached; and to shun with keener circum-
spection the most distant approach towards the confines of
danger? Let them not lament it as a hardship, but account
it to be a privilege, that the delicacy of their sex impels
them more scrupulously to avoid the very appearance of
evil, and that the consciousness of their danger serves to
secure their purity, by placing them at a greater distance
from the evil itself.
Though it be one main object of this little work, rather
to lower than to raise any desire of celebrity in the female
<la
bigh
N 2
20
CONVERSATION.
heart; yet I would awaken it to a just sensibility to hon-
est fame: I would call on women to reflect that our
religion has not only made them heirs to a blessed immor-
tality hereafter, but has greatly raised them in the scale
of being here, by lifting them to an importance in society
unknown to the most polished ages of antiquity. The
religion of Christ has even bestowed a degree of re-
nown on the sex beyond what any other religion ever did.
Perhaps there are hardly so many virtuous women (for I
reject the long catalogue whom their vices have trans-
ferred from oblivion to infamy) named in all the pages of
Greek or Roman history, as are handed down to eternal
fame, in a few of those short chapters with which the
great Apostle to the Gentiles has concluded his epistles
to his converts. Of" devout and honourable women,"
the sacred scriptures record "not a few." Some of the
most affecting scenes, the most interesting transactions,
and the most touching conversations which are recorded
of the Saviour of the world, passed with women. They
are the first remarked as having "ministered to him of
their substance." Theirs was the praise of not abandoning
their despised Redeemer when he was led to execution,
and under all the hopeless circumstances of his ignomini-
ous death; they appeared to have been the last attending
to his tomb, and the first on the morning when he arose
from it. Theirs was the privilege of receiving the car-
fiest consolation from their risen Lord; theirs was the
honour of being first commissioned to announce his glo-
rious resurrection to the world. And even to furnish
heroic confessors, devoted saints, and unshrinking mar-
tyrs to the Church of Christ, has not been the exclusive
honour of the bolder sex.
>>>
shak
103
CHAPTER XIV.
CONVERSATION.-Hints suggested on the subject.-On the tempers and
dispositions to be introduced in it.-Errors to be avoided.—Vanity
under various shupes the cause of those errors.
THE sexes will naturally desire to appear to each oth-
er, such as each believes the other will best like; their
conversation will act reciprocally, and each sex will ap-
CONVERSATION.
21
pear more or less rational as they perceive it will more
or less recommend them to the other. It is therefore
to be regretted, that many men, even of distinguished
sense and learning, are so apt to consider the society of
ladies, as a scene in which to rest their understandings,
rather than to exercise them; while ladies, in return, are
too much addicted to make their court by lending them-
selves to this spirit of trifling; they often avoid to make
use of what abilities they have; and affect to talk below
their natural and acquired powers of mind; considering
it as a tacit and welcome flattery to the understanding of
men to renounce the exercise of their own.
+
;
Now since tastes and principles thus mutually operate,
men, by keeping up conversation to its proper standard,
would not only call into exercise the powers of mind
which women actually possess, but would even awaken in
them new energies which they do not know they possess ;
and men of sense would find their account in doing this
for their own talents would be more highly rated by com-
panions who were better able to appreciate them. And,
on the other hand, if young women found it did not often
recommend them in the eyes of those whom they might
wish to please, to be frivolous and superficial, they would
become more sedulous in correcting their own habits:
whenever fashionable women indicate a relish for instruct-
ive conversation, men will not be apt to hazard what is
vain or unprofitable; much less will they ever presume
to bring forward what is loose or corrupt, where some
signal has not been previously given, that it will be ac-
ceptable, or at least that it will be pardoned.
Ladies commonly bring into company minds already
too much relaxed by petty pursuits, rather than over-
strained by intense application; littleness of the employ-
ments in which they are usually engaged, does not so ex-
haust their spirits so as to make them stand in need of
that relaxation from company, which severe application
or overwhelming business make requisite for studious or
public men. The due consideration of this circumstance
might serve to bring the sexes more nearly on a level in
society; and cach might meet the other half way; for that
degree of lively and casy conversation which is a necessary
<
22
CONVERSATION.
refreshment to the learned and busy, would not decrease
in pleasantness by being made of so rational a cast as
would yet somewhat raise the minds of women, who com-
monly seek society as a scene of pleasure, not as a refuge
from intense thought or exhausting labour.
10
It is a disadvantage even to those women who keep the
best company, that it is unhappily almost established into
a system, by the other sex, to postpone every thing like
instructive discourse till the ladies are withdrawn; their
retreat serving as a kind of signal for the exercise of in-
tellect. And in the few cases in which it happens that
any important discussion takes place in their presence,
they are for the most part considered as having little in-
terest in serious subjects. Strong truths, whenever such
happen to be addressed to them, are either diluted with
flattery, or kept back in part, or softened to their taste;
or if the ladies express a wish for information on any point,
they are put off with a compliment, instead of a reason;
and are considered as beings who are not expected to sce
and to judge of things as they really exist.
Do we then wish to see the ladies, whose opportunities
leave them so incompetent, and the modesty of whose sex
ought never to allow them even to be as shining as they
are able ;-do we wish to see them take the lead in me-
taphysical disquisitions? Do we wish them to plunge into
the depths of theological polemics,
And find no end in wand'ring mazes lost?
Do we wish them to revive the animosities of the Bango-
rian controversy, or to decide the process between the
Jesuits and the five propositions of Jansenius? Do we
wish to enthrone them in the professor's chair, to deliver
oracles, harangues, and dissertations? to weigh the me-
rits of every new production in the scales of Quintilian,
or to regulate the unities of dramatic composition by Aris-
totle's clock & Or, renouncing those foreign aids, do we
desire to behold them, inflated with their original powers,
labouring to strike out sparks of wit, with a restless anx-
iety to shine, which generally fails, and with a laboured
affectation to please, which never pleases ?
Discurs de bons mots, fades caracteres !
do
CONVERSATIONATION.
23
.
P
All this be far from them!-But we do wish to see the
conversion of well-bred women rescued from vapid com-
mon places, from uninteresting tattle, from trite and hack-
neyed communications, from frivolous earnestness, from
false sensibility, from a warm interest about things of no
moment, and an indifference to topics the most important;
from a cold vanity, from the overflowings of self-love, ex-
hibiting itself under the smiling mask of an engaging flat-
tery, and from all the factitious manners of artificial inter-
course. We do wish to see the time passed in polished
and intelligent society, considered among the beneficial,
as well as the pleasant portions of our existence, and not
consigned over, as it too frequently is, to premeditated
trifling, or systematic unprofitableness. Let us not, how-
ever, be misunderstood; it is not meant to prescribe that
they should affect to talk on lofty subjects, so much as to
suggest that they should bring good sense, simplicity, and
precision into those common subjects, of which, after all,
both the business and the conversation of mankind is in a
great measure made up.
It is too well known how much the dread of imputed
pedantry keeps off any thing that verges towards learned,
and the terror of imputed enthusiasm staves off any thing
that approaches to serious conversation, so that the two
topics which peculiarly distinguish us, as rational and im-
mortal beings, are by general consent in a good degree
banished from the society of rational and immortal crea-
tures. But we might almost as consistently give up the
comforts of fire because a few persons have been burnt,
and the benefit of water because some others have been
drowned, as relinquish the enjoyments of intellectual, and
the blessings of religious intercourse, because the learned
world has sometimes been infested with pedants, and the
religious world with fanatics.
As in the momentous times in which we live, it is next
to impossible to pass an evening'in company, but the talk
will so inevitably revert to politics, that, without any pre-
meditated design, every one present shall infallibly get to
know to which side the other inclines; why, in the far
higher concern of eternal things, should we so carefully
shun every offered opportunity of bearing even a casual
0
<
Wh
A
24
CONVERSATION.
testimony to the part we espouse in "religion? Why,
while we make it a sort of point of conscience to leave no
doubt on the mind of a stranger, whether we adopt the
party of Pitt or Fox, shall we choose to leave it very pro-
blematical whether we belong to God or Baal? Why, in
religion, as well as in politics, should we not act like peo-
ple, who having their all at stake, cannot forbear now and
then adverting for a moment to the object of their grand
concern, and dropping, at least, an incidental intimation
of the side to which they belong.
Even the news of the day, in such an eventful period as
the present, may lend frequent occasions to a woman of
principle, to declare, without parade, her faith in a moral
Governor of the world; her trust in a particular Provi-
dence; her belief in the Divine Omnipotence; her con-
fidence in the power of God, in educing good from evil,
in his employing wicked nations, not as favourites but in-
struments; her persuasion that present success is no proof
of the divine favour; in short, some intimation that she is
not ashamed to declare that her mind is under the influ-
ence of Christian faith and principle. A general concur-
rence in exhibiting this spirit of decided faith and holy
trust, would inconceivably discourage that pert infidelity
which is ever on the watch to produce itself: and, as we
have already observed, if women, who derive authority
from their rank or talents, did but reflect how their senti-
ments are repeated, and their authority quoted, they
would be so on their guard, that general society might be-
come a scene of general improvement, and the young,
who are looking for models on which to fashion them-
selves, would be ashamed of exhibiting any thing like le-
vity, or skepticism, or profaneness.
لام
Ad
A
Let it be understood, that it is not meant to intimate,
that serious subjects should make up the bulk of conversa-
tion; this, as it is impossible, would also often be impro-
per. It is not intended to suggest, that they should be ab-
ruptly introduced, or unsuitably prolonged; but only that
they should not be systematically shunned, nor the brand
of fanaticism be fixed on the person who, with whatever
propriety, hazards the introduction of them. It is evident,
however, that this general dread of serious topics arises a
CONVERSATION.
2.5
good deal from an gnorance of the true nature of religion;
people avoid it, on the principle expressed by the vulgar
phrase of the danger of playing with edge-tools. They
conceive of it as something which involves controversy,
and dispute, and mischief; something of an inflammatory
nature, which is to stir up ill humours; as of a sort of
party business, which sets friends at variance. So much
is this notion adopted, that I have seen announced two
works of considerable merit, in which it was stipulated as
an attraction, that religion, as being likely to excite anger
and party distinctions, should be carefully excluded. Such
is the worldly idea of the spirit of that religion, whose di-
rect object it was, to bring "peace and good will to men !"
ca
Women too little live or converse up to their under-
standings and however we have deprecated affectation
or pedantry, let it be remembered, that both in reading
and conversing, the understanding gains more by stretch-
ing, than stooping. If by exerting itself it may not attain
10 all it desires, yet it will be sure to gain something. The
mind, by always applying itself to objects below its level,
contracts and shrinks itself to the size, and lowers itself
to the level, of the object about which it is conversant =
while the mind which is active expands and raises itself,
grows larger by exercise, abler by diffusion, and richer
by communication.
But the taste of general society is not favourable to im-
provement. The seriousness with which the most frivo
lous subjects are agitated, and the levity with which the
most serious are despatched, bear a pretty exact propor
tion to each other. Society too is a sort of magic lantern ;
the scene is perpetually shifting. In this incessant change,
the evanescent fashion of the present minute, which, while
in many it leads to the cultivation of real knowledge, has
also sometimes led even the gay and idle to the affectation
of mixing a sprinkling of science with the mass of dissipa-
tion. The ambition of appearing to be well informed
breaks out even in those triflers who will not spare time
from their pleasurable pursuits sufficient for acquiring
that knowledge, of which, however, the reputation is so
desirable. A little smattering of philosophy often digni-
Hes the pursuits of the day, without rescuing them from
26
CONVERSATION.
the vanities of the night. A course of lectures (that ad-
mirable assistant for enlightening the understanding) is
not seldom resorted to as a means to substitute the appear-
ance of knowledge for the fatigue of application; but
where this valuable help is attended merely like any other
public exhibition, and is not furthered by correspondent
reading at home, it often serves to set off reality of igno-
rance with the affectation of skill. But instead of produ
cing in conversation a few reigning scientific terms, with
a familiarity and readiness, which
Amaze the unlearn'd, and make the learned smile,
would it not be more modest even for those who are bet-
ter informed, to avoid the common use of technical terms
whenever the idea can be as well conveyed without them?
For it argues no real ability to know the names of tools;
the ability lies in knowing their use and while it is in
the thing, and not in the term, that real knowledge con-
sists, the charge of pedantry is attached to the use of the
term, which would not attach to the knowledge of the
science.
In the faculty of speaking well, ladies have such a hap-
py promptitude of turning their slender advantages to ac-
count, that there are many who, though they have never
been taught a rule of syntax, yct, by a quick facility in
'profiting from the best books and the best company, hard-
ly ever violate one; and who often exhibit an elegant and
perspicuous arrangement of style, without having studi-
ed any of the laws of composition. Every kind of know-
ledge, which appears to be the result of observation, re-
flection, and natural taste, sits gracefully on women.
Yet on the other hand it sometimes happens, that ladies
of no contemptible natural parts are too ready to produce,
not only pedantic expressions, but crude notions; and
still oftener to bring forward obvious and hackneyed re-
marks, which float on the very surface of a subject, with
the imposing air of recent invention, and all the vanity of
conscious discovery. This is because their acquirements
have not been woven into their minds by early instruction :
what knowledge they have gotten stands out as it were
above the very surface of their minds, like the appliquée
of the embroiderer, instead of having been interwoven
SIN
سے
20
CONVERSATION.
CH
with the growth of the piece, so as to have become a part
of the stuff. They did not, like men, acquire what they
know while the texture was forming. Perhaps no better
preventive could be devised for this literary vanity, thare
early instruction; that woman would be less likely to be
vain of her knowledge who did not remember the time
when she was ignorant. Knowledge that is burnt in, if
I may so speak, is seldom obtrusive, rarely impertinent.
Their reading also has probably consisted much in
abridgments from larger works, as was observed in a for-
mer chapter; this makes a readier talker, but a shallower
thinker, than the perusal of books of more bulk. By
these scanty sketches their critical spirit has been excit-
ed, while their critical powers have not been formed. For
in those crippled mutilations they have seen nothing of
that just proportion of parts, that skilful arrangement of
the plan, and that artful distribution of the subject, which
while they prove the master hand of the writer, serve al-
so to form the taste of the reader, far more than a dis-
jointed skeleton, or a beautiful feature or two can do.
The instruction of women is also too much drawn from
the scanty and penurious sources of short writings of the
essay kind: this, when it comprises the best part of a
person's reading, makes a smatterer and spoils a scho-
lar; for though it supplies current talk, yet it does not
make a full mind; it does not furnish a store-house of
materials to stock the understanding, neither does it ac-
custom the mind to any trains of reflection: for the sub-
jects, besides being each succinctly, and on account of
this brevity, superficially treated, are distinct and discon-
nected: they rise out of no concatenation of ideas, nor
any dependent series of deduction. Yet on this pleasant
but desultory reading, the mind which has not been train-
ed to severer exercise, loves to repose itself in a sort of
creditable indolence, instead of stretching its powers in
the wholesome labour of consequent investigation:*
* The writer cannot be supposed desirous of depreciating the value
of those many beautiful periodical essays which adorn our language:
But, perhaps, it might be better to regale the mind with them singly, at
different times, than to read at the same sitting, a multitude of short
pieces on dissimilar and unconnected topics, by way of getting through
the book.
28
CONVERSATION;
I am not discouraging study at a late period of life, or
even slender knowledge: information is good, at what-
ever period and in whatever degree it be acquired. But
in such cases it should be attended with peculiar humili-
ty and the new possessor should bear in mind, that what
is fresh to her has been long known to others; and she
should therefore be aware of advancing as novel that
which is common, and obtruding as rare that which every
body possesses. Some ladies are eager to exhibit proofs of
their reading, though at the expense of their judgment,
and will introduce in conversation quotations quite irre-
velant to the matter in hand because they happen at the
instant to recur to their recollection, or were, perhaps,
found in the book they have just been reading. Unap-
propriate quotations or strained analogy may slew read-
ing, but they do not shew taste. That just and hap-
py allusion which knows by a word how to awaken a cor-
responding image, or to excite in the hearer the idea
which fills the mind of the speaker, shews less pedantry
and more taste that bare citations; and a mind embucd
with elegant knowledge will inevitably betray the opu-
lence of its resources, even on topics which do not re-
late to science or literature. Well informed persons
will easily be discovered to have read the best books,
though they are not always detailing catalogues of au-
thors. Though honey owes its exquisite taste to the fra-
grance of the sweetest flowers, yet the skill of the little
artificer appears in this, that the delicious stores are so
admirably worked up, as not to taste individually of
any
of those sweets of the very essence of which it is com-
pounded. But true judgment will detect the infusion
which true modesty will not display; and even common
subjects passing through a cultivated understanding bor-
row a flavour of its richness. A power of apt selection is
more valuable than any power of general retention; and
an apposite remark, which shoots straight to the point,
demands higher powers of mind than an hundred simple
acts of memory for the business of the memory is only
to store up materials which the understanding is to mix
and work up with its native faculties, and which the judg-
ment is to bring out and apply. But young women who
ave more vivacity than sense, and more vanity than viva-
:
44
-
tak
43
CONVERSATION.
29
L
city, often risk the charge of absurdity to escape that of
ignorance, and will even compare two authors who are
totally unlike, rather than miss the occasion to shew that
they have read both.
Among the arts to spoil conversation, some ladies pos-
sess that of suddenly diverting it from the channel in
which it was beneficially flowing, because some word used
by the person who was speaking has accidentally struck
out a new train of thinking in their own minds, and not be-
cause the general idea expressed has struck out a corres-
ponding idea, which sort of collision is indeed the way of
eliciting the true fire. Young ladies, whose sprightli
ness has not been disciplined by a correct education, con-
sider how things may be prettily said, rather than how
they may be prudently or seasonably spoken; and hazard
being thought wrong, or rash, or vain, for the chance of
being reckoned pleasant. The flowers of rhetoric capti-
vate them more than the justest deductions of reason;
and to repel an argument they arm themselves with a
metaphor. Those also who do not aim so high as elo-
quence, are often surprised that you refuse to accept of a
prejudice instead of a reason; they are apt to take up
with a probability in place of a demonstration, and cheap-
ly put you off with an assertion when you are requiring a
proof. The same mode of education renders them also.
impatient of opposition; and if they happen to possess
beauty, and to be vain of it, they may be tempted to con-
sider that as an additional proof of their being always in
the right. In this case, they will not ask you to submit
your judgment to the force of their argument, so much as
to the authority of their charms.
The same fault in the mind, strengthened by the same
cause, (a neglected education,) leads lively women often
to pronounce on a question without examining it on any
given point they seldomer doubt than mes; not because
they are more clear-sighted, but because they have not
been accustomed to look into a subject long enough to
discover its depths and its intricacies; and not discerning
its difficulties, they conclude that it has none. Is it a
contradiction to say, that they scem at once to be quick-
sighted and short-sighted? What they see at all, they
commonly see at once; a little difficulty discourages
80
CONVERSATION.
?
them; and, having caught a hasty glimpse of a subject,
they rush to this conclusion, that either there is no more
to be seen, or that what is behind will not pay them for
the trouble of searching. They pursue their object ea-
gerly, but not regularly; rapidly, but not pertinaciously;
for they want that obstinate patience of investigation which
grows stouter by repulse. What they have not attained,
they do not believe exists; what they cannot seize at once,
they persuade themselves is it not worth having.
Is a subject of moment started in company? While the
more sagacious are deliberating on its difficulties, and
viewing it under all its aspects in order to form a compe-
tent judgment before they decide, you will often find the
most superficial woman present determine the matter
without hesitation. Not seeing the perplexitics in which
the question is involved, she wonders at the want of pene-
tration in him whose very penetration keeps him silent.
She secretly despises the dull perception and slow deci-
sion of him who is patiently untying the knot, which she
fancies she exhibits more dexterity by cutting. By this
shallow sprightliness, the person whose opinion was best
worth having is discouraged from delivering it, and an
important subject is dismissed without discussion, by this
inconsequent flippancy and voluble rashness. It is this
abundance of florid talk, from superficial matter, which
has brought on so many of the sex the charge of invert-
ing the Apostle's precept, and being swift to speak, slow
to hear.
<
Gd
For if the great Roman Orator could observe, that si-
lence was so important a part of conversation, that " there
was not only an art but an eloquence in it," how peculiar-
does the remark apply to the modesty of youthful fe-
males! But the silence of listless ignorance and the silence
of sparkling intelligence,are two things almost as obvious-
ly distinct, as the wisdom and the folly of the tongue,
An inviolable and marked attention may shew, that a wo-
mian is pleased with a subject, and an illuminated counte-
nance may prove that she understands it, almost as une-
quivocally as language itself could do; and this, with a
modest question, is in may cases as large a share of the
conversation as it is decorous for feminine delicacy to take.
It is also as flattering an encouragement as men of sense
2
CONVERSATION.
31
require, for pursuing such topics in the presence of wo-
men, which they would be more disposed to do, did they
oftener gain by it the attention which it is natural to wish
to excite.
Yet, do we not sometimes see an impatience to be
heard (nor is it a feminine failing only) which good breed-
ing can scarcely subdue? And even when these incorri-
gible talkers are compelled to be silent, is it not evident
that they are not listening to what is said, but are only
thinking of what they themselves shall say, when they
can seize the first lucky interval for which they are so
narrowly watching?
But conversation must not be considered as a stage for
the display of our talents, so much as a field for the exer-
cise and improvement of our virtues; as a means for
promoting the glory of our Creator, and the good and
happiness of our fellow creatures. Well-bred and intelli-
gent Christians are not, when they join in society, to con-
sider themselves as entering the lists like intellectual
prize fighters, in order to exhibit their own vigour
and dexterity, to discomfit their adversary, and to bear
away the palin of victory. Truth and not triumph should
be the object; and there are few occasions in life, in which
we are more unremittingly called upon to watch ourselves
narrowly, and to resist the assaults of various temptations,
than in conversation. Vanity, jealousy, envy, misrepre-
sentation, resentment, disdain, levity, impatience, insin-
cerity, will in turn solicit to be gratified. Constantly to
struggle against the desire of being thought more wise,
more witty, and more knowing, than those with whom we
associate, demands the incessant exertion of Christian
vigilance, a vigilance which the generality are so far from
suspecting necessary in the intercourse of common soci
ety, that cheerful conversation is rather considered as an
exemption and release from it, than as an additional obli-
gation to it.
❤
But society, as was observed before, is not a stage on
which to throw down our gauntlet, and prove our own
prowess by the number of falls we give to our adversary;
so far from it, good breeding as well as Christianity, con-
siders as an indispensable requisite for conversation, the
t
02..
32
CONVERSATION,
•
disposition to bring forward to notice any talent in others,
which their own modesty, or conscious inferiority would
lead them to keep back. To do this with effect requires
a penetration exercised to discern merit, and a generous
candour which delights in drawing it out. There are few
who cannot converse tolerably on some one topic; what
hat is, we should try to find out, and in general introduce
that topic, though to the suppression of any one on which
we ourselves are supposed to excel: and however superior
we may be in other respects to the persons in question,
we may, perhaps, in that particular point, improve by
them; and if we do not gain information, we shall at least
gain a wholesome exercise to our humility and self-denial;
we shall be restraining our own impetuosity; we shall, if
we take this course on just occasions only, and so as to be-
ware lest we gratify the vanity of others, be giving confi-
dence to a doubting, or cheerfulness to a depressed spi-
rit. And to place a just remark, hazarded by the diffident,
in the most advantageous point of view; to call the atten-
tion of the inattentive, the forward, and the self-sufficient,
to some quiet person in the company, who, though of
nuch worth, is perhaps of little note; these are requisites
for conversation, less brilliant, but far more valuable,
Than the power of exciting bursts of laughter by the bright-
est wit, or of extorting admiration by the most poignant
sallics of ridicule.
For wit is of all the qualities of the female mind that
which requires the severest castigation; yet the tempe-
rate exercise of this fascinating quality throws an addi-
tional lustre round the character of an amiable woman;
for to manage with discreet modesty a dangerous talent,
confers a higher praise than can be claimed by those in
whom the absence of the talent takes away the temptation
to misemploy it. To women, wit is a peculiarly perilous
possession, which nothing short of the sobermindedness of
Christianity can keep in order. Intemperate wit craves
admiration as its natural aliment; it lives on flattery as
its daily bread. The professed wit is a hungry beg-
gar, that subsists on the extorted alms of perpetual
panegyric; and like the vulture in the Grecian fable,
its appetite increases by indulgence. Simple truth and
sober approbation become tasteless and insipid to the
J
A
CONVERSATION.
3$
C
palate, daily vitiated by the delicious poignances of exag-
gerated commendation. Under the above restrictions,
however, wit may be safely and pleasantly exercised; for
chastised wit is an elegant and well-bred, and not unfem-
inine quality. But humour, especially if it degenerate
into imitation, or mimicry, is very sparingly to be ventured
on; for it is so difficult totally to detach it from the sus-
picion of buffoonery, that a woman will be likely to lose
more of that delicacy which is her appropriate grace,
than she will gain in the eyes of the judicious, by the
most successful display of humour.
But if it be true that some women are too apt to affect
brilliancy and display in their own discourse, and to un-
dervalue the more humble pretensions of less showy cha-
racters; it must be confessed also, that some of more or-
dinary abilities are now and then guilty of the opposite er-
ror, and foolishly affect to value themselves on not mak-
ing use of the understanding they really possess. They
exhibit no small satisfaction in ridiculing women of
high intellectual endowments, while they exclaim with
much affected humility, and much real envy, that "they
are thankful they are not geniuses." Now, though one is
glad to hear gratitude expressed on any occasion, yet the
want of sense is really no such great mercy to be thankful
for; and it would indicate a better spirit, were they to pray to
be enabled to make a right use of the moderate understand-
ing they possess, instead of exposing with a visible pleas-
ure the imaginary or real defects of their more shining ac-
quaintance. Women of the brightest faculties should not
only "bear those faculties meekly," but consider it as no
derogation, cheerfully to fulfil those humbler duties which
make up the business of common life, always taking into
the accoun the higher responsibility attached to higher
gifts. While women of lower attainments should exert
to the utmost such abilities as Providence has assigned
them; and while they should not deride excellencies
which are above their reach, they should not despond at
an inferiority which did not depend on themselves ; nor,
because God has denied them ten talents, should they for-
get that they are equally responsible for the one he has
allotted them, but set about devoting that one with humble
diligence to the glory of the Giver.
1
-
34
CONVERSATION.
- Vanity, however, is not the monopoly of talents: let
not a young lady, therefore, fancy that she is humble,
merely because she is not ingenious. Humility is not
the exclusive privilege of dulness. Folly is as conceited
as wit, and ignorance many a time outstrips knowledge in
the race of vanity. Equally earnest competitions spring
from causes less worthy to excite them than wit and ge-
nius. Vanity insinuates itself into the female heart under
a variety of unsuspected forms, and seizes on many a lit-
tle pass which was not thought worth guarding.
Who has not seen as restless emotion agitate the fea-
tures of an anxious matron, while peace and fame hung
trembling in doubtful suspense on the success of a soup
or a sauce, on which sentence was about to be pronounced
by some consummate critic, as could have been excited
by any competition for literary renown, or any struggle
for contested wit? Nor was the illustrious hero of Greece
more effectually hindered from sleeping by the trophies.
of Miltiades, than many a modish damsel by the eclipsing
superiority of some newer decoration exhibited by her
more successful friend.
•
There is another species of vanity in some women Which
disguises itself under the thin veil of an affected humility;
they will accuse themselves of some fault from which they
are remarkably exempt, and lament the want of some ta-
lent which they are rather notorious for possessing. This'
is not only a clumsy trap for praise, but there is a disin-
genuous intention, by renouncing a quality they eminent-
ly possess to gain credit for others in which they are real-
ly deficient. All affectation involves a species of deceit.
The apostle when he enjoins, "not to think of ourselves
more highly than we ought," does not exhort us to think
falsely of ourselves, but to think "soberly ;" and it is worth
observing that in this injunction he does not use the word
speak, but think, inferring possibly, that it would be safer
to speak little of ourselves, or not at all; for it is so far
from being an unequivocal proof of our humility to talk
even of our defects, that while we make self the subject,
in whatever way, self-love contrives to be gratified, and
will even be content that our faults should be talked of,
rather than that we should not be talked of at all. Some
are also attacked with such proud fits of humility, that
$
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CONVERSATION.
35
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¿
while they are ready to accuse themselves of almost every
sin in the lump, they yet take fire at the imputation of the
slightest individual fault; and instantly enter upon their
own vindication as warmly as if you, and not themselves,
had brought forward the charge. The truth is, they ven-
tured to condemn themselves, in the full confidence that
you would contradict them; the last thing they intended
was that you should believe them, and they are never so
much piqued and disappointed as when they are taken at
their word.
Of the various shapes and undefined forms into which
vanity branches out in conversation, there is no end. Out
of a restless desire to please, grows the spurious desire to
astonish from vanity as much as from credulity, arises
that strong love of the marvellous, with which the conver-
sation of the ill-educated abounds. Hence that fondness
for dealing in narratives hardly within the compass of pos-
sibility. Here vanity has many shades of gratification;
those shades will be stronger or weaker, whether the re-
later chance to have been an eye-witness of the wonder
she recounts; or whether she claim only the second-hand
renown of its having happened to her friend, or the still
remoter celebrity of its having been witnessed only by her
friend's friend: but even though that friend only knew
the man, who remembered the woman, who actually be-
held the thing which is now causing admiration in the
company, still self, though in a fainter degree, is brought
into notice, and the relater contrives in some circuitous
way to be connected with the wonder.
To correct this propensity to clevate and surprise,”*
it would be well in mixed society to abstain altogether
from hazarding stories, which, though they may not be
absolutely false, yet lying without the verge of probabili-
ty, are apt to impeach the credit of the narrator; in whom
the very consciousness that she is not believed, exeites an
increased eagerness to depart still farther from the sober-
ness of truth, and induces a habit of vehement asseveration,
which is too often called in to help out a questionable point.†
* The Rehearsal.
+ This is also a good rule in composition. An event, though it may actually have
happened, yet if it he out of the reach of probability or contrary to the common course
of nature, will seldom be chosen as a subject by a writer of good taste; for he i nows
that a probable fiction will interest the feelings inore than an unlikely ti uth. Verisim-
Ditude is indeed the poet's truth,but the truth of the moralist is of a more sturdy growi»
4th
36
CONVERSATION.
*#
•
There is another shape, and a very deformed shape it
is, in which loquacious vanity shews itself; I mean, the
betraying of confidence. Though the act be treacherous,
yet the fault, in the first instance, is not treachery, but van-
ity. It does not so often spring from the mischievous de-
sire of divulging a secret, as from the pride of having been
trusted with it. It is the secret inclination of mixing self
with whatever is important. The secret would be of little
value if the revealing it did not serve to intimate our con-
nexion with it; the pleasure of its having been deposited
with us would be nothing, if others may not know it has
been so deposited. When we continue to see the variety
of serious evils this principle involves, shall we persist in
asserting that vanity is a slender mischief?
There is one offence, committed in conversation, of
much too serious a nature to be overlooked, or to be an-
imadverted on without sorrow and indignation: I mean,
the habitual and thoughtless profaneness of those who are
repeatedly invoking their Maker's name on occasions the
most trivial. It is offensive in alits variety of aspects ;-
it is very pernicious in its effects ;-it is a growing evil ;-
those who are most guilty of it, are, from habit, hardly
conscious when they do it; are not aware of the sin; and
for both these reasons, without the admonitions of faithful
friendship, little likely to discontinue it It is utterly IN-
EXCUSABLE ;—it has none of the palliatives of templation
which other vices plead, and in that respect stands dis-
tinguished from all others, both in its nature and degree
of guilt. Like many other sins, however, it is at once
cause and effect; it proceeds from want of love and rever-
ence to the best of Beings, and causes that want, both in
themselves and others. Yet with all those aggravations,
there is, perhaps, hardly any sin so frequently committed,
so seldom repented of, and so little guarded against. On
the score of impropriety too, it is additionally offensive, as
being utterly repugnant to female delicacy, which often
affects to be shocked at swearing in a man. Now this spe-
cies of profaneness is not only swearing, but, perhaps, in
some respects, swearing of the worst sort; as it is a di-
rect breach of an express command, and offends against
the very letter of that law, which says in so many words,
THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY
CONVERSATION.
3M
GOD IN VAIN. It offends against delicacy and good breed-
ing; for those, who commit it, little think of the pain they
are inflicting on the sober mind, which is deeply wounded
when it hears the holy name it loves dishonoured; and it
is as contrary to good breeding to give pain, as it is to
true piety to be profane.
I would endeavour to give some faint idea of the gross-
ness of this offence, by an analogy (O! how inadequate !)
with which the feeling heart, even though not seasoned
with religion, may be touched. To such I would earnest-
ly say -Suppose you had some beloved friend,- to put
the case still more strongly, a departed friend-a revered
parent, perhaps,-whose image never occurs without awak-
ing in your bosom sentiments of tender love and gratitude;
how would you feel if you heard this honoured name ban-
died about with unfeeling familiarity and indecent levity;
or, at best, thrust into every pause of speech as a vulgar
expletive? Does not your affectionate heart recoil at the
thought? And yet the hallowed name of your truest Be-
nefactor, your heavenly Father, your best Friend, who
gives you all you enjoy, those very friends in whom you
so much delight, those very organs with which you dis-
honour him, is treated with an irreverence, a contempt, a
wantonness, with which you cannot bear the very thought
or mention of treating a human friend. His name is im-
piously, is unfeelingly, is ungratefully singled out as the
object of decided irreverence, of systematic contempt, of
thoughtless levity. It is used indiscriminately to express
anger, joy, grief, surprise, impatience; and what is almost
still more unpardonable than all, it is wantonly used as á
mere unmeaning expletive, which, being excited by no.
emotion, can have nothing to recommend it, unless it be
the pleasure of the sin.
Lư
(
Among the deep, but less obvious, mischiefs of conver-
sation, misrepresentation, must not be overlooked. Self-
love is continually at work, to give to all we say a bias in
our own favour. The counteraction of this fault should
be set about in the earliest stages of education. If young
persons have not been discouraged in the natural, but evil,
propensity to relate every dispute they have had with oth-
ers to their own advantage; if they have not been trained
to the duty of doing justice even to those with whom they
•
38
CONVERSATIONE
are at variance; if they have not been led to aim at a com-
pletely impartiality in their little narratives, and instruct-
ed never to take advantage of the absence of the other par-
ty, in order to make the story lean to their own side more
than the truth will admit; how shall we in advanced life
look for correct habits, for unprejudiced representations,
for fidelity, accuracy, and unbiassed justice?
Yet, how often in society, otherwise respectable, are we
pained with narrations in which prejudice warps, and self-
love blinds! How often do we see, that withholding
part of a truth answers the worst ends of a falsehood!
How often regret the unfair turn given to a business, by
placing a sentiment in one point of view, which the speak-
er had used in another! the letter of truth preserved,
where its spirit is violated! a superstitious exactness
scrupulously maintained in the under parts of a detail, in
order to impress such an idea of integrity as shall gain
credit, while the leading principle is designedly mistat-
ed! nay, a new character given to a fact by a different
look, tone, or emphasis, which alters it as much as words
could have done! the false impression of a sermon con-
veyed, when we do not like the preacher, or when through
him we wish to make religion itself ridiculous! the
avoiding of literal untruths while the mischief is better
effected by the unfair quotation of a passage divested of
its context the bringing together detached portions of
a subject, and making those parts ludicrous, when con-
nected, which were perfect in their distinct position! the
insidious use made of a sentiment by representing it as
the opinion of him who had only brought it forward in or-
der to expose it! the relating opinions which had merely
been put hypothetically, as the avowed principles of him
we would discredit! that subtle falsehood which is so
made to incorporate with a certain quantity of truth, that
the most skilful moral chemist cannot analyze or sepa-
rate them for a good misrepresenter knows that a suc-
cessful lie must have a certain infusion of truth, or it will
not go down.
All that indefinable ambiguity and equi-
vocation; all that prudent deceit, which is rather impli-
ed than expressed; those more delicate artifices of the
school of Loyola and of Chesterfield, which allow us when
we dare not deny a truth, yet so to disguise and discolour
"
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LOVE
Fo
CONVERSATION.
1
уртан
it, that the truth we relate shall not resemble the truth we
heard! These, and all the thousand shades of simulation
and dissimulation, will be carefully guarded against in
the conversation of vigilant Christians.
Again, it is surprising to mark the common deviations
from strict veracity, which spring, not from enmity to
truth, not from intentional deceit, not from malevolence
or envy, or the least design to injure, but from mere le-
vity, habitual inattention, and a current notion that it is
not worth while to be correct in small things. But here
the doctrine of habits comes in with great force, and in
that view no error is small. The cure of this disease in
its more inveterate stages being next to impossible, its
prevention ought to be one of the carliest objects of edu-
cation.*
The grievous fault of gross and obvious detraction
which infects conversation, has been so heavily and so just-
ly condemned by divines and moralists, that the subject
is exhausted. But there is an error of an opposite com-
plexion, which we have before noticed, and against which
the peculiar temper of the times requires that young la-
dies of a better cast should be guarded. From the nar-
rowness of their own sphere of observation, they are
sometimes addicted to accuse of uncharitableness, that
distinguishing judgment, which, resulting from a sound
penetration and a zeal for truth, forbids persons of a very
correct principle to be indiscriminately prodigal of com-
mendation without inquiry, and without distinction. There
is an affectation of candour, which is almost as mischiev-
ous as calumny itself; nay, if it be less injurious in its in-
dividual application, it is, perhaps, more alarming in its
gencral principle, as it lays waste the strong fences which
separate good from evil. They know (though they some-
tines calumniate) that calumny is wrong; but they have
not been told that flattery is wrong also; and youth, being
apt to fancy that the direct contrary to wrong must neces-
sarily be right, are apt to be driven into violent extremes.
The dread of being only suspected of one fault, makes
them actually guilty of the other; and to avoid the charge
of harshness or of envy, they plunge into insincerity. In
this they are actuated either by an unsound judgment or
an unsound principle.
x
In this age of high-minded independence, when our
* See the t
ON
7
ven the pes of Taß sindone
*
10
CONVENSATION.
CONVE
youth are apt to set up for themselves, and every man is
too much disposed to be his own legislator, without look-
ing, as his standard, to the established law of the land; and
to set up for his own divine, without looking to the re-
vealed will of God; by a candour equally vicious with our
vanity, we are also complaisantly led to give the latitude
we take; and it is become too frequent a phrase in the
mov.hs of our tolerating young ladies, when speaking of
their more erring and misled acquaintance, to offer for
them this flimsy vindication, "that what they do is right
if it appear right to them;" '—" if they see the thing in that
light, and act up to it with sincerity, they cannot be mate-
rially wrong." But the standard of truth, justice, and re-
Jigion, must neither be elevated nor depressed, in order
to accommodate it to actual circumstances: it must never
be lowered to palííate error, to justify folly, or to vindicate
vice. Good-natured young people often speak favourably
of unworthy, or extravagantly of common characters, from
one of these motives; either their own views of excel-
lence are low, or they speak respectfully of the undeserv-
ing, to purchase for themselves the reputation of tender-
ness and generosity; or they lavish unsparing praise on
almost all alike, in the usurious hope of buying back
universal commendation in return; or in those captivat-
ing characters in which the simple and masculine lan-
guage of truth is sacrificed to the jargon of affected soft-
ness; and in which smooth and pliant manners are substi-
tuted for intrinsic worth, the inexperienced are too apt to
suppose virtues, and to forgive vices. But they should
carefully guard against the error of making manner the
criterion of merit, and of giving unlimited credit to stran-
gers for possessing every perfection, only because they
bring into company the engaging exterior of alluring
gentleness. They should also remember that it is an ea-
sy, but not an honest way of obtaining the praise of can-
dour, to get into the soft and popular habit of saying of all
their acquaintance, when speaking of them, that they are
so good! True Christian candour conceals faults, but it
does not invent virtues. It tenderly forbears to expose
the evil which may belong to a character, but it dares not
ascribe to it the good which does not exist. To correct
this propensity to false judgment and insincerity, it would
be well to bear in mind, that while every good action,
come from what source it may, and every good quality,
be it found in whomsoever it will, deserves its fair propor-
}
26
1
CONVERSATION,
41
1
tion of distinct and willing commendation: yet no charac-
ter is GOOD, in the true sense of the word, which is not
W
RELIGIOUS.
In fine to recapitulate what has been said, with some
additional hints:-Study to promote both intellectual and
moral improvement in conversation; labour to bring into
it a disposition to bear with others, and to be watchful
over yourself; keep out of sight any prominent talent of
your own, which, if indulged, might discourage or op--
press the feeble minded. If you know any one present to
possess any particular weakness or infirmity, never exer-
cise your wit by maliciously inventing occasions which
may lead her to expose or betray it; but give as favour-
able a turn as you can to the follies which appear, and
kindly help her to keep the rest out of sight. Never
gratify your own humour, by hazarding what you suspect
may wound any one present in their persons, connexions,
professions in life, or religious opinions; and do not for-
get to examine whether the laugh your wit has raised be
never bought at this expense. Give credit to those who,
without your kindness, will get none; do not talk at any
one whom you dare not talk to, unless from motives in
which the golden rule will bear you out. Seek neither
to shine nor to triumph; and if you seek to please, take
care that it be in order to convert the influence you may
gain by pleasing to the good of others. Cultivate true po-
liteness, for it grows out of true principle, and is consist
ent with the Gospel of Christ; but avoid those feigned
attentions which are not stimulated by good will, and those
stated professions of fondness which are not dictated by
esteem. Remember, that the praise of being thought ami-
able by strangers, may be bought too dear, if it be bought
at the expense of truth and simplicity: remember, that
Simplicity is the first charm in manner, as Truth is in
mind; and could truth make herself visible, she would
appear invested in Simplicity.
Remember also, that true good nature is the soul, of
which politeness is only the garb. It is not that artificial
quality which is taken up by many when they go into se-
ciety, in order to charm those whom it is not their par-
ticular business to please; and is laid down when they
return home to those to whom to appear amiable is a real
duty. It is not that facinating but deceitful softness,
which, after having acted over a hundred scenes of the
most lively sympathy and tender interest with every slight
12
ON SENSIBILITY.
+
acquaintance; after having exhausted every phrase of
feeling, for the trivial sicknesses or petty sorrows of mul-
titudes who are scarcely known, leaves it doubtful whether
a grain of real feeling or genuine sympathy be reserved
for the tlearest connexions; and which dismisses a wo-
man to her immediate friends with little affection, and to
her own family with little attachment.
True good nature, that which alone deserves the name,
is not a holiday ornament, but an every-day habit. It does
not consist in servile complaisance, or dishonest flattery,
or affected sympathy, or unqualified assent, or unwarrant-
able compliance, or eternal smiles. Before it can be
allowed to rank with the virtues, it must be wrought up
from a humour into a principle, from an occasional dispo-
sition into a habit. It must be the result of an equal and
well-governed mind, not the start of casual gaiety, the trick
of designing vanity, or the whim of capricious fondness.
It is compounded of kindness, forbearance, forgiveness,
and self-denial; "it seeketh not its own," but must be
capable of making continual sacrifices of its own tastes,
humours, and self love; but among the sacrifices it makes,
it must never include its integrity. Politeness on the
one hand, and insensibility on the other, assume its name,
and wear its honours; but they assume the honours of a
triumph, without the merit of a victory; for politeness
subdues nothing, and insensibility has nothing to subdue.
Good nature of the true cast, and under the foregoing re-
gulations, is above all price in the common intercourse
of domestic society; for an ordinary quality, which is
constantly brought into action by the perpetually recur-
ring, though minute, events of daily life, is of higher val-
ue than more brilliant qualities, which are more seldom
called into use. And, indeed, Christianity has given that
new turn to the character of all the virtues, that perhaps
it is the best test of the excellence of many, that they have
fistle brilliancy in them. The Christian Religion has de-
graded some splendid qualities from the rank they held,
and elevated those which were obscure into distinction.
CHAPTER XV.
On the danger of an ill-directed Sensibility,
IN considering the human character with a view to its
improvement, it is prudent to endeavour to discover the
natural bent of the mind, and having found it, to direct
vour force against that side on which the warp lies, that
ON SENSIBILITY,
43
you may lessen by counteraction the defect which you
might be promoting, by applying your aid in a contrary
direction. But the misfortune is, people who mean better
than they judge, are apt to take up a set of general rules,
good perhaps in themselves, and originally gleaned from
experience and observation on the nature of human
things, but not applicable in all cases. These rules they
keep by them as nostrums of universal efficacy, which
they therefore often bring out for use in cases to which
they do not apply. For to make any remedy effectual, it
is not enough to know the medicine, you must study the
constitution also; if there be not a congruity between the
two, you may be injuring one patient by the means which
are requisite to raise and restore another, whose tempe-
rament is of a contrary description.
It is of importance in forming the female character,
that those on whom, this task devolves should possess so
much penetration as accurately to discern the degree of
sensibility, and so much judgment as to accommodate the
treatment to the individual character. By constantly sti-
mulating and extolling feelings naturally quick, those
feelings will be rendered too acute and irritable. On the
other hand, a calm and equable temper will become ob-
tuse by the total want of excitement; the former treat-
ment converts the feelings into a source of error, agita-
tion, and calamity: the latter starves their native energy,
deadens the affections, and produces a cold, dull, selfish
spirit; for the human mind is an instrument which will
lose its sweetness if strained too high, and will be de-
prived of its tone and strength if not sufficiently raised.
It is cruel to chill the precious sensibility of an ingenu-
ous soul, by treating with supercilious coldness and un-
feeling ridicule every indication of a warm, tender, disin-
terested, and enthusiastic spirit, as if it exhibited symp-
toms of a deficiency in understanding or prudence. How
many are apt to intimate, with a smile of mingled pity and
contempt, that when such a one knows the world, that is,
in other words, when she shall be grown cunning, selfish,
and suspicious, she will be ashamed of her present glow
of honest warmth, and of her lovely susceptibility of heart.
May she never know the world, if the knowledge of it
must be acquired at such an expense! But to sensible
hearts, every indication of genuine feeling will be dear,
for they will know that it is this temper which, by the
JO
1
P2
છે.
ON SENSIBILITY.
碧
​guidance of the Divine Spirit, may make her one day be
come more enamoured of the beauty of holiness: which,
with the co-operation of principle, and under its direc-
tion, will render her the lively agent of Providence in di-
minishing the misery that is in the world: into which misery
this temper will give her a quicker intuition than colder
characters possess. It is this temper which,when it is touch-
ed and purified by a "live coal from the altar."* will give
her a keener taste for the spirit of religion, and a quick-
er zeal in discharging its duties. But let it be remem-
bered likewise, that as there is no quality in the female
character which will be so likely to endanger the peace,
and to expose the virtue of the possessor; so there is
one which requires to have its luxuriances more careful-
ly watched, and its wild shoots more closely lopped.
For young women of affections naturally warm, but not
carefully disciplined, are in danger of incurring an unna-
tural irritability; and while their happiness falls a vic-
tim to the excess of uncontrolled feelings, they are li-
able at the same time to indulge a vanity of all others the
most preposterous, that of being vain of their very de-
fect. They have heard sensibility highly commended,.
without having heard any thing of those bounds and fen-
ces which were intended to confine it, and without hav-
ing been imbued with that principle which would have
given it a beneficial direction; conscious that they pos-
sess the quality itself in the extreme, and not aware that
they want all that makes that quality safe and delightful,
they plunge headlong into those sins and miseries from
which they conceitedly imagine, that not principle but
coldness has preserved the more sober-minded and well-
instructed of their sex.
-
W
A
But as it would be foreign to the present design to ex-
patiate on those criminal excesses which are some of the
sad effects of ungoverned passion, it is only intended here
to hazard a few remarks on those lighter consequences
of it, which consist in the loss of comfort without ruin of
character, and the privation of much of the happiness of
life without involving any very censurable degree of guilt
or discredit. Let it, however, be incidentally remarked,
and let it be carefully remembered, that if no women have
risen so high in the scale of moral excellence as those
whose natural warmth has been conscientiously governed
by its true guide, and directed to its true cud; so mone
* Isaiah vi. 6.
ON SENSIBILITY.
45
<d
have furnished such deplorable instances of extreme de-
pravity as those who, through the ignorance or the dere-
liction of principle, have, been abandoned by the excess
of this very temper to the violence of ungoverned passions
and uncontrolled inclinations. Perhaps, if we were to in-
quire into the remote cause of some of the blackest crimes
which stain the annals of mankind, profligacy, murder, and
especially suicide, we might trace them back to this ori-
ginal principle, and ungoverned sensibility.
Notwithstanding all the fine theories in prose and verse
to which this topic has given birth, it will be found that
very exquisite sensibility contributes so little to happiness,
and may yet be made to contribute so much to useful-
ness, that it may, perhaps, be considered as bestowed
for an exercise to the possessor's own virtue, and as a
keen instrument with which she may better work for the
good of others.
Women of this cast of mind are less careful to avoid the
charge of unbounded extremes, than to escape at all events
the imputation of insensibility. They are little alarmed at
the danger of exceeding, though terrified at the suspicion,
of coming short, of what they take to be the extreme point
of feeling. They will even resolve to prove the warmth
of their sensibility, though at the expense of their judg
ment, and sometimes also of their justice. Even when
they earnestly desire to be and to do right, they are apt
to employ the wrong instrument to accomplish the right
end. They employ the passions to do the work of the
judgment; forgetting or not knowing, that the passions
were not given us to be used in the search and discovery
of truth, which is the office of a cooler and more discrim-
inating faculty; but that they were given to animate us to
warmer zeal in the pursuit and practice of truth, when
the judgment shall have pointed out what is truth.
Through this natural warmth, which they have been
justly told is so pleasing, but which, perhaps, they have
not been told will be continually exposing them to peril and
to suffering, their joys and sorrows are excessive. Of this
extreme irritability, as was before remarked, the ill-edu-
cated learn to boast as if it were a decided indication of
superiority of soul, instead of labouring to restrain it as
the excess of a temper which ceases to be amiable, when
it is no longer under the control of the governing faculty..
It is misfortune enough to be born more liable to suffer
-Ch
•
46
ON SENSIBILITY.
I
and to sin, from this conformation of mind; it is too much
to nourish the evil by unrestrained indulgence: it is still
worse to be proud of so misleading a quality.
Flippancy, impetuosity, resentment, and violence of
spirit, grow out of this disposition, which will be rather
promoted than corrected, by this system of education on
which we have been animadverting ; in which system,
emotions are too early and too much excited, and tastes
and feelings are considered as too exclusively making up
the whole of the female character: in which the judg
ment is little exercised, the reasoning powers are seldom
brought into action, and self-knowledge and self-denial
scarcely included.
mh
The propensity of mind which we are considering, if
unchecked, lays its possessors open to unjust preposses-
sions, and exposes them to all the danger of unfounded at-
tachments. In early youth, not only love at first sight, but
also friendship, of the same sudden growth, springs up
from an ill-directed sensibility; and in after life, women
under the powerful influence of this temper, conscious
that they have much to be borne with, are too readily in-
clined to select for their confidential connexions, flexible ·
and flattering companions, who will indulge and perhaps.
admire their faults, rather than firm and honest friends,
who will reprove and would assist in curing them. We
may adopt it as a general maxim, than an obliging, weak,
yielding, complaisant friend, full of small attentions, with
little religion, little judgment, and much natural acquies-
cence and civility, is a most dangerous, though generally
a too much desired confidant: she soothes the indolence,
and gratifies the vanity of her friend, by reconciling her
to her faults, while she neither keeps the understanding
nor the virtues of that friend in exercise; but withholds
from her every useful truth, which by opening her eyes
might give her pain. These obsequious qualities are the
"soft green"* on which the soul loves to repose itself.
But it is not a refreshing or a wholesome repose: we
should not select, for the sake of present ease, a soothing
flatterer, who will lull us into a pleasing oblivion of our
failings, but a friend, who, valuing our soul's health above
our immediate comfort, will rouse us from torpid indul-
gence to animation, vigilance, and virtue.
An ill-directed sensibility also leads a woman to be in-
judicious and eccentric in her charities; she will be in
• Burke'a "Sublime and Beautiful."
ON SENSIBILITY.
danger of proportioning her bounty to the immediate ef-
fect which the distressed object produces on her senses :
and she will be more liberal to a small distress presenting
itself to her own eyes, than to the more pressing wants and
better claims of those miseries, of which she only hears
the relation. There is a sort of stage effect, which some
people require for their charities: she will be apt also to
desire, that the object of her compassion shall have some-
thing interesting and amiable in it, such as shall furnish
pleasing images and lively pictures to her imagination,
and engaging subjects for description; forgetting that in her
charities, as well as in every thing else, she is to be a “fol-
lower of Him, who pleased not himself;" forgetting, that
the most coarse and disgusting object is as much the re-
presentative of Him who said, "Inasmuch as ye do it to
one of the least of these, ye do it unto me," as the most
interesting nay, the more uninviting and repulsive cases
may be better tests of the principle on which we relieve,
than those which abound in pathos and interest, as we can
have less suspicion of our motive in the latter case than
in the former. But, while we ought to neglect neither
of these supposed cases, yet the less our feelings are
caught by pleasing circumstances, the less will be the dan-
ger of our indulging self-complacency, and the more likely
shall we be to do what we do for the sake of Him who has
taught us, that no deeds but what are performed on that
principle, "shall be recompensed at the resurrection of the
just."
Und
W
But through the want of that governing principle which
should direct her sensibility, a tender-hearted woman,
whose hand, if she be actually surrounded with scenes
and circumstances, to call it into action, is
Open as day to melting charity;
nevertheless may utterly fail in the great and comprehen-
sive duty of Christian love, for she has feelings which are
acted upon solely by local circumstances and present
events. Only remove her into another scene, distant from
the wants she has been relieving; place her in the lap of
indulgence, so entrenched with ease and pleasure, so im-
mersed in softness of life, that distress no longer finds
any access to her presence, but through the faint and dull
medium of a distant representation; remove her from the
sight and sound of that misery which, when present, so ten-
derly affected her--she now forgets that misery exists;
as she hears but little, and sees nothing of want and sor-
$8
ON SENSIBILITY.
I
row, she is ready to fancy that the world is grown happier
than it was in the mean time, with a quiet conscience
and a thoughtless vanity, she has heen lavishing on super-
fluities that money which she would cheerfully have given
to a charitable case, had she not forgotten that any such
were in existence, because pleasure had blocked up the
avenues through which misery used to find its way to her
heart; and now, when again such a case forces itself into
her presence, she laments with real sincerity that the
money is gone which should have relieved it.
In the mean time, perhaps, other women of less natural
sympathy, but whose sympathies are under better regula-
tion, or who act from a principle which requires little
stimulus, have, by an habitual course of self-denial, by a
constant determination to refuse themselves unnecessary
indulgencies, and by guarding against that dissolving
PLEASURE which melts down the firmest virtue that al-
lows itself to bask in its beams, have been quietly furnish-
ing a regular provision for miseries, which their knowl-
edge of the state of the world teaches them are every
where to be found, and which their obedience to the will
of God tells them it is their duty both to find out and to
relieve; a general expectation of being liable to be called
upon for acts of charity, will lead the conscientiously cha-
ritable always to be prepared.
On such a mind as we have been describing, novelty
also will operate with peculiar force, and in nothing more
than in the article of charity. Old established institutions,
whose continued existence must depend on the continued
bounty of that affluence to which they owed their origin,
will be sometimes neglected, as presenting no variety to
the imagination, as having by their uniformity ceased to
be interesting, there is now a total failure of those springs
of mere sensitive feeling which set the charity a-going,
and those sudden emotions of tenderness and gusts of pity,
which once were felt, must now be excited by newer forms
of distress. As age comes on, that charity which has
been the effect of mere feeling, grows cold and rigid,
on account also of its having been often disappointed in
its high expectations of the gratitude and subsequent me-
rit of those it has relieved; and by withdrawing its bounty,
because some of its objects have been undeserving, it
gives clear proof that what it bestowed was for its own
gratification; and now finding that self-complacency at
an end, it bestows no longer. Probably too the cause of
C
'ON SENSIBILITY.
45
so much disappointment may have been, that ill choice
of the objects to which feeling, rather than a discrimina-
ting judgment has led. The summer showers of mere
'sensibility soon dry up, while the living spring of Chris-
tian charity flows alike in all seasons.
The impatience, levity, and fickleness, of which women
have been somewhat too generally accused, are perhaps in
no small degree aggravated by the littleness and frivolous-
ness of female pursuits. The sort of education they com-
'monly receive, tcaches girls to set a great price on small
things. Besides this, they do not always learn to keep a
very correct scale of degrees for rating the value of the
objects of their admiration and attachment; but by a kind
of unconscious idolatry, they rather make a merit of lov
ing supremely things and persons which ought to be lov-
ed with moderation, and in a subordinate degree the one
to the other. Unluckily, they consider moderation as so
necessarily indicating a cold heart and narrow soul, and
they look upon a state of indifference with so much hor-
ror, that either to love or hate with energy is supposed by
them to proceed from a higher state of mind than is pos-
sessed by more steady and equable characters. Whereas it
is in fact the criterion of a warm but well-directed sensibi-
lity, that while it is capable of loving with energy, it must
be enabled, by the judgment which governs it, to suit and ad-
just its degree of interest to the nature and excellence of
the object about which it is interested; for unreasonable
prepossession, disproportionate attachment, and capricious
or precarious fondness, is not sensibility.
Excessive but unintentional flattery is another fault into
which a strong sensibility is in danger of leading its pos-
sessor. A tender heart and a warm imagination conspire
to throw a sort of radiance round the object of their love,
till people are dazzled by a brightness of their own creat-
ing. The worldly and fashionable borrow the warm lan-
guage of sensibility without having the really warm feel-
ing; and young ladies get such a habit of saying, and es-
pecially of writing, such over obliging and flattering things
to eachother, that this mutual politeness, aided by the self-
love so natural to us all, and by an unwillingness to search
into our own hearts, keeps up the illusion, and we get a
habit of taking our character from the good we hear of our-
selvcs, which others assume, but do not very well know,
rather than from the evil we feel in ourselves, and which
we therefore ought to be theroughly acquainted with,
?
▾
.
3
ON SENSIBILITY.
Ungoverned sensibility is apt to give a wrong direction
to its anxieties; and its affection often falls short of the
true end of friendship. If the object of its regard happen
to be sick, what inquiries! what prescriptions! what an
accumulation is made of cases in which the remedy its
fondness suggests has been successful! What an unaffect-
ed tenderness for the perishing body! Yet is this sensibi-
lity equally alive to the immortal interests of the sufferer?
Is it not silent and at ease when it contemplates the dear-
est friend persisting in opinions essentially dangerous; in
practices unquestionably wrong? Does it not view all this,
not only without a generous ardour to point out the peril,
and rescue the friend; but if that friend be supposed to be
dying, does it not even make it the criterion of kindness to
let her die undeceived? What a want of true sensibility,
to feel for the pain, but not for the danger of those we
love! Now see what sort of sensibility the Bible teaches!
Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart, but thou
shalt in any wise rebuke him, and shalt not suffer sin upon
him."* But let that tenderness which shrinks from the
idea of exposing what it loves to a momentary pang, figure
to itself the bare possibility, that the object of its own fond
affection may not be the object of the Divine favour! Let
it shrink from the bare conjecture, that "the familiar
friend with whom it has taken sweet counsel," is going
down to the gates of death, unrepenting, unprepared, and
yet unwarned.
But mere human sensibility goes a shorter way to work.
Not being able to give its friend the pain of hearing her
faults or of knowing her danger, it works itself up into the
quieting delusion that no danger exists, at least not for the
objects of its own affection; it gratifies itself by inventing
a salvation so comprehensive as shall take in all itself loves
with all their faults; it creates to its own fond heart an
ideal and exaggerated divine mercy, which shall pardon
and receive all in whom this blind sensibility has an inter-
est, whether they be good or whether they be evil.
In regard to its application to religious purposes, it is a
test that sensibility has received its true direction when it
is supremely turned to the love of God: for to possess an
overflowing fondness for our fellow-creatures and fellow-
sinners, and to be cold and insensible to the Essence of
goodness and perfection, is an inconsistency to which the
feeling heart is awfully liable. God has himself the first
* Leviticus Máx. 17.
ON SENSIBILITY.
51
claim to the sensibility he bestowed. “He first loved us
this is a natural cause of love. "He loved us while we
were sinners :" this is a supernatural cause. He conti-
nues to love us though we neglect his favours, and slight
his mercies this would wear out any earthly kindness.
He forgives us, not petty neglects, not occasional slights,
but grievous sins, repeated offences, broken vows, and un-
requited love. What human friendship performs offices
so calculated to touch the soul of sensibility?
Those young women in whom feeling is indulged to
the exclusion of reason and examination, are peculiarly
liable to be the dupes of prejudice, rash decisions, and
false judgment. The understanding having but little pow-
er over the will, their affections are not well poized, and
their minds are kept in a state ready to be acted upon by
the fluctuations of alternate impulses; by sudden and va-
rying impressions; by casual and contradictory circum-
stances; and by emotions excited by every accident. In-
stead of being guided by the broad views of general truth,
and having one fixed principle, they are driven on by the
impetuosity of the moment. And this impetuosity blinds
the judgment as much as it misleads the conduct; so that
for want of a habit of cool investigation and inquiry, they
meet every event without any previously formed opinion
or rule of action. And as they do not accustom themselves
to appreciate the real value of things, their attention is as
likely to be led away by the under parts of a subject, as to
seize on the leading feature. The same eagerness of mint
which hinders the operation of the discriminating faculty,
leads also to the error of determining on the rectitude of
an action by its success, and to that of making the event of
an undertaking decide on its justice or propriety; it also
leads to that superficial and erroneous way of judging
which fastens on exceptions, if they make in one's own
favour, as grounds of reasoning, while they lead us to
overlook received and general rules which tend to estab-
lish a doctrine contrary to our wishes.
K
Sh
Open-hearted, indiscreet girls, often pick up a few
strong notions, which are as false in themselves as they
are popular among the class in question : such as, " that
warm friends must make warm enemies,"-that " the
generous love and hate with all their hearts,"that" a
reformed rake makes the best husband:" --that "there is
no medium in marriage, but that it is a state of exquisite
Q
છે.
R
ON SENSIBILITY.
happiness or exquisite misery;" with many other doc-
trines of equal currency and equal soundness! These
they consider as axioms, and adopt as rules of life. From
the two first of these oracular sayings, girls are in no
small danger of becoming unjust through the very warmth.
of their hearts: for they will get a habit of making their
estimate of the good or ill qualities of others, merely in
proportion to the greater or less degree of kindness which
they themselves have received from them. Their esti-
snation of general character is thus formed on insulated and
partial grounds; on the accidental circumstance of perso-
nal predilection or personal pique. Kindness to themselves
or their friends involves all possible excellence; neglect,
all imaginable defects. Friendship and gratitude can and
should go a great way; but as they cannot convert vice
into virtue, so they ought never to convert truth into false-
hood. And it may be the more necessary to be upon our
guard in this instance, because the very idea of gratitude
may mislead us, by converting injustice into the sem-
blance of a virtue. Warm expressions should therefore
be limited to the conveying a sense of our own individual
obligations which are real, rather than employed to give
an impression of general excellence in the person who
has obliged us, which may be imaginary. A good man
is still good, though it may not have fallen in his way, to
oblige or serve us, nay, though he may have neglected or
even unintentionally hurt us; and sin is still sin, though
committed by the person in the world to whom we are the
most obliged, and whom we most love.
·
We come next to that fatal and most indelicate, nay,
gross maxim, that "a reformed rake makes the best hus-
band;" an aphorism to which the principles and the hap-
piness of so many young women have been sacrificed. It
goes upon the preposterous supposition, not only that ef
fects do not follow causes, but that they oppose them; on
the supposition, that habitual vice creates rectitude of
character, and that sin produces happiness; thus flatly
contradicting what the moral government of God uni-
formly exhibits in the course of human events, and what
Revelation so evidently and universally teaches.
For it should be observed, that the reformation is gen-
erally, if not always, supposed to be brought about by
the all-conquering force of female charms. Let but a
profligate young man have a point to carry by winning
the affections of a vain and thoughtless girl; he will be-
ON SENSIBILITY.
53
gin his attack upon her heart, by undermining her reli-
gious principles, and artfully removing cvery impedi-
ment which might have obstructed her receiving the ad-
dresses of a man without character. And while he will
lead her not to hear without ridicule the mention of that
change of heart, which scripture teaches and experience
proves the power of Divine grace can work on a vicious
character; while he will teach her to sneer at a change
which he would treat with contempt, because he denies
the possibility of so strange and miraculous a conversion;
yet he will not scruple to swear, that the power of her
beauty has worked a revolution in his own loose practi-
ces, which is equally complete and instantaneous.
But supposing it possible that his reformation were ge-
nuine, it would even then by no means involve the truth
of her proposition, that past libertinism insures future
felicity; yet many a weak girl, confirmed in this palata-
ble doctrine by examples she has frequently admired of
those surprising reformations so conveniently effected in
the last scene of most of our comedies, has not scrupled
to risk her earthly and eternal happiness with a man,
who is not ashamed to ascribe to the influence of her
beauty that power of changing the heart, which he in-
piously denies to Omnipotence itself.
As to the last of these practical aphorisms, that "there
is no medium in marriage, but that it is a state of exqui-
site happiness or exquisite miscry;" this, though not
equally sinful, is equally delusive: for marriage is only
one modification of human life, and human life is not com-
monly in itself a state of exquisite extremes; but is for
the most part that mixed and moderate state, so natu-
rally dreaded by those who set out with fancying this
world a state of rapture, and so naturally expected by
those who know it to be a state of probation and discipline.
Marriage, therefore, is only one condition, and often the
best condition, of that imperfect state of being, which,
though seldom very exquisite, is often very tolerable; and
which may yield much comfort to those who do not look for
constant transport. But,unfortunately, those who find them-
selves disappointed of the unceasing raptures they had
anticipated in marriage, disdaining to sit down with so
poor a provision as comfort, and scorning the acceptance
of that moderate lot which Providence commonly bestows
with a view to check despondency and to repress presump-
tion; give themselves up to the other alternative; and, by
-
ܚ
→
54
ON SENSIBILITT:
abandoning their heart to discontent, make to themselves
that misery with which their fervid imaginations had
filled the opposite scale.
The truth is, these young ladies are very apt to pick
up their opinions, less from the divines than the poets;
and the poets, though it must be confessed they are some
of the best embellishers of life, are not quite the safest
@onductors through it: for in travelling through a wilder-
mess, though we avail ourselves of the harmony of sing-
ing-birds to render the grove delightful, yet we never
think of following them as guides to conduct us through
its labyrinths.
Those women, in whom the natural defects of a warm
temper have been strengthened by an education which
fosters their faults, are very dexterous in availing them-
selves of a hint, when it favours a ruling inclination, sooths
vanity, indulges indolence, or gratifies their love of pow-
cr. They have heard so often from their favourite scnti-
mental authors, and their more flattering male friends,
that when Nature denied them strength, she gave them
Fascinating graces in compensation; that their strength.
consists in their weakness;" and that "they are endowed
with arts of persuasion which supply the absence of force,
and the place of reason;" that they learn, in time, to pride
themselves on that very weakness, and to become vain
of their imperfections; till at length they begin to claim
for their defects, not only pardon, but admiration. Hence
they get to cherish a species of feeling which, if not
checked, terminates in excessive selfishness; they learn
to produce their inability to bear contradiction as a proof
of their tenderness; and to indulge in that sort of irrita-
bility in all that relates to themselves, which inevitably
leads to the utter exclusion of all interest in the sufferings
of others. Instead of exercising their sensibility in the
wholesome duty of relieving distress, and visiting scenes
of sorrow, that sensibility itself is pleaded as a reason for
their not being able to endure sights of wo, and for shun-
ning the distress it should be exerted in removing. That
exquisite sense of feeling which God implanted in the
heart as a stimulus to quicken us in relieving the miseries
of others, is thus introverted, and learns to consider self
not as the agent, but the object of compassion. Tender-
ness is made an excuse for being hard-hearted; and instead
of drying the weeping cyes of others, this false delicacy
rescrves its selfish tears for the more elegant and less ex-
ON SENSIBILITY,
55
pensive sorrows of the melting novel or the pathetic tra-
gedy.
When feeling stimulates only to self-indulgence; when
the more exquisite affections of sympathy and pity eva-
porate in sentiment, instead of flowing out in active cha-
rity, and affording assistance, protection, or consolation to
every species of distress; it is an evidence that the feeling
is of a spurious kind; and instead of being nourished as
an amiable tenderness, it should be subdued as a fond and
base self-love.
Ad
That idleness, to whose cruel inroads many women of for-
tune are unhappily exposed, from not having been trained
to consider wholesome occupation, vigorous exertion, and
systematic employment, as making part of the indispensa-
ble duties of life, lays them open to a thousand evils of
this kind, from which the useful and the busy are exempt~
ed: and, perhaps, it would not be easy to find a more piti-
able object than a woman with a great deal of time and a
great deal of money on her hands, who, never having been
taught the conscientious use of either, squanders both at
random, or rather moulders both away, without plan,
without principle, and without pleasure; all whose pro-
jects begin and terminate in self: who considers the rest
of the world only as they may be subservient to her grati-
fication; and to whom it never occurred, that both her
time and money were given for the gratification and good
of others.
It is not much to the credit of the other sex, that they
now and then lend themselves to the indulgence of this
selfish spirit in their wives, and cherish by a kind of false
fondness those faults which should be combated by good
sense and a reasonable counteraction: slothfully prefer-
ring a little false peace, the purchase of precarious quiet,
and the reputation of good nature, to the higher duty of
forming the mind, fixing the principles, and strengthen-
ing the character of her with whom they are connected.
Perhaps too a little vanity in the husband helps out his
good nature; he secretly rewards himself for his sacri-
fice by the consciousness of his superiority; he feels a
self-complacency in his patient condescension to her
weakness, which tacitly flatters his own strength, and he
is, as it were, paid for stooping by the increased sense of
his own tallness. Seeing also, perhaps, but little of other
women, he gets to believe that they are all pretty much
*'
MOCK
Q:2
46
ON SENSIBILITY.
}
#
alike, and that, as a man of sense, he must content hin
self with what he takes to be the common lot. Whereas,
in truth, by his misplaced indulgence, he has rather made
his own lot than drawn it; and thus through an indolent
despair in the husband of being able to effect any im-
provement by opposition, it happens, that many a help-
less, fretful, and daudling wife acquires a more power-
ful ascendency than the most discreet and amiable wo-
man; and that the most absolute female tyranny is estab-
lished by these sickly and capricious humours.
The poets again, who, to do them justice, are always
ready to lend a helping hand when any mischief is to be
done. have contributed their full share towards confirm-
ing these feminine follies: they have strengthened by
adulatory maxims, sung in seducing strains, those faults
which their talents and their influence should have been
employed in correcting. When fair and youthful fe-
males are complimented with being
Fine by defect and delicately weak!
is not a standard of feebleness held out to them to which
vanity will gladly resort and to which softness and indo-
lence can easily act up, or rather act down, if I may be
allowed the expression?
When ladies are told by the same misleading, but to
them high authority, that "smiles and tears are the irrc-
sistible arms with which Nature has furnished them for
conquering the strong," will they not eagerly fly to this
cheap and ready artillery instead of labouring to furnish
themselves with a reasonable mind, an equable temper,
and a meek and quiet spirit?
mah
Every animal is endowed by Providence with the pe-
culiar powers adapted to its nature and its wants! while
none, except the human, by grafting art on natural saga-
city, injures or mars the gift. Spoilt women, who fancy
there is something more piequant and alluring in the muta-
ble graces of caprice, than in the monotonous smoothness
of an even temper, and who also having heard much, as
was observed before, about their "amiable weakness,"
learn to look about them for the best succedancum to
strength, the supposed absence of which they sometimes
endeavour to supply by artifice. By this engine the.
weakest woman frequently furnishes the converse to the
famous reply of the French minister, who, when he was
accused of governing the mind of that feeble Queen Ma-
ry de Medicis by sorcery, replied, "that the only sorcery
M
ON SENSIBILITY.
57
1
he had used, was that influence which strong minds natu-
rally have over weak ones."
But though it be fair so to study the tempers, defects,
and weaknesses of others, as to convert our knowledge of
them to the promotion of their benefit and our own; and
though it be making a lawful use of our penetration to
avail ourselves of the faults of others for "their good to
edification;" yet all deviations from the straight line of
truth and simplicity; every plot insidiously to turn in-
fluence to unfair account; all contrivances to extort from
a bribed complaisance what reason and justice would re-
fuse to our wishes: these are some of the operations of
that lowest and most despicable engine, selfish cunning,
by which little minds sometimes govern great ones.
d
*
And unluckily, women, from their natural desire to
please, and from their sometimes doubting by what means
this grand end may be best effected, are in more danger of
being led into dissimulation than inen; for dissimulation
is the result of weakness, and the refuge of doubt and
distrust, rather than of conscious strength, the dangers
of which lie another way. Frankness, truth, and simpli-
city, therefore as they are inexpressibly charming, so are
they peculiarly commendable in women, and nobly evince
that while the possessors of them wish to please, (and
why should they not wish it?) they disdain to have re-
course to any thing but what is fair, and just, and honour-
áble to effect it; that they scorn to attain the most desir-
ed end by any but the most lawful means. The beauty of
simplicity is indeed so intimately felt and generally ac-
knowledged by all who have a true taste for personal,
moral, or intellectual beauty, that women of the deepest
artifice often find their account in assuming an exterior
the most foreign to their character, and by affecting the
most studied naivete. It is curious to see the quantity of
art some people put in practice in order to appear natu-
ral; and the deep design which is set at work to exhibit
simplicity. And indeed this feigned simplicity is the
most mischievous, because the most engaging of all the
Proteus forms which dissimulation can put on. For the
most free and bold sentiments have been sometimes ha-
zarded with fatal success under this unsuspected mask.
And an innocent, quiet, indolent, artless manner, has been
adopted as the most refined and successful accompani
ment of sentiments, ideas, and designs,neither artless nor
innocent,
HO
CHAPTER XVI.
On dissipation, and the modern habits of fashionable life.
PERHAPS the interests of true friendship, clegant con-
versation, mental improvement, social pleasure, maternal
duty, and conjugal comfort, never received such a blow
as when Fashion issued out that arbitrary and universal
decree, that every body must be acquainted with every
body; together with that consequent authoritative, but
Father inconvenient clause, that every body must also go
every where every night. The devout obedience paid to
this law is incompatible with the very being of friend-
ship; for as the circle of acquaintance expands, and it
will be continually expanding, the affections will be beat-
en out into such thin lamina as to leave little solidity
maining. The heart which is continually exhausting it-
self in professions grows cold and hard. The feelings of
kindness diminish in proportion as the expression of it
becomes more diffuse and indiscriminate. The very
traces of "simplicity and godly sincerity" in a delicate
female, wear away imperceptibly by constant collision
with the world at large. And perhaps no woman takes
so little interest in the happiness of her real friends, as
she whose affections are incessantly evaporating in uni-
versal civilities; as she who is saying fond and flattering
things at random to a circle of five hundred people every
night.
re
i
*
The decline and fall of animated and instructive con-
versation has been in a good measure effected by this bar
barous project of assembling en masse. An excellent
prelate, with whose friendship the author was long hon-
oured, and who himself excelled in the art of conversa-
tion, used to remark, that a few years had brought about
a great revolution in the manners of society; that it used
to be the custom previously to going into company, to
think that something was to be communicated or receiv
ed, taught or learnt; that the powers of the understand-
ing were expected to be brought into exercise, and that
it was therefore necessary to quicken the mind, by read-
ing and thinking, for the share the individual might he
expected to take in the general discourse; but that know-
ledge, and taste, and wit, and erudition, seemed now to
be scarcely considered as necessary materials to be brought
into the pleasurable commerce of the world; because
*The late Bishop of Horne.
-
ON DISSFFATION, &c.
59
now there was little chance of turning them to much
account; and therefore he who possessed them, and he
who possessed them not, were nearly on a footing.
It is obvious also that multitudinous assemblies are so
little favourable to that cheerfulness which it should seem
to be their very end to proniote, that if there were any che-
mical process by which the quantum of spirits, animal or
intellectual, could be ascertained, the diminution would be
found to have been inconceivably great, since the trans-
formation of man and woman from a social to a gregarious
animal.
But if it be true that friendship, society, and cheerful-
ħess, have sustained so much injury by this change of man-
ners, how much more pointedly does the remark apply to
family happiness!
Notwithstanding the known fluctuation of manners,
and the mutability of language, could it be foreseen, when
the apostle Paul exhorted" married women to be keepers
at home," that the time would arrive when that very phrase
would be selected to designate one of the most decided acts
of dissipation? Could it be foreseen that when a fine lady
should send out a notification that on such a night she shall
be AT HOME, these two significant words (besides intimat-
ing the rarity of the thing) would present to the mind an
image the most undomestic which language can convey ?
My country readers, who may require to have it explained
that these two magnetic words now possess the powerful
influence of drawing together every thing fine within the
sphere of their attraction, may need also to be apprized,
that the guests afterwards are not asked what was said by
the company, but whether the crowd was prodigious, the
rule for deciding on the merit of a fashionable society not
being by the taste or the spirit, but by the score and the
hundred. The question of pleasure, like a parliamentary
question, is now carried by numbers. And when two par-
tics modish, like two parties political, are run one against
another on the same night, the same kind of mortification
attends the leader of a defeated minority, the same tri-
umph attends the exulting carrier of superior numbers,
in the one case as in the other.
An eminent divine has said, that "perseverance in
prayer will either make a man leave off sinning, or a con-
tinuance in sin will make him leave off prayer." This re-
mark may be accommodated to those ladies who, while
they are devoted to the enjoyments of the world, yet re-
60
ON DISSIPATION, AND THE
tain considerable solicitude for the instruction of their
daughters. But if they are really in earnest to give them
a Christian education, they must themselves renounce a
dissipated life. Or if they resolve to pursue the chace of
pleasure, they must renounce this prime duty. Contraries
cannot unite. The moral nurture of a tall daughter can no
more be administered by a mother whose time is absorbed
by crowds abroad, than the physical nurture of her infant
offspring can be supplied by her in a perpetual absence
from home. And is not that a preposterous affection which
leads a mother to devote a few months to the inferior duty
of furnishing aliment to the mere animal life, and then to
desert her post when the more important moral and intel-
lectual cravings require sustenance? This great object is
not to be effected with the shreds and parings rounded off
from the circle of a dissipated life; but in order to its ade-
quate execution, the mother should carry it on with the
same spirit and perseverance at home, which the father
thinks it necessary to be exerting abroad in his public duty
or professional engagements.
Ca
The usual vindication (and in theory it has a plausible
sound) which has been offered for the large portion of time
spent by women in acquiring ornamental talents is, that
they are calculated to make the possessor love home, and
that they innocently fill up the hours of leisure. The plea
has indeed so promising an appearance, that it is worth in-
quiring whether it be in fact true. Do we then, on fairly
pursuing the inquiry, discover that those who have spent
most time in such light acquisitions, are really remarkable
for loving home or staying quietly there? or that when
there, they are sedulous in turning time to the best ac-
count? I speak not of that rational and respectable class
of women, who, applying (as many of them do) these ele-
gant talents to their true purpose, employ them to fill up
the vacancies of better occupations, and to embellish the
leisure of a life actively good. But do we generally see
that even the most valuable and sober part of the reigning
feinale acquisitions leads their possessor to scenes most
favourable to the enjoyment of them? to scenes which we
should naturally suppose she would seek, in order to the
more effectual cultivation of such rational pleasures?
Would not those delightful pursuits, botany and draw-
ing, for instance, seem likely to court the fields, the
woods, and gardens of the paternal seat, as more congenial
to their nature, and more appropriate to their exercise,
MODERN HADITS OF LIFE.
61
$
than barren watering places, destitute of a tree, or an herb,
or a flower, and not affording an hour's interval from suc-
cessive pleasures, to profit by the scene even if it abound-
ed with the whole vegetable world, from the "Cedar of
Lebanon to the Hyssop on the wall."
S
From the mention of watering places, may the author
be allowed to suggest a few remarks on the evils which
have arisen from the general conspiracy of the gay to usurp
the regions of the sick; and from their converting the
health-restoring fountains, meant as a refuge for disease,
into the resorts of vanity for those who have no disease
but idleness?
This inability of staying at home, as it is one of the most
infallible, so it is one of the most dangerous symptoms of
the reigning mania. It would be more tolerable, did this
epidemic malady only break out, as formerly, during the
winter, or some one season. Heretofore, the tenantry and
the poor, the natural dependents on the rural mansions of
the opulent, had some definite period to which they might
joyfully look forward for the approach of those patrons,
part of whose business in life it is to influence by their
presence, to instruct by their example, to sooth by their
kindness, and to assist by their liberality, those whom Pro-
vidence, in the distribution of human lots, has placed un-
der their more immediate protection. Though it would be
far from truth to assert that dissipated people are never
charitable, yet I will venture to say, that dissipation is in-
consistent with the spirit of charity. That affecting pre-
cept followed by so gracious a promise, "Never turn away
thy face from any poor man, and then the face of the Lord
shall never be turned away from thee," cannot literally
mean that we should give to all, as then we should soon
have nothing left to give but it seems to intimate the ha-
bitual attention, the duty of inquiring out all cases of dis-
tress, in order to judge which are fit to be relieved ;` now
for this inquiry, for this attention, the dissipated have little
taste and less leisure.
Let a reasonable conjecture (for calculation would fail !)
be made of how large a diminution of the general good
has been effected in this single respect, by causes, which,
though they do not seem important in themselves, yet
make no inconsiderable part of the mischief arising from
modern manners and I speak now to persons who intend
to be charitable. What a deduction will be made from the
aggregate of charity, by a circumstance apparently trifling,
{
}
Da
(IN DISSIPATION, AND THE
1
when we consider what would be the beneficial effects of
that regular bounty which must almost unavoidably result
from the evening walks of a great and benevolent family
among the cottages of their own domain: the thousand
little acts of, comparatively unexpensive kindness, which
the sight of petty wants and difficulties would excite ;
wants, which will scarcely be felt in the relation; and
which will probably be neither seen, nor felt, nor fairly
represented, in their long absences, by an agent. And
what is even almost more than the good done, is the habit
of mind kept up in those who do it. Would not this habit,
exercised on the Christian principle, that even a cup of
'cold water," given upon right motives, shall not lose its
reward; while the giving "all their goods to feed the
poor," without the true principle of charity, shall profit
them nothing; would not this habit, I say, be almost the
best part of the education of daughters ?*
But transplant this wealthy and bountiful family period.
ically to the frivolous and uninteresting bustle of the wa-
tering place; there it is not denied that frequent public
and fashionable acts of charity may make a part (and it is
well they do) of the business and amusement of the day;
with this latter, indeed, they are sometimes good-natured-
ly mixed up. But how shall we compare the regular sys-
tematical good these persons would be doing at their own
home, with the light and amusing, and bustling bounties
of the public place? The illegal raffle at the toy-shop,
may relieve, it is true, some distress, but this distress,
though it may be real, and though if real, it ought to be
relieved, is far less easily ascertained than the wants of the
poor round a person's own door, or the debts of a distress-
ed tenant. How shall we compare the broad stream of
bounty which should be flowing through and refreshing
whole districts, with the penurious current of the sub-
scription breakfast for the needy musician, in which the
price of the gift is taken out in the diversion, and in which
pleasure dignifies itself with the name of bounty? How
shall we compare the attention, and time, and zeal which
would otherwise, perhaps, be devoted to the village school,
* It would be a pleasant summ; r amusement for our young ladies of fortune, if they
were to preside at such spiuning feasts as are instituted at Nuneham, for the promotion
o virtue and industry in their own sex. Pleasurable anniversaries of this kind would
serve to combine in the minds o. the poor two ideas which ought never to be separa-
ted, but which they are not very orward to unite,that the great wish to make them
happy as well as good Orcasional approximations of the rich and poor, for the purpo-
ses of relier and instruction, and aminal meetings for the purpose o: innocent pleasure,
would do much towards wearing away discontent, and contribute to reconcile the low,
er class to trat state in which it has plensed God to place thein.
i
MODERN HABITS OF LIFE.
63
STA
spent in hawking about benefit tickets for abroken player,
while the kindness of the benefactress, perhaps, is re-
warded by scenes in which her charity is not always re-
paid by the purity of the exhibition?
60
da
Far be it from the author to wish to check the full tide
of charity wherever it is disposed to flow! Would she
could multiply the already abundant streams, and behold
overy source purified! But in the public resorts there
are many who are able and willing to give. In the se-
questered, though populous village, there is, perhaps, on-
ly one affluent family; the distress which they do not be-
hold, will probably not be attended to: the distress which
they do not relieve will probably not be relieved at all:
the wrongs which they do not redress will go unredress-
ed: the oppressed whom they do not rescue will sink
under the tyranny of the oppressor. Through their own
rural domains too, charity runs in a clearer current, and
is under less suspicion of being polluted by that muddy
tincture which it is sometimes apt to contract in passing
through the impure soil of the world.
But to return from this too long digression: the old
standing objection formerly brought forward by the pre-
judices of the other sex, and too eagerly laid hold on as
a shelter for indolence and ignorance by ours, was, that
intellectual accomplishments too much absorbed the
thoughts and affections, took women off from the neces-
sary attention to domestic duties, and superinduced a con-
tempt or neglect of whatever was useful. But it is pecu-
liarly the character of the present day to detect absurd
opinions, and expose plausible theories by the simple and
decisive answer of experiment; and it is presumed that
this popular error as well as others, is daily receiving the
refutation of actual experience. For it cannot surely be
maintained on ground that is any longer tenable, that ac-
quirements truly rational are calculated to draw off the
mind from real duties. Whatever removes prejudices,
whatever stimulates industry, whatever rectifics the
judgment, whatever corrects self-conceit, whatever pu-
rifies the taste, and raises the understanding, will be like-
ly to contribute to moral excellence to woman moral
excellence is the grand object of education; and of mo-
ral excellence, domestic life is to woman the proper
sphere.
*C%
J
60%
لیف
Count over the list of females who have made ship-
R
64
ON DISSIPATION, AND THE
wreck of their fame and virtue, and have furnished the
most lamentable examples of the dereliction of family du-
ties; and the number will not be found considerable who
have been led astray by the pursuit of knowledge. And
if a few deplorable instances of this kind be produced, it
will commonly be found that there was little infusion into
the minds of such women of that correcting principle
without which all other knowledge only "puffeth up."
The time nightly expended in late female vigils is ex-
pended by the light of far other lamps than those which
are fed by the student's oil; and if families are to be
found who are neglected through too much study in the
mistress, it will probably be proved to be Hoyle, and not
Homer, who has robbed her children of her time and af-
fections. For one family which has been neglected by
the mother's passion for books, an hundred have been de-
serted through her passion for play. The husband of a
fashionable woman will not often find that the library is
the apartment the expenses of which involve him in debt
or disgrace. And for one literary slattern, who now
manifests her indifference to her husband by the neglect
of her person, there are scores of elegant spendthrifts
who ruin theirs by excess of decoration.
May I digress a little while I remark, that I am far from
asserting that literature has never filled women with van-
ity and self-conceit; the contrary is too obvious: but I
will assert, that in general those whom books arc suppos-
ed to have spoiled, would have been spoiled in another
way without them.
She who is a vain pedant because
she has read much, has probably that defect in her mind
which would have made her a vain fool if she had read
nothing. It is not her having more knowledge, but less
sense, which makes her insufferable; and ignorance
would have added little to her value, for it is not what she
has but what she wants, which makes her unpleasant.
These instances too furnish only a fresh argument for the
general cultivation of the female mind. The wider diffu-
sion of sound knowledge, would remove that temptation
to be vain which may be excited by its rarity.
But while we would assert that a woman of a cultivat-
ed intellect is not driven by the same necessity as others
into the giddy whirl of public resort: who but regrets
that real cultivation does not inevitably preserve her from
it? No wonder that inanity of character, that vacuity of
mind, that torpid ignorance, should plunge into dissipa-
MODERN HABITS OF LIFE.
65
tion as their natural refuge: should seek to bury their
insignificance in the crowd of pressing multitudes, and
hope to escape analysis and detection in the undistin-
guished masses of mixed assemblies! There attrition
rubs all bodies smooth, and makes all surfaces alike;
thither superficial and external accomplishments natural-
ly fly as to their proper scene of action; as to a field
where competition in such trifles is in perpetual exer-
cise; where the laurels of admiration are to be won,
where the trophies of vanity may be carried off trium-
phantly.
It would indeed be matter of little comparative regret,
if this corrupt air were breathed only by those whose na-
tural element it seems to be ; but who can forbear lament-
ing that the power of fashion attracts into this impure and
unwholesome atmosphere, minds also of a better make,
of higher aims and ends, of more ethereal temper? that
it attracts even those who, renouncing enjoyments for
which they have a genuine taste, and which would make
them really happy, neglect society they love and pursuits
they admire, in order that they may seem happy, and be
fashionable in the chace of pleasures they despise, and in
company they disapprove! But no correctness of taste,
no depth of knowledge, will infallibly preserve a woman
from this contagion, unless her heart be impressed with
a deep Christian conviction that she is responsible for
the application of knowledge as well as for the dedication
of time.
MRO
QU
得
​This contagion is so deep, so wide, and fatal, that if I
were called upon to assign the predominant cause of the
greater part of the misfortunes and corruptions of the
great and gay in our days, I should not look for it princi-
pally in any obviously great or striking circumstance;
not in the practice of notorious vices, not originally in the
dereliction of Christian principle; but I should without
hesitation ascribe it to a growing, regular, systematic sc-
ries of amusements; to an incessant, boundless, and not
very disreputable DISSIPATION. Other corruptions,
though more formidable in appearance, are yet less fatal
in some respects, because they leave us intervals to re-
flect on their turpitude, and spirit to lament their exces-
ses; but dissipation is the more hopeless, as by engross-
ing almost the entire life, and enervating the whole mo-
ral and intellectual system, it leaves neither time for re-
flection, nor space for self-examination, nor temper for
48
ON DISSIPATION, AND TRE
the cherishing of right affections, nor leisure for the
eperation of sound principles, nor interval for regret, nor
vigour to resist temptation, nor energy to struggle for
aniendment.
The great master of the science of pleasure among the
ancients, who reduced it into a system, which he called
the chief good of man, directed that there should be in-
terval enough between the succession of delights to sharp-
en inclination; and accordingly instituted periodical days
of abstinence; well knowing that gratification was best
promoted by previous self-denial. But so little do our
votaries of fashion understand the true nature of pleasure,
that
one amusement is allowed to overtake another with-
out any interval, either for recollection of the past, or
preparation for the future. Even on their own selfish
principle, therefore, nothing can be worse understood
ihan this continuity of enjoyment: for to such a degree
of labour is the pursuit carried, that the pleasures exhaust
instead of exhilarating, and the recreations require to be
rested from.
For, not to argue the question on the ground of reli-
gion, but merely on that of present enjoyment; look
abroad and see who are the people that complain of wea-
tiness, listlessness, and dejection. You will not find them
among the class of such as are overdone with work, but
with pleasure. The natural and healthful fatigues of bu-
siness may be recruited by simple and cheap gratifications;
but a spirit, worn down with the toils of amusement, re-
quires pleasures of poignancy; varied, multiplied, sti-
mulating!
K
Mad
It has been observed by medical writers, that that sober
excess in which many indulge, by cating and drinking a
little too much at every day's dinner and every night's
supper, more effectually undermines the health, than
those more rare excesses by which others now and then
break in upon a life of general sobriety. This illustra-
tion is not introduced with a design to recommend occa-
sional deviations into gross vice, by way of a pious receipt
for mending the morals; but merely to suggest, that
there is a probability that those who are sometimes driven
by unresisted passion into irregularities which shock their
cooler reason, are more liable to be roused to a sense of
their danger, than persons whose perceptions of evil are
blunted through a round of systematical, unceasing, and
yet not scandalous dissipation. And when I affirm that
MODERN BABITS OF LIFE,
67
:
this system of regular indulgence relaxes the soul, en-
slaves the heart, bewitches the senses, and thus disquali-
fies for pious thought or useful action, without having
any thing in it so gross as to shock the conscience; and
when I hazard an opinion that this state is more formi-
dable, because less alarming, than that which bears upon
it a more determined character of evil, I no more mean
to speak of the latter in slight and palliating terms, than
I would intimate, because the sick sometimes recover
from a fever, but seldom from a palsy, that a fever is
therefore a safe or a healthy state.
*
12
But there seems to be an error in the first concoction,
out of which the subsequent errors successively grow.
First then, as has been observed before, the showy educa-
tion of women tends chiefly to qualify them for the glare
of public assemblies: secondly, they seem in many in-
stances to be so educated, with a view to the greater pro-
bability of their being splendidly married: thirdly, it is
alleged, in vindication of those dissipated practices, that
daughters can only be seen, and admirers procured, at
balls, operas, and assemblies; and that therefore, by a na-
tural consequence, balls, operas, and assemblies must be
followed up without intermission till the object be effect-
ed. For the accomplisment of this object it is, that all this
complicated machinery had been previously set a-going,
and kept in motion with an activity not at all slackened
by the disordered state of the system: for some machines,
instead of being stopped, go faster because the true spring
is out of order; the only difference being, that they go
wrong, and so the increased rapidity adds only to the
quantity of error.
It is also, as we have already remarked, an error to fan-
cy that the love of pleasure exhausts itself by indulgence,
and that the very young are chiefly addicted to it. The
contrary appears to be true. The desire often grows with
the pursuit in the same degree as motion is quickened by
the continuance of the gravitating force.
First then, it cannot be thought unfair to trace back
the excessive fondness for amusement to that mode of edu-
cation we have elsewere reprobated. Few of the ac-
complishments, falsely so called, assist the developement
of the faculties; they do not exercise the judgment nor
bring into action those powers which fit the heart and
mind for the occupations of life; they do not prepare
R 3
68
ON DISSIPATION, AND THE
women to love home, to understand its occupations, to en-
liven its uniformity, to fulfil its duties, to multiply its com-
forts: they do not lead to that sort of experimental logic,
if I may so speak, compounded of observation and reflec
tion, which makes up the moral science of life and man-
ners. Talents which have display for their object, des-
pise the narrow stage of home: they demand mankind
for their spectators, and the world for their theatre.
While one cannot help shrinking a little from the idea
of a delicate young creature, lovely in person and enga-
ging in mind and manners, sacrificing nightly at the public
shrine of Fashion, at once the votary and the victim; one
cannot help figuring one's self how much more interesting.
she would appear in the eyes of a man of feeling, did he
behold her in the more endearing situations of domestic
life. And who can forbear wishing, that the good sense,
good taste, and delicacy of the men had rather led them
to prefer seeking companions for life in the almost sacred
quiet of a virtuous home? There they might have had
the means of seeing and admiring those amiable beings in
the best point of view: there they might have been en-
abled to form a juster estimate of female worth, than is
likely to be obtained in scenes, where such qualities and
talents as might be expected to add to the stock of do-
mestic comfort must necessarily be kept in the back ground,
and where such only can be brought into view as are not
particularly calculated to insure the certainty of home
delights.
20
O! did they keep their persons fresh and new,
How would they pluck allegiance from men's carts,
And win by rateness!
เส
2
-
But by what unaccountable infatuation is it that men
too, even men of sense, join in the confederacy against
their own happiness, by looking for their home compan-
ions in the resorts of vanity? Why do not such men rise
superior to the illusions of fashions? Why do they not uni-
formly seek her who is to preside in their families, in the
bosom of her own? in the practice of every domestic duty,
in the exercise of every amiable virtue, in the exertion of
every elegant accomplishment? those accomplishments of
which we have been reprobating, not the possession, but
the application? there they would find her exerting them
to their truc end, to enliven business, to animate retire-
ment, to embellish the charming scene of family delights,
to heighten the interesting pleasures of social intercourse,
MODERN HABITS OF LIFE.
and, rising to their noblest object, to adorn the doctrine of
God her Saviour.
If, indeed, woman were mere out-side, form and face,
only, and if mind made up no part of her composition, it
would follow that a ball-room was quite as appropriate a
place for choosing a wife, as an exhibition room for choos-
ing a picture. But, inasmuch as women are not mere
portraits, their value not being determinable by a glance of
the eye, it follows that a different mode of appreciating
their value, and a different place for viewing them ante-
cedent to their being individually selected, is desirable.
The two cases differ, also in this, that if a man select a
picture for himself from among all its exhibited compet-
itors, and bring it to his own house, the picture being pas-
sive, he is able to fix it there: while the wife, picked up
at a public place, and accustomed to incessant display,
will not, it is probable, when brought home, stick so qui-
ctly to the spot where he fixes her; but will escape to the
exhibition-room again, and continue to be displayed at
every subsequent exhibition, just as if she were not be-
come private property, and had never been definitively
disposed of.
2
It is the novelty of a thing which astonishes us, and not
its absurdity; objects may be so long kept before the eye
that it begins no longer to observe them; or may be
brought into such close contact with it, that it does not
discern them. Long habit so reconciles us to almost any
thing, that the grossest improprieties cease to strike us
when they once make a part of the common course of ac-
tion. This, by the way, is a strong reason for carefully
sifting every opinion and every practice before we let them
incorporate into the mass of our habits, after which they
will be no more examined.-Would it not be accounted
preposterous for a young man to say he had fancied such
a lady would dance a better minuet, because he had seen
her behave devoutly at Church, and therefore had chosen
her for his partner? and yet he is not thought at all absurd,
when he intimates that he chose a partner for life because
he was pleased with her at a ball. Surely the place of
choosing and the motive of choice, would be just as appro-
priate in one case as in the other, and the mistake, if the
judgment failed, not quite so serious.
There is, among the more elevated classes of society, a
certain set of persons who are pleased exclusively to call
themselves, and whom others by a sort of compelled cour-
→
59
ON DISSIPATION, AND THE
<
tesy are pleased to call, the fine world. This small detach-
ment consider their situation with respect to the rest of
mankind, just as the ancient Grecians did theirs ; that is,
as the Grecians thought there were but two sorts of be-
ings, and that all who were not Grecians were barbarians ;
so this certain set conceives of society as resolving itself
into two distinct classes, the fine world and the people;
to which last class they turn over all who do not belong
to their little coterie, however high their rank, or fortune,
or merit. Celebrity, in their estimation, is not bestowed
by birth or talents, but by being connected with them.
They have laws, immunities, privileges, and almost a lan-
guage of their own; they form a kind of distinct cast, and
with a sort of esprit du corps detach themselves from
others, even in general society, by an affectation of dis-
tance and coldness; and only whisper and smile in their
own little groups of the initiated; their confines are jeal-
ously guarded, and their privileges are incommunicable.
In this society a young man loses his natural character,
which, whatever it might have been originally, is melted
down and cast into the one prevailing mould of Fashion;
all the strong, native, discriminating qualities of his mind
being made to take one shape, one stamp, one superscrip-
tion! However varied and distinct might have been the
materials which nature threw into the crucible, plastic
Fashion takes care that they shall all be the same, or at
least appear the same, when they come out of the mould.
A young man in such an artificial state of society, accus-
tomed to the voluptuous case, refined luxuries, soft ac-
commodations, obsequious attendance, and all the unre-
strained indulgencies of a fashionable club, is not to be
expected after marriage to take very cordially to a home,
unless very extraordinary excrtions are made to amuse, to
attach, and to interest him and he is not likely to lend a
very helping hand to the happiness of the union, whose
most laborious exertions have hitherto been little more
than a selfish stratagem to reconcile health with pleasure.
Excess of gratification has only served to make him irri-
table and exacting; it will of course be no part of his pro-
ject to make sacrifices, he will expect to receive them :
and what would appear incredible to the Paladins of gal-
ant times, and the Chevaliers Preux of more heroic days,
leven in the necessary business of establishing himself for
life, he sometimes is more disposed to expect attentions
than to make advances. Thus the indolent son of fashion,
NO
MODERN HABITS OF LIFE.
71
with a thousand fine, but dormant qualities, which a bad
tone of manners forbids him to bring into exercise; with
real energies which that tone does not allow him to dis-
cover, and an unreal apathy which it commands him to
feign; with the heart of an hero, perhaps, if called into
the field, affects at home the manners of a Sybarite; and
he who, with a Roman, or what is more, with a British
valour, would leap into the gulph at the call of public duty,
Yet in the soft and piping time of peace,
when fashion has resumed her rights, would murmur if a
rose leaf lay double under him.
The clubs above alluded to, as has been said, generate
and cherish luxurious habits, from their perfect ease, un-
dress, liberty, and inattentions to the distinctions of rank :
they promote a love of play, and in short, every temper
and spirit which tends to undomesticate; and what adds
to the mischief is, all this is attained at a cheap rate com-
pared with what may be procured at home in the same
style.
These indulgencies, and this habit of mind, imply so
much gratification of the passions, that a woman can ne-
ver hope successfully to counteract the evil by supplying
at home gratifications in a superior degree, which are of
the same kind. If she should attempt this, in a little time
she will find that those passions, to which she has trusted
for making pleasant the married life of her husband, will
crave the still higher pleasures of the club; and while
these are pursued, she will be consigned over to solitary
evenings at home, or driven back to the old dissipations.
To conquer the passion for club gratifications, a woman
must not strive to feed it with sufficient aliment in the same
kind in her society, either at home or abroad; she must
supplant and overcome it by a passion of a different na-
ture, which Providence has kindly planted within us; I
mean by inspiring him with the love of fire-side enjoy-
ments. But to qualify herself for administering these, she
must cultivate her understanding, and her heart, and her
temper, acquiring at the same time that modicum of ac-
complishments suited to his taste, which may qualify her
for possessing, both for him and for herself, greater va-
rietics of safe recreation.
One great cause of the want of attachment in these mo-
dish couples is, that by living in the world at large, they
are not driven to depend on each other as the chief source of
comfort. Now it is pretty clear, in spite of modern theories,
C
1
1
72
ON DISSIPATION, AND THE
that the very frame and being of societies, whether great
or small, public or private, is jointed and glued together
by dependence. Those attachments which arise from, and
are compacted by, a sense of mutual wants, mutual affec-
tion, mutual benefit, and mutual obligation, are the cement
which secure the union of the family as well as of the state.
Unfortunately, when two young persons of the above
description marry, the union is sometimes considered ra-
ther as the end than the beginning of an engagement: the
attachment of each to the other is rather viewed as an ob-
ject already completed, than as one which marriage is to
confirm more closely. But the companion for life is not
always chosen from the purest motive; she is selected,
perhaps, because she is admired by other men, rather than
because she possesses in an eminent degree those pecu-
liar qualities which are likely to constitute the individual
happiness of the man who chooses her. Vanity usurps the
place of affection; and indolence swallows up the judg-
ment. Not happiness, but some easy substitute for happi-
ness, is pursued; and a choice which
; and a choice which may excite envy, ra-
ther than produce satisfaction, is adopted as the means of
effecting it.
A
The pair, not matched but joined, set out separately
with their independent and individual pursuits; whether
it made a part of their original plan or not, that they should
be indispensably necessary to each other's comfort,the sense
of this necessity, probably not very strong at first, rather
diminish than increases by time; they live so much in the
world, and so little together, that to stand well with their
own set continues the favourite project of each; while
to stand well with each other is considered as an under-
part of the plot in the drama of life. Whereas,did they start
in the conjugal race with the fixed idea that they were to
look to each other for their chief woridly happiness, not
only principle, but prudence, and even selfishness, would
convince them of the necessity of sedulously cultivating
cach others esteem and affection as the grand means of
promoting that happiness. But vanity, and the desire of
flattery and applause, still continue to operate. Even after
the husband is brought to feel a perfect indifference for
his wife, he still likes to see her decorated in a style
which may serve to justify his choice. He encourages her
to set off her person, not so much for his own gratification,
as that his self-love may be flattered, by her continuing to
attract the admiration of those whose opinion is the stan-
รูป
MODERN HABITS OF LIFE.
73
四​节
​4
Hard by which he measures his fame, and which fame is
to stand him in the stead of happiness. Thus is she ne-
cessarily exposed to the two-fold temptation of being at
once neglected by her husband, and exhibited as an
object of attraction to other men. If she escape this com-
plicated danger, she will be indebted for her preserva-
tion, not to his prudence, but to her own principles.
In some of these modish marriages, instead of the de-
corous neatness, the pleasant intercourse, and the mutual
warmth of communication of the once social dinner; the
late and uninteresting meal is commonly hurried over by
the languid and slovenly pair, that the one may have time
to his dress for his club, and the other for her party. And
in these cold, abstracted tétes-à-têtes, they often take as
little pains to entertain each other, as if the one was pre-
cisely the only human being in the world in whose eyes
the other did not feel it necessary to appear agreeable.
But if these young and perhaps really amiable persons
could struggle against the imperious tyranny of fashion,
and contrive to pass a little time together, so as to get ac-
quainted with each other; and if each would live in the
lively and conscientious exercise of those talents and at-
tractions which they sometimes know how to produce on
Occasions not quite so justifiable; they would, I am per-
suaded, often find out each other to be very agreeable
people. And both of them, delighted and delighting, re-
ceiving and bestowing happiness, would no longer be
driven to the necessity of perpetually flying from home
as from the only scene which offers no possible materials
for pleasure.
It may seem a contradiction to have asserted, that be-
ings of all ages, tempers, and talents, should, with such
unremitting industry, follow up any way of life, if they
did not find some enjoyment in it; yet I appeal to the
bosoms of these incessant hunters in the chase of plea-
sure, whether they are really happy. No.-In the full
tide and torrent of diversion, in the full blaze of gaiety,
The heart distrusting asks if this be joy?
But there is an anxious restlesness excited by the pursuit,
which, if not interesting, is bustling. There is the dread,
and partly the discredit, of being suspected of having one
hour unmortgaged, not only to successive, but contend-
ing engagements; this it is, and not the pleasure of the
engagement itself, which is the object. There is an
agitation in the arrangements which imposes itself on the
**
}
ON DISSIPATION, AND THE
vacant heart for happiness. There is a tumult kept up in
the spirits, which is a busy though treacherous substitute
for comfort. The multiplicity of solicitations soothes vani-
ty. The very regret that they cannot be all accepted has
its charms; for dignity is flattered because refusal implies
importance, and pre-engagement intimates celebrity.
Then there is the joy of being invited when others are
neglected; the triumph of showing one's less modish
friend, that one is going where she cannot come ; and the
feigned regret at being obliged to go, assumed before her
who is half wild at being obliged to stay away. These are
some of the supplemental shifts for happiness with which
vanity contrives to feed her hungry followers; too eager
to be nice.
In the succession of open houses, in which pleasure is
to be started and pursued on any given night, the actual
place is never taken in the account of enjoyment; the
scene of which is always supposed to lie in any place
where her votaries happen not to be. Pleasure has no
present tense: but in the house which her pursuers have
just quitted, and in the house to which they are just hast-
ening, a stranger might conclude the slippery goddess
had really fixed her throne, and that her worshippers con-
sidered the existing scene, which they seem compelled
to suffer, but from which they were eager to escape, as re-
ally detaining them from some positive joy to which they
were flying in the next crowd; till, if he met them there,
he would find the component parts of each precisely the
same. He would hear the same stated phrases interrupt-
ed, not answered, by the same stated replies; the unfin-
ished sentence "driven adverse to the winds" by pressing
multitudes; the same warm regret mutually exchanged
by two friends (who had been expressly denied to each
other all the winter) that they had not net before; the
same soft and smiling sorrow at being torn away from
each other now; the same anxiety to renew the meeting,
with perhaps the same secre* resolution to avoid it. He
would hear described, with t. 3 same pathetic earnestness,
the difficulties of getting into this house, and the dangers
of getting out of the last! the perilous retreat of former
nights, effected amidst the shocks of chariots and the clang
of contending coachmen! a retreat indeed effected with a
skill and peril little infcrior to that of the ten thousand,
and detailed with far juster triumph; for that which hap-
pened only once in a life to the Grecian Hero, occurs te
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these British heroines every night. There is one point of
resemblance, indeed, between them, in which the com
parison fails; for the Commander, with a mauvaise honte
at which a true female veteran would blush, is remarka-
ble for never naming himself.
With "mysterious reverence" I forbear to descant on
those serious and interesting rites, for the more august
and solemn celebration of which, Fashion nightly convenes
these splendid myriads to her more sumptuous temples.
Rites! which, when engaged in with due devotion, ab-
sorb the whole soul, and call every passion into exercise,
except indeed those of love, and peace, and kindness, and
gentleness. Inspiring rites! which stimulate fear, rouse
hope, kindle zeal, quicken dulness, sharpen discernment,
exercise memory, inflame curiosity! Rites! in short, in
the due performance of which all the energies and atten-
tions, all the powers and abilities, all the abstraction and
exertion, all the diligence and devotedness, all the sacri-
fice of time, all the contempt of ease, all the neglect of
sleep, all the oblivion of care, all the risks of fortune
(half of which, if directed to their true objects, would
change the very face of the world :)all these are concen-
trated to one point; a point in which the wise and the
weak, the learned and the ignorant, the fair and the fright-
ful, the sprightly and the dull, the rich and the poor, the
Patrician and Plebeian, meet in one common and uniform
equality; an equality as religiously respected in these so-
lemnities, in which all distinctions are leveiled at a blow,
and of which the very spirit is therefore democratical, as
it is combated in all other instances.
Behold four Kings in majesty rever'd,
With hoary whiskers and a jorked beard;
And four fair Queens, whose hand sustain a flow'r,
Th' expressive emblem of their softer pow'r ;
Four Knaves in garbs succinct, a trusty band,
Caps on their heads, and halberts in their hand;
And party-colour'd troops, a shining train,
Drawn forth to combat on the velvet plain.*
CHAP. XVII.
On public amusements.
IT is not proposed to enter the long contested field of
controversy, as to the individual amusements which may
be considered as safe and lawful for those women of the
higher class who make a strict profession of Christianity.
The judgment they will be likely to form for themselves
* Rape of the Lock.
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ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS.
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on this subject, and the plan they will consequently adopt,
will depend much on the clearness or obscurity of their
religious views; and on the greater or less progress they
have made in their Christian course. It is in their choice
of amusements that you get in some measure to know the
real dispositions of mankind. In their business, in the
leading employments of life, their path is in a good degree
chalked out for them: there is, in this respect, a sort of
general character, wherein the greater part, more or less,
must coincide. But in their pleasures the choice is vo-
luntary, the taste is self-directed, the propensity is inde-
pendent; and of course the habitual state, the genuine bent
and bias of the temper are most likely to be seen in those
pursuits,whichevery man is at liberty to choose forhimself.
4
When a truly religious principle shall have acquired.
such a degree of force as to produce that conscientious
and habitual improvement of time before recommended,
it will discover itself by an increasing indifference and
even deadness to those pleasures which are interesting to
the world at large. A woman under the predominating
influence of such a principle, will begin to discover that
the same thing which in itself is innocent may yet be
comparatively wrong. She will begin to feel that there
are many amusements and employments which, though
they have nothing censurable in themselves, yet if they
be allowed to entrench on hours which ought to be dedi-
cated to still better purposes; or if they are protracted
to an undue length; or, above all, if by softening and re-
Jaxing her mind, and dissipating her spirits, they so in-
dispose her for better pursuits as to render subsequent
duties a burden, become in that case clearly wrong for
her, whatever they may be for others. Now as tempta-
tions of this sort are the peculiar dangers of better kind
of characters, the sacrifice of such little gratifications as
may have no great harm in them, come in among the
daily calls to self-denial in a Christian.
Tigh
The line arts, for instance, polite literature, elegant so-
ciety, these are among the lawful, and liberal, and becom-
ing recreations of higher life; yet if even these be culti-
vated to the neglect or exclusion of severer duties; if
they interfere with serious studies, or disqualify the mind
for religious exercises, it is an intimation that they have
been too much indulged; and, under such circumstances,
it might be the part of Christian circumspection to
inquire if the time devoted to them ought not to be abridg-
TRA
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ed. Above all, a tender conscience will never lose sight
of one safe rule of determining in all doubtful cases; if
the point be so nice that though we hope upon the whole
there may be no harm in engaging in it, we may at least
be always quite sure that there can be no harm in letting
it alone. The adoption of this simple rule would put a
period to much unprofitable casuistry.
100
The principle of being responsible for the use of time
once fixed in the mind, the conscientious Christian will
be making a continual progress in the great art of turning
time to account. In the first stages of her religion she
will have abstained from pleasures which began a little to
wound the conscience, or which assumed a questionable
shape; but she will probably have abstained with regret,
and with a secret wish that conscience could have permit-
ted her to keep well with pleasure and religion too. But
you may discern in her subsequent course that she has
reached a more advanced stage, by her beginning to neg-
lect even such pleasures or employments as have no moral
turpitude in them, but are merely what are called in-
nocent. This relinquishment arises, not so much from
her feeling still more the restraints of religion, as from
the improvement in her religious taste. Pleasures cannot
now attach her merely from their being innocent, unless
they are interesting also; and to be interesting they must
be consonant to her superinduced views. She is not con-
tented to spend a large portion of her time harmlessly, it
must be spent profitably also. Nay, if she be indeed car-
nestly pressing towards the mark," it will not be even
enough for her that her present pursuit be good, if she be
convinced that it might be still better. Her contempt of
ordinary enjoyments will increase in a direct proportion
to her increased relish for those pleasures which religion
enjoins and bestows. So that at length, if it were possi-
ble to suppose that an angel could come down to take off
as it were the interdict, and to invite her to resume all
the pleasures she had renounced, and to resume them
with complete impunity, she would reject the invitation,
because she would despise, from an improvement in her
spiritual taste, those delights from which she had at first
abstained through fear. Till her will and affections come
heartily to be engaged in the service of God, the progress
will not be comfortable; but when once they are so en-
gaged, the attachment to this service will be cordial, and
her heart will not desire to go back and toil again in the
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ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS.
drudgery of the world. For her religion has not so much
given her a new creed, as a new heart and a new life.
>>
As her views are become new, so her tempers, dispo-
sitions, tastes, actions, pursuits, choice of company, choicé
of amusements, are new also; her employment of time is
changed; her turn of conversation is altered; "old things
are passed away, all things are become new. In dissi-
pated and worldly society, she will seldom fail to feel a
sort of uneasiness, which will produce one of these two
effects; she will either, as proper seasons present them-
selves, struggle hard to introduce such subjects as may
be useful to others; or, supposing that she finds herself
unable to effect this, she will, as far as she prudently can,
absent herself from all unprofitable kind of society. In-
deed, her manner of conducting herself under these cir
cumstances may serve to furnish her with a test of her
own sincerity. For while people are contending for a
little more of this amusement, and pleading for a little
extension of that gratification, and fighting in order that
they may hedge in a little more territory to their pleasure
ground, they are exhibiting a kind of evidence against
themselves, that they are not yet" renewed in the spirit
of their mind."
It has been warmly urged as an objection to certain re-
ligious books, and particularly against a recent work of
high worth and celebrity, by a distinguished layman,*
that they have set the standard of self-denial higher than
reason or even than Christianity requires. These works
do indeed elevate the general tone of religion to a higher
pitch than is quite convenient to those who are at infinite
pains to construct a comfortable and comprehensive plan,
which shall unite the questionable pleasures of this world
with the promised happiness of the next. I say it has
been sometimes objected, even by those readers who on
the whole greatly admire the particular work alluded to,
that it is unreasonably strict in the preceptive and prohi-
bitory parts; and especially that it individually and speci-
fically forbids certain fashionable amusements, with a
severity not to be found in the scriptures; and is scru-
pulously rigid in condemning diversions against which
nothing is said in the New Testament; each objector,
however, is so far reasonable, as only to beg quarter for
her own favourite diversion, and generously abandons
the defence of those in which she herself has no pleasure.
* Practical View, &c. by Mr. Wilberforce.
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ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS.
But these objectors do not seem to understand the truc
genius of Christianity. They do not consider that it is
the character of the Gospel to exhibit a scheme of prin-
ciples, of which it is the tendency to infuse such a spirit
of holiness as must be utterly incompatible, not only with
customs decidedly vicious, but with the very spirit of
worldly pleasure. They do not consider that Christiani-
ty is neither a table of ethics, nor a system of opinions,
nor a bundle of rods to punish, nor an exhibition of re-
wards to allure, nor a scheme of restraints, nor merely a
code of laws; but it is a new principle infused into the
heart by the word and the Spirit of God, out of which
principle will inevitably grow right opinions, renewed af-
fections, correct morals, and holy habits, with an invari-
able desire of pleasing God, and a constant fear of of-
fending him. A real Christian, whose heart is once tho-
roughly imbued with this principle, can no more return
to the amusements of the world, than a philosopher can
be refreshed with the diversions of the vulgar, or a man
be amused with the recreations of a child. The New
Testament is not a mere statute book: it is not a table
where every offence is detailed, and its corresponding
penalty annexed: it is not so much a compilation, as a
spirit of laws it does not so much prohibit every indi-
vidual wrong practice, as suggest a temper and general
principle with which every wrong practice is incompati-
ble. It did not, for instance, so much attack the then
reigning and corrupt fashions, which were probably, like
the fashions of other counties, temporary and local; but
it struck at that worldliness, which is the root and stock
from which all corrupt fashions proceed.
The prophet Isaiah, who addressed himself more par-
ticularly to the Israelitish women, inveighed not only
against vanity, luxury, and immodesty, in general; but
with great propriety blamed even those precise instances
of each, to which the women of rank in the particular coun-
try he was addressing were especially addicted; nay, he
enters into the minute detail of their very personal de-
corations, and brings specific charges against their lovity
and extravagance of apparel; meaning, however, chicfly
to censure the turn of character which these indicated.
But the Gospel of Christ, which was to be addressed to all
ages, stations, and countries, seldom contains any such de-
Isaiah, chap. iii
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tailed animadversions; for though many of the censura-
ble modes which the prophet so severely reprobated, con-
tinued probably to be still prevalent in Jerusalem in the
days of our Saviour, yet how little would it have suited the
universality of his mission, to have confined his preaching
to such local, limited, and fluctuating customs! not but
that there are many texts which actually do define the
Christian conduct as well as temper, with sufficient par-
ticularity to serve as a condemnation of many practices
which are pleaded for, and often to point pretty directly at
them.
Had Peter, on that memorable day when he added three
thousand converts to the Church by a single sermon, nar-
rowed his subject to a remonstrance against this diversion,
or that public place, or the other vain amusement, it might
indeed have suited the case of some of the female Jewish
converts who were present; but such restrictions as might
have been appropriate to them, would probably not have
applied to the cases of the Parthians and Medes, of which
his audience was partly composed; or such as might have
belonged to them would have been totally inapplicable to
the Cretes and Arabians; or again, those which suited.
these would not have applied to the Elamites and Meso-
potamians. By such partial and circumscribed addresses,
his multifarious audience, composed ofall nations and coun-
tries, would not have been, as we are told they were,
"pricked to the heart." But when he preached on the
broad ground of general "repentance and remission of
sins in the name of Jesus Christ," it was no wonder that
they all cried out, "What shall we do?" These collected
foreigners, at their return home, must have found very
different usages to be corrected in their different coun-
tries; of course a detailed restriction of the popular abu-
ses at Jerusalem, would have been of little use to stran-
gers returning to their respective nations. The ardentapos-
tle, therefore, acted more consistently in communicating
to them the large and comprehensive spirit of the Gospel,
which should at once involve all their scattered and sepa-
rate duties, as well as reprove all their scattered and sepa-
rate corruptions; for the whole always includes a part,
and the greater involves the less. Christ and his disciples,
mstead of limiting their condemnation to the peculiar va-
nities reprehended by Isaiah, embraced the very soul and
principle of the mall, in such exhortations as the following:
Be ye not conformed to the world;"—" If any man love
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the world, the love of the Father is not in him :"
fashion of this world passeth away." Our Lord and his
apostles, whose future unlimited audience was to be made
up out of the whole world, attacked the evil heart, out of
which all those incidental, local, and popular corruptions
proceeded.
In the time of Christ and his immediate followers, the lux-
ury and intemperance of the Romans had arisen to a pitch
before unknown in the world; but as the same Gospel
which its Divine Author and his disciples were then
preaching to the hungry and necessitous, was afterwards
to be preached to high and low, not excepting the Roman
Emperors themselves; the large precept, "Whether ye
eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of
God," was likely to be of more general use, than any se-
parate exhortation to temperance, to thankfulness, to mo-
deration as to quantity or expense; which last, indeed,
must always be left in some degree to the judgment and
circumstances of the individual.
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When the Apostle of the Gentiles visited the "saints
of Cesar's household," he could hardly fail to have heard,
nor could he have heard without abhorrence, of some of
the fashionable amusements in the court of Nero. He must
have reflected with peculiar indignation on many things
which were practised in the Circensian games: yet, in-
stead of pruning this corrupt trec, and singling out even
the inhuman gladiatorial sports for the object of his con-
demnation, he laid his axe to the root of all sin, by preach-
ing to them that Gospel of Christ of which he was not
ashamed;" and shewing to them that believed, that "it
was the power of God, and the wisdom of God" It is some-
what remarkable, that about the very time of his preach-
ing to the Romans, the public taste had sunk to such an
excess of depravity, that the very women engaged in those
shocking encounters with the gladiators.
But, in the first place, it was better that their right
practice should grow out of the right principle; and next,
his specifically reprobating these diversions might have
had this ill effect, that succeeding ages, seeing that they
in their amusements came somewhat short of those dread-
ful excesses of the polished Romans, would only have
plumed themselves on their own comparative superiority;
and on this principle, even the buil-fights of Madrid might
have had their panegyrists. The truth is, the apostle knew
that such abominable corruptions could never subsist to-
15
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ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS.
gether with Christianity; and, in fact, the honour of abol
ishing these barbarous diversions was reserved for Con-
stantine, the first Christian Emperor.
Besides, the apostles, by inveighing against some par-
ticular diversions, might have seemed to sanction all which
they did not actually censure and as, in the lapse of time
and the revolution of governments, customs change and
manners fluctuate; had a minute reprehension of the fash-
ions of the then existing age been published in the New
Testament, that portion of Scripture must in time have
become obsolete, even in that very same country, when the
fashions themselves should have changed. Paul and his
brother apostles knew that their epistles would be the
oracles of the Christian world, when these temporary di-
versions would be forgotten. In consequence of this know-
ledge, by the universal precept to avoid" the lust of the
flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life," they have
prepared a lasting antidote against the principle of all cor-
rupt pleasures, which will ever remain equally applicable
to the loose fashions of all ages, and of every country, to the
end of the world.
Therefore to vindicate diversions, which are in them-
selves unchristian, on the pretended ground that they are
not specifically condemned in the gospel, would be little
less absurd than if the heroes of Newmarket should bring
it as a proof that their periodical meetings are not con-
demned in Scripture, because St. Paul, when writing to
the Corinthians, did not speak against these, or because,
in availing himself of the Isthmian games, as a happy
illustration of the Christian race, he did not drop any cen-
sure on the practice itself: a practice which was indeed
as much more pure than the races of Christian Britain, as
the moderation of being contented with the triumph of a
crown of leaves, is superior to that criminal spirit of gam
bling which iniquitously enriches the victor by beggaring
the competitor.
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Local abuses, as we have said, were not the object of a
book whose instructions were to be of universal and last-
ing application. As a proof of this, little is said in the
Gospel of the then prevailing corruption of polygamy;
nothing against the savage custom of exposing children,
or even against slavery; nothing expressly against sui-
cide or duelling; the last Gothic custom, indeed, did not
exist among the crimes of Paganism. But is there not an
implied prohibition against polygamy in the general de-
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ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS.
nunciation against adultery? Is not exposing of children
condemned in that charge against the Romans, that "they
were without natural affection?" Is there not a strong
censure against slavery conveyed in the command to "do
unto others as you would have them do unto you?” and
against suicide and duelling, in the general, prohibition
against murder, which is strongly enforced by the solemn
manner in which murder is traced back to its first seed
of anger, in the sermon on the mount.
Thus it is clear, that when Christ sent the Gospel to all
nations, he meant that that Gospel should proclaim those
prime truths, general laws, and fundamental doctrines,
which must necessarily involve the prohibition of all indi-
vidual, local, and inferior errors; errors which could not
have been specifically guarded against, without having a
distinct Gospel for every country, or without swelling the
divine volume into such inconvenient length as would have
defeated one great end of its promulgation.* And while
its leading principles are of universal application, it must
always, in some measure, be left to the discretion of the
preacher, and to the conscience of the hearer, to examine
whether the life and habits of those who profess it are
conformable to its spirit.
The same Divine Spirit which indicted the holy Scrip-
tures, is promised to purify the hearts and renew the na-
tures of repenting and believing Christians; and the com-
positions it inspired are in some degree analogous to the
workmanship it effects. It prohibited the vicious prac-
tices of the apostolical days, by prohibiting the passions
and principles which rendered them gratifying; and still
working in like manner on the hearts of real Christians,
it corrects the taste which was accustomed to find its pro-
pergratification in the resorts of vanity; and thus effectu-
ally provides for the reformation of the habits, and infu-
ses a relish for rational and domestic enjoyments, and
for whatever can administer pleasure to that spirit of
peace, and love, and hope, and joy, which animates and
rules the renewed heart of the true Christian.
But there is a portion of Scripture, which, though to
a superficial reader it may seem but very remotely con-
nected with the present subject, yet to readers of anoth-
er cast, seems to settle the matter beyond controversy: In
the parable of the great supper, this important truth is
held out to us, that even things good in themselves may be
"To the poor the Gospel is preached." Luke vij. 22,
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ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS.
the means of our eternal ruin, by drawing our hearts from
Gud, and causing us to make light of the offers of the
Gospel. One invited guest had bought an estate, anoth-
er had made a purchase, equally blameless, of oxen; a
third had married a wife, an act not illaudable in self.
They had all different reasons; but they all agreed in
this, to decline the invitation to the supper. The worldly
possessions of one, the worldly business of another, and
what should be particularly attended to, the love to his
dearest relative, of a third, (a love, by the way, not only al-
lowed, but commanded in Scripture) were brought for-
ward as excuses for not attending to the important busi-
ness of religion. The consequence, however, was the
same to all. "None of those which were bidden shall
"taste of my supper." If then things innocent, things ne-
cessary, things laudable, things commanded, become sin-
ful, when by unseasonable or excessive indulgence they
detain the heart and affections from God, how vain will
all those arguments necessarily be rendered, which are
urged by the advocates for certain amusements, on the
ground of their harmelessness; if those amusements serve
(not to mention any positive evil which may belong to
them) in like manner to draw away the thoughts and af-
fections from all spiritual objects?
To conclude; when this topic happens to become the
subject of conversation, instead of addressing severe and
pointed attacks to young ladies on the sin of attending
places of diversion, would it not be better first to endeav-
our to excite in them that principle of Christianity, with
which such diversions seem not quite compatible; as the
physician, who visits a patient in an eruptive fever, pays
little attention to those spots which to the ignorant appear
to be the discase, except indeed so far as they serve as
indications to let him into its nature, but goes straight to
the root of the malady? He attacks the fever, he lowers
the pulse, he changes the system, he corrects the general
habit; well knowing that if he can but restore the vital
principle of health, the spots, which were nothing but
symptoms, will die away of themselves.
In instructing others we should imitate our Lord and
his apostles, and not always aim our blow at each partic-
ular corruption; but making it our business to convince
our pupil that what brings forth the evil fruit she exhibits,
cannot be a branch of the true vine; we should thus avail
ourselves of individual corruptions, for impressing her
M
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ON FUBLIC AMUSEMENTS.
83
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with a sense of the necessity of purifying the common
source from which they flow-a corrupt nature. Thus
making it our grand business to rectify the heart, we pur-
sue the truc, the compendious, the only method of uni-
versal holiness.
¿
I would, however, take leave of those amiable and not
ill-disposed young persons, who complain of the rigour of
human prohibitions, and declare "they meet with no such
strictness in the gospel," by asking them, with the most
affectionate earnestness, if they can conscientiously rc-
concile their nightly attendance at every public place
which they frequent, with such precepts as the following:
"Redeeming the time :"-"Watch and pray :"“Watch,
for ye know not at what time your Lord cometh :"
"Abstain from all appearance of evil:" "Set. vour af-
fections on things above :"-" Be ye spiritually minded,”
"Crucify the flesh, with its affections and lusts." And
I would venture to offer one criterion, by which the per-
sons in question may be enabled to decide on the positive
innocence and safety of such diversions: I mean, provided
they are sincere in their scrutiny, and honest in their avow-
al. If, on their return at night from those places, they find
they can retire, and "commune with their own hearts ;"
if they find the love of God operating with undiminished
force on their minds; if they can "bring every thought into
subjection," and concentrate every wandering imagina-
tion; if they can soberly examine into their own state of
mind: I do not say, if they can do all this perfectly and
without distraction; (for, who can do this at any time?)
but if they can do it with the same degree of seriousness,
pray with the same degree of fervour, and renounce the
world in as great a measure as at other times; and if they
can lie down with a peaceful consciousness of having a-
voided in the evening " that temptation" which they had
prayed not to be "led into" in the morning, they may
then more reasonably hope that all is well, and that they
are not speaking false peace to their hearts.*
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*ILI might presume to recommend a book, which o" all others exposes the insig-
nificance, vanity, littleness, and emptiness of the world, I should not hesitate to rame
Mr Law's Serious call to a devout and so y Lale" Few writers, except. Paschal, have
directed so much aenteness of reasoning, and so much pointed wit, to this object
not only makes the reader atraido!`a worldiy life on account of its sinfulness, but ashum-
ed of it on account of its folly Few men perhaps have had a deeper insight into the
human heart, or have more skilfully probed its corruptions; yet on points o; doctrine
his views do not seem to be just, and his disquisitions are often, unsound and 'buci:ul;
so that a general perusal ofhis works would beither be profitable or intelligibly
a rubiouable wonian immersed in the vanideso life, to a busy nae overwhelmed with
its enres, U know no book so applicabic, or likely to exhibit with equal force the vani-
ty o the shindows they are pursuing. gint even in this work he is not a sale guide to
evangelical light; and in many of his others he is highly visionary and whimsical; and
70
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CHAPTER XVIII.
A worldly spirit incompatible with the spirit of Christianity.
Is it not whimsical to hear such complaints against the
strictness of religion as we are frequently hearing, from
beings who are voluntarily pursuing, as has been shewn
in the preceding chapters, a course of life which fashion
makes infinitely more laborious? How really burdensome
would Christianity be, if she enjoined such sedulous ap-
plication, such unremitting labours, such a succession of
fatigues if religion commanded such hardships, and self-
denial, such days of hurry, such evenings of exertion, such
nights of broken rest, such perpetual sacrifices of quiet,
such exile from family delights, as fashion imposes, then
indeed the service of Christianity would no longer merit
its present appellation of being a "reasonable service:"
then the name of perfect slavery might be justly applied
to that which we are told in the beautiful language of our
church, is " a service of perfect freedom :" a service, the
great object of which is "to deliver us from the bondage
of corruption "into the glorious liberty of the children
of God."
A worldly temper, by which I mean a disposition to
prefer worldly pleasures, worldly satisfactions, and world-
ly advantages to the immortal interests of the soul; and
to let worldly considerations actuate us instead of the dic-
tates of religion in the concerns of ordinary life; a world-
ly temper, I say, is not, like almost any other fault, the
effect of passion or the consequence of surprise, when
the heart is off its guard. It is not excited incidentally by
the operation of external circumstances on the infirmity
of nature; but it is the vital spirit, the essential soul, the
living principle of evil. It is not so much an act, as a state
of being; not so much an occasional complaint, as a taint-
ed constitution of mind. If it do not always show itself
in extraordinary excesses, it has no perfect intermission.
Even when it is not immediately tempted to break out in-
to overt and specific acts, it is at work within, stirring up
the heart to disaffection against holiness, and infusing a
kind of moral disability to whatever is intrinsically good.
I have known some excellent persons, who were first led by this admirable genius to
see the wants of their own hearts, and the utter insufficiency of the world to fill up the
craving void, though they became eminem for piety and self-denial, have had their
use ulness abridged, and whose minds have contracted something of a monastic se
verity by an unqualified perusal of Mr. Law. Irue Christianity does not call on us
to starve our bodies, but our corruptions As the mortified apostle of the holy and self-
dening Baptist, preaching repentance because the kingdom of Heaven is at hand,
Mr Law has no superior. As à preacher of salvation, on scriptural grounds, I would
follow other guides.
парни патрони
QN A WORLDLY SPIRIT,
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It infects and depraves all the powers and faculties of the
soul; for it operates on the understanding by blinding it
to whatever is spiritually good; on the will, by making it
averse from God; on the affections, by disordering and
sensualizing them; so that one may almost say to those
who are under the supreme dominion of this spirit, what
was said to the hosts of Joshua, "Ye cannot serve the
Lord."
This worldliness of mind is not at all commonly under-
stood, and for the following reason:-People suppose
that in this world our chief business is with the things of
this world, and that to conduct the business of this world
well, that is, conformably to moral principles, is the chief
substance of moral and true goodness. Religion, if intro-
duced at all into the system, only makes its occasional,
and if I may so speak, its holiday appearance. To bring
religion into every thing, is thought incompatible with
the due attention to the things of this life. And so it
would be, if by religion were meant talking about reli-
gion. The phrase therefore, is: "One cannot always be
praying; "we must mind our business and social duties
as well as our devotion." Worldly business being thus
subjected to worldly, though in some degree moral, max-
ims, the mind during the conduct of business grows
worldly; and a continually increasing worldly spirit dims
the sight and relaxes the moral principle on which the af
fairs of the world are conducted, as well as indisposes the
mind for all the exercises of devotion.
1
=
<3
<
But this temper, as far as relates to business, assumes
the semblance of goodness; so that those who have not
right views are apt to mistake the carrying on the affairs.
of life on a tolerably moral principle, for religion. They
do not see that the evil lies not in their so carrying on bu-
siness, but in their not carrying on the things of this life
in subserviency to those of eternity; in their not carrying
them on with the unintermitting idea of responsibility.
The evil does not lie in their not being always on their
knees, but in their not bringing their religion from the
closet into the world: in their not bringing the spirit of
the Sunday's devotions into the transactions of the week:
in not transforming their religion from a dry, and specu-
lative, and inoperative system, into a lively, and influen-
tial, and unceasing principle of action.
Though there are, blessed be God! in the most ex-
*
T
88
ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT.
alted stations, women who adorn their Christian profes-
sion by a consistent conduct; yet are there not others
who are labouring hard to unite the irreconcilable inter-
ests of earth and heaven? who, while they will not relin-
quish one jot of what this world has to bestow, yet by no
means renounce their hopes of a better? who do not think
it unreasonable that their indulging in the fullest posses-
sion of present pleasure should interfere with the most
certain reversion of future glory? who, after living in the
most unbounded gratification of ease, vanity, and luxu-
ry, fancy that heaven must be attached of course to a life
of which Christianity is the outward profession, and which
has not been stained by any flagrant or dishonourable act
of guilt?
Are there not many who, while they entertain a respect
for religion, (for I address not the unbelieving or the li-
centious,) while they believe its truths, observe its forms,
and would be shocked not to be thought religious, are
yet immersed in this life of disqualifying worldliness!
who though they make a conscience of going to the pub-
lic worship once on a Sunday, and are scrupulously obser-
vant of the other rites of the church, yet hesitate not to give
up all the rest of their time to the very sume pursuits and
pleasures which occupy the hearts and lives of those loos-
er characters, whose enjoyment is not obstructed by any
dread of a future account? and who are acting on the wise
principle of "the children of this world," in making the
most of the present state of being, from the conviction
that there is no other to be expected?
It must be owned, indeed, that faith in unseen things
is at times sadly weak and defective even in the truly pi-
ous; and that it is so, is the subject of their grief and hu-
miliation. O! how does the real Christian take shame
in the coldness of his belief, in the lowness of his attain-
ments! How deeply does he lament that "when he would
do good, evil is present with him?”—that the life he
now lives in the flesh, is" not, in the degree it ought to
be," by faith in the Son of God!" Yet one thing is
clear; however weak his belief may seem to be, it is evi-
dent that his actions are mainly governed by it; he evin-
ces his sincerity to others by a life in some good degree
analagous to the doctrines he professes: while to himself
he has this conviction, that faint as his confidence may be
at times, yet at the worst of times he would not exchange
that faint measure of trust and hope for all the actual
ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT.
89
pleasures and possessions of his most splendid acquaint-
ance; and as a proof of his sincerity, he never seeks the
cure of his dejection, where they seek theirs, in the world,
but in God.
But as to the faith of worldly persons, however strong
it may be in speculation, however orthodox their creed,
one cannot help fearing that it is a little defective in sin-
cerity for if there were in the mind a full persuasion of
the truth of revelation, and of the eternal bliss it prom-
ises, would it not be obvious to them that there must be
more diligence for its attainment? We dis. over great ar-
dour in carrying on worldly projects, because we believe
the good which we are pursuing is real, and will reward
the trouble of the pursuit: we believe that good to be at-
tainable by diligence, and prudently proportion our ear-
nestness to this conviction: and therefore where we see
persons professing a lively faith in a better world, yet la-
bouring little to obtain an interest in it, can we forbear
suspecting that their belief, not only of their own title to
eternal happiness, but of eternal happiness itself, is not
well grounded? and that if they were to "examine them-
selves truly," the faith would be found to be much of a
piece with the practice?
Even that very taste for enjoyment which leads the per-
sons in question to possess themselves of the qualifica-
tions for the pleasures of the present scene; that under-
standing which leads them to acquire such talents as may
enable them to relish the resorts of gaiety here, should
induce those who are really looking for a future state of
happiness, to wish to acquire something of the taste, and
temper, and talents, which may be considered as qualifi-
cations for its enjoyment. The neglect to do this must
proceed from one of these two causes; either they must
think their present course a safe and proper course; or
they must think that death is to produce some sudden and
surprising alteration in the human character. But the
office of death is to transport us to a new state, not to
transform us to a new nature; the stroke of death is in-
tended to effect our deliverance out of this world, and
our introduction into another; but it is not likely to effect
any sudden and surprising or total change in our hearts
or our tastes so far from this, that we are assured in
Scripture," that he that is filthy will be filthy still, and
he that is holy will be holy still." Though we believe
that death will completely cleanse the holy soul from its re-
the
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1
20
ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT.
maining pollutions, that it will exchange defective sanc-
tification into perfect purity, entangling temptation into
complete freedom, want and pain into health and fruition,
doubts and fears into perfect security, and oppressive
weariness into everlasting rest; yet there is no magic in
the wand of death which will convert an unholy soul into
a holy onc. And it is awful to reflect, that such tempers
as have the allowed predominance here will maintain it
for ever; that such as the will is when we close our eyes
upon the things of time, such it will be when we open
them on those of eternity. The mere act of death no
more fits us for heaven, than the mere act of the mason
who pulls down our old house fits us for a new one. If
we die with our hearts running over with a love of the
world, there is no promise to lead us to expect that we
shall rise with them full of the love of God: death indeed
will shew us to ourselves such as we are, but will not
make us such as we are not and it will be too late to be
acquiring self-knowledge when we can no longer turn it
to any account but that of tormenting ourselves. To il-
lustrate this truth still farther by an allusion familiar to
the persons I address: the drawing up the curtain at the
theatre, though it serves to introduce us to the entertain
ments behind it, does not create in us any new faculties
ló understand or to relish those entertainments: these
inust have been long in acquiring: they must have been
provided beforehand, and brought with us to the place,
if we would relish the pleasures of it; for the entertain-
ment can only operate on that taste we carry to it. It is
too late to be acquiring when we ought to be enjoying.
That spirit of prayer and praise, those dispositions of
love, meekness," peace, quietness, and assurance;" that
indifference to the fashion of a world which is passing
away; that longing after deliverance from sin; that de-
sire of holiness, together with all the specific marks of
our having "the fruits of the spirit" here, must surely
make some part of our qualification for the enjoyment of
a world, the pleasures of which are all spiritual. And
who can conceive any thing comparable to the awful sur-
prise of a soul, long immersed in the indulgences of van-
ity and pleasure, yet all the while lulled by the self-com-
placency of a religion of mere forms: who, while it
counted upon heaven as a thing of course, had made no
preparation for it! Who can conceive any surprise com-
parable to that of such a soul on shutting its eyes on a
*
ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT.
91
world of sense, of which all the objects and delights were
so congenial to its nature, and opening them on a world
of spirits, of which all the characters of enjoyment are
of a nature new, unknown, surprising, and specifically
different? pleasures more inconceivable to its apprehen-
sion, and more unsuitable to its taste, than the gratifica-
tions of one sense are to the organs of another, or than
the most exquisite works of genius to absolute imbecili-
ty of mind.
While we would with deep humility confess that we
cannot purchase heaven by any works or right dispositions
of our own; while we gratefully acknowledge that it must
be purchased for us by "Him who loved us, and washed
us from our sins in his blood;" yet let us remember that
we have no reason to expect we could be capable of en-
joying the pleasures of a heaven so purchased without
heavenly mindedness. When those persons who are apt
to expect as much comfort from religion as if their hearts
were not full of the world, now and then, in a fit of honesty
or low spirits, complain that Christianity does not make
them as good and as happy as they were led to expect from
that assurance, that "great peace have they who love the
Lord," and that "they who wait on him shall want no man-
ner of thing that is good;" when they lament that the
paths of religion are not those "paths of pleasantness"
they were led to expect; their case reminds one of a ce-
lebrated physician, who used to say, that the reason why
his prescriptions, which commonly cured the poor and the
temperate, did so little good among his rich luxurious pa-
tients, was, that while he was labouring to remove the dis-
ease by medicines, of which they only took drams, grains,
and scruples; they were inflaming it by a multiplicity of
injurious aliments, which they swallowed by ounces, pounds,
and pints.
P
O
These fashionable Christians should be reminded, that
there was no half engagement made for them at their bap-
tism; that they are not partly their own and partly their
Redeemer's. He that is "bought with a price," is the
sole property of the purchaser. Faith does not consist
merely in submitting the opinions of the understanding,
but the dispositions of the heart: religion is not a sacrifice
of sentiments, but of affections: it is not the tribute of fear
extorted from a slave, but the voluntary homage of love
paid by a child,
T2
.92
ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT,
}
1
Neither does a Christian's piety consist in living in re-
treat, and railing at the practices of the world, while, per-
haps, her heart is full of the spirit of that world at which
she is railing but its consists in subduing the spirit of
the world and opposing its practices, even while her duty
obliges her to live in it.
1
no
Nor is the spirit or the love of the world confined to
those only who are making a figure in it; nor are its ope-
rations bounded by the precincts of the metropolis, nor
tne limited regions of first-rate rank and splendour. She
who inveighs against the luxury and excesses of London,
and solaces herself in her own comparative sobriety, be-
cause her more circumscribed fortune compels her to take
up with the second-hand pleasures of successive watering-
places, which pleasures she pursues with avidity, is go-
verned by the same spirit: and she whose still narrower
opportunties stint her to the petty diversions of her pro-
vincial town, if she be busied in swelling and enlarging
her smaller sphere of vanity and idleness, however she
may comfort herself with her own comparative goodness,
by railing at the unattainable pleasures of the watering-
place, or the still more unapproachable joys of the capi-
tal, is governed by the same spirit: for she who is as
vain, as dissipated, and as extravagant as actual circum-
stances admit, would be as vain, as dissipated, and as ex-
travagant as the gayest objects of her invective now are, if
she could change places with them. It is not merely by
what we do that we can be sure the spirit of the world has
no dominiou over us, but by fairly considering what we
should probably do if more were in our power.
The worldly Christian, if I may be allowed such a con-
tradiction in terms, must not imagine that she acquits her-
self of her religious obligations by her mere weekly obla-
tion of prayer. There is no covenant by which communion
with God is restricted to an hour or two on the Sunday:
she does not acquit herself by setting apart a few particu-
1r days in the year for the exercise of a periodical devo-
tion, and then flying back to the world as eagerly as if she
were resolved to repay herself with large interest for her
short fit of self denial; the stream of pleasure running
with a more rapid current, from having been interrupted
by this forced obstruction. And the avidity with which
one has seen certain persons of a still less correct charac-
ter than the class we have been considering; return to a
whole year's carnival, after the self-imposed penance of a
|
ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT.
93
Passion week, gives a shrewd intimation that they consid-
ered the temporary abstraction less as an act of penitence
for the past, than as a purchase of indemnity for the future.
Such bare-weight Protestants prudently condition for re-
taining the Popish doctrine of indulgences, which they buy,
not indeed of the late spiritual court of Rome, but of that
secret, self-acquitting judge, which ignorance of its own.
turpitude, and of the strict requirements of the divine law,
has established supreme in the tribunal of every unrenew-
ed heart.
→
But the practice of self-examination is impeded with
one clog, which renders it peculiarly inconvenient to the
gay and worldly for the royal prophet (who was, how-
ever, himself as likely as any one to be acquainted with
the difficulties peculiar to greatness) has annexed as a con-
comitant to "communing with our own heart," that we
should “be still." Now this clause of the injunction ren-
ders the other part of it not a little inconsistent with the
present habits of fashionable life, of which stillness is clear-
ly not one of the constituents. It would, however, great-
ly assist those who do not altogether decline the practice,
if they were to establish into a rule the habit of detecting
certain suspicious practices, by realizing them, as it were,
to their own minds, through the means of drawing them
out in detail, and of placing them before their eyes clothed
in language; for there is nothing that so effectually ex-
poses an absurdity which has passed muster for want of
such an inquisition, as giving it shape and form. How many
things which now work themselves into the habit, and pass
current, would then shock us by their palpable inconsist-
ency
! Who, for instance, could stand the sight of such a
debtor and creditor account at this :-Item
-Item; So many
card-parties, balls, and operas due to me in the following
ycar, for so many manuals and meditations paid before-
hand during the last six days in lent? With how much
indignation soever this suggestion may be treated; what-
ever offence may be taken at such a combination of the
serious and the ludicrous; however we may revolt at the
idea of such a composition with our Maker, when put into
so many words; does not the habitual course of some go
near to realize such a statement?
<+>
ba
HÀN
But “
a Christian's race," as a venerable Prelate* ob-
serves, « is not run at so many heats," but is a constant
course and progress by which we are continually gaining
Bishop Hopkins.
94
ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT.
J
|
ground upon sin, and approaching nearer to the kingdom
of God.
Am I then ridiculing this pious seclusion of contrite
sinners? Am I then jesting at that "troubled spirit,
which God has declared is his "acceptable sacrifice ?"
God forbid! Such reasonable retirements have been the
practice, and continue to be the comfort of some of the
sincerest Christians; and will continue to be resorted to
as long as Christianity, that is, as long as the world, shall
last. It is well to call off the thoughts, even for a short
time, not only from sin and vanity, but even from the law-
ful pursuits of business, and the laudable concerns of life;
and, at times, to annihilate, as it were, the space which di-
vides us from eternity:
'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours,
And ask them what report they bore to heaven,
Aud how they might have borne more welcome news.
ود
Yet as to those who seek a short annual retreat as a mere
form; who dignify with the idea of a religious retirement
a week in which it is rather unfashionable to be seen in
town; who retire with an unabated resolution to return to
the maxims, the pleasures, and the spirit of that world
which they do but mechanically renounce; is it not to be
feared that such a short secession, which does not even
pretend to subdue the principle, but merely suspends the
act, may only serve to set a keener edge on the appetite
for the pleasures they are quitting? Is it not to be feared
that the bow may fly back with redoubled violence from
having been unnaturally bent? that by varnishing over a
life of vanity with the transient externals of a formal and
temporary piety, they may the more dangerously skin over
the troublesome soreness of a tender conscience by laying
This flattering unction to the soul?
For is it not among the delusions of a worldly piety to
consider Christianity as a thing which cannot, indeed,
safely be omitted, but which is to be got over ; a certain
quantity of which is, as it were, to be taken in the lump,
with long intervals between the repetitions? to consider
religion as imposing a set of hardships, which must be
occasionally encountered in order to procure a peaceable
enjoyment of the long respite? that these severe condi-
tions thus fulfilled, the acquitted Christian having paid
the annual demand of a rigorous requisition, she may now
lawfully return to her natural state; and the old reckoning
being adjusted, she may begin a new score, and receive
the reward of her punctual obedience, in the resumed in-
A
ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT.
25
dulgence of those gratifications which she had for a short
time laid aside as a hard task to please a hard master : but
this task performed, and the master appeased, the mind
may discover its natural bent, in joyfully returning to the
objects of its real choice? Whercas, is it not clear on the
other hand, that if the religious exercises had produced
the effect which it is the nature of true religion to produce,
the penitent could not return with her old genuine alacri-
ty to those habits of the world, from which the pious week-
ly manuals through which she has been labouring, with
the punctuality of an almanack as to the day, and the ac-
curacy of a beadroll as to the number, was intended by the
devout authors to rescue their reader?
I am far from insinuating that this literal sequestration
ought to be prolonged throughout the year, or that all
the days of business are to be made equally days of solem-
nity and continued meditation. This earth is a place in
which a much larger portion of a common Christian's time
must be assigned to action than to contemplation. Wo-
men of the higher class were not sent into the world to
shun society, but to improve it. They were not designed
for the cold and visionary virtues of solitudes and monas-
teries, but for the amiable, and endearing, and useful offi-
ces of social life; they are of a religion which does not
impose idle austerities, but enjoins active duties; a reli-
gion of which the most benevolent actions require to be
sanctified by the purest motives; a religion which does
not condemn its followers to the comparatively easy task
of seclusion from the world, but assigns them the more
difficult province of living uncorrupted in it; a religion
which, while it forbids them to "follow a multitude to do
evil,” includes in that prohibition the sin of doing nothing,
and which moreover enjoins them to be followers of him
"who went about doing good."
Sig
WS
But may we not reasonably contend, that though the
same sequestration is not required, yet that the same spirit
and temper which one hopes is thought necessary by all
during the occasional humiliation, must, by every reak
Christian, be extended throughout all the periods of the
year? And when that is really the case, when once the
spirit of religion shall indeed govern the heart, it will
not only animate her religious actions and employments,
but will gradually extend itself to the chastising her con-
versation, will discipline her thoughts, influence her com-
mon business, and sanctify her very pleasures.
(80)
*90
ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT.
I
But it should seem that many, who entertain a general
notion of Christian duty, do not consider it as of universal
and unremitting obligation, but rather as a duty binding
at times on all, and always on some. To the attention of
such we would recommend that very explicit address of
our Lord on the subject of self-denial, the temper, direct-
ly opposed to a worldly spirit:" And he said unto them
ALL, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself,
and take up his cross DAILY." Those who think self-de-
nial not of universal obligation, will observe the word all,
and those who think the obligation not constant will attend
to the term daily. These two little words cut up by the
root all the occasional religious observances grafted on a
worldly life; all transient, periodical, and temporary acts
of piety, which some would commute for habitual thought-
lessness.
There is indeed scarcely a more pitiable being than one
who, instead of making her religion the informing prin-
ciple of all she does, has only just enough to keep her in
continual fear; who drudges through her stinted exer-
cises with a superstitious kind of terror, while her gene-
ral life shows that the love of holiness is not the govern-
ing principle in her heart: who seems to suffer all the
pains and penalties of Christianity, but is a stranger to
"that liberty wherewith Christ has made us free." Let
it not be thought a ludicrous invention, if the author haz-
ard the producing a real illustration of these remarks, in
the instance of a lady of this stamp, who, returning from
church on a very cold day, and remarking with a good
deal of self-complacency how much she had suffered in
the performance of her duty, comforted herself with em-
phatically adding, "that she hoped however it would
answer."
>>
But there is no permanent comfort in any religion,
short of that by which the diligent Christian strives that
all his actions shall have the love of God for their motive,
and the glory of God, as well as his own salvation, for
their end; while to go about to balance one's good and
bad actions one against the other, and to take comfort in
the occasional predominance of the former, while the cul-
tivation of the principle from which they should spring
is neglected, is not the road to all those peaceful fruits of
the Spirit to which true Christianity conducts the humble
and penitent believer.
ON A WORLDLY STINIT.
97
But I am aware that a better cast of characters than
those we have been contemplating; that even the amia-
ble and the well disposed who, while they want cofrage
to resist what they have too much principle to think right,
and too much sense to justify, will yet plead for the palli-
aling system, and accuse these remarks of unnecessary
rigour. They will declare "that really they are as reli-
gious as they can be; they wish they were better; they
have little satisfaction in the life they are leading, yet they
Cannot break with the world; they cannot fly in the face
of custom; it does not become individuals like them to
oppose the torrent of fashion." Beings so interesting,
abounding with engaging qualities; who not only feel the
beauty of goodness, but reverence the truths of Christi-
anity, and are aw fully looking for a general judgment, one
is grieved to hear lament that they only do as others do,"
when they are perhaps themselves of such rank and im→
portance that if they would begin to do right, others would
be brought to do as they did. One is grieved to hear
them indolently assert, that "they wish it were otherwise,"
when they possess the power to make it otherwise, by set-
ting an example which they know would be followed.
One is sorry to hear them content themselves with declar-
ing, that "they have not the courage to be singular,"
when they must feel, by seeing the influence of their ex-
ample in worse things, that there would be no such great
singularity in piety itself, if once they became sincerely
pious. Besides, this diffidence does not break out on other
occasions. They do not blush to be quoted as the op-
posers of an old mode or the inventors of a new one.
Nor are they equally backward in being the first to ap-
pear in a strange fashion, such an one as often excites
wonder, and sometimes even offends against delicacy.
Let not then diffidence be pleaded as an excuse only on
occasions wherein courage would be virtue.
Will it be thought too harsh a question if we venture
to ask these gentle characters who are thus entrenching
themselves in the imaginary safety of surrounding multi-
tudes, and who say "we only do as others do," whether
they are willing to run the tremendous risk of consequen-
ces, and to fare as others fare ?
But while these plead the authority of fashion as a suf-
ficient reason' for their conformity to the world, one who
has spoken with a paramount authority has positively
said, "Be ye not conformed to the world." Nay, it is urg-
18
ON A WORLDLY SAIRIT.
ed as the very badge and distinction by which the cha-
racter opposite to the Christian is to be marked “ that the
friendship of the world is enmity with God."
Temptation to conform to the world was never perhaps
more irresistible than in the days which immediately pre-
ceded the deluge. And no man could ever have pleaded
the fashion in order to justify a criminal assimilation with
the reigning manners, with more propriety than the pa-
triarch Noah. He had the two grand and contending ob-
jects of terror to encounter which we have; the fear of
ridicule, and the fear of destruction; the dread of sin, and
the dread of singularity. Our cause of alarm is at least
equally pressing with his; for it does not appear, even
while he was actually obeying the divine command in
providing the means of his future safety, that he saw any
actual symptoms of the impending ruin, So that in one
sense he might have truly pleaded as an excuse for slack-
ness of preparation, "that all things continued as they
were from the beginning; " while many of us, though
the storm is begun, never think of providing the refuge :
though we had a fuller revelation, have seen Scripture
illustrated, prophecy fulfilling, with every awful circum-
stance that can either quicken the most sluggish remiss-
ness, or confirm the feeblest faith.
Besides, the patriarch's plea for following the fashion
was stronger than you can produce. While you must see
that many are going wrong, he saw that none were going
right.
"All flesh had corrupted his way before God;
whilst, blessed be God! you have still instances enough of
picty to keep you in countenance. While you lament
that the world seduces you, (for every one has a little
world of his own,) your world perhaps is only a petty
neighbourhood, a few streets and squares; but the patriarch
had really the contagion of a whole united world to resist;
he had literally the example of the whole face of the earth
to oppose. The "fear of man" also would then have
been a more pardonable fault, when the lives of the same
individuals who were likely to excite respect or fear was
prolonged many ages, than it can be in the short period
now assigned to human life. How lamentable then that
opinion should operate so powerfully when it is but the
breath of a being so frail and so short-lived,
That he doth cease to be;
Ére one can say he is,
*
1
1
ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT.
99
4
You who find it so difficult to withstand the individual al-
lurement of one modish acquaintance, would if you had
been in the patriarch's case have concluded the struggle
to be quite ineffectual, and sunk under the supposed
fruitlessness of resistance. "Myself," would you not
have said?" or at most my little family of eight persons.
can never hope to stop this torrent of corruption; I la-
ment the fruitlessness of opposition; I deplore the neces-
sity of conformity with the prevailing system; but it
would be a foolish presumption to hope that one family
can effect a change in the state of the world." In your
own case, however, it is not certain to how wide an ex-
tent the hearty union of even fewer persons in such a
cause might reach at least is it nothing to do what the
patriarch did? was it nothing to preserve himself from
the general destruction? was it nothing to deliver his
own soul? was it nothing to rescue the souls of his whole
family?
A wise man will never differ from the world in trifles.
It is certainly a mark of a sound judgment to comply with
it whenever we safely can; such compliance strengthens
our influence by reserving to ourselves the greaterweight
of authority on those occasions, when our conscience ob-
liges us to differ. Those who are prudent will cheerful-
ly conform to all its innocent usages; but those who are
Christians will be scrupulous in defining which are real-
ly innocent previous to their conformity to them. Not
what the world, but what the Gospel calls innocent, will
be found at the grand scrutiny to have been really so. A
discreet Christian will take due pains to be convinced he
is right, before he will presume to be singular: but from
the instant he is persuaded that the Gospel is true, and
the world of course wrong, he will no longer risk his
safety by following multitudes, or his soul by staking it
on human opinion. All our most dangerous mistakes
arise from our not constantly referring our practice to the
standard of Scripture, instead of the mutable standard of
human opinion, by which it is impossible to fix the real
value of characters. For this latter standard in some
cases determines those to be good who do not run all the
lengths in which the notoriously bad allow themselves.
The Gospel has an universal, the world has a local, stand-
ard of goodness: in certain societies certain vices alone
are dishonourable, such as covetousness and cowardice ;
U
Wa
I
1
100
UMAN CORNUFTTON.
while those sins of which our Saviour has said, that they
which commit them "shall not inherit the kingdom of
God," detract nothing from the respect some persons re-
ceive. Nay, those very characters whom the Almighty
has expressly declared "He will judge,' are received,
are adinired, are caressed, in that which calls itself the
best company.
22
But to weigh our actions by one standard now, when
we know they will be judged by another hereafter, would
be reckoned the height of absurdity in any transactions
but those which involve the interests of eternity. "How
readest thou?" is a more specific direction than any com-
parative view of our own habits with the habits of others:
and at the final bar it will be of little avail that our actions
have risen above those of bad men, if our views and prin-
ciples shall be found to have been in opposition to the
Gospel of Christ.
Nor is their practice more commendable, who are ever
on the watch to pick out the worst actions of good mien,
by way of justifying their own conduct on the compari-
son. The faults of the best men, "for there is not a
just man upon the earth who sinneth not," can in no
wise justify the errors of the worst and it is not invaria-
bly the example of even good men that we must take for
our unerring rule of conduct nor is it by a single ac-
tion that either they or we shall be judged; for in that
case who could be saved? but it is by the general preva-
lence of right principles and good habits; by the predo
minance of holiness, and righteousness, and temperance
in the life, and by the power of humility, faith, and love
in the heart.
"
1
CHAPTER XIX,
On the leading doctrines of Christianity. The corruption of human na-
ture. The doctrine of redemption. The necessity of a change of
heart, and of the divine influences to produce that change; with a
sketch of the Christian character.
M
THE author having in this little work taken a view of
the false notions often imbibed in early life from a bad
education, and of their pernicious effects; and having
attempted to point out the respective remedies to these;
she would now draw all that has been said to a point, and
declare plainly what she humbly conceives to be the
source whence all these false notions, and this wrong
* Hebrews xiii. 4.
1
HUMAN CORRUPTION.
101.
}
!
conduct really proceed: The prophet Jeremiah shall an-
swer: "It is because they have forsaken the fountain of
living waters, and have hewn out to themselves cisterns,
broken cisterns that can hold no water.” It is an ig-
norance past belief, of what Christianity really is the
remedy, therefore, and the only remedy that can be ap-
plied with any prospect of success, is RELIGION, and by
religion she would be understood to mean the Gospel of
Jesus Christ.
(C
It has been before hinted, that religion should be taught
at an early period of life; that children should be brought
up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." The
manner in which they should be taught has likewise with
great plainness been suggested; that it should be done in
so lively and familiar a manner as to make religion amia-
ble, and her ways to appear, what they really are, ways
of pleasantness." And a slight sketch has been given of
the genius of Christianity, by which her amiableness.
would more clearly appear. But this, being a subject of
such vast importance, compared with which every other
subject sinks into nothing; it seems not sufficient to
speak on the doctrines and duties of Christianity in de-
tached parts, but it is of importance to point out, though
in a brief manner, the mutual dependence of one doctrine
upon another, and the influence which these doctrines
have upon the heart and life, so that the duties of Christi-
anity may be seen to grow out of its doctrines by which
it will appear that Christian virtues differ essentially
from Pagan: it is of a quite different kind: the plant it-
self is different, it comes from a different root, and grows
in a different soil.
St
It will be seen how the humbling doctrine of the cor-
ruption of human nature, which has followed from the cor-
ruption of our first parents, makes way for the bright dis-.
play of redeeming love. How from the abasing thought
that "we are all as sheep going astray, every one in his
own way" that "none can return to the Shepherd of our
souls, except the Father draw him that "the natural
man cannot receive the things of the Spirit, because they
are spiritually discerned:" how from this humiliating
view of the helplessness, as well as the corruption of human
nature, we are to turn to that animating doctrine, the of
fer of divine assistance. So that, though human nature
will appear from this view in a deeply degraded state, and
consequently all have cause for humility, yet not one has
"
202
HUMAN CORRUPTION.
cause for despair: the disease indeed is dreadful, but a
physician is at hand, both able and willing to save us :
though we are naturally "without strength, our help is
laid upon one that is mighty."
We should observe then, that the doctrines of our Sa-
viour are, if I may so speak, like his coat, all woven into
one piece. We should get such a view of their recipro-
cal dependence as to be persuaded that without a deep
sense of our own corruptions we can never seriously be-
lieve in a Saviour, because the substantial and acceptable
belief in Him must always arise from the conviction of
our want of Him; that without a firm persuasion that the
Holy Spirit can alone restore our fallen nature, repair the
ruins of sin, and renew the image of God upon the heart,
we never shall be brought to serious, humble prayer for
repentance and restoration; and that, without this repent-
ance there is no salvation: for though Christ has died
for us, and consequently to him we must look as a Sa-
viour, yet he has himself declared that he will save none
but true penitents.
-
ON THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN CORRUPTION.
To come now to a more particular statement of these
doctrines. When an important edifice is about to be erect--
cd, a wise builder will dig deep, and look well to the foun-
dations, knowing that without this the fabric will not be
likely to stand. The foundation of the Christian reli-
gion, out of which the whole structure may be said to arise,
appears to be the doctrine of the fall of man from his ori~
ginal state of righteousness; and of the corruption and
helplessness of human nature, which are the consequen-
ces of this fall, and which is the natural state of every one
born into the world. To this doctrine it is important to
conciliate the minds, more especially of young persons,
who are peculiarly disposed to turn away from it as a morose,
unamiable, and gloomy idea: they are apt to accuse those
who are more strict and serious, of unnecessary severity,
and to suspect them of thinking unjustly ill of mankind.
Some of the reasons which prejudice the inexperienced
against the doctrine in question appear to be the follow-
ing.
Young persons themselves have seen little of the world.
In pleasurable society the world puts on its most amiable
appearance; and that softness and urbanity which pre-
vail, particularly amongst persons of fashion, are liable to
be mistaken for more than they are really worth. The
+
HUMAN CORRUPTION.
103
opposition to this doctrine in the young, arises partly from
ingenuousness of heart, partly from a habit of indulging
themselves in favourable suppositions respecting the
world, rather than of pursuing truth, which is always the
grand thing to be pursued; and partly from the populari-
ty of the tenet, that every body is so wonderfully good!.
This error in youth has however a still deeper founda-
tion, which is their not having a right standard of moral
good and evil, in consequence of their already partaking
of the very corruption which is spoken of; they are there-
fore apt to have no very strict sense of duty, or of the ne-
cessity of a right and religious motive to every act.
A
Moreover, young people usually do not know them-
selves. Not having yet been much exposed to tempta-
tion, owing to the prudent restraints in which they have
been kept, they little suspect to what lengths in vice
they themselves are liable to be transported, nor how far
others actually are carried, who are set free from those
restraints.
Having laid down these as some of the causes of crror
on this point, I proceed to observe on what strong grounds
the doctrine itself stands.
Fo
Profane history abundantly confirms this truth: the his-
tory of the world being in fact little else than the history
of the crimes of the human race. Even though the annals
of remote ages lie so involved in obscurity, that some de-
gree of uncertainty attaches itself to many of the events
recorded, yet this one melancholy truth is always clear,
that most of the miseries which have been brought upon
mankind, have proceeded from this general depravity.
th
The world we now live in furnishes abundant proof of
this truth. In a world formed on the deceitful theory of
those who assert the innocence and dignity of man, almost
all the professions, since they would have been rendered
useless by such a state of innocence, would not have ex-
isted. Without sin we may nearly presume there would
have been no sickness; so that every medical professor is
a standing evidence of this sad truth. Sm not only brought
sickness but death into the world; consequently every
funeral presents a more irrefragable argument than a
thousand sermons. Had man persevered in his original
integrity, there could have been no litigation, for there
would be no contests about property in a world where
mone would be inclined to attack it. Professors of law,
U 2
104
HUMAN CORRUPTION.
therefore, from the attorney who prosecutes for a trespass,
to the pleader who defends a criminal, or the judge who
condemns him, loudly confirm the doctrine. Every victo-
ry by sea or land should teach us to rejoice whith humili-
ation, for conquest itself brings a terrible, though splendid
attestation to the truth of the fall of man.
Even those who deny the doctrine, act universally more
or less on the principle. Why do we all secure our houses
with bolts, and bars, and locks? Do we take these steps
to defend our lives and property from any particular fear ?
from any suspicion of this neighbour, or that servant, or
the other invader? No:-It is from a practical conviction
of the common depravity; from a constant, pervading,
but undefined dread of impending evil arising from the
sense of general corruption. Are not prisons built, and
Jaws enacted, on the same practical principle?
But not to descend to the more degraded part of our
species. Why in the fairest transaction of business is.
nothing executed without bonds, receipts, and notes of
hand? Why does not a perfect confidence in the dignity
of human nature abolish all these securities; if not be-
ween enemies, or people indifferent to each other, yet at
least between friends and kindred, and the most honour-
able connexions? Why, but because of that univeral suspi
cion between man and man, which, by all we see, and hear,
and feel, is become interwoven with our very make?
Though we do not entertain any individual suspicion, nay,
though we have the strongest personal confidence, yet the
acknowledged principle of conduct has this doctrine for
its basis. "I will take a receipt though it were from my
brother," is the established voice of mankind; or, as I
have heard it more artfully put, by a fallacy of which the
very disguise discovers the principle, "Think every man
honest, but deal with him as if you knew him to be other-
wise." And as, in a state of innocence, the beasts, it is.
presumed, would not have bled for the sustenance of man,
so their parchments would not have been wanted as in-
struments of his security against his fellow man.
Jak s
bath 1
But the grand arguments for this doctrine must be
drawn from the Holy Scriptures: and these, besides im-
plying it almost continually, expressly assert it; and that
in instances too numerous to be all of them brought for-
* Bishop Butler distinctly declares this truth to be evident, from experience as well
as Revelation," that this world exhibits an idea ofa RUIN;" and he will hazard much
who ventures to assert that Butler detended Christianity upon prioriples unconsuraATT
to reason, philosophy or sound experience.
HUMAN CORRUPTIOK.
104
39 G
ward here. Of these may I be allowed to produce a few?
"God saw that the wickedness of man was great, and that
every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only
evil continually :". “God looked upon the earth, and
behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way
upon the earth. And it repented the Lord that he had
made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
This is a picture of mankind before the flood; and the
doctrine receives additional confirmation in Scripture,
when it speaks of the times which followed after that tre-
mendous judgment had taken place. The Psalms abound
in lamentations on the depravity of man. They are
all gone aside; there is none that doeth good, no not one.
"In thy sight," says David, addressing the Most High,
"shall no man living be justified." Job in his usual lofty
strain of interrogation, asks, “What is man that he should
be clean, and he that is born of a woman that he should
be righteous? Behold the heavens are not clean in His
sight, how much more abominable and filthy is man, who
drinketh iniquity like water?”
66
***
Nor do the Scriptures speak of this corruption as arising
only from occasional temptation, or from mere extrinsic
causes. The wise man tells us, that "foolishness is bound
up in the heart of a child :" the prophet Jeremiah assures
us, "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperate-
ly wicked" and David plainly states the doctrine: "Be-
hold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother
conceive me." "Can language be inore explicit?
The New Testament corroborates the Old. Our Lord's
reproof of Peter seems to take the doctrine for granted:
"Thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those
that be of man ;" clearly intimating, that the ways of man
are opposite to the ways of God. And our Saviour, in that
affecting discourse to his disciples, observes to them that,
as they were by his grace made different from others,
therefore they must expect to be hated by those who were
so unlike them. And it should be particularly observed,
as another proof that the world is wicked, that our Lord
considered "the world" as opposed to him and to his dis-
ciples. "If ye were of the world, the world would love
its own; but I have chosen you out of the world, there-
fore the world hateth you." St. John, writing to his Chris-
tian church, states the same truth: "We know that we
are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness."
* Genesis và
↑ John xv. 19%.
10
vad
+
1
106
HUMAN CONRUPTION.
Man in his natural and unbelieving state is likewise repre-
sented as in a state of guilt, and under the displeasure of
Almighty God. "He that believeth not the Son shall not
see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him."
Here, however, if it be objected, that the heathen who
never heard of the Gospel will not assuredly be judged
by it; the Saviour's answer to such curious inquirers con-
cerning the state of others is, "Strive to enter in at the
strait gate." It is enough for us to believe that God will
judge all men according to their opportunities. But with
whatever mercy he may judge those who, living in a land
of darkness, are without knowledge of his revealed law,
our business is not with them, but with ourselves. It is
our business to consider what mercy he will extend to
those who, living in a Christian country, abounding with
means and ordinances, where the Gospel is preached in
its purity; it is our business to inquire how he will deal
with those who shut their eyes to its beams, who close
their ears to its truths. For an unbeliever, who has passed
his life in the meridian of Scripture light, or for an out-
ward but unfruitful professor of Christianity, 1 know not
what hope the Gospel holds out.
The natural state of man is again thus described: "The
carnal mind is enmity against God; (awful thought !) for
it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God."
What the apostle means by being in the flesh, is evident
by what follows; for speaking of those whose hearts were
changed by divine grace, he says, "But ye are not in the
flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell
in you that is, you are now not in your natural state:
the change that has passed on your minds by the influ-
ence of the Spirit of God is so great, that your state may
properly be called being in the Spirit. It may be further
observed that the same apostle, writing to the churches of
Galatia, tells them, that the natural corruption of the hu-
man heart is continually opposing the spirit of holiness
which influences the regenerate. "The flesh lusteth
against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and
these are contrary the one to the other :" which passage
by the way, at the same time that it proves the corruption
of the heart, proves the necessity of divine influences.
And the apostle, with respect to himself, freely confesses.
and deeply laments the workings of this corrupt princi-
ple: "O wretched man that I am !" &c.
HÚMAN CORRUPTION.
107
It has been objected by some who have opposed this
doctrine, that the same Scriptures which speak of man-
kind as being sinners, speak of some as being righteous;
and hence they would argue, that though this depravity of
human nature may be general, yet it cannot be universal.
This objection, when examined, serves only, like all other
objections against the truth, to establish that which it was
intended to destroy. For what do the Scriptures assert
respecting the righteous? That there are some whose
principles, views, and conduct, are so different from the
rest of the world, and from what theirs themselves once
were, that these persons are honoured with the peculiar
title of the "sons of God." But no where do the Scriptures
assert that even these are sinless; on the contrary their
faults are frequently mentioned; and persons of this class
are moreover represented as those on whom a great change
has past; as having been formerly "dead in trespasses and
sins;" but as "being now called out of darkness into light."
as "translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son;" as
66 having passed from death to life." And St. Paul put
this matter past all doubt, by expressly asserting, that
"they were all by nature the children of wrath even as
others."
(C
It might be well to ask certain persons who oppose the
doctrine in question, and who also seem to talk as if they
thought there were many sinless people in the world, how
they expect that such sinless people will be saved? (though
indeed to talk of an innocent person being saved is a pal-
pable contradiction in terms; it is talking of curing a man
already in health.) "Undoubtedly," such will say, they
will be received into those abodes of bliss prepared for the
righteous."-But be it remembered there is but one way
to these blissful abodes, and that is, through Jesus Christ:
"For there is none other name given among men where-
by we must be saved." If we ask whom did Christ come to
save? the Scripture directly answers, "He came into the
world to save sinners :”—"His name was called Jesus,
because he came to save his people from their sins.” When
St. John was favoured with a heavenly vision, he tells us,
that he beheld a great multitude which no man could
number, of all nations, and kindred, and people, and tongues,
standing before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed
with white robes;" that one of the heavenly inhabitants in-
formed him who they were: "These are they who come
out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and
A
108
HUMAN CORRUPTION.
made them white in the blood of the Lamb; therefore arc
they before the throne of God, and serve him day and
night in his temple; and he that sitteth on the throne shall
dwell among them; they shall hunger no more, neither
thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor
any heat; for the Lamb which is in the midst of them
shall feed them, and shall lead them to living fountains of
waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes
as
We may gather from this description what these glo-
rious and happy beings once were: they were sinful crea-
tures: their robes were not spotless: "They had washed
them, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."
They are likewise generally represented as having been
once a suffering people: they came out of great tribula-
tion. They are described as having overcome the great
tempter of mankind, "by the blood of the Lamb:"*
they who follow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth :" as
"redeemed from among men." And their employment in
the regions of bliss is a farther confirmation of the doc-
trine of which we are treating. "The great multitude,”
&c. &c. we are told, "stood and cried with a loud voice,
Salvation to our God who sitteth upon the throne, and to
the Lamb!" Here we see they ascribe their salvation to
Christ, and consequently their present happiness to his
atoning blood. And in another of their celestial anthems,
they say in like manner: "Thou wast slain, and hast re-
decmed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and
tongue, and people, and nation."
By all this it is evident, that men of any other descrip-
tion than redeemed sinners must gain admittance to heaven
some other way than that which the Scriptures point out;
and also that when they shall arrive there, so different will
be their employment, that they must have an anthem pe-
Guliar to themselves.
ور
Nothing is more adapted to "the casting down of high
imaginations," and to promote humility, than this reflec-
tion, that heaven is always in Scripture pointed out not as
the reward of the innocent, but as the hope of the penitent.
This, while it is calculated to "exclude boasting," the
temper the most opposite to the Gospel, is yet the most
suited to afford comfort; for were heaven promised as the
reward of innocence, who could attain to it? but being, as
it is, the promised portion of faith and repentance, who is
compelled to miss it?
*Rev. xii. 14.
† Rev. v. 9.
† Rev, xiv. 4.
↓
HUMAN CONNUPTION.
109
It is urged that the belief of this doctrine of our cor-
ruption produces many ill effects, and therefore it should be
discouraged. That it does not produce those ill effects,
when not misunderstood or partially represented, we shall
attempt to show at the same time let it be observed, if
it be really true, we must not, reject it on account of any
of these supposed ill consequences. Truth may often be
attended with disagreeable effects, but if it be truth it must
still be pursued. If, for instance, treason should exist in a
country, every one knows the disagreeable effects which
will follow such a conviction; but our not believing such
treason to exist, will not prevent such effect following it;
on the contrary, our believing it may prevent the conse-
quences.
It is objected, that this doctrine debases human na-
ture, and that finding fault with the building is only another
way of finding fault with the architect. To the first part
of this objection it may be remarked, that if man be real-
ly a corrupt, fallen being, it is proper to represent him as
such the fault then lies in the man and not in the doctrine,
which only states the truth. As to the inference which
is supposed to follow, namely, that it throws the fault up-
on the Creator, it proceeds upon the false supposition that
man's present corrupt state is the state in which he was
originally created and also that God has left him una-
voidably to perish in it, whereas although "in Adam we
dic, in Christ we shall be made alive."
::
It is likewise objected, that as this doctrine must give
us such a bad opinion of mankind, it must consequently
produce ill-will, hatred, and suspicion. But it should be
remembered, that it gives us no worse an opinion of other
men than it gives us of ourselves; such views of our-
selves have a very salutary effect, inasmuch as they have
a tendency to produce humility; and humility is not
likely to produce ill-will to others, "for only froin pride
cometh contention :" and as to the views it gives us of
mankind, it represents us as fellow sufferers; and surely
the consideration that we are the companions in misery is
not calculated to produce hatred. The truth is, these
effects have actually followed from a false and partial view:
of the subject.
Old persons who have seen much of the world, and whe
have little religion, are apt to be strong in their belief of
man's actual corruption; but not taking it up on Chris-
tian grounds, this belief in them shows itself in a narrow
110
HUMAN CORRUPTION.
and malignant temper; in uncharitable judgment, and
harsh opinions.
Suspicion and hatred also arc the uses to which Ro-
chefoucault and the other French philosophers have con-
verted this doctrine: their acute minds intuitively found
the corruption of man, and they saw it without its con-
comitant and correcting doctrine: they allowed man to
be a depraved creature, but disallowed his high original:
they found him in a low state, but did not conceive of
him as having fallen from a better. They represent him
rather as a brute than an apostate; not taking into the
account that his present degraded nature and depraved
faculties are not his original state; that he is not such as
he came out of the hands of his Creator, but such as he
has been made by sin. Nor do they know that he has not
even now lost all remains of his primitive dignity, but is
still capable of a restoration more glorious
Than is dreamt of in their philosophy.
Ja
+
Perhaps, too, they know from what they feel, all the evil
to which man is inclined; but they do not know, for they
have not felt, all the good of which he is capable by the
superinduction of the divine principle: thus they as-
perse human nature instead of representing it fairly, and
in so doing it is they who calumniate the great Creator.
The doctrine of corruption is likewise accused of be-
ing a gloomy, discouraging doctrine, and an enemy to
joy and comfort. Now suppose this objection true in its
fullest extent. Is it any way unreasonable that a being.
fallen into a state of sin, under the displeasure of Al-
mighty God, should feel seriously alarmed at being in
such a state? Is the condemned criminal blamed because
he is not merry? And would it be esteemed a kind action
to persuade him that he is not condemned in order to
make him so?
But this charge is not true in the sense intended by
those who bring it forward. Those who believe this doc
trine are not the most gloomy people. When, indeed,
any one by the influence of the Holy Spirit is brought to
view his state as it really is, a state of guilt and danger,
it is natural that fear should be excited in his mind, but
it is such a fear as impels him "to flee from the wrath to
come:" it is such a fear as moved Noah to prepare an
ark to the saving of his house." Such an one will like-
wise feel sorrow; not however "the sorrow of the world
which worketh death," but that godly sorrow which
6+
4
DOCTRINE OF REDEMPTION.
11L
worketh repentance: such an one is in a proper state to
receive the glorious doctrine we are next about to con-
template; namely,
<
THAT GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD, THAT HE GAVE HIS
ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, THAT WHOSOEVER BELIEVED
ON HIM SHOULD NOT PERISH, BUT HAVE EVERLASTING
LIFE.
Or this doctrine it is of the last importance to form
just views, for as it is the only doctrine which can keep
the humble penitent from despair, so, on the other hand,
great care must be taken that false views of it do not lead
us to presumption. In order to understand it rightly, we
must not fill our minds with our own reasonings upon it,
which is the way in which some good people have been
misled, but we must betake ourselves to the Scriptures,
wherein we shall find the doctrine stated so plainly as to
shew that the mistakes have not arisen from a want of
clearness in the Scriptures, but from a desire to make
it bend to some favourite notions. While it has been re-
jected by some, it has been so mutilated by others, as hard-
ly to retain any resemblance to the Scripture doctrine of
redemption. We are told in the beautiful passage last
quoted its source, the love of God to a lost world-who
the Redeemer was the Son of God-the end for which
this plan was formed and executed." That whosoever
believed in him should not perish, but have everlasting
life." There is nothing surely in all this to promote
gloominess. If kindness and mercy have a tendency to
win and warm the heart, here is every incentive to joy
and cheerfulness. Christianity looks kindly towards all,
and with peculiar tenderness on such, as, from humbling
views of their own unworthiness, might be led to fancy
themselves excluded:-we are expressly told,that "Christ
died for all "that "he tasted death for every man :-
that "he died for the sins of the whole world." Accord-
ingly he has commanded that his Gospel should be
"preached to every creature" which is in effect declar-
ing that not a single human being is excluded: for to
preach the Gospel is to offer a Saviour and the Sa-
viour in the plainest language offers himself to all,--de-
claring to "all the ends of the earth"-" look unto me
and be saved." It is therefore an undeniable truth, that
no one will perish for want of a Saviour, but for rejecting
him.
*
X
Dettagli
7
112
NECESSITY OF HOLINESS.
:
But to suppose that because Christ has died for the
"sins of the whole world," the whole world will therefore
be saved, is a most fatal mistake in the same book which
tells us that "Christ died for all," we have likewise this
awful admonition; "Strait is the gate, and few there be
that find it ;" which, whether it be understood of the im-
mediate reception of the Gospel, or of the final use which
was too likely to be made of it, gives no encouragement
to hope that all will entitle themselves to its reward. And
whilst it declares that "there is no other name whereby
we may be saved but the name of Jesus;" it likewise de-
clares,
N
THAT WITHOUT HOLINESS NO MAN SHALL SEE THE
LORD."
>
It is much to be feared that some, in their zeal to de-
fend the Gospel doctrines of free grace, have materially
injured the Gospel doctrine of holiness: stating, that
Christ has done all in such a sense, as that there is no-
thing left for us to do.-But do the Scriptures hold out
2) is
this language?-« Come, for all things are ready
the Gospel call; in which we may observe, that at the
same time that it tells us that "all things are ready," it
nevertheless tells us that we must " come."
Food being
provided for us will not benefit us except we partake of
it.—It will not avail us that "Christ our passover is sacri-
ficed for us," unless "we keep the feast."-We must
make use of " the fountain which is opened," if we would
be purified. "All, indeed, who are athirst are invited to
take of the waters of life freely; but if we feel no" thirst;"
if we do not drink, their saving qualities are of no avail.
tt
It is the more necessary to insist on this in the present
day, as there is a worldly and fashionable, as well as a,
low and sectarian Antinomianism: there lamentably pre-
vails in the world an unwarranted assurance of salvation,
founded on a slight, vague, and general confidence in what
Christ has done and suffered for us, as if the great object
of his doing and suffering had been to emancipate us from
all obligations to duty and obedience; and as if, because
he died for sinners, we might therefore safely and com-
fortably go on to live in sin, contenting ourselves with
now and then a transient, formal, and unmeaning avowal
of our unworthiness, our obligation, and the all-sufficien-
cy of his atonement. By this quit-rent, of which all the
cost consists in the acknowledgment, the sensual, the
worldly, and the vain, hope to find a refuge in heaven,
(6
I
}
CHANGE OF HEART.
113
I
when driven from the enjoyments of this world. But this
indolent Christianity is no where taught in the Bible.
The faith inculcated there is not a lazy, professional faith,
but that faith which "produceth obedience,” that faith
which "worketh by love," that faith of which the prac-
tical language is Strive that you may enter in ;”-
"So run that you may obtain ;"-" So fight that you may
lay hold on eternal life :"-that faith which directs us
"not to be weary in well doing ;"-which
which says, "Work
out your own salvation :"-never forgetting at the same
time" that it is God which worketh in us both to will
and to do.”—Are those rich supplies of grace which the
gospel offers; are those abundant aids of the Spirit which
it promises, tendered to the slothful -No: God will
have all his gifts improved. Grace must be used, or it
will be withdrawn. The Almighty thinks it not deroga-
tory to his free grace to declare, that "those only who
do his commandinents have right to the tree of life."
And the Scriptures represent it as not derogatory to the
sacrifice of Christ, to follow his example in well-doing.
The only caution is, that we must not work in our own
strength, not bring in our contribution of works as if iu
aid of the supposed deficiency of His merits.
For we must not in our over-caution fancy, that because.
Christ has "redeemed us from the curse of the law," we
are therefore without a law. In acknowledging Christ as
a deliverer, we must not forget that he is a law-giver too,
and that we are expressly commanded "to fulfil the law
of Christ : "if then we wish to know what his laws are,
we must "search the Scriptures," especially the New
Testament; there we shall find him declaring
THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITY OF A CHANGE OF HEART AND LIFE.
:
OUR Saviour says that "except a man be born again, he
cannot see the kingdom of God:" that it is not a mere
acknowledging His authority, calling him "Lord, Lord,"
that will avail any thing, except we do what He com-
mands that any thing short of this is like a man building
his house upon the sands, which, when the storms come
on, will certainly fall. In like manner the apostles are
continually enforcing the necessity of this change, which
they describe under the various names of "the new man;'
the new creature ;"-" a transformation into the image
of God;"" a participation of the divine nature."S
* Ephesians, iv. 24.
4 2 Corinthians, xii.
Galatians, vi. 15.
↑
§ 2 Peter, i, 4.
i
S
5
1
114
INFLUENCE OF THE KOLY SPIRIT.
Nor is this change represented as consisting merely în a
change of religious opinions; nor in exchanging gross
sins for those which are more sober and reputable ; nor in
renouncing the sins of youth, and assuming those of a
quieter period of life; nor in leaving off evil practices
because men are grown tired of them, or find they injure
their credit, health, or fortune; nor does it consist in in-
offensiveness and obliging manners, nor indeed in any
nerely outward reformation.
4
But the change consists in "being renewed in the spi-
rit of our minds;" in being "conformed to the image of
the Son of God;" in being "called out of darkness into
His marvellous light." And the whole of this great change,
its beginning, progress, and final accomplishment, for it is
represented as a gradual change, is ascribed to
THE INFLUENCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
WE are perpetually reminded of our utter inability to
help ourselves, that we may set the higher value on those
gracious aids which are held out to us. We are taught
that "we are not sufficient to think any thing as of our-
selves, but our sufficiency is of God." And when we are
told that "if we life after the flesh, we shall die," we are
at the same time reminded, that it is " through the Spirit
that we must mortify the deeds of the body." We are
likewise cautioned that we "grieve not the Holy Spirit of
fiod:" that we " quench not the Spirit." By all which
expressions, and many others of like import, we are taught
that, while we are to ascribe with humble gratitude every
good thought, word, and work, to the influence of the
Holy Spirit, we are not to look on such influences as su-
perseding our own exertions: and it is plain that we may
reject the gracious offers of assistance, since otherwisc
there would be no occasion to caution us not to do it.
The Scriptures have illustrated this in terms which are
familiar indeed, but which are therefore only the more
condescending, and endearing. "Behold, I stand at the
floor and knock. If "any man hear my voice and open the
door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he
with me." Observe, it is not said, if any man will not list-
en to me, I will force open the door. But if we refuse
admittance to such a guest, we must abide by the con-
'sequences.
This sublime doctrine of divine assistance is the more
to be prized, not only on account of our own helplessness,
but from the additional consideration of the powerful ad-
EXISTENCE OF THE EVIL SPIRIT.
113
versary with whom the Christian has to contend: an arti-
cle of our faith, by the way, which is growing into gene-
ral disrepute among the politer classes of society. Nay,
there is a kind of ridicule attached to the very suggestion
of the subject, as if it were exploded on full proof of its
being an absolute absurdity, utterly repugnant to the lib-
eral spirit of an enlightened age. And it requires no
small neatness of expression and periphrastic ingenuity to
get the very mention tolerated.-I mean the scripture doc-
trine of the existence and power of our great spiritual
enemy. It is considered by the fashionable skeptic as a
vulgar invention, which ought to be banished with the bc-
lief in dreams, and ghosts, and witchcraft-by the fash-
ionable Christian, as an ingenious allegory, but not as a
literal truth; and by almost all, as a doctrine which, when
it happens to be introduced at Church, has at least noth-
ing to do with the pews, but is by common consent made
over to the aisles, if indeed it must be retained at all.
*
May I, with great humility and respect, presume to
suggest to our divines, that they would do well not to lend
their countenance to these modish curtailments of the
Christian faith; nor to shun the introduction of this doc-
trine when it consists with their subject to bring it for-
ward. A truth which is seldom brought before the eye, im-
perceptibly grows less and less important; and if it be an
unpleasing truth, we grow inore and more reconciled to
its absence, till at length its intrusion becomes offensive,
and we learn in the end to renounce what we at first only
neglected. Because some coarse and ranting enthusiasts
have been fond of using tremendous terms with a violence
and frequency, which might make it seem to be a gratifi-
cation to them to denounce judgments and anticipate tor-
ments, can their coarseness or vulgarity make a true doc-
trine false, or an important one trifling? If such preachers
have given offence by their uncouth manner of managing
en awful doctrine, that indeed furnishes a caution to treat
the subject more discreetly, but it is no just reason for
avoiding the doctrine. For to keep a truth out of sight
because it has been absurdly handled or ill-defended,
might in time be assigned as a reason for keeping back,
one by one, every doctrine of our holy church; for which
of them has not had imprudent advocates or weak chain-
pions?
Be it remembered that the doctrine in question is not
•
*
X 2
116
ON THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER.
only interwoven by allusion, implication, or direct asser-
tion throughout the whole Scripture, but that it stands
prominently personified at the opening of the New as well
as the Old Testament. The devil's temptation of our Lord,
in which he is not represented figuratively, but visibly
and palpably, stands on the same ground of authority with
other events which are received without repugnance.
And it may not be an unuseful observation to remark,
that the very refusing to believe in an evil spirit, may be
considered as one of his own suggestions; for there is not
a more dangerous illusion than to believe ourselves out
of the reach of illusions, nor a more alarming temptation,
than to fancy that we are not liable to be tempted.
L
But the dark cloud raised by this doctrine will be dis-
pelled by the cheering certainty that our blessed Saviour
having himself" been tempted like as we are, is able to
deliver those who are tempted."
But to return.-From this imperfect sketch wc may
sec how suitable the religion of Christ is to fallen man!
How exactly it meets every want! No one needs now
perish because he is a sinner, provided he be willing to
forsake his sins; for "Jesus Christ came into the world
to save sinners :" and " He is now exalted to be a Prince
and a Saviour, to give repentance and forgiveness of sin."
Which passage, be it observed, may be considered as
pointing out to us the order in which he bestows his bles-
sings; he gives first repentance, and then forgiveness.
We may likewise see how much the character of a truc
Christian rises above every other: that there is a whole-
ness, an integrity, a completeness in the Christian cha-
racter: that a few natural, pleasing qualities, not cast in
the mould of the Gospel, are but as beautiful fragments,
or well turned single limbs, which for want of that beauty
which arises from the proportion of parts, for want of
that connexion of the members with the living head, are
of little comparative excellence. There may be amiable
qualities which are not Christian graces and the apostle,
after enumerating every separate article of attack or de-
fence with which a Christian warrior is to be accoutred,
sums up the matter by directing that we put on "the
whole armour of God." And this completeness is insisted
on by all the apostles. One prays that his converts may
“ stand perfect and complete in the whole will of God :"
another enjoins that they be "perfect and entire, wanting
nothing."
J
ON THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER,
117
Now we are not to suppose that they expected any con-
vert to be without faults; they knew too well the consti-
tution of the human heart; but Christians must have no
fault in their principle; their views must be direct, their
proposed scheme must be faultless; their intention must
be single; their standard must be lofty; their object must
be right; their "mark must be the high calling of God
in Christ Jesus."-There must be no allowed evil, no war«
ranted defection, no tolerated impurity. Though they do
not rise as high as they ought, nor as they wish, in the scale
of perfection, yet the scale itself must be correct, and the
desire of ascending perpetual: they must count the de-
grees they have already attained as nothing. Every grace.
must be kept in exercise, conquests once made over an
evil propensity must not only be maintained but extended.
And in truth, Christianity so comprises contrary, and as it
may be thought irreconcilable excellencies, that those
which seem so incompatible as to be incapable by nature
of being inmates of the same breast, are almost neces-
sarily involved in the Christian character.
2
For instance; Christianity requires that our faith be at
once fervent and sober; that our love be both ardent and
lasting; that our patience be not only heroic but gentle :
she demands dauntless zeal and genuine humility; active
services and complete self-renunciation; high attainments
in goodness, with deep consciousness of defect; courage in
reproving, and meckness in bearing reproof; a quick per-
ception of what is sinful; with a willingness to forgive the
offender; active virtue ready to do all, and passive virtue
ready to bear allWe must stretch every faculty in the
service of our Lord, and yet bring every thought into obe-
dience to Him while we aim to live in the exercise of
every Christian grace, we must account ourselves unpro-
fitable servants: we must strive for the crown, yet re-
ceive it as a gift, and then lay it at our Master's feet:
while we are busily trading in the world with our Lord's
talents, we must "commune with our heart, and be still :”
while we strive to practise the purest disinterestedness,
we must be contented, though we meet with selfishness
in return; and while laying out our lives for the good of
mankind, we must submit to reproach without murmuring,
and to ingratitude without resentment. And to render us
equal to all these services, Christianity bestows not only
the precept, but the power; she does what the great post
118
ON THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER.
of Ethics lamented that Reason could not do, "she lends
us arms as well as rules.'
For here, if not the worldly and the timid, but the hum-
ble and the well disposed should demand with fear and
trembling, "Who is sufficient for these things?" Reve
lation makes its own reviving answer: "My grace is suffi-
cient for thee."
It will be well here to distinguish that there are two
sorts of Christian professors, one of which affect to speak
of Christianity as if it were a mere system of doctrines,
with little reference to their influence on life and manners;
while the other consider it as exhibiting a scheme of hu-
man duties independent on its doctrines. For though the
latter sort may admit the doctrines, yet they contemplate
them as a separate and disconnected set of opinions, rather
than as an influential principle of action.—In violation of
that beautiful harmony which subsists in every part of
Scripture between practice and belief, the religious world
furnishes two sorts of people, who seem to enlist them-
selves, as if in opposition, under the banners of Saint Pauk
and Saint James, as if those two great champions of the
Christian cause had fought for two masters. Those who
affect respectively to be the disciples of each, treat faith
and works as if they were opposite interests, instead of in-
separable points. Nay, they go farther, and set Saint Paul
at variance with himself.
да ви
Now instead of reasoning on the point, let us refer to
the apostle in question, who definitively settles the dispute.
The apostolical order and method in this respect deserve
notice and imitation; for it is observable, that the earlier
parts of most of the Epistles abound in the doctrines of
Christianity, while those latter chapters, which wind up
the subject, exhibit all the duties which grow out of them,
as the natural and necessary productions of such a living
root. But this alternate mention of doctrine and practice,
which seemed likely to unite, has on the contrary formed
a sort of line of separation between these two orders of be-
lievers, and introduced a broken and mutilated system.
Those who would make Christianity consist of doctrines
only, dwell, for instance, on the first eleven chapters of the
Epistle to the Romans, as containing exclusively the sum
and substance of the Gospel. While the mere moralists,
who wish to strip Christianity of her lofty and appropriate
attributes, delight to dwell on the twelfth chapter, which
1
DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER.
119
is a table of duties, as exclusively as if the preceding chap-
ters made no part of the sacred Canon. But Paul himself,
who was at least as sound a theologian as any of his com-
mentators, scttles the matter another way, by making the
duties of the twelfth grow out of the doctrines of the ante-
cedent eleven, just as any other consequence grows out of
its cause. And as if he suspected that the indivisible union
between them might possibly be overlooked, he links the
two distinct divisions together by a logical "therefore,"
with which the twelfth begins :-" I beseech you there-
fore," (that is, as the effect of all I have been inculcating,)
"that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, accepta-
ble to God," &c. and then goes on to enforce on them, as
a consequence of what he had been preaching, the prac-
tice of every Christian virtue. This combined view of the
subject seems, on the one hand, to be the only means of
preventing the substitution of Pagan morality for Chris-
tian holiness; and on the other, of securing the leading
doctrine of justification by faith, from the dreadful danger
of Antinomian licentiousness; every human obligation
being thus grafted on the living stock of a divine principle.
sva
CHAPTER XX.
On the duty and efficacy of prayer.
IT is not proposed to enter largely on a topic which has
been exhausted by the ablest pens. But as a work of this
nature seems to require that so important a subject should
not be overlooked, it is intended to notice in a slight man-
ner a few of those many difficulties and popular objections
which are brought forward against the use and efficacy of
prayer, even by those who would be unwilling to be sus-
pected of impiety and unbelief.
There is a class of objectors who strangely profess to
withhold homage from the Most High, not out of con-
tempt, but reverence. They affect to consider the use of
prayer as derogatory to the omniscience of God, asserting
that it looks as if we thought he stood in need of being
informed of our wants; and as derogatory to his goodness,
as implying that he needs to be put in mind of them.
But is it not enough for such poor frail beings as we
are to know, that God himself does not consider prayer as
derogatory either to his wisdom or goodness? And shall
we erect ourselves into judges of what is consistent with
120
DUTY AND EFFICACE OF PRAYER.
1
the attributes of HIM, before whom angels fall prostrate
with self abasement? Will he thank such defenders of his
attributes, who while they profess to reverence, scruple
not to disobey him? It ought rather to be viewed as a
great encouragement to prayer, that we are addressing a
Being, who knows our wants better than we can express
them, and whose preventing goodness is always ready to
relieve them.
It is objected by another class, and on the specious
ground of humility too, though we do not always find the
objector himself quite as humble as his plea, that it is ar-
rogant in such insignificant beings as we are to presume
to lay our petty necessities before the great and glorious
God, who cannot be expected to condescend to the multi-
tude of trifling and even interfering requests which are
brought before him by his creatures. These and such like
objections arise from mean and unworthy thoughts of the
great Creator. It seems as if those who make them consi-
dered the Most High as "such an one as themselves ;"
a being, who can perform a certain quantity of business,
but who would be overpowered with an additional quan-
tity. Or at best, is it not considering the Almighty in the
light, not of an infinite God, but of a great man, of a mi-
nister, or a king, who, while he superintends great and na-
tional concerns, is obliged to neglect small and individual
petitions, because he cannot spare that leisure and atten-
tion which suffice for every thing? They do not consider
him as that infinitely glorious Being who, while he beholds
at once all that is doing in heaven and in earth, is at the
same time as attentive to the prayer of the poor destitute,
as present to the sorrowful sighing of the prisoner, as if
these forlorn creatures were the objects of his undivided
attention.
T
M
These critics, who are for sparing the Supreme Being
the trouble of our prayers, and, if I may so speak without
profaneness, would relieve Omnipotence of part of his
burden, by assigning to his care only such a portion as
may be more easily managed, seem to have no concep-
tion of his attributes.
1
They forget that infinite wisdom puts him as easily
within reach of all knowledge, as infinite power does of
all performance; that he is a being in whose plans com-
plexity makes no difficulty, and multiplicity no confu-
sion : that to ubiquity distance does not exist; that to
infinity space is annihilated; that past, present, and fu
Sk
·
1
BUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER.
121
ture, are discerned more accurately at one glance of his
eye, to whom a thousand years are as one day, than a sin-
gle moment of time or a single point of space can be by
ours.
To the other part of the objection founded on the sup-
posed interference (that is, irreconcilableness) of one
man's petitions with those of another, this answer seems
to suggest itself: first, that we must take care that when
we ask, we do not "ask amiss;" that, for instance, we
ask chiefly, and in an unqualified manner, only for spirit-
ual blessings to ourselves and others; and in doing this
the prayer of one man 'cannot interfere with that of ano-
ther. Next, in asking for temporal and inferior bles-
sings, we must qualify our petition even though it should
extend to deliverance from the severest pains, or to our
very life itself, according to that example of our Saviour:
"Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.
Nevertheless not my will, but thine be done." By thus
qualifying our prayer, we exercise ourselves in an act of
resignation to God; we profess not to wish what will in-
terfere with his benevolent plan, and yet we may hope
by prayer to secure the blessing so far as it is consistent
with it. Perhaps the reason why this objection to prayer
is so strongly felt, is the too great disposition to pray for
merely temporal and worldly blessings, and to desire
them in the most unqualified manner, not submitting to
be without them, even though the granting them should
be inconsistent with the general plan of Providence.
Another class continue to bring forward, as pertina-
ciously as if it had never been answered, the exhausted
argument, that seeing God is immutable, no petitions of
ours can ever change Him: that events themselves be-
ing settled in a fixed and unalterable course, and bound
in a fatal necessity, it is folly to think that we can disturb
the established laws of the universe, or interrupt the
course of Providence by our prayers and that it is ab-
surd to suppose these firm decrees can be reversed by any
requests of ours.
Without entering into the wide and trackless field of
fate and free will, from which pursuit I am kept back
equally by the most profound ignorance and the most in-
vincible dislike, I would only observe, that these objec-
tions apply equally to all human actions as well as to
prayer. It may therefore with the same propriety be
urged, that seeing God is immutable and his decrees un-
4
1
122
DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRATER.
alterable, therefore our actions can produce no change
in Him or in our own state. Weak as well as impious
reasoning. It may be questioned whether the modern
French and German philosophers might not be pre-
vailed upon to acknowledge the existence of God, if they
might make such an use of his attributes. The truth is,
and it is a truth discoverable without any depth of learn-
ing, all these objections are the offspring of pride. Poor,
short-sighted man cannot reconcile the omniscience and
decrees of God with the efficacy of prayer; and, because
he cannot reconcile them, he modestly concludes they are
irreconcilable. How much more wisdom as well as hap-
piness results from an humble Christian spirit! Such a
plain practical text as, "Draw near unto God, and he
will draw near unto you," carries more consolation, more
true knowledge of his wants and their remedy to the
heart of a penitent sinner, than all the tomes of casuistry
which have puzzled the world ever since the question
was first set afloat by its original propounders.
And as the plain man only got up and walked, to prove
there was such a thing as motion, in answer to the phi-
losopher who denied it; so the plain Christian, when he
is borne down with the assurance that there is no efficacy
in prayer, requires no better argument to repel the as-
sertion than the good he finds in prayer itself.
All the doubts proposed to him respecting God, do not
so much affect him as this one doubt respecting himself:
"If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear
me." For the chief doubt and difficulty of a Christian
consists, not so much in a distrust of God's ability and
willingness to answer the prayer of the upright, as in a
distrust of his own uprightness, and of the quality of the
prayer which he offers up.
Let the subjects of a dark fate maintain a sullen, or the
slaves of a blind chance a hopeless, silence, but let the
child of a compassionate Almighty Father supplicate his
mercies with an humble confidence, inspired by the as-
surance that "the very hairs of his head are numbered.”
Let him take comfort in that individual and minute atten-
tion, without which not a sparrow falls to the ground, as
well as in that heart-cheering promise, that, as “the eyes
of the Lord are over the righteous," so are " his ears open
to their prayers." And as a pious bishop has observed,
❝ Our Saviour has as it were hedged in and enclosed the
Lord's Prayer with these two great fences of our faith,
DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAY ST.
1
God's willingness and his power to help us :" the preface
to it assures us of the one which, by calling God by the
tender name of "Our Father," intimates his readiness
to help his children and the animating conclusion.
"Thine is the power," rescues us from every unbelieving
doubt of his ability to help us.
A Christian knows, because he feels, that prayer is,
though in a way to him inscrutable, the medium of con-
nexion between God and his rational creatures; the means
appointed by him to draw down his blessings upon us.
The Christian knows, that prayer is the appointed means
of uniting two ideas, one of the highest magnificence,
the other of the most profound lowliness, within the com-
pass of imagination; namely, that it is the link of com-
munication between "the High and Lofty One who in-
habiteth eternity," and that heart of the "contrite in
which he delights to dwell." He knows that this inex-
plicable union between beings so unspeakably, so essen-
tially different, can only be maintained by prayer.
The plain Christian, as was before observed, cannot ex-
plain why it is so; but while he feels the efficacy, he is
contented to let the learned define it; and he will no more
postpone prayer till he can produce a chain of reasoning
on the manner in which he derives benefit from it, than
he will postpone eating till he can give a scientific lecture
on the nature of digestion: he is contented with knowing
that his meat nas nourished him; and he leaves to the
philosopher, who may choose to defer his meal till he has
elaborated his treatise, to starve in the interim. The
Christian feels better than he is able to explain, that the
functions of his spiritual life can no more be carried on
without habitual prayer, than those of his natural life with-
out frequent bodily nourishment. He feels renovation and
strength grow out of the use of the appointed means, as
necessarily in the one case as in the other. He feels that
the health of his soul can no more be sustained, and
its powers kept in continued vigour by the prayers of a
distant day, than his body by the aliment of a distant day.
But there is one motive to the duty in question, für
more constraining to the true believer than all others that
can be named; more imperious than any arguments on
its utility, than any convictions of its efficacy, even than
any experience of its consolations. Prayer is the com-
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BUTT AND EFFICACY OF FRATÉR
*
mand of God; the plain, positive, repeated injunction of
the Most High, who declares, "He will be inquired of."
This is enough to secure the obedience of the Christian,
even though a promise were not, as it always is, attached
to the command. But in this case the promise is as clear
as the precept: "Ask, and ye shall receive ;" Scek,
and ye shall find:" this is enough for the plain Christian.
As to the manner in which prayer is made to coincide with
the general scheme of God's plan in the government of
human affairs; how God has left himself at liberty to re-
concile our prayer with his own predetermined will, the
Christian does not very critically examine, his precise and
immediate duty being to pray and not to examine; and
probably this being among the "secret things which be-
long to God," and not to us, it will lie hidden among those
numberless mysteries which we shall not fully understand
till faith is lost in sight.
In the mean time it is enough for the humble believer
to be assured, that the Judge of all the earth is doing right:
it is enough for him to be assured in that word of God
which cannot lie," of numberless actual instances of the
efficacy of prayer in obtaining blessings and averting ca-
lamities, both national and individual; it is enough for
him to be convinced experimentally, by that internal evi-
dence which is perhaps paramount to all other evidence,
the comfort he has received from prayer when all other
comforts have failed and above all, to end with the
same motive with which we began, the only motive in-
deed which he requires for the performance of any duty.
-it is motive enough for him, that thus saith the Lord.
For when a serious Christian has once got a plain, une-
quivocal command from his Maker on any point, he never
suspends his obedience while he is amusing himself with
looking about for subordinate motives of action. Instead
of curiously analysing the nature of the duty, he consid-
ers how he shall best fulfil it: for on these points at
least it may be said without controversy, that "the igno-
rant (and here who is not ignorant?) have nothing to de
with the law but to obey it.'
Others there are who, perhaps, not controverting any
of these premises, yet neglect to build practical consc-
quences on the admission of them; who, neither denying
the duty nor the efficacy of prayer, yet go on to live either
in the irregular observance or the total neglect of it, as
1
DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER,
198
appetite, or pleasure, or business, or humour, may happen
to predominate; and, who by living almost without prayer,
may be said " to live almost without God in the world."
To such we can only say, that they little know what
they lose. The time is hastening on when they will look
upon those blessings as invaluable, which now they think
not worth asking for. "O that they were wise! that
they understood this! that they would consider their
latter end!"
There are again others, who, it is to be feared, having
once lived in the habit of prayer, yet not having been well
grounded in those principles of faith and repentance on
which genuine prayer is built, have by degrees totally
discontinued it. They do not find," say they," that their
affairs prosper the better or the worse; or perhaps they
were unsuccessful in their affairs even before they dropt the
practice, and so had no encouragement to go on." They
do not know that they had no encouragement: they do
not know how much worse their affairs might have gone
on, had they discontinued it sooner, or how their prayers
helped to retard their ruin. Or they do not know that
perhaps they asked amiss," or that, if they had obtained
what they asked, they might have been far more unhappy-
For a true believer never "restrains prayer," bcause he
is not certain he obtains every individual request; for he is
persuaded that God, in compassion to our ignorance, some-
times in great mercy withholds what we desire, and often
disappoints his most favoured children by giving them, not
what they ask, but what he knows is really good for them.
The froward child, as a pious prelate* observes, cries for
the shining blade, which the tender parent withholds,
knowing it would cut his fingers.
(6
Thus to persevere when we have not the encourage-
iment of visible success, is an evidence of tried faith. Of
this holy perseverance Job was a noble instance. Defeat
and disappointment rather stimulated than stopped his
prayers, Though in a vehement strain of passionate clo-
quence he exclaims, "I cry out of wrong, but I am not
heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment:" yet so
persuaded was he of the duty of continuing this holy
importunity, that he persisted against human hope, till he
attained to that pitch of unshaken faith, by which he was
• Bishop Nat
7:26
DUTT AND EMICACT OF PRATEN.
enabled to break out into that sublime apostrophe, "Thougli
he slay me, I will trust in him "
But may we not say that there is a considerable class,
who not only bring none of the objections which we have sta-
ted against the use of prayer; who are so far from reject-
ing, that they are exact and regular in the performance of
it who yet take it up on as low ground as is consistent
ith their ideas of their own safety; who, while they con-
siderprayer as an indispensable form, believe nothing ofthat
change of heart which it is intended to produce? Many
who yet adhere scrupulously to the letter, are so far from
entering into the spirit of this duty, that they are strong-
ly inclined to suspect those of hypocrisy who adopt the
true scriptural views of prayer. Nay, as even the Bible
may be so wrested as to be made to speak almost any lan-
guage in support of almost any opinion, these persons lay
hold on Scripture itself to bear them out in their own
slight views of this duty; and they profess to borrow from
it the ground of that censure which they cast on the more
serious Christians. Among the many passages which have
been made to convey a meaning foreign to its original de-
sign, none has been seized upon with more avidity by such
persons than the pointed censures of our Saviour on those
M
who for a pretence make long prayers;" as well as on
those who use vain repetitions, and think they shall be
heard for much speaking." Now the things here intended
to be reproved, were the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and
the ignorance of the heathen, together with the error of
all those who depended on the success of their prayers,
while they imitated the deceit of the one or the folly of
the other. But our Saviour never meant those severe rc-
prehensions should cool or abridge the devotion of pious
Christians, to which they do not apply.
More or fewer words, however, so little constitute the
alue of prayer, that there is no doubt but one of the most
effecting specimens on record is the short petition of the
Publican; full fraught as it is with that spirit of contrition
;nd self abasement, which is the very principle and soul
f prayer. And this perhaps is the best model for that sud-
den lifting up of the heart which we call ejaculation. But
I doubt, in general, whether the few hasty words to which
these frugal petitioners would stint the scanty devotions of
others, will be always found ample enough to satisfy the
humble penitent, who, being a sinner, has much to cons
盲
​1
-
DUTY AND EFFICACY OF FRAYER.
197
fess; who, hoping he is a pardoned sinner, has much to
acknowledge. Such an one perhaps cannot always pour
out the fulness of his soul within the prescribed abridg-
ments. Even the sincerest Christian, when he wishes to
find his heart warm, has often to lament its coldness.
Though he feel that he has received much, and has there-
fore much to be thankful for, yet he is not able at once to
bring his wayward spirit into such a posture as shall fit it
for the solema business; for such an one has not merely
his form to repeat, but he has his peace to make. A de-
vout supplicant too will labour to affect and warm his mind
with a sense of the attributes of God, in imitation of the
holy men of old. Like Jehosaphat, he will sometimes cnu-
merate "the power, and the might, and the mercies of
the Most High," in order to stir up the sentiments of awe
and gratitude and humility in his own soul.* He has the
example of his Saviour, whose heart dilated with the ex-
pression of the same holy affections: "I thank thee, ()
Father, Lord of heaven and earth." A heart thus warmed
with divine love cannot always scrupulously limit itselfto the
mere business of prayer, if I may so speak. The humble
supplicant, though he be no longer governed by a love of
the world, yet grieves to find that he cannot totally exclude
it from his thoughts. Though he has on the whole, a deep
sense of his own wants, and of God's abundant fulness to
supply them, yet when he most wishes to be rejoicing in
those strong motives for love and gratitude, alas! even
then he has to mourn that his thoughts are gone astray af-
ter some "trifle lighter than vanity itself." The best
Christian is but too liable, during the temptations of the
day, to be ensnared by "the lust of the eye, and the pride
of life," and is not always brought without cffort to reflect
that he is but dust and ashes. How can even good persons,
who are just come perhaps from listening to the flattery
of their fellow-worms, acknowledge before God, without
any preparation of the heart, that they are miserable sin-
ners? They require a little time, to impress on their own
souls the solemn confession of sin they are making to Him,
without which brevity and not length might constitute
hypocrisy. Even the sincerely pious have in prayer griev-
ous wanderings to lament, from which others mistaking-
ly suppose the advanced Christian to be cxempt. Such
* 2 Chron. **. 5, 6.
Mik
protag
DUTY AND BRICÁGY OF PRAYERS
123
wanderings that, as an old divine has observed, it would
exceedingly humble a good man, could he, after he had
prayed, be made to see his prayers written down, with in-
terlineations of all the vainand impertinent thoughts which
had thrust themselves in amongst them. So that such an
one will indeed, from a sense of these distractions, feel
deep occasion with the prophet to ask forgiveness for
"the iniquity of his holy things" and would find cause
enough for humiliation every night, had he to lament the
sins of his prayers only.
We know that such a brief petition as, "Lord, help
my unbelief," if the supplicant be in so happy a frame,
and the prayer be darted with such strong faith that his
very soul mounts with the petition, may suffice to draw
down a blessing which may be withheld from the more
prolix petitioner: yet, if by prayer we do not mean a
mere form of words, whether they be long or short; 'if
the true definition of prayer be, that it is the desire of
the heart; if it be that secret communion between God
and the soul which is the very breath and being of reli-
gion; then is the Scripture so far from suggesting that
short measure of which it is accused, that it expressly
says, Pray without ceasing :"-" Pray evermore:
"I will that men pray every where :" Continue in-
stant in prayer."
#
Septe
If such repetitions" as these objectors reprobate,
stir up desires as yet unawakened, for "vain repeti-
tions" are such as awaken or express no new desire, and
serve no religious purpose, then are "repetitions" not
to be condemned. And ifit be true that our Saviour
gave
the warning against "long prayers" in the sense these
allege; if he gave the caution against vain repetitions in
the sense these believe; then he broke his own rule in
both instances: for once we are told "he continued all
night in prayer to God." And again in a most awful cri-
sis of his life, it is expressly said, "He prayed the third
time using the same words."*
But as it is the effect of prayer to expand the affections
as well as sanctify them, the benevolent Christian is not
satisfied to commend himself alone to the divine favour.
The heart which is full of the love of God, will overflow
with love to its neighbour. All that are near to himself
* Matt. xvi, 4
DUTY AND EFFICACT OF PRAYER.
129
he wishes to bring near to God. Religion makes a man
so liberal of soul, that he cannot endure to restrict any
thing, much less divine mercies to himself: he spiritu-
alizes the social affections, by adding intercessory to per-
sonal prayer: for he knows, that petitioning for others is
one of the best methods of exercising and enlarging our
love and charity towards them. It is unnecessary to pro-
duce any of the numberless instances with which Scrip-
ture abounds, on the efficacy of intercession: I shall con-
fine myself to a few observations on the benefits it brings
to him who offers it.-When we pray for the objects of
our dearest regard, it purifies love when we pray for
those with whom we have worldly intercourse, it smooths
down the swellings of envy, and bids the tumults of am-
bition subside: when we pray for our country, it sancti-
fies patriotism: when we pray for those in authority, it
adds a divine motive to human obedience: when we pray
for our enemies, it softens the savageness of war, and
mollifies hatred into sorrow. And we can best learn, nay
we can only learn, the difficult duty of forgiving those who
have offended us, when we bring ourselves to pray for.
them to Him whom we ourselves daily offend. When
those who are the faithful followers of the same divine
Master pray for each other, the reciprocal intercession
best realizes that beautiful idea of "the Communion of
Saints."
Some are for confining their intercessions only to the
good, as if none but persons of merit were entitled to our
prayers, Merit! who has it? Desert! who can plead
it! in the sight of God, I mean. Who shall bring his
own piety, or the piety of others, in the way of claim be-
fore a Being of such transcendant holiness, that "the
heavens are not clean in his sight?" And if we wait for
perfect holiness as a preliminary to prayer, when shall
such erring creatures pray at all to HIM "who chargeth
the angels with folly !"
In closing this little work with the subject of interces-
sory prayer, may the author be allowed to avail herself of
the feeling it suggests to her own heart? And while she
earnestly implores that Being, who can make the mean-
est of his creatures instrumental to his glory, to bless this
humble attempt to those for whom it was written, may
she, without presumption, entreat that this work of
Christian charity may be reciprocal, and that those who
130
DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER.
peruse these pages, may put up a petition for her, that in
the great day to which we are all hastening, she may not
be found to have suggested to others what she herself
did not believe, or to have recommended what she did not
desire to practise? In that awful day of everlasting deci-
sion, may both the reader and the writer be pardoned,
and accepted," not for any works of righteousness which
they have done," but through the merits of the GREAT
INTERCESSOR.
THE END.
!
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