Chapter 14

Nor is it enough that young women _love_ well. To be on fire of an adulterous love or a blind passion, which is little better, is one thing; and to love righteously, nobly, steadily, is another thing. Woman naturally has great strength of affection. She loves by an irresistible impulse. But that love is not worthy unless it be directed to worthy objects and swayed by high moral principles. The love of a woman should be as the love of an angel. It should swell in her bosom as a great tide of moral life, binding her to beauty of soul, worth of character, excellency of life. She should not waste her love on unworthy objects, on impure and lecherous men or women. Her love, to be truly womanly, must not be a love of person or outward charms, so much as a love of principle, a love of magnanimity, integrity, wisdom, affection, piety; a love of whatever may magnify and adorn a human soul. It is unwomanly to waste the high energies of her love on the material charms of an elegant person, or the brilliant accomplishments of cultured manners, unless they are united with true worth of character. The love of womanhood is the love of worth, the love of mental harmony and spiritual powers. True, woman may pity corruption, may sympathize with all manner of offenders; may give the force of her compassion to the erring and unrighteous; so she may admire genius, culture, the beauty of person, and the charms of manner; but her love is only for real worth, for that which is enduring and Godlike. She may find pleasure in many things and persons that she must not, can not love. Love is too precious to be wasted on any thing but its legitimate objects, wealth of mind and worth of character.

Nor yet is it enough that young women _behave_ well. Something more is needed than a correct outward life. Many behave well who have but little worth of character. They behave well because it is best for their social standing because society loves good behavior and pays it the compliment of respect. It is well to behave well. There is no true life without becoming behavior. We have all praise for good behavior. It should be one great object in every young woman's life to study for a becoming and womanly behavior. Her manners should be agreeable; her conversation should be chaste and proper; her deportment should be dignified and easy; her regard for propriety and fitness in all she says and does should be made manifest; and in all respects her behavior should be such as becomes womanhood. But while we recommend this as of very great importance, we say it is not enough. Good behavior must spring from a good heart. If it is studied as an outside fitness, a cloak, or a fashionable attire, it will not answer the purpose for which it is intended. A purely outside life is a sham, and sooner or later defeats itself. There is no concealing a bad heart. It may be done for a little while, but it can not be kept concealed. Like murder, it will out. So a heart that is not particularly bad, but only lacks true principle, will soon expose its hollowness. Its want of moral power will be felt. But even if it would not expose itself, it would be infinitely best to imbue it with righteous principle. For itself, for its own happiness, it must be good.

Genuine good behavior springs from an inward harmony of character which blends all inward essences of good. It does not come from any one, nor a few great virtues. It is the mingled result of all. Young women, then, must not be satisfied with possessing a few good traits of character. They must strive for all; for it is only in the possession of all that inward harmony can be enjoyed. The beauty of woman's life grows out of this harmony. A mind jarred by inward discord can never ultimate a good life. This discord will show itself in the life. Spiritual harmony is the great attainment all should have in view. In this lies the charm of womanhood. Out from this goes the sweet influences of the outward life. The divine grace of womanly propriety is the fruit that grows from this combination of all excellences.

To attain this, the first thing is self-control. How few women have any thing like a respectable amount of self-control. The great majority are nervous, excitable, fidgety. They frighten at a spider, laugh at a silly joke, love at first sight, go into spasms at disappointment, cry about trifles, have a fit of admiration at the sight of a pretty dress, have as many moods in a day as the wind, and in all respects exhibit every indication of the most disorderly, uncontrolled mind. Talk about harmony in such a character! We may as well look for wisdom in the house of folly. No mental habit is worse than that of giving the reins to our impulses. They are sure to lead us into difficulty. There is scarcely a more disgusting sight than a woman, well endowed, all given up to the sway of her impulses. Trust her! Why, you may as well trust the wind. Love her! You may as well fix your affections on the vanishing rainbow. Hope for good at her hands! As well hope for stability among the clouds. A useless, dangerous, troublesome, miserable thing is a woman of impulse. And yet there are thousands of them. They keep themselves and the world in a grand effervescence. If there is any evil to be avoided, it is this. If there is any virtue to be sought, it is self-control. And yet it is difficult of attainment in our order of society. Women are so shut up from healthy air and exercise, so excluded from ennobling avocations, so hemmed in by conventional rules, so compelled to have waiters, assistants, beaux, somebody to lead them, advise them, do for them, think for them--are so annoyed by petty cares and trifling vexations, and so subjected to abuses, both of a private and public nature, that self-control is a virtue harder of attainment than almost any other. Yet none is needed more than this. And it must be attained, or the glory of womanhood can never be put on. If the struggle is hard, the victory will be all the grander. Let no young woman give up in despair. The power is in her if she will but use it. She may be the queen of her own soul if she will. All depends upon the force of her will.

Young women have much to hope for, and the world much to hope for at their hands. A better idea of womanhood is growing up in the minds of men. Woman's wrong, difficulties, and trials are being felt. Her aimless, hopeless life is being mourned over. The evils from a false society preying upon all womankind are being felt; and almost every woman is beginning to feel the approaching indications of a better time coming. Women are asking, "What shall we do? We wish not to be idle. We feel too much shut out from useful avocations. We feel too little opportunity to work out for ourselves such characters as we know we ought to possess. We must, we will do something for our own elevation."

Let every young woman determine to do something for the honor and elevation of her sex. At least let her determine that she will possess and always wear about her as her richest possession a true womanhood. This is the most that she can do. Above all, let her not throw obstacles in the way of her sisters, who are striving nobly to be useful, but rather help them with the weight of her encouragement and counsel. Let her determine that for herself she will do her own thinking; that she will form her own opinions from her own investigations; that she will persist in holding the highest principles of womanly morality and the virtuous attainments which constitute a true womanhood. When she has done this, let her call to her aid all the force of character she can command to enable her to persist in being a woman of the true stamp. In every class of society the young women should awake to their duty. They have a great work to do. It is not enough that they should be what their mothers were. They must be more. The spirit of the times calls on woman for a higher order of character and life. Will young women heed the call? Will they emancipate themselves from the fetters of custom and fashion, and come up a glorious company to the possession of a vigorous, virtuous, noble womanhood--a womanhood that shall shed new light upon the world, and point the way to a divine life? We wait to hear the answer in the coming order of women.

Lecture Fourteen.

HAPPINESS.

Happiness Desired--Fretful People--Motes in the Eye--We were Made for Happiness--Sorrow has Useful Lessons--Happiness a Duty--Despondency is Irreligious--Pleasure not always Happiness--The Misuse of the World--Contentment necessary to Happiness--Happiness must be sought aright--Truly seeking we shall Find--Our Success not always Essential--Happiness often Found Unexpectedly--Happiness overcomes Circumstances--A Tendency to Murmuring--God Rules over All--Health necessary to Happiness--Disease is Sinful--God Loves a Happy Soul--Happiness Possible to All.

It is commonly believed that men are happy or unhappy according to circumstances. But this may well be questioned; for multitudes are intensely miserable under circumstances highly favorable to happiness. The high-born, the wealthy, the distinguished, and even the good, are often unhappy. Many very excellent persons, whose lives are honorable and whose characters are noble, pass numberless hours of sadness and weariness of heart. The fault is not with their circumstances, nor yet with their general characters, but with themselves, that they are miserable. They have failed to adopt the true philosophy of life. They wait for Happiness to come instead of going to work and making it; and while they wait they torment themselves with borrowed troubles, with fears, forebodings, morbid fancies and moody spirits, till they are all unfitted for Happiness under any circumstances. Sometimes they cherish unchaste ambition, covet some fancies or real good which they do not deserve and could not enjoy if it were theirs, wealth they have not earned, honors they have not won, attentions they have not merited, love which their selfishness only craves. Sometimes they undervalue the good they do possess; throw away the pearls in hand for some beyond their reach, and often less valuable; trample the flowers about them under their feet; long for some never seen, but only heard or read of; and forget present duties and joys in future and far-off visions. Sometimes they shade the present with every cloud of the past, and although surrounded by a thousand inviting duties and pleasures, revel in sad memories with a kind of morbid relish for the stimulus of their miseries. Sometimes, forgetting the past and present, they live in the future, not in its probable realities, but in its most improbable visions and unreal creations, now of good and then of evil, wholly unfitting their minds for real life and enjoyments. These morbid and improper states of mind are too prevalent among young women. They excite that nervous irritability which is so productive of pining regrets and fretful complaints. They make that large class of fretters who enjoy no peace themselves, nor permit others to about them. In the domestic circle they fret their life away. Every thing goes wrong with them because they make it so. The smallest annoyances chafe them as though they were unbearable aggravations. Their business and duties trouble them as though such things were not good. Pleasure they never seem to know because they never get ready to enjoy it. Even the common movements of Providence are all wrong with them. The weather is never as it should be. The seasons roll on badly. The sun is never properly tempered. The climate is always charged with a multitude of vices. The winds are everlastingly perverse, either too high or too low, blowing dust in everybody's face, or not fanning them as they should. The earth is ever out of humor, too dry or too wet, too muddy or dusty. And the people are just about like it. Something is wrong all the time, and the wrong is always just about them. Their home is the worst of anybody's; their street and their neighborhood is the most unpleasant to be found; nobody else has so bad servants and so many annoyances as they. Their lot is harder than falls to common mortals; they have to work harder and always did; have less and always expect to. They have seen more trouble than other folks know any thing about. They are never so well as their neighbors, and they always charge all their unhappiness upon those nearest connected with them, never dreaming that they are themselves the authors of it all. Such people are to be pitied. Of all the people in the world they deserve most our compassion. They are good people in many respects, very benevolent, very conscientious, very pious, but, withal, very annoying to themselves and others. As a general rule, their goodness makes them more difficult to cure of their evil. They can not be led to see that they are at fault. Knowing their virtues they can not see their faults. They do not perhaps over-estimate their virtues, but fail to see what they lack, and what they lack they charge upon others, often upon those who love them best. They see others' actions through the shadow of their own fretful and gloomy spirits. Hence it is that they see their own faults as existing in those about them, as a defect in the eye produces the appearance of a corresponding defect in every object toward which it is turned. This defect in character is more generally the result of vicious or improper habits of mind, than any constitutional idiosyncrasy. It is the result of the indulgence of gloomy thoughts, morbid fancies, inordinate ambition, habitual melancholy, a complaining, fault-finding disposition. It is generally early acquired, not in childhood, but in youth. Childhood is too buoyant, fresh, and free for such indulgences. Early youth--when its passions are developing, when the soul's bubbling springs are opening fresh and warm, when young hopes put out, to be blighted with a shade, young loves come to be disappointed with a frown, young desires aspire to be saddened with the first failure--is the season when the seeds of disquiet and unhappiness are sown in the soul. And in the most gifted and sensitive souls these seeds are oftenest sown. Those of highly poetic temperaments, of delicate and almost divine psychology, in whom some little constitutional unbalance existed at the beginning of life, and whose judgments developed slower than their passions, are often those who drink the bitterest waters of life. Beautiful souls, sitting in the shadow of self-gathered clouds! We pity and love them. We never see one without longing to bless it. Oh, could they but know how unbecoming such powers and virtues are, such gloominess and disquiet, they would rouse themselves to the glories of a morning life, and, shaking the dews of the night from their wings, would soar aloft in the sunshine of wisdom and love. Having tasted the bitter waters of sorrow, they may appreciate, perhaps all the better, the sweet nectar of life which ought to flow from all our states of mind and outward actions. We were not made for sorrow, but for joy. Our souls were not so delicately wrought to be wasted in fear and melancholy. Our minds were not so gifted to spend themselves on clouds and in darkness. Our hearts were not so firmly strung to wail notes of grief and woe. This beautiful world, so ever fresh and new about us, was not designed to imprison self-convicted souls away from its sunshine and flowers. The bending heavens arching so grandly over us, so studded with sparkling joy-lights, and animated with the eternal cotillion of the skies, invites to no such irreverent repining. Creation's wide field of animated existence inspires no such moodiness and fretfulness of spirit. It is all wrong; it is absolutely sinful. We have no moral right to make ourselves or others so unhappy. We were made for happiness as well as holiness. All life's duties and experiences, when properly understood, are the steps that lead to the temple of eternal good. Disappointments and crosses may come, but let them come; they bring their lessons of wisdom. Failures may crush our hopes and stop us on life's way; but we may gather up and go on again rejoicing in what we have learned. Toils may demand our time and energies; let us give them; labor creates strength and imparts knowledge. Others may use our earnings, and require our care and support; let it be so: "It is more blessed to give than to receive."

Our friends may die and leave our hearts and homes desolate for a time; we can not prevent it, nor would it be best if we could. Sorrow has its useful lessons when it is legitimate, and death is the gate that opens out of earth toward the house "eternal in the heavens." If we lose them, heaven gains them. If we mourn, they rejoice. If we hang our harps on the willows, they tune theirs in the eternal orchestra above, rejoicing that we shall soon be with them. Shall we not drown our sorrow in the flood of light let through the rent vail of the skies which Jesus entered, and, to cure our loneliness, gather to us other friends to walk life's way, knowing that every step brings us nearer the departed, and their sweet, eternal home, which death never enters, and where partings are never known? We may still love the departed. They are ours as ever, and we are theirs. The ties that unite us are not broken. They are too strong for death's stroke. They are made for the joys of eternal friendship. Other friendships on earth will not disturb these bonds that link with dear ones on high. Nor will our duties below interfere with the sacredness of our relations with them. They wish not to see us in sorrow. They doubtless sympathize with us; and could we hear their sweet voices, they would tell us to dry our tears, and bind ourselves to other friends, and joyfully perform all duties on earth till our time to ascend shall come.

Every lesson of life, wisely read, tells us that we should be happy; that we should seek to be happy from principle, not simply from impulse; that we should make Happiness a great object in life; that our duties, our varied relations to our fellows as friends, as lovers, as companions, as parents, as children; our avocations, our labors, sacrifices, hopes, trials, struggles, should administer to our Happiness. And it is our business to see that they do. Is it a duty to be good? It is just as much a duty to be happy, to train our minds to pleasant moods, and our hearts to cheerful feelings. There is no duty more sanctioned by every moral obligation than the duty to be happy. We have no moral right to make others miserable, or to permit them to remain so when we can help it. No more right have we to torment our own souls, or to permit habitual sadness and despondency to weigh down our spirits. It is well for every young person to seek true moral light upon this subject; and especially for young women, for their peculiarly sensitive and affectionate nature, their confined habits and employments, their cares multiplying as they grow older, and their body-wearying and soul-trying experiences and labors demand the very best philosophy and religion of life; and more so as the men with whom their lots will be likely to be cast appreciate so little the trials and experiences of woman's life. They ought to start out resolutely determined to be happy, to seek the good of every thing. This should be the first precept in their moral mode, the first article in their creed, the first resolution demanded by their religion. We have no confidence in a gloomy religion. Human souls were never made to do penance, to lacerate and torment themselves in worship or duty. Every truth in the theology of the Bible beams with a glory that ought to illuminate our minds with a light almost divine. Every principle of "the glorious Gospel of the blessed God" is benignant and smiling with the love of the Father, and ought to animate our souls with the joy of a steady blessedness. Every duty demanded by the Christian religion is but the requirement of perfect love, and should quicken our consciences to the most lively satisfaction. To be desponding and gloomy is indeed irreligious. Hearty joy is the fruit of religion. Swelling gladness is the praise-note of the truly Christian spirit. There are no possessions like religious possessions to fill the soul with true enjoyment. And what are they? They are, first: a mind in harmony with the works and ways of God, which sees the Father in the daily movements of the spheres and the providential arrangements of the world; in the blossoming life of spring, and the withered death of winter; in the dear relations of domestic life, and the more showy fraternities of nations; in birth, and life, and death; in every provision for happiness found in the wide range of the physical and spiritual universe; secondly, a conscience void of offense toward God and man; in love with right, bound to righteous principle in a wedlock that knows no breaking; devout, honest, kind, because it is right and Godlike so to be; which rules the mind and life with a gentle but powerful sway, leading where angels walk in every pure and honest word and work; and thirdly, a heart swelling with love to God and man; an earnest, warm, good-willing heart, lighting its face with sunshine, and softening its hand with tenderness; a heart that can melt in others' woes, and glow in others' joys, pure and chaste, subdued and calm. Such a mind, such a conscience, such a heart afford true religious enjoyments. The more one has of such possessions, the happier he must be. With such a mind, the true philosophy of life is clear--it is that we were made to be happy in righteousness and truth, and should bend all our energies to guard our hearts from every fretful and desponding feeling, and make every experience in life bless and make us happy. Oh, young woman! set your heart on Happiness; not on pleasure that floats on the surface of life, but on that inward peace that dwells in the soul devoted to all good. The things about us are designed to administer to our Happiness, and we should _use_ them for this purpose. The world we live in is for our use. Food, raiment, money, wealth are for use. They are adapted to good ends in life. They help us to comfort, convenience, beauty, and knowledge. Wisely used, they serve us well; but abused, they sting us with many poisoned darts. The most of us make ourselves miserable by a misuse of the world. We fret our souls well-nigh to death about dress, food, houses, lands, goods, wealth. We live for these things, as though serving them could give us Happiness. We are ambitious of gains and gold, as though these could answer the soul's great wants, as though these could think and love, admire and worship. We chase the illusive glitter of fashion as though it was a crown of glory, and could impart dignity and peace to its wearer. We hunt after pleasure as though it could be found by searching. Pleasure comes of itself. It must never be wooed. She is a coy maid, and ever eludes her flattering followers. She will come and abide with us when we use wisely the world and its good things. But we must put things to their true use, else pleasure will keep away. Oh, how much might we enjoy life if we would put things to their true use! When the sun shines, we must love it and think of its treasures of wealth to the world. When the cloud rises, we must admire its somber glory, for it is big with blessings. The morning must be accepted as a rosy blessing, the evening as a quiet prelude to repose; the day as an opportunity for achievements worthy of us, and the night for refreshing rest and recruit.