This work is offered, not as one of metaphysics and theology, to exercise the intellect alone. It presents the grand practical question of life to woman as the mother, the educator, the nurse, and the fountain of home sympathies for the race. It is the question over which every Christian mother ponders with aching heart as every new immortal is brought to her arms. It is the question where every Christian teacher stands in awe, as, gazing into the dark futurity over the dim ocean of eternity, each young mind is felt to be a voyager whose frail and solitary bark is soon to be launched. The Protestant mother or teacher, with the Bible in her hands, can not, as in the Catholic Church, throw off this tremendous responsibility on to her priest. She may go to her minister for aid, but at the last she must decide for herself what is that path which Jesus Christ decides to be right in guiding the lambs of His flock through such awful dangers.
Here, then, is the great practical question on which depends the life of the soul, and for ETERNITY! and every parent and every teacher must decide on which theory the young minds committed to their care shall be trained.
In contemplating the discussions that must ere long be renewed on these great topics, and in such forms as to involve, not theologians alone or chiefly, but the people, and especially the most intelligent of her own sex, the writer recalls with deep interest her early efforts as a pioneer in elevating the course of female education. Then she supposed herself the first, as she was among the first, to introduce such works as Butler's Analogy, Mental Philosophy, and a Mathematical course as a regular part of female education. And as she recalls the hundreds of bright, vigorous, and independent minds under her care thus trained to reason accurately, and now scattered as mothers and influential members of society in almost every state in the Union, and then remembers, too, how many institutions all over the land have for years pursued the same course, she can not but thankfully believe that the Almighty Teacher and Ruler was thus preparing her sex for these very responsibilities.
In relinquishing that educational enterprise which for years has absorbed her time and strength, while as yet it is so imperfectly understood and so little appreciated, she asks, with tender and grateful memories, the attention, not only of her dear former pupils, but of that multitude of noble and benevolent women who, at so many times and places, have afforded her their sympathy and aid, to what is still farther offered on this subject in the closing note.[6]
[4] The word "church" in the New Testament, in the Greek, signifies "assembly" or "congregation," and not an organization of regenerate persons.
[5] See Note C.
[6] See Note D.