Letters and Memories. 1842.
Woman’s Mission. February 18.
It is the glory of woman that she was sent into the world to live for others rather than for herself; and therefore, I should say, let her smallest rights be respected, her smallest wrongs redressed; but let her never be persuaded to forget that she is sent into the world to teach man—what I believe she has been teaching him all along, even in the savage state, namely, that there is something more necessary than the claiming of rights, and that is, the performing of duties; to teach him specially, in these so-called intellectual days, that there is something more than intellect, and that is—purity and virtue.
Lecture on Thrift. 1869.
The Heroic Life. February 19.
Provided we attain at last to the truly heroic and divine life, which is the life of virtue, it will matter little to us by what wild and weary ways, or through what painful and humiliating processes, we have arrived thither. If God has loved us, if God will receive us, then let us submit loyally and humbly to His law—“whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.”
All Saints’ Day Sermons.
The Wages of Sin. February 20.
It is sometimes said, “The greater the sinner the greater the saint.” I do not believe it. I do not see it. It stands to reason—if a man loses his way and finds it again, he is so much the less forward on his way, surely, by all the time he has spent in getting back into the way.
And if any of you fancy you can sin without being punished, remember that the prodigal son is punished most severely. He does not get off freely the moment he chooses to repent, as false preachers will tell you. Even after he does repent and resolves to go back to his father’s house he has a long journey home in poverty and misery, footsore, hungry, and all but despairing. But when he does get home; when he shows he has learnt the bitter lesson; when all he dares to ask is, “Make me as one of thy hired servants,”—he is received as freely as the rest.