But, it may be said, any considerable degree of culture will lift the masses above their vocations, and cause them to become dissatisfied with their lot; that the cultured mind despises drudgery. The very reverse of this is true. Culture dignifies labor and destroys drudgery. The man determines the dignity of the calling; not the calling the dignity of the man. Let men of culture carry their culture into their vocations, and their vocations will become honorable. Let cultured men plow and reap, and plowing and reaping will become as dignified as the "learned professions." Because a man can not wear as fine a garb at the forge as he can at the desk, it does not follow that his thoughts may not be as fine. A man may wear a polished intellect and a cultivated soul under a coarse garb as well as under a fine one; and he should be respected the more, if circumstances have compelled him to develop his intellectual and moral forces; if at all, under a rough exterior.
While in these thoughts I have spoken of men, I have used the term generically. The principles apply with equal force to the women of this country. One of the great evils of our land is, that among the ladies, domestic labor is not sufficiently dignified. The number of mothers in the ordinary walks of life, silly enough to think that ignorance of domestic duties is an accomplishment for their daughters, is by no means small. This results from a want of true culture and common sense. There is no just reason why a young lady should not knead her dough and conjugate a Greek verb at the same time with equal skill. True culture will dignify domestic labor among women of all classes, and this will result in more domestic prosperity, and more domestic happiness. The rich and the poor will be brought into closer sympathy, unnecessary distinctions will be broken down, and the people will become one in the essential elements of good government and pure religion.
Young ladies, you above all others should appreciate the blending of culture and Christianity. One glance at the history of the world must convince you that the highest culture, unsanctified by Christianity, has never elevated your sex above disgraceful servitude. Certainly you can not entertain the thought, that the culture which does not elevate woman can ever bless the world. Only Christianity has exalted the gentler sex to that position in the esteem and affections of men that God designed she should occupy. Hence, of all the friends of ancient Christianity, woman should be the truest and most lasting; and of all the enemies of modern Rationalism, she should be the most bitter and unrelenting.
In conclusion, allow me to repeat the thought of the beginning, that it is the nature of man to look upward, and he who does not look upward is untrue to his nature. But in the flesh, we can only begin to ascend the heights of God. Here we are weighed down with infirmity, with our frail, decaying bodies; but our souls long for the power of incessant, never-wearying, glorious activity, awaiting us in the upper world. One of my highest conceptions of Heaven; one that thrills me to contemplate, is a life of no more prostration from labor; no more weariness of over-wrought brain; no aching head nor pain-racked body; but incessant labor, unincumbered by frail mortality; growth, development, expanding visions of God, among pure intelligences, and amid the celestial splendor of eternal worlds. But in the flesh, I can not bathe in those fountains of celestial light. Then let me leave this frail tenement of clay, as one steps out of the vehicle that can take him no farther, and leaving it behind, ascends the lofty mountain to gaze upon the unfolding wonders of God. Let my liberated spirit not only look upward, but mount upward, as on eagles' wings, till rising above the Pleiades, and leaving the Milky-way to fade out in the receding distance, it walks with God on the ever-ascending plain, reached only by culture and Christianity.
II.—SELF CULTURE.
[An Address Delivered Before Columbia Christian College, June 7, 1878.]
Ladies and Gentlemen:—I am happy in the privilege of again addressing you in the interests of the great work in which you are so nobly engaged. To-day many of you go out from under the fostering care of this institution, to engage in the ceaseless battle of life. That you have been well panoplied for the conflict is not questioned. And, if I can second, in some degree, the efforts of your faithful and worthy Faculty in directing and encouraging you to that success that should crown their efforts and yours, I shall feel that I have labored to no trifling purpose. The theme selected for your consideration is
"Self-Culture."
Man, though fallen, is in his ruins grand. His powers of development are little less than infinite. They begin with the cradle, but do not end with the grave. No other being begins so low and ascends so high. In his beginning, he is "crushed before the moth;" in the fullness of his power he shall "judge angels." In this world he scarcely begins to live. This life is too short and this world too small for the development of his God-given faculties. Here he scarcely learns the alphabet preparatory to God's grand university from which he is never to graduate. He simply begins the study of an unending book. He but gathers a few pebbles on the shores of the river of time, then sinks beneath its wave.