Consecrated Womanhood / A Sermon Preached in the First Congregational Church, Portland, Oregon - Frederic Rowland Marvin

"Make life, death, and that vast forever

One grand, sweet song."

How shall we strengthen love that it may endure when the fires of youth and passion are cold? Only by the cultivation of those noble virtues which like bands of steel weld together in one life and faith honest and pure hearts. How shall two hearts grow old together? Only by the persistent cultivation of those qualities which are ever young and which age not with declining years. The young man will not be guilty of an act tainted with meanness or baseness lest the maiden he loves blot his image from the pure heaven of her heart; let the young husband and wife cherish the same fear and honor, and they shall grow nearer and dearer as the years silver their brows. The happiness of marriage depends upon the very highest and most delicate of reserves, the most noble and careful speech, the best and most honorable perception; upon a kindness greater than that of a mother to her child.

The supreme glory of consecrated womanhood lies in the consecration itself. The love of God makes every other love immortal. What love through Him we give to others is forever. Only as we consecrate our lives to the Divine Love can we hope to become heavenly-minded; and they only consecrate themselves to the Divine Love who, in imitation of our Saviour, give heart and hand to the service of mankind. There is a fable that four young ladies, disputing as to the beauty of their hands, called upon an aged woman who had solicited alms, for a settlement of the dispute. The three whose hands were white and faultless had refused her appeal, while she whose fingers were brown and rough had given in charity. Then the aged beggar said: "Beautiful are these six uplifted hands, soft as velvet and snowy as the lily: but more beautiful are the two darker hands that have given charity to the poor." Learn the lesson of consecrated womanhood. In olden times, when the children of Israel prepared the Tabernacle in the wilderness, "all the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen. And all the women whose heart stirred them up in wisdom spun goats' hair." The wise-hearted women of to-day are the daughters of modern Israel who from the love of God serve faithfully the great family of mankind.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] It may be a matter of interest to some who read this sermon to know who was the first woman to graduate from an American college. In an article on "The First Female College" (the Georgia Female College), in the "Century" for May, 1890, Mr. H. S. Edwards states that he has been unable to obtain the name of any woman who graduated at Oberlin in 1838. An Oberlin College catalogue, however, gives the name of Miss Zeruiah Porter (afterwards Mrs. Tweed) as the graduate of 1838, and therefore the first graduate of an American college. Miss Porter graduated in the so-called literary course, which did not include Greek. In 1841, Miss Mary Hosford, Miss Elizabeth S. Prall, and Miss Mary C. Rudd took the degree of A. B. at Oberlin.

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