Similar to this love of parents, and growing out of it, should be our love to God. Him we should regard as our parent. As such we should always think of Him. In all our works, and walks, and joys He should be present in our minds as our Father. Sweet shall be our thoughts of Him. Cheerfully should we meditate upon His wonderful works and ways. Gladly should our hearts praise Him and our souls commune with him. His commands should inspire us with holy delight. All our life should be made radiant with the inspiring thoughts of our Father. His matchless love and marvelous wisdom should make us feel like little children, happily yet adoringly and gratefully receiving the gifts of parental goodness. With such a love as this growing in our hearts and shining in our lives, how good and happy must we be! And yet this is religion. Love thy Father in heaven, is the full command. All else grows out of this. We can not love our fellows unless we love our Father. This is the sum of all Christ's teachings. He gave us the Father. "Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." Before Christ, the Father was not known. God had only partially revealed himself. The glory of the full revelation was reserved for the immortal and immaculate Son. To know or love the Father is eternal life. This is the religion of the Saviour—this the religion of redemption. Salvation is in it. It is the power of God to God; gives its sanction to virtue; adorns the mind with the graces of godliness; sweetens the heart with amenities of goodness, and dignifies the soul with a spiritual assimilation to the Father. Man thus becomes a spiritual child of God. He is by a nature a natural child, and he is thus by grace or love made a spiritual child. Under the power of this love the world assumes a new aspect; it becomes a secondary object, good in its place, but only a means of spiritual improvement. Life becomes sublime in its great ends and eternal results. The soul of man becomes, at least in prospect, a glorious and eternal thing, often darkened by error and polluted by sin, but the object of God's love and care and the Redeemer's solicitude, progressively unfolding its powers and putting on its beauties under the sunshine of the All-seeing eye. And the race of men become the children of the great and loving Father, whose care and smiles no figures shall number, no ages wear out. This is the religion we believe the Saviour inculcated among men, which was the power of God unto salvation, the central and all-powerful idea of which is love. This is the religion in which thousands are this day rejoicing and living lives which are the brightest ornaments of humanity. And this is the religion which we offer to our youthful friends as the only cure for sin-sick humanity—the only safe guide through life—the only hope and strength of youth, manhood, and old age. We have not a separate religion for youth, nor a distinct religious life for them to live different from the old. It is the beauty of true religion, as of true love, that it lasts through all seasons. It is to grow by, live by, and die by; and, what is more, to rise through endless ages by. We understand this to be an eternal religion. Who becomes truly religious here, learns so much of heaven, walks so far in the celestial road. A truthful, religious life is the first step in heaven, not to heaven. Christ calls it the kingdom of heaven. Without the principles of religious love no woman's character is perfect, or so perfect as it may be. However learned, refined, or cultured she may be by art and society, if her soul is not baptized in this religious love, this love of the Father, she lacks the most essential beauty of spiritual womanhood. If she is not grateful to God, not in love with his glorious perfections, she is yet low and worldly. Her soul is bound in the chains of sense. It is this religion which adds the finishing touch of excellency to woman's character. It is this which makes her divine. In her best estate she is only earthly till this has wrought its redeeming work within her. To be blessed as she may be to make her life good and spiritually grand, she should begin early this devotion to the Father. Her heart should in early youth turn its face to its God and look up in sweet and grateful adoration. Woman's heart is the natural shrine of religion; and this shrine should be dedicated while she is young. In cheerful confidence she should give her soul to her Father in heaven. The earlier she does it, the truer and happier will be her life. It is a sad mistake that religion is depressing and saddening to youth. "It is the soul's calm sunshine and the heartfelt joy." It is good for youth as for old age—as good to rejoice as to mourn by. It is as much for sunshine as for shade. He who has the most of it is the lightest-hearted man.
It is as fitting for the marriage altar as for the burial scene. It is calculated as much to elevate and gladden the cheerful heart as to relieve and bless the sorrowful one. Woman in all her relations has an especial need of religion to sustain her. Her pathway is beset with trials. She loves and must love her friends. These, one after another, are separated from her by the customs or accidents of society, or the stern hand of death; sickness and misfortune must come upon her. Her soul is sensitive, and she feels keenly the severing of love's dearest ties. Nowhere else can she find a balm for her aching heart but in the bosom of the Father. If her heart is spiritualized by a holy religious love, there will come to her ministering spirits in the hopes and joys of religion which will bring relief.
Oh, if I could impress on the young female mind the importance of this subject, I should do the world a benefit we could not estimate. Think of a woman all through life shedding about her the genial influence of true religion. From early youth to latest age she is an evangel of peace and love. Her steps are marked with deeds of charity; her life is radiant with goodness. She loves her Father, and, loving him, she loves his children; and, loving them, both her and her heart grow large and her soul strong and beautiful. Her life is a song of praise. Men love to do her secret homage, and in many a heart she is surnamed "angel."
Why should any woman think to live without religion? Oh, how sad is her life without it—how dark her death! It is only in religious love that the future becomes bright, and hope changes to cheerful faith. I have presented woman's religious duty in a simple form of love to God. I have not time to speak of its detail, nor the means of cultivating this love and growing in the Divine grace; these are given in the sublime yet simple words of Jesus of Nazareth. To him I refer you for light to guide you.
I wish to speak a little of an objection that often comes up to the view of the subject I have taken. It is this: "How can we love a being we have not seen? a Father we have not known? a God we can not comprehend?" The objection is a strong one in many minds, and for such I will show how it looks to me.
Our daily experience tells us that we can love beings we have never seen. I doubt not that every American loves Washington. His name is dear to us all. His character and life are our boast and admiration. Not more should we love him if we had seen him and known him well. It is his character that we have and not his person. His character is as clear and glorious to us as it was to his compeers. It thrills us as delightfully and moves upon us as powerfully as it did upon them. It is a glory hung around the name of America to which the world looks with a reverent and admiring joy. To tell me that I can not love Washington would be to rob me of the highest pride I feel in my country. I love him for what he was in the day of his earthly glory, the man of all majesty, the pride of all nations. I love him for what he did, for the life of spotless virtue and magnificent wisdom and goodness. He lived for the good of his country and the world. I love him for the tall angel of light that he now is, and the celestial richness of the glory that streams from his brow. I know I love him, and no philosophy or skepticism can cheat me out of that love.
I could name a hundred characters that have lived in the past and now live in heaven that I know I love in the same way. I love them as really as I do my personal friends, and love them in proportion to the greatness and goodness I see in them. I may say the same of many living men and women. Speaking from my own experience, I should say that I can love goodness, worth, all that is lovable in character as well as in a being that I have not seen as one that I have. I have known of people who have an earthly father living that they have never seen, and whom they love with a deep and rich fervency of affection. I have known of children whom poverty or accident has separated in infancy from their mother, and who cherished for that unknown, far-off maternal friend a sacred and deathless love. They have meditated hours, days, and weeks on the sad separation and the sweet, holy bosom from which they drew the breath of life. In well-formed minds this love grows up with their growth and strengthens with their strength. The idea of parentage awakens love in the heart. The relation is so near and dear it can not be otherwise in good and cultured minds. Then we can love a father whom we have not seen. We all know that the idea of God is a spontaneity in the human mind. Though God may be incomprehensible and his ways past finding out, he is still so much within and around us that we can not keep the thoughts of him out of our minds. We know, too, that thousands do love Him with a deathless love who can comprehend him no better than we. We may infer from this that we can love Him also.
But when we think of His character, its infinite loveliness, its unfathomable depth of love, and wisdom, and holiness, it seems to me that the impossibility is in not loving him. How can we help loving him? Add to this that He is our Father, out of the depth of whose being we were born, and that he loves us with an unspeakable and eternal love, and the attraction to love him becomes still stronger. Then think how much He has done for us; how he has given us our parents and friends, and all the dear and delightful objects of life, thought, and hope; and more than this, has given us Jesus, and with him the glorious Gospel, revealing an immortal life and a glorious inheritance beyond the Jordan of death. These benefactions of His love make his character appear infinitely attractive, so that the wonder would seem to be that any should fail to love him.
It seems clear that the Father may be none the less loved on account of his being unseen. We are constituted to love things unseen. And if we scan it closely we shall find that we really love nothing else. Character worth, virtue, goodness, love, wisdom, knowledge, science, philosophy, religion, are all unseen. So the charm about a person that makes us love him is unseen. Indeed, it is the unseen we love, and nothing else. We are spiritual beings, and made for spiritual exercises. Our nature is exactly adapted to the love and worship of an unseen God. When we do not do it we are acting contrary to our nature. We deny ourselves as well as God when we do not love and adore him. Is it proper for youth to do so? By no means. All youth, and especially young women, should feel that so long as they neglect their religious duties they neglect the most important concerns of their eternal existence. They are not ephemeral, but eternal creatures. Their relation to God and each other are eternal ones. They are on the sea of being—turn back they can not. God is above and around them, and always will be. The sooner they love Him, the better it will be for them. To love Him is spiritual life; to love him not is death.
It is a glorious thing to live life well. They can not do it without religion. Woman is scarcely woman unless the great principle of love guides her. That principle, directed toward God and man, is the sum total of the Christian religion. Let every young woman so direct it that her whole life may be radiant with the light and deeds of love.