To attain this, the first thing is self-control. How few women have any thing like a respectable amount of self-control. The great majority are nervous, excitable, fidgety. They frighten at a spider, laugh at a silly joke, love at first sight, go into spasms at disappointment, cry about trifles, have a fit of admiration at the sight of a pretty dress, have as many moods in a day as the wind, and in all respects exhibit every indication of the most disorderly, uncontrolled mind. Talk about harmony in such a character! We may as well look for wisdom in the house of folly. No mental habit is worse than that of giving the reins to our impulses. They are sure to lead us into difficulty. There is scarcely a more disgusting sight than a woman, well endowed, all given up to the sway of her impulses. Trust her! Why, you may as well trust the wind. Love her! You may as well fix your affections on the vanishing rainbow. Hope for good at her hands! As well hope for stability among the clouds. A useless, dangerous, troublesome, miserable thing is a woman of impulse. And yet there are thousands of them. They keep themselves and the world in a grand effervescence. If there is any evil to be avoided, it is this. If there is any virtue to be sought, it is self-control. And yet it is difficult of attainment in our order of society. Women are so shut up from healthy air and exercise, so excluded from ennobling avocations, so hemmed in by conventional rules, so compelled to have waiters, assistants, beaux, somebody to lead them, advise them, do for them, think for them—are so annoyed by petty cares and trifling vexations, and so subjected to abuses, both of a private and public nature, that self-control is a virtue harder of attainment than almost any other. Yet none is needed more than this. And it must be attained, or the glory of womanhood can never be put on. If the struggle is hard, the victory will be all the grander. Let no young woman give up in despair. The power is in her if she will but use it. She may be the queen of her own soul if she will. All depends upon the force of her will.
Young women have much to hope for, and the world much to hope for at their hands. A better idea of womanhood is growing up in the minds of men. Woman's wrong, difficulties, and trials are being felt. Her aimless, hopeless life is being mourned over. The evils from a false society preying upon all womankind are being felt; and almost every woman is beginning to feel the approaching indications of a better time coming. Women are asking, "What shall we do? We wish not to be idle. We feel too much shut out from useful avocations. We feel too little opportunity to work out for ourselves such characters as we know we ought to possess. We must, we will do something for our own elevation."
Let every young woman determine to do something for the honor and elevation of her sex. At least let her determine that she will possess and always wear about her as her richest possession a true womanhood. This is the most that she can do. Above all, let her not throw obstacles in the way of her sisters, who are striving nobly to be useful, but rather help them with the weight of her encouragement and counsel. Let her determine that for herself she will do her own thinking; that she will form her own opinions from her own investigations; that she will persist in holding the highest principles of womanly morality and the virtuous attainments which constitute a true womanhood. When she has done this, let her call to her aid all the force of character she can command to enable her to persist in being a woman of the true stamp. In every class of society the young women should awake to their duty. They have a great work to do. It is not enough that they should be what their mothers were. They must be more. The spirit of the times calls on woman for a higher order of character and life. Will young women heed the call? Will they emancipate themselves from the fetters of custom and fashion, and come up a glorious company to the possession of a vigorous, virtuous, noble womanhood—a womanhood that shall shed new light upon the world, and point the way to a divine life? We wait to hear the answer in the coming order of women.
Lecture Fourteen.
HAPPINESS.
Happiness Desired—Fretful People—Motes in the Eye—We were Made for Happiness—Sorrow has Useful Lessons—Happiness a Duty—Despondency is Irreligious—Pleasure not always Happiness—The Misuse of the World—Contentment necessary to Happiness—Happiness must be sought aright—Truly seeking we shall Find—Our Success not always Essential—Happiness often Found Unexpectedly—Happiness overcomes Circumstances—A Tendency to Murmuring—God Rules over All—Health necessary to Happiness—Disease is Sinful—God Loves a Happy Soul—Happiness Possible to All.
It is commonly believed that men are happy or unhappy according to circumstances. But this may well be questioned; for multitudes are intensely miserable under circumstances highly favorable to happiness. The high-born, the wealthy, the distinguished, and even the good, are often unhappy. Many very excellent persons, whose lives are honorable and whose characters are noble, pass numberless hours of sadness and weariness of heart. The fault is not with their circumstances, nor yet with their general characters, but with themselves, that they are miserable. They have failed to adopt the true philosophy of life. They wait for Happiness to come instead of going to work and making it; and while they wait they torment themselves with borrowed troubles, with fears, forebodings, morbid fancies and moody spirits, till they are all unfitted for Happiness under any circumstances. Sometimes they cherish unchaste ambition, covet some fancies or real good which they do not deserve and could not enjoy if it were theirs, wealth they have not earned, honors they have not won, attentions they have not merited, love which their selfishness only craves. Sometimes they undervalue the good they do possess; throw away the pearls in hand for some beyond their reach, and often less valuable; trample the flowers about them under their feet; long for some never seen, but only heard or read of; and forget present duties and joys in future and far-off visions. Sometimes they shade the present with every cloud of the past, and although surrounded by a thousand inviting duties and pleasures, revel in sad memories with a kind of morbid relish for the stimulus of their miseries. Sometimes, forgetting the past and present, they live in the future, not in its probable realities, but in its most improbable visions and unreal creations, now of good and then of evil, wholly unfitting their minds for real life and enjoyments. These morbid and improper states of mind are too prevalent among young women. They excite that nervous irritability which is so productive of pining regrets and fretful complaints. They make that large class of fretters who enjoy no peace themselves, nor permit others to about them. In the domestic circle they fret their life away. Every thing goes wrong with them because they make it so. The smallest annoyances chafe them as though they were unbearable aggravations. Their business and duties trouble them as though such things were not good. Pleasure they never seem to know because they never get ready to enjoy it. Even the common movements of Providence are all wrong with them. The weather is never as it should be. The seasons roll on badly. The sun is never properly tempered. The climate is always charged with a multitude of vices. The winds are everlastingly perverse, either too high or too low, blowing dust in everybody's face, or not fanning them as they should. The earth is ever out of humor, too dry or too wet, too muddy or dusty. And the people are just about like it. Something is wrong all the time, and the wrong is always just about them. Their home is the worst of anybody's; their street and their neighborhood is the most unpleasant to be found; nobody else has so bad servants and so many annoyances as they. Their lot is harder than falls to common mortals; they have to work harder and always did; have less and always expect to. They have seen more trouble than other folks know any thing about. They are never so well as their neighbors, and they always charge all their unhappiness upon those nearest connected with them, never dreaming that they are themselves the authors of it all. Such people are to be pitied. Of all the people in the world they deserve most our compassion. They are good people in many respects, very benevolent, very conscientious, very pious, but, withal, very annoying to themselves and others. As a general rule, their goodness makes them more difficult to cure of their evil. They can not be led to see that they are at fault. Knowing their virtues they can not see their faults. They do not perhaps over-estimate their virtues, but fail to see what they lack, and what they lack they charge upon others, often upon those who love them best. They see others' actions through the shadow of their own fretful and gloomy spirits. Hence it is that they see their own faults as existing in those about them, as a defect in the eye produces the appearance of a corresponding defect in every object toward which it is turned. This defect in character is more generally the result of vicious or improper habits of mind, than any constitutional idiosyncrasy. It is the result of the indulgence of gloomy thoughts, morbid fancies, inordinate ambition, habitual melancholy, a complaining, fault-finding disposition. It is generally early acquired, not in childhood, but in youth. Childhood is too buoyant, fresh, and free for such indulgences. Early youth—when its passions are developing, when the soul's bubbling springs are opening fresh and warm, when young hopes put out, to be blighted with a shade, young loves come to be disappointed with a frown, young desires aspire to be saddened with the first failure—is the season when the seeds of disquiet and unhappiness are sown in the soul. And in the most gifted and sensitive souls these seeds are oftenest sown. Those of highly poetic temperaments, of delicate and almost divine psychology, in whom some little constitutional unbalance existed at the beginning of life, and whose judgments developed slower than their passions, are often those who drink the bitterest waters of life. Beautiful souls, sitting in the shadow of self-gathered clouds! We pity and love them. We never see one without longing to bless it. Oh, could they but know how unbecoming such powers and virtues are, such gloominess and disquiet, they would rouse themselves to the glories of a morning life, and, shaking the dews of the night from their wings, would soar aloft in the sunshine of wisdom and love. Having tasted the bitter waters of sorrow, they may appreciate, perhaps all the better, the sweet nectar of life which ought to flow from all our states of mind and outward actions. We were not made for sorrow, but for joy. Our souls were not so delicately wrought to be wasted in fear and melancholy. Our minds were not so gifted to spend themselves on clouds and in darkness. Our hearts were not so firmly strung to wail notes of grief and woe. This beautiful world, so ever fresh and new about us, was not designed to imprison self-convicted souls away from its sunshine and flowers. The bending heavens arching so grandly over us, so studded with sparkling joy-lights, and animated with the eternal cotillion of the skies, invites to no such irreverent repining. Creation's wide field of animated existence inspires no such moodiness and fretfulness of spirit. It is all wrong; it is absolutely sinful. We have no moral right to make ourselves or others so unhappy. We were made for happiness as well as holiness. All life's duties and experiences, when properly understood, are the steps that lead to the temple of eternal good. Disappointments and crosses may come, but let them come; they bring their lessons of wisdom. Failures may crush our hopes and stop us on life's way; but we may gather up and go on again rejoicing in what we have learned. Toils may demand our time and energies; let us give them; labor creates strength and imparts knowledge. Others may use our earnings, and require our care and support; let it be so: "It is more blessed to give than to receive."
Our friends may die and leave our hearts and homes desolate for a time; we can not prevent it, nor would it be best if we could. Sorrow has its useful lessons when it is legitimate, and death is the gate that opens out of earth toward the house "eternal in the heavens." If we lose them, heaven gains them. If we mourn, they rejoice. If we hang our harps on the willows, they tune theirs in the eternal orchestra above, rejoicing that we shall soon be with them. Shall we not drown our sorrow in the flood of light let through the rent vail of the skies which Jesus entered, and, to cure our loneliness, gather to us other friends to walk life's way, knowing that every step brings us nearer the departed, and their sweet, eternal home, which death never enters, and where partings are never known? We may still love the departed. They are ours as ever, and we are theirs. The ties that unite us are not broken. They are too strong for death's stroke. They are made for the joys of eternal friendship. Other friendships on earth will not disturb these bonds that link with dear ones on high. Nor will our duties below interfere with the sacredness of our relations with them. They wish not to see us in sorrow. They doubtless sympathize with us; and could we hear their sweet voices, they would tell us to dry our tears, and bind ourselves to other friends, and joyfully perform all duties on earth till our time to ascend shall come.