A Memorial of Mrs. Margaret Breckinridge

by John Breckinridge; Samuel Miller

The fact is, the pursuit of knowledge may be compared to the task of one who is called to cross a high and craggy mountain. If he is willing to forego his own best interests, both as to bodily and mental health, he may employ some sturdy, athletic assistant to take him up in his arms, and bear him over the steep ascent, and deposit him in safety on the other side, without the use of a muscle of his own. But what would he be the better for it, at the end of his journey? His limbs would not be braced. His chest would not be expanded. He would miss a thousand interesting objects of attention which the use of his own feet would have brought to his view. After a thousand such boasted expeditions, he might live and die the same feeble, nervous dyspeptic, that he was when he set out. Whereas, he who resolves to climb the same mountain by his own efforts; who addresses himself to the task with patient persevering labour; who takes step after step, slowly, but wisely and firmly; may not gain the ascent quite as speedily as his weaker contemporary; but he will gain it much more to his own profit and comfort, and, in the end, find every power invigorated by the enterprise. O, if children and young people could feel how foolish it is to procure themselves to be borne up the mountain of knowledge by others, instead of climbing it themselves, they would despise all the "labour-saving machinery" to which many of them are so fond of resorting; and would remember that what is gained by their own intellectual efforts, is more solid, wears better, digests better, and is productive of richer fruit, both to themselves and others.

It is a law impressed by our Maker on the intellectual, as well as the physical man, that "if any will not work, neither shall he eat." It is a real blessing, if we did but know it, to have labour connected with all our attainments. Thus do we best answer the great end of our being; thus do we invigorate every power, and become prepared most effectually to "serve our generation by the will of God."

LETTER VII.
CULTIVATION OF THE HEART, AND THE MORAL HABITS.

Dear Children:—By the heart, I mean the moral feelings, dispositions, and affections. And by cultivating the heart, I mean directing much attention to restraining, regulating, and purifying all its exercises. This may be said to lie at the foundation of all duty and all happiness. Were your intellectual powers cultivated with all possible care and success, and your moral faculties neglected, you might be polished and elegant demons; but would be miserable yourselves, and a curse to society. Whether, therefore, you regard your own present enjoyment, and everlasting welfare, or the happiness of those around you, you cannot too early remember the great purpose for which you were sent into the world, and the relations which you sustain as rational, social, and immortal creatures. You cannot too early or too diligently learn to restrain your passions; to deny yourselves; and to cultivate those benevolent, meek, humble, and amiable habits, which are indispensable to tranquillity and peace of mind, and which alone can prepare you to adorn and bless the social circles with which you may be connected. I draw your attention the more earnestly to this great subject because I see so many young people who appear never to think of the importance, or even utility of this part of their education.

If you have not learned, dear children, that you are by nature prone to be proud, vain, selfish, envious, irascible, sensual, malignant, and, in a word, to indulge the various appetites and passions which tend to destroy your own peace, and to invade the comfort of those around you; if you have not discovered that this is the tendency of your nature, and that resisting it will call for much self-denial, and continual, and sometimes for agonizing effort, you have attended less to your own feelings, and habits, and less to the character of your friends and associates than I am willing to suppose.

Perhaps you will ask—Does not religion cover all this ground? Where the power of Christian principle reigns in the heart, will not every thing intended to be included in this letter follow as a matter of course? If the plan of salvation, treated in a former letter, be received and obeyed, will not all the objects contemplated in the present letter, be included and secured? Whence, then, the necessity, or even the propriety, of making it matter of separate consideration? I answer, the religion of Christ, in its spirit and power, does indeed embrace all moral excellence. It does, in fact, where it bears appropriate and entire sway, include every moral feeling, affection, and habit, which can adorn and elevate human nature. And yet it is to be lamented that many who cherish the Christian hope, are not as much aware of this fact as they ought to be; and are not so careful to exhibit all the loveliness, as well as the purity of example which become them, as is desirable. And, besides, I have always found that there is a great advantage in pursuing rather more into detail the various branches of the Christian temper, than is commonly done even in the best treatises on religious character and duty. The French have a phrase which expresses more exactly than any English one which I can recollect, my meaning in the title of this letter. The phrase I refer to, is Les petites morales; by which they appear to understand those moral delicacies of feeling, temper, and intercourse, which, though not always found actually shining in every professing, or even every real Christian, do really belong to the Christian code of ethics, and are indispensable to a complete and exemplary character.

The duties which grow out of our relations to God, are generally acknowledged by all professors of religion. However defective their obedience, their obligations are seldom disputed. But if it be the law of God, not only that we should "love Him with all our heart and soul and strength and mind," but also that we should "love our neighbours as ourselves," then the duties growing out of this great law are more multiplied, tender, delicate and important than most of those who are called religious people recognise in practice, or even in theory.

It is true, the root of all sound morality is religion. And it is equally true, that the deeper sense any one has of the constraining love of Christ, and of the holiness, majesty, omniscience, and omnipresence of God, the more faithful he will be in the discharge of all moral duties, both in private and in public. Labour then, day by day, to gain a deeper impression of the claims of your Creator and Redeemer upon you. Meditate much on the Divine glory. Cultivate a devout spirit. Study to walk with God in the exercise of faith, and love, and prayer. And endeavour to keep constantly before your minds his all seeing eye, his infinite holiness, his judgment seat, and those righteous retributions which he has in store for all his creatures, whether they be good, or whether they be evil? This is cultivating the heart in the most essential and radical sense. This is going to "the root of the matter." That morality, and that alone, which is grafted upon this sanctified stock, will be regarded with approbation by the Searcher of hearts, and stand the test of the great day.

But while you labour with your hearts, that they may be habitually laid open, with all the softness and tenderness of spiritual sensibility, to the claims of your Creator and Redeemer; study with no less diligence to cherish a deep sense of all the duties which you owe to your beloved relatives, to your friends, to your neighbours, and to all with whom you have intercourse. To perceive the theory of these duties, is the province of the understanding; to enter into them, as a practical matter, and under a solemn sense of obligation, is an affair of the heart; and the more deeply your hearts are schooled both in the principles and practice of these duties, the more they may be said to partake of that culture which I am now recommending.