A Memorial of Mrs. Margaret Breckinridge

by John Breckinridge; Samuel Miller

When I imagine to myself what an influence your precious Mother might have had in cultivating your moral feelings and habits, if it had pleased God to spare her to you; when I think of the happy power which her delicate, forming hand, might, by the divine blessing, have exerted over the heart of each of you;—the heart—as Mrs. Hannah More expresses it—that "seat of evil propensities—that little troublesome empire of the passions;"—I could sit down and weep afresh that you are never to enjoy that culture. But, happily, there is a source of infinitely better culture. Try to lay to heart your weakness and your wants, and implore without ceasing the enlightening, subduing, and sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit, and you will find "his grace sufficient for you."

There are special duties which you owe to your beloved surviving Parent, and to all your domestic relatives, of the most peculiar and tender kind; duties which it is equally your privilege and your honour to discharge. These are veneration, love, gratitude, and a dutiful respect to all their feelings, as well as their interests. Here children are extremely apt to fail. Affection is generally found to descend from parents to their offspring, and in general from elder to younger relatives, in great strength; but from children to parents, or from the young to the old, it seldom rises with equal vigour. Let not this be said of you. Constantly cherish toward your beloved Father, and all your elder relatives, not merely an outward respect, and dutifulness of deportment, but a cordial and ardent affection; a sincere and lively gratitude for all those anxious cares and labours on their part for your benefit, for which you have been indebted ever since you were born, and for which you can never make an adequate return. Try to please them by the constant manifestation of love, confidence, and grateful veneration; and let them see that you treasure up, to your profit, all their instruction, reproofs, and warnings. When the heart, as well as the outward conduct, is conformed to these sentiments, O, how endearing and happy is the intercourse between parents and children! What a charm is diffused over the whole aspect of domestic society!

Let me entreat you, also, early to learn the duty and the pleasure of living in affectionate harmony among yourselves. I can scarcely express to you the pain which I have sometimes felt when I have perceived any thing like a spirit of strife and acrimony rising between you, and leading to the exchange of angry looks and passionate language. Surely three motherless children ought to feel more closely bound together than to indulge in such a temper and conduct. If you do not love one another, who can you expect will love you? Be careful, then, continually to cultivate a spirit of brotherly and sisterly affection toward each other. Let nothing interrupt this. When any contest arises, let the only strife be, which shall be the first to yield, rather than contend. On no account allow yourselves to employ harsh, much less violent language toward each other. And if any contest arises which you cannot settle between yourselves without violence, let a united appeal to your Father, if he be present, or in his absence, to your grandparents, terminate the controversy. Seldom does a conflict of this kind arise without there being blame on both sides. And who so proper to make the proper award, and to adjust every difficulty, as those who love you all equally and dearly, and have age and experience on their side?

Let me enjoin on you to begin, as early as possible, to cherish a spirit of habitual benevolence—a desire, wherever you go, to promote the happiness of all around you. Selfishness is the great master-sin of human nature. "All seek their own." The young, especially, are apt to be swallowed up in the excessive pursuit of their own enjoyment, and that enjoyment is rarely sought or found in ministering to the wants, and promoting the comfort of others. But rely upon it, dear children, this is a narrow and altogether deceptive view of the best means of happiness. Not only is it the divine command that we "love our neighbour as ourselves," but it is equally certain that obedience to this great law tends as directly to make ourselves happy, as it does to promote the comfort of the objects of our benevolent attention. If you wish to be happy yourselves, study continually to make all around you so too. The luxury of doing good is the richest luxury of which we are capable. It is the very spirit of Christ, who "went about doing good;" and the more closely we commune with him in the exercise of the same spirit, the more we secure true and rational enjoyment. Wherever you are, then, cultivate a spirit of sympathy with the afflicted, and the habit of flying spontaneously to the relief of suffering. You cannot begin too early to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to minister to the wants of the sick and dying, to relieve distress of every kind, and to "please every one for his good to edification:"—not by flattery, which is too commonly the method of pleasing adopted; but by letting it be seen that you seek, as much as in you lies, to make all around you truly happy. Never promote mirth at the expense of others. Never allow yourselves to "set others by the ears" as it is sometimes expressed, for the sake of derision. Carefully avoid all those "tricks," which so many of the young delight in, and by which so much suffering, and sometimes even ultimately the loss of life, have been incurred. In a word, conscientiously cherish the principle and the habit of never giving a moment's pain to a human being, or even to a brute beast, unless it be necessary for their real good; and wherever you see pain, by whomsoever inflicted, do all in your power, consistent with other obligations, to relieve it, and to give rational pleasure. There is nothing, be assured, dear children, in all the splendour of fashionable display, in all the gratifications of sense, in all the delirious joys of giddy dissipation, once to be compared with the hallowed pleasure of habitually doing good to all within your reach. Yes, make doing good your "ruling passion," and you will be among the happiest of mortals.

Let me beseech you to watch over your temper with studious care. Few things are more unhappy in a young person of either sex, than an irritable, irascible temper. It betrays into a thousand indiscretions. It poisons social intercourse. It alienates friends. It destroys the comfort of the individual who indulges it; and it interferes with the comfort of all with whom he converses. I have known this infirmity to cast a cloud over the whole course of many persons who were otherwise fitted to adorn and bless society. Watch and pray against it with the utmost diligence. "He that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." "Be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath." Learn "by soft answers to turn away wrath," both in yourselves and others. Be not ready to take offence, or to consider any one as "an offender for a word." Never regard an honest difference of opinion from yourself as a personal affront. Surely the indulgence of such a spirit is as unreasonable as it is unhappy. Guard with the utmost vigilance against a jealous, suspicious temper. Ill nature, peevishness, and a disposition to take every thing by an unfavourable handle, and to indulge in satire and sarcasm, are revolting in every human being, but especially in the female sex. I have never known such a temper to be indulged without diminishing both the respectability and happiness of its possessor. Let a mild, amiable, conciliatory spirit reign in all your intercourse. Be ever kind, tender hearted, and forgiving, even as you hope to obtain forgiveness from the God of all grace. Let the spirit of benevolence, and a desire to please, shine in your countenances, and be manifest in your deportment in all companies; at home and on journies; in the public hotel, and in the parlour of a friend; towards servants, as well as towards your equals or superiors. In a word, in temper as well as in conduct, "Whatsoever ye would that others should do unto you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets."

In forming your moral character and habits, I entreat you to lay great stress upon cultivating a sacred and delicate regard to truth, in all your social intercourse. Rely upon it, you cannot pay too conscientious a regard to this point. A fault here is as dishonourable as it is criminal. I do not allow myself to fear that my beloved grandchildren, after the training they have received, will ever indulge in deliberate falsehood. In this there is a meanness as well as a sin, which I hope they will equally despise and abhor. But it is to be lamented that there is much in social conversation, in which many people deemed respectable are apt to indulge themselves, and which I hope you will make conscience of sacredly avoiding. I mean all exaggeration in your descriptions; all high-colouring in your statements; all indulgence in fabulous narratives, even in jest, for the amusement of company. Aside from the dictates of religion in this matter, which are sacred and conclusive, there is something in these habits adapted to lower the character, and to diminish the influence of those who indulge them, with all sober-minded people. Whatever may be the consequence, let a regard to the strictest verity, as if you were on oath, reign in all you say and do. Avoid the meanness, as well as the sin of the slightest departure from absolute truth. Let all underhand deceptive contrivances, all low cunning, all habits of carrying your plans by disingenuous arts, be abhorred and avoided. How gratifying would it be to those who love you, to know that it had passed into something like a proverb among your acquaintance—"The statement is from a Breckinridge—and therefore may be depended on!"

Let me farther entreat you to guard against all indulgence of the spirit of pride, or vanity. By pride, I mean such an inordinate and unreasonable conceit of our own superiority in any respect, as leads us to look down on others as beneath us, and to treat them with haughtiness, or contempt. And by vanity, I understand that excessive desire for the applause of others which leads to egotism, and such a weak anxiety to attract the notice, and gain the approbation of those around us, as are apt to betray into little and unworthy arts for gaining the object. That both ought to be repudiated, as at once folly and sin, I hope no formal argument will be necessary to convince you. But still, they are both besetting sins, which cleave with deplorable obstinacy to multitudes whose judgment is against them. Be assured, dear children, pride is as foolish as it is criminal. Who made you to differ from others? And what have you that you have not received? If you have minds, or an education, or outward circumstances more favourable than those of many others, who conferred them upon you? If, therefore, you have received all, why should you glory as if you had not received them? I know that we sometimes hear people talk of a "laudable pride," an "honest pride," "a noble pride," &c. But such language is a grievous abuse of terms, and ought to be forever banished from the vocabulary of Christians. Pride was "the condemnation and snare of the devil," and is in all cases a weakness and a sin. To call a proper personal dignity and self-respect by this odious name, is altogether incorrect and deceptive. To speak of a disposition to avoid a mean action as "a noble pride," is a perversion of language, as well as of moral principle. "Be clothed with humility; for God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble." "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall; for when pride cometh, then cometh shame, but with the lowly is wisdom." Vanity is a passion still more childish and degrading. It exhibits a rational creature hanging on the smiles and the praise of his fellow worms for his importance and happiness. O, what infatuation for miserable sinners, who deserve nothing at the hand of God but wrath, and the overflowing of wrath, and who are dependant on his bounty for every breath, to be puffed up with high thoughts of themselves, and arrogantly to claim the incense of praise! Fly, then, from pride and vanity with the utmost vigilance. Study to be "meek and lowly in heart." "Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate." "In lowliness of mind esteem others better than yourselves." "Be not wise or great in your own conceits." Be not greedy of praise. Despise all the unworthy arts of seeking and fishing for it. Rely upon it, the lower you lie in the dust of abasement, the happier you will be. The more you are disposed to love and honour all around you according to their real character, the more infallibly you will secure their love and confidence in return. And the less anxious you are to gain the applause of men, the more likely you will be to attain it, if you are found humbly and diligently performing your duty. In short, if I wished you to gain the highest degree of esteem and honour among men, I would say—Do not seek this object anxiously, or even directly at all. Never inquire what others say or think of you. Speak of yourselves, in conversation, as little as possible. Treat your superiors with uniform respect, but not with fawning or flattery; and your inferiors, down to the lowest servant or beggar, with undeviating condescension and kindness; trying to benefit every one, and promote the happiness of every one; and you will have as much of the love and respect of all as you really deserve, and probably more. If you sincerely try to promote the happiness of all around you, and do it with a kind and amiable manner, I believe it is one of the cases in which our Lord's declaration never fails to be fulfilled—"Give, and it shall be given unto you, good measure pressed down and running over shall men give into your bosom."

Strive with sacred care against every feeling approaching to the passion of envy. As you are now at an age when you are called daily to compete with school and play-mates, you may be sometimes strongly tempted to indulge in this passion. But it is a base passion. Beware of it. How fiend-like, to sicken and repine at excellence! How base, to be displeased and mortified when we contemplate the superior prosperity, happiness, or accomplishments of others! When you witness such superior attainments or excellence, let the only effort be to excite gratitude to God for its existence, and a generous emulation of it in yourselves.