And then, again, let as look at the present position of American women in society. In its best aspects social life may be said to be the natural outgrowth of the Christian home. It is something far better than the world, than Vanity Fair, than the Court of Mammon, where all selfish passions meet and parade in deceptive masquerade. It is the selfish element in human nature which pervades what we call the world; self-indulgence, enjoyment, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of life, receive, in that arena, their full development. Society, on the contrary, in its highest meaning, becomes the practical development of the second great commandment, loving and serving our neighbor. In every Christian country there are many individuals, especially among women, to whom social life practically bears that meaning. Public worship itself is a social act, the highest of all, blending in one the spirit of the two great commandments—the love of God and the love of man. And whatever of social action or social enjoyment is not inconsistent with those two great commandments becomes the Christian's heritage, makes a part, more or less important, of his education, enters into the great stream of the better civilization. And it is here that we reach what may be called the more public duties of woman. From all duties entirely public she is now, or she may be if she choose, relieved by man. These more public duties of hers are still but the outgrowth of her home life, and more or less closely interwoven with it. They are very important, never to be neglected with impunity. The really unsocial woman is in great danger of becoming also un-christian. Every friend crossing the threshold brings social life into the home. The genial smile, the kindly greeting, the cheering word, all these and a thousand other gracious impulses, are, of course, but the first instinctive movements of the social feeling. And from these we move onward over a vast field of action, to the very farthest point reached by the higher charities of Christianity. There can be no doubt that the charm, the grace, and the happy cheerfulness of society are chiefly due to women; and it is also true that the whole unwritten common-law of society is, in a great measure, under their control. The world is constantly encroaching here, enervating and corrupting social life. To oppose wisely, skillfully, and effectually these treacherous encroachments, these alluring temptations, is one of the most difficult tasks possible. To contribute her full share toward purifying and brightening the social atmosphere about her, in accordance with the spirit of true Christian civilization, such is one great and essential part of woman's work in life. It is a work more especially her own. Man, without his helpmeet, can do but little here. His faculties are absorbed by other tasks, not more important, but more engrossing and essentially different. The finer tact, the more graceful manner, the quicker wit, the more tender conscience, are all needed here. Every woman in the country has her own share of this work to do. Each individual woman is responsible for the right use of all her own social influences, whether for good or for evil.
To keep up the standard of female purity becomes emphatically one of the most stringent duties of every Christian woman. For her own sake, for the sake of all she loves, for the sake of her country, for the service of Christ and His Church, she is bound to uphold this standard at a high point—a point entirely above suspicion. This task is of importance incalculable. But, owing to the frivolity of some women, and the very loose ideas of many men, it is no easy task. Undoubtedly, the very great majority of women are born modest at heart. Their nature is by many degrees less coarse than that of man. And their conscience is more tender. But there is one temptation to which they too often yield. With them the great dangers are vanity and the thirst for admiration, which often become a sort of diseased excitement—what drinking or gambling is to men. Here is the weak point. Yielding chiefly to this temptation, scores of women are falling every day. Vanity leads them to wear the extravagant, the flashy, the immodest, the unhealthy dress, to dance the immodest dance, to adopt the alluring manner, to carry flirting to extremes. Vanity leads them, in short, to forget true self-respect, to enjoy the very doubtful compliment of a miserably cheap admiration. They become impatient of the least appearance of neglect or indifference, they become eager in pursuit of attention, while men always attribute that pursuit to motives of the coarsest kind. It is generally vanity alone which leads a married woman to receive the first disgraceful flattery of dissolute men. Probably nine out of ten of those American women who have trifled with honor and reputation, whose names are spoken with the sneer of contempt, have been led on, step by step, in the path of sin by vanity as the chief motive. Where one woman falls from low and coarse passions, a hundred fall from sheer levity and the love of admiration.
To counteract this fatal influence young women must be taught to respect themselves, to be on their guard against vanity and its enticements, to cherish personal modesty in every way. The married woman who is quietly working by example or by precept among the young girls nearest to her, seeking to cherish and foster among them this vital principle of pure personal modesty in dress, in language, in reading, in tone of voice, in countenance, in manner—the natural outward expression of true modesty of heart—is doing far more for her country than if she were to mount the rostrum to-morrow and make a political speech eloquent as any of Webster's.
Sensible women may always have a good measure of political influence of the right sort, if they choose. And it is in one sense a duty on their part to claim this influence, and to exert it, but always in the true womanly way. The influence of good sense, of a sound judgment, of good feeling may always he theirs. Let us see that we preserve this influence, and that we use it wisely. But let us cherish our happy immunities as women by keeping aloof from all public personal action in the political field. There is much higher work for us to do. Our time, our thoughts, our efforts may be given to labors far more important than any mere temporary electing, or law-making, passed today, annulled to-morrow, in obedience to the fickle spirit of party politics.
THAT WORK IS TO PROMOTE BY ALL WORTHY MEANS THE MORAL CIVILIZATION OF THE COUNTRY.
Toward this work legislation, the mere enacting of laws, can do but little. We have all heard of the shrewd mind who considered the songs of a people as more important than their laws. The moral condition of a nation is subject to many different influences—of these the statute book is but one, and that not the most important. No mere skeleton of political constitution can, of itself, produce moral health and strength. It is the living heart within which does the work. And over that heart women have very great influence. The home is the cradle of the nation. A sound home education is the most important of all moral influences. In the very powerful influences which affection gives them over the home, by teaching childhood, by guiding youth, over the men of their family, women have noble means for working good, not only to their own households, not only to the social circle about them, but to the nation at large. All these influences they can bring into action far more effectually by adhering closely to that position which is not only natural to them, but also plainly allotted to them by the revealed Word of God. In no position of their own devising can they do that work half so well.
Political and social corruption are clearly the great evils to be dreaded for our country. We have already gone far enough in the path of universal manhood suffrage to feel convinced that no mere enlargement of the suffrage has power to save us from those evils. During half a century we have been moving nearer and nearer to a suffrage all but universal, and we have, during the same period, been growing more corrupt. The undisguised frauds at elections, the open accusations of bribery in legislative assemblies, the accusations of corruption connected with still higher offices—of these we read daily in the public prints. And these accusations are not disproved. They are generally believed. It is clear, therefore, that something more effectual than universal manhood suffrage is needed to stem the torrent. And it is simply ridiculous to suppose that womanhood suffrage can effect the same task. Who can believe that where men, in their own natural field, have partially failed to preserve a healthful political atmosphere, an honest political practice, that women, so much less experienced, physically so much more feeble, so excitable, so liable to be misled by fancy, by feeling, are likely, in a position foreign to their nature, not only to stand upright themselves, but, like Atlas of old, to bear the weight of the whole political world on their shoulders—like Hercules, to cleanse the Augean stables of the political coursers—to do, in short, all that man has failed to do? No; it is, alas! only too clear that something more than the ballot-box, whether in male or female hands, is needed here. And it is the same in social life. The public prints, under a free press, must always hold up a tolerably faithful mirror to the society about them. The picture it displays is no better in social life than in political life. We say the mirror is tolerably faithful, since there are heights of virtue and depths of sin alike unreflected by the daily press. The very purest and the very foulest elements of earthly existence are left out of the picture. But the general view can scarcely fail to be tolerably correct. Take, then, the sketch of social life as it appears in some half dozen of the most popular prints from week to week. You will be sure to find the better features grievously blended with others fearfully distorted by evil. There are blots black as pitch in that picture. There are forms, more fiend-like than human, photographed on those sheets of paper. Crimes of worse than brutal violence, savage cruelty, crimes of treachery and cowardly cunning and conspiracy, breach of trust, tyrannical extortion, groveling intemperance, sensuality gross and shameless—the heart sickens at the record of a week's crime! It is a record from which the Christian woman often turns aside appalled. Human nature can read no lessons of humility more powerful than those contained in the newspapers of the day. They preach what may be called home truths with most tremendous force. From this record of daily crime it is only too clear that universal suffrage has had no power to purify the society in which we live. If no worse, we can not claim to be better than other nations, under a different political rule.
This admission becomes the more painful when we reflect that in America this full freedom of fundamental institutions, this relief from all needless shackles, is combined with a well-developed system of intellectual education. We are an absolutely free nation. We are, on the whole, and to a certain point, intellectually, an educated nation. Yet vice and crime exist among us to an extent that is utterly disgraceful. It is evident, therefore, that universal manhood suffrage, even when combined with general education, is still insufficient for the task of purifying either social or political life. The theoretical infidel philosopher may wonder at this fact. Not so the Christian. Great intellectual activity, and the abuse of that power for evil purposes, are a spectacle only too common in this world. Look at the present condition of the most civilized nations. Of all generations that have lived on earth, our own is assuredly the most enlightened, in an intellectual sense; mental culture has never been so generally diffused as it is to-day, nor has it ever achieved so many conquests as within the last half century; and yet mark how comparatively little has this wonderful intellectual progress accomplished in the noble work of improving the moral condition of the most enlightened countries. To the mind humbled by Christian doctrine, living in the light of a holy faith, these facts, though unspeakably painful, can not cause surprise. We are prepared for them. We have already learned that no mere legislative enactment and no mere intellectual training can suffice to purify the human heart thoroughly. An element much more powerful than mental culture is needed for that great work. For this work light from on high is sent. A thorough MORAL EDUCATION is required, and the highest form of that education can be reached in one way only—by walking in the plain path of obedience to the will of the Creator, as revealed in Holy Scripture. We must turn, not to Plato and Aristotle, but to inspired Prophet and Apostle. We must open our hearts to the spirit of the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount. We must go to Sinai and to Calvary, and humbly, on bended knee, receive the sublime lessons to be learned there.
We should never have expected moral progress as an inevitable consequence of free institutions and mere intellectual education, had it not been that, like other nations, we indulge in idolatries, and among our "gods many" are the suffrage and mental activity. We are gravely told by philosophers that, with the vote in the hands of woman, the moral elevation of the race is secured forever! "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" The feeling is common in America that to doubt the omnipotence of universal suffrage in its extreme development is not only treason, but a sort of blasphemy. And this feeling is now leading many minds, unconsciously, perhaps, to shrink from opposing the present movement in favor of womanhood suffrage. They bow the knee to the common idol. They dare not believe it possible for the suffrage to be carried too far. For ourselves we have no sympathies whatever with idolatry. We fearlessly declare our opinion, therefore, that no political institutions whatever, neither despotic, nor monarchical, nor aristocratic, nor yet the most free, are capable, in themselves, of achieving moral education for a people. Neither do we believe it more possible for abstract intellectual culture to gain this most important of all ends. Institutions wisely free are a very great blessing. Let us be fervently thankful for them. Intellectual education is equally important and desirable. These are both noble and admirable means to work with, provided we still look above and beyond them for a further development of the race—for fullness of MORAL CIVILIZATION. In fact, if we wish for a vigorous, healthful, lasting development of republican institutions, we must necessarily unite with these not only intellectual teaching, but also a sound MORAL EDUCATION. This is a fact to which men, in the whirl of their political or commercial struggles, too often willfully shut their eyes. They are quite ready to acknowledge the truth of the assertion in a general way, but they choose to forget its vast importance in political or commercial practice. They recklessly lower the moral standard themselves, whenever that standard is at a height inconvenient for the attaining of some particular object toward which they are aiming. They are lacking in faith. Unlike women, who carry faith with them in private life, men act as if faith were not needed in everyday public life. At least the great majority of men, nominal Christians, fail to carry Christian principle with them into common business or politics. Faith, in the heart of women, is connected with love; consequently it is less easily stifled. They more frequently carry this principle with them in daily practice—not to the extent that they should do, but far more so than most men do. And here, Christian women, is your great advantage. It is the Lord's work to which we would urge you. The work of true faith, however lowly, is sure of a blessing. With faith unfeigned in your hearts, giving purity to your lives, you have it in your power to render most effectual service to the nation in your own natural sphere, far beyond what you could possibly accomplish by the path of common politics. You have never, as yet, done full justice to the advantages of your own actual position in this respect. You have overlooked the great work immediately before you. We have no magic talisman to offer you in carrying out that work. We shall not flatter you with the promise of unlimited success; we shall not attempt to gratify any personal ambition of public honors. We have no novel theories or brilliant illusions with which to dazzle your imagination.
FIDELITY TO PLAIN MORAL DUTIES—THIS IS THE ONE GREAT PRINCIPLE TO WHICH WE WOULD MOST EARNESTLY CALL YOUR ATTENTION.