Such being her relative position, hers it must be to prescribe the customs of social life, and say to man, "hitherto shalt thou go and no further." The tone of morals will be such as she makes it. Man will be conformed to the model she exhibits. He seldom, if ever, rises above the level of his female associates. Surround him with the vulgar, the thoughtless, the impure, and you shall not see him pure, thoughtful, refined. Place him ever in the society of intelligent, dignified, Christian women, and their virtues will be reflected on him.
And is it so, that woman is responsible, in a great measure, for the fashions and habits of the community in which she lives? It is even so. If she discard that foolish frippery and passion for display, which occasionally characterize her own sex, it will not long live. It must be buried in its own foibles, and have no resurrection. If she frown upon him who robs woman of her jewel, he is a fugitive on the face of the earth. If she discountenance the use of intoxicating beverages, the young man will learn that abstinence on his part is the price of respect and love on hers. Her office here is magnified: her influence has become a power. The other offices were guiding and directory; this is reformatory. Society looks to her for its type. Its virtues and its vices are of her moulding. It is what she bids it be.
What a potency! Let her wield it for her country's welfare. Then shall it be a beacon light to other lands now in darkness and degradation, because there woman is still the slave of man's passions, and has never risen, under Christianity, to know her dignity, and make her brutal master feel her moral equality in the scale of being.
Only one other office of woman shall we notice at present—the exemplification and diffusion of Christianity—of Christianity, not so much in its forms and dogmas, as in its spirit; not solely as a redeeming scheme, but also as a reforming power.
To Christianity woman is emphatically a debtor. It has breathed into her its breath of life, and she has become a living soul. Else had she been but a dead manikin. To it she owes her present advanced position, her commanding influence. Even all the literature and refinement of Greece and Rome could not confer on woman the boon which the religion of Jesus has brought her. He was woman's son, and his religion tells it. Go where that religion is not, and there woman is naught.
Christianity has not only broken down the wall of partition between male and female, but has opened the sealed fountains of her soul, and caused them to send forth rills of gentleness and love, which have refreshed humanity and poured out gladness on a dark and dreary world. Let the cross, then, be woman's standard, Jesus woman's trust, Christianity woman's charter. That thrown overboard, we are wrecked. Its principles abandoned, the world sinks again into barbarism, and woman to brute degradation. "The last at the cross and earliest at the sepulchre," must remember to cling to Christianity as her hope, her life. Let her never be ashamed to confess it her ruling principle, her source of joy, nor be hesitant in disseminating its seeds, that she may every where behold its lily-flowers.
Can it ever be well said of woman, "she careth not if there be a God, or a soul, or a time of retribution; pleasure is the idol of her heart: she thirsteth for no purer heaven." Let such an one be decked in all the gorgeous trappings of wealth, let her brow be crowned with the coronet of rank, let her girdle hold the key which unlocks the treasures of California, and yet she wants that which ennobles her sex, and would render her an object of love and a source of joy to others.
"Oh, what is woman, what her smile,
Her lip of love, her eyes of light.
What is she, if her lips revile
The lowly Jesus? Love may write
His name upon her marble brow,
And linger in her curls of jet:
The light spring-flower may scarcely bow
Beneath her step—and yet—and yet—
Without that meeker grace she'll be
A lighter thing than vanity."
Never, then, let the sneer of the infidel, nor the scorn of the skeptic drive woman from compounding the spices to embalm her crucified Master, nor make her ashamed to be seen early at his sepulchre. Rather let her glory in the cross, and make the most of her high mission here to send its healing influences to every sick and sorrowing creature on this green earth. Why should any poor, perishing mortal be left in all the degradation of idolatry, when there is in our possession a power that would lift him to heights of bliss, temporal and eternal? Why should the world be left to its wailings and its woes, when Christianity diffused, in its benign spirit, would convert those woes into joys, those wailings into hallelujahs? How can woman, owing her all to the religion of the Bible, refrain from exerting her energies to place this word of life in the hands of every pilgrim over the deserts of time? And may she so breathe its spirit and feel its power, that it shall never again be thus written of her:
"There came
A stranger bright and beautiful
With steps of grace, and eye of flame,
And tone and look most sweetly blent
To make her presence eloquent;
Oh, then I looked for tears. She stood
Before the prisoner of Calvary.
I saw the piercing spear—the blood—
The gall—the writhe of agony.
I saw his quivering lips in prayer,
'Father, forgive them'—all was there!
I turned in bitterness of soul,
And spake of Jesus. I had thought
Her feelings would refuse control:
For woman's heart I knew was fraught
With gushing sympathies. She gazed
A moment on it carelessly,
Then coldly curl'd her lip, and praised
The high priest's garment! Could it be
That look was meant, dear Lord, for thee!"