Do we not all know that there is something much more devotional in the love of woman than man—a something much more nearly allied to religion? Do we not know that this same weakness and consequent dependence, makes woman more confiding, more trusting, more submissive than man? She feels much greater veneration for the great and the powerful, and acquiesces much more readily in the tyranny and oppression of rulers. Even women of the very first order of intellect feel this reliance and trust on the greater powers around them. Mrs. Jameson says, in speaking of the Portia of Shakspeare, "I never yet met in real life, nor ever read in tale or history, of any woman distinguished for intellect of the highest order, who was not also remarkable for this trustingness of spirit, this hopefulness and cheerfulness of temper, which is compatible with the most serious habits of thought, and the most profound sensibility. Lady Wortley Montague was one instance; and Madame de Stael furnishes another much more memorable."
The physical weakness of woman and her consequent dependence on man, makes religion more necessary to her for another reason. It is her interest that every restraint should be imposed on the passions of man; that he should walk in the paths of virtue and morality; that his superior strength should be subdued and tempered by motives of humanity. He is then more kind, more attentive, and more loving to her. He is then a better father, a better economist,—in fine, a better citizen, fulfilling more perfectly all the relations of life. The Christian religion, as we shall soon see, is eminently calculated to produce this happy result, and consequently woman is deeply interested in its spread. Let no one start forward with the objection, that in this way she is the better enabled to govern her husband. I admit this, if, to govern him, means to restrain him from vice and immorality; but surely this is a government which no honest good citizen can object to. Every lady has a fearfully deep interest in the whole character and temperament of her husband's mind and feelings. Upon them depend, indeed, her weal or woe. Her condition may be deplorable, and sometimes irremediable, if a wicked husband choose to oppress her. But that is certainly a holy and a virtuous selfishness, if selfishness it can possibly be called, which secures our own welfare and happiness while adding to that of another, by curbing and controlling his more violent and malignant feelings and passions, and attuning the whole inner man to harmony and concord.
4th. Seclusion and Meditation.
Again, the life of woman, as has been before remarked, is much more sedentary, more secluded, and consequently more contemplative than that of man. Solitude and contemplation are very favorable to the production of religious impressions and the generation of a spirit of piety and devotion. Man is so constantly occupied amid the busy scenes of active employment, so much engrossed with his schemes of ambition and self-aggrandizement, so rapidly whirled forward by the eddying current of active life, that he scarcely will take time to pause in the hurry and bustle of existence to contemplate his Maker, and render to him the homage that is his due. Public devotion even often breaks in upon his regular routine of life, and frequently mars some little pet scheme of the day. He is a Sabbath-day worshipper; a worshipper at spare times and leisure seasons. But the solitary chamber of a woman, is often by day and by night, the temple from which in her lone hours she sends her silent prayers to heaven; the temple from which, in her silent meditations, her thoughts wander forth and hold sweet communion with the God of nature.
But, let us investigate a little more philosophically, the effects of this secluded, meditative, contemplative life of woman. And, in the first place, all will acknowledge that occasional solitude and consequent meditation are extremely favorable to the cause of virtue generally. Whilst we are running our dissipated career, under the excitement of the passions, we rarely have time, leisure, and reflection sufficient to determine on reform. "It is not in the madness of intemperate enjoyment," says Dr. Brown, in one of his most brilliant lectures, "that we see drunkenness in the goblet, or disease in the feast. Under the actual seduction of the passion we see dimly, if we see at all, any of the evils to which it leads." It is in the hour of solitude and reflection, that the remorseful thought of our errors and vices, comes across the mind; then, in the coolness and calmness of solitude, can we trace out the blighting evils that are likely to follow on our career; then, and then alone, can we dispassionately view, in the vista of the future, our loss of character, of health and riches, by the course we are pursuing; then we behold the melancholy consequences, widening out, until they embrace our family, friends, neighborhood, and state; we then can summon, in gloomy review before the mind's eye, our wives and children, dearer to us than life, living in penury and misfortune, and perhaps dependent for a scanty subsistence upon the cold hand of charity. When the mind is capable of reflection—of sketching out this sad picture, there may be hopes of reform. The individual is never absolutely, hopelessly lost, who indulges in silent meditations on the past; such an individual may even be saved at the eleventh hour. Hence, too, there is virtue in mere intelligence, because intelligence can always think and meditate. Hence, too, the efficacy of solitary confinement in the gloomy walls of the prison, and the very deleterious influence of all prison discipline not based on the principle of solitary confinement.
Again, any scene of distress, any monuments or associations, which remind us of the instability of the boasted works of man; anything which forces a comparison in the mind between the transitory character and nothingness of the things of earth, when compared with the eternity of ages that are to follow, or with the perfections and immutability of God; all such reflections as these are calculated to make a deep religious impression upon the mind. What classic scholar, for example, can stand upon the Capitol on the Capitoline Mount, in Modern Rome, and look over the mouldering but still magnificent ruins of the imperial city, as they lie scattered and confused over the vallies and the seven hills, and cast a retrospective glance at the ages which have gone by, without a deep feeling of religious awe and of veneration towards the God of nature? When he reflects that the poet of antiquity describes this classic ground, over which the eye of the traveller is now wandering in pensive and bewildering gaze, as a solitary wilderness; when Evander, and afterwards when Æneas came to the Latian Coast; that the brier and the bramble then grew together in wild luxuriance on the Tarpeian Hill; that the foxes had their holes and the birds their nests on the Palatine and the Aventine. When he looks again to the time of the poet, and beholds the proud imperial city, the mistress of the world, enthroned in all her gorgeous splendor and costly magnificence upon the seven hills, wielding the sceptre of her dominion over the earth,
"Until the o'ercanopied horizon fail'd,"
and sees upon the Tarpeian hill, the splendid temple with its golden ornaments and its stately columns, instead of the brier and the bramble, and beholds,
| "Pretors, proconsuls to their provinces Hasting, or on return, in robes of state, Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power, Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings: Or embassies from regions far remote, In various habits on the Appian road, Or on the Emilian." |
And then looks to her again—when in the awful language of the poet,