Parents may prevent this mistake in young women, if they will. The mother, at least, can prevent it. Where mothers manage the matter as it ought to be managed, you will not find daughters, on going into company, so deeply interested in these matters that nothing seems so to loosen the tongue, light up the countenance, and brighten the eye, as conversation about the latest engagements and marriages, and nothing so much or so quickly interest them in a newspaper, even a religious one, and that, too, on the Sabbath, as the list of marriages. Alas! do mothers or daughters know what are the practical common sense inferences from this conduct, where it greatly abounds.
Remember, moreover, in this matter, as well as in all other matters which concern your own happiness and the happiness of others—in this matter, I might say, which concerns your happiness more than almost all others—to seek the direction of that Being who has said, "If any lack wisdom, let him ask of God." You cannot, surely, obey this first injunction on the human race, without first and always, at every step of your course, seeking for his approbation. You cannot, in one word, be concerned in a duty which may involve the destinies—present and eternal—of millions and millions of human beings, without looking upward toward the throne of God, and soliciting, with all the humility, as well as confidence, of the most devoted child of an earthly parent, that wisdom and guidance which are to be found in all fulness in the Father of lights, and which, when properly apprehended, can never mislead you.
CHAPTER XXXII.
MORAL PROGRESS.
Importance of progress. Physical improvement a means rather than an end. The same true of intellectual improvement. The general homage which is paid to inoffensiveness. Picture of a modern Christian family. Measuring ourselves by others. Our Saviour the only true standard of comparison. Importance of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Blessedness of communicating. Young women urged to emancipate themselves from the bondage of fashion, and custom, and selfishness.
After all I have said of the importance of physical, intellectual and social improvement and progress, it is moral progress for which we were, pre-eminently, created. The great end of Christianity itself—to use the words of a learned and eloquent divine—is, to make men better than they were before: but whether or not this expresses the entire truth, one thing is certain—that wherever Christianity fails to make man better, it fails of accomplishing its whole intention respecting him. Perhaps the apostle expressed the idea I would inculcate, in the fewest words and in the clearest manner, when he required his converts to "grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."
Mere physical improvement—or even physical perfection, were it attainable—would hardly be worth the pains, if it were any thing more than a means to an end. We might study the subject of health, and practice its excellent rules with the utmost zeal and faithful conscientiousness; and yet it would hardly prove a blessing to us, if it only gave us the more efficiency in the service of the world, the flesh and the devil. And the same, or nearly the same, may be said of intellectual improvement and progress. Though the general tendency of both—when conscience is properly trained and the heart set right—is beneficial, yet it is not necessarily so, without a right heart and correct conscience. Satan is not wanting—so to speak—in intelligence or physical energy.
Physical and intellectual development and progress, therefore, are little more than means to secure an end. If they prove to be what it was the original intention of the Creator they should be, they are eminently conducive to our highest interests, both as respects this world and the world which is to come. If otherwise, they do but accelerate, and in the end aggravate, our doom. They tend but to make our condemnation the more sure, and the more dreadful.
I have urged, elsewhere, the importance of conscientiousness in every thing we do: let me especially recommend you to make continual progress in excellence or holiness, a matter of conscience. Do not be continually measuring yourself—above all, your spiritual self—by your neighbors. If you are the true disciple of Christ, and if you are what a Christian should be in this land of Christianity, you will not indulge yourself in comparisons with any but the Saviour himself. You will be daily and hourly striving to possess more and more of his spirit; in the belief that without the spirit of Christ, you neither are nor can be his.
It is painful to think of the great number of individuals who go through life—often through a long life—and yet accomplish so little for themselves and others. That they are free from outward immorality or blame—as much so at least as their neighbors—seems to satisfy them. Some of the best families I know, are trained in this way. They are excellent people; they are disciples of Christ, if there are any such in the world: we cannot say aught against them, if we would. They seem to discharge all the external duties of our holy religion with a most scrupulous exactness; and they seem—the whole family—to bear the image of Christ. Whatever is true or lovely, is theirs; or appears to be so.