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S T R L C T U R F S
ON THE
MODERN SYSTEM
OF
FE M A L E E D U CAT I O N.
*****
BY HANNAH MORE,
>
LONDON :
PRINTED FOR THOMAS TEGG AND SON, CHEAPSIDE:
R. GRIFFIN AND co. GLAsgow; STILLIES AND Co.
EDINBURGH ; AND J. CUMMING, DUBLIN.
1834.



- STRICTURES
T H E MoD ERN SYSTEM
FEMALE EDUCATION.
CHAPTER I.
Address to Women of Rank and Fortune, on the
Effects of their Influence on Society.—Suggestions
for the Evertion of it in various Instances.
Among the talents for the application of which
women of the higher class will be peculiarly ac-
countable, there is one, the importance of which
they can scarcely rate too highly. This talent is in-
fluence. We read of the greatest orator of antiquity,
that the wisest plans which it had cost him years to
frame, a woman could overturn in a single day; and
when one considers the variety of mischiefs which
an ill-directed influence has been known to produce,
one is led to reflect with the most sanguine hope on
the beneficial effects to be expected from the same
powerful force when exerted in its true direction.
The general state of civilized society depends more
than those are aware who are not accustomed to scru-
tinize into the springs of human action, on the pre-
vailing sentiments and habits of women, and on the
nature and degree of the estimation in which they
lin B
* * *

2 ON THE EIFFECTS
are held. Even those who admit the power of female
elegance on the manners of men, do not always at-
tend to the influence of female principles on their
character. In the former case, indeed, women are
apt to be sufficiently conscious of their power, and
not backward in turning it to account. But there
are nobler objects to be effected by the exertion of
their powers, and unfortunately, ladies, who are often
unreasonably confident where they ought to be diffi-
dent, are sometimes capriciously diffident just when
they ought to feel where their true importance lies;
and feeling, to exert it. To use their boasted power
over mankind to no higher purpose than the gratifi-
cation of vanity or the indulgence of pleasure, is the
degrading triumph of those fair victims to luxury,
caprice, and despotism, whom the laws and the reli-
gion of the voluptuous prophet of Arabia exclude
from light, and liberty, and knowledge; and it is
humbling to reflect, that in those countries in which
fondness for the mere persons of women is carried to
the highest excess, they are slaves; and that their
moral and intellectual degradation increases in direct
proportion to the adoration which is paid to mere
external charms. -
But I turn to the bright reverse of this mortifying
scene; to a country where our sex enjoys the bless-
ings of liberal instruction, of reasonable laws, of a
pure religion, and all the endearing pleasures of an
equal, social, virtuous, and delightful intercourse: I
turn with an earnest hope, that women, thus richly
dowed with the bounties of Providence, will not
content themselves with polishing, when they are
able to reform; with entertaining, when they may
awaken; and with captivating for a day, when they
may bring into action powers of which the effects
may be commensurate with eternity.


OF INFLUENCE. 3
In this moment of alarm and peril, I would call
on them with a “warning voice,” which should stir
up every latent principle in their minds, and kindle
every slumbering energy in their hearts; I would
call on them to come forward, and contribute their
full and fair proportion towards the saving of their
country. But I would call on them to come forward,
without departing from the refinement of their cha-
racter, without derogating from the dignity of their
rank, without blemishing the delicacy of their sex: I
would call them to the best and most appropriate
exertion of their power, to raise the depressed tone
of public morals, and to awaken the drowsy spirit of
religious principle. They know too well how arbi-
trarily they give the law to manners, and with how
despotic a sway they fix the standard of fashion. But
this is not enough; this is a low mark, a prize not
worthy of their high and holy calling. For, on the
use which women of the superior class may now be
disposed to make of that power delegated to them by
the courtesy of custom, by the honest gallantry of the
heart, by the imperious control of virtuous affections,
by the habits of civilized states, by the usages of po-
lished society; on the use, I say, which they shall
hereafter make of this influence, will depend, in no
low degree, the well-being of those states, and the
virtue and happiness, nay perhaps the very existence,
of that society.
At this period, when our country can only hope to
stand by opposing a bold and noble unanimity to the
most tremendous confederacies against religion, and
order, and governments, which the world ever saw ;
what an accession would it bring to the public
strength, could we prevail on beauty, and rank, and
talents, and virtue, confederating their several pow-
ers, to come forward with a patriotism at once firm



4 ON THE EFFECTS
and feminine, for the general good! I am not sounding
an alarm to female warriors, or exciting female poli-
ticians: I hardly know which of the two is the most
disgusting and unnatural character. Propriety is to
a woman what the great Roman critic says action is
to an orator; it is the first, the second, the third re-
quisite. A woman may be knowing, active, witty,
and amusing; but without propriety she cannot be
amiable. Propriety is the centre in which all the
lines of duty and of agreeableness meet. It is to
character what proportion is to figure, and grace to
attitude. It does not depend on any one perfection,
but it is the result of general excellence. It shows
itself by a regular, orderly, undeviating course; and
never starts from its sober orbit into any splendid
eccentricities; for it would be ashamed of such
praise as it might extort by any aberrations from its
proper path. . It renounces all commendation but
what is characteristic; and I would make it the cri-
terion of true taste, right principle, and genuine feel-
ing, in a woman, whether she would be less touched
with all the flattery of romantic and exaggerated pa-
negyric than with that beautiful picture of correct and
elegant propriety, which Milton draws of our first
mother, when he delineates
** “Those thousand decencies which daily flow
From all her words and actions.”
Even the influence of religion is to be exercised
with discretion. A female Polemic wanders nearly
as far from the limits prescribed to her sex, as a
female Machiavel or warlike Thalestris. Fierceness has
made almost as few converts as the sword, and both
are peculiarly ungraceful in a female. Even religi-
ous violence has human tempers of its own to indulge,
and is gratifying itself when it would be thought to


OF INFLUENCE. 5
be serving God. Let not the bigot place her natural
passions to the account of Christianity, or imagine
she is pious when she is only passionate. Let her
bear in mind that a Christian doctrine is always to
be defended with a Christian spirit, and not make
herself amends by the stoutness of her orthodoxy for
the badness of her temper. Many, because they
defend a religious opinion with pertinacity, seem to
fancy that they thereby acquire a kind of right to
withhold the obedience which should be necessarily
involved in the principle.
But the character of a consistent Christian is as
carefully to be maintained, as that of a fiery dispu-
tant is to be avoided; and she who is afraid to avow
her principles, or ashamed to defend them, has little
claim to that honourable title. A profligate, who
laughs at the most sacred institutions, and keeps out
of the way of every thing which comes under the
appearance of formal instruction, may be discon-
certed by the modest, but spirited rebuke of a deli-
cate woman, whose life adorns the doctrines which
her conversation defends: but she who administers
reproof with ill breeding, defeats the effect of her
remedy. On the other hand, there is a dishonest
way of labouring to conciliate the favour of a whole
company, though of characters and principles irre-
concilably opposite. The words may be so guarded
as not to shock the believer, while the eye and voice
may be so accommodated as not to discourage the
infidel. She who, with a half earnestness, trims be-
tween the truth and the fashion; who, while she
thinks it creditable to defend the cause of religion,
yet does it in a faint tone, a studied ambiguity of
phrase, and a certain expression in her countenance,
which proves that she is not displeased with what
she affects to censure, or that she is afraid to lose

6 ON THE EFFECTS
her reputation for wit, in proportion as she advances
her credit for piety, injures the cause more than
he who attacked it; for she proves, either that she
does not believe what she professes, or that she
does not reverence what fear compels her to believe.
But this is not all : she is called on, not barely to
repress impiety, but to excite, to encourage, and to
cherish every tendency to serious religion.
Some of the occasions of contributing to the gene-
ral good which are daily presenting themselves to
ladies, are almost too minute to be pointed out. Yet
of the good which right-minded women, anxiously
watching these minute occasions, and adroitly seizing
them, might accomplish, we may form some idea by
the ill effects which we actually see produced,
through the mere levity, carelessness, and inatten-
tion (to say no worse) of some of those ladies, who
are looked up to as standards in the fashionable
world.
I am persuaded, if many a one, who is now dis-
seminating unintended mischief, under the danger-
ous notion that there is no harm in any thing short
of positive vice, and under the false colours of that
indolent humility, “What good can I do?” could
be brought to see in its collected force the annual
aggregate of the random evil she is daily doing, by
constantly throwing a little casual weight into the
wrong scale, by mere inconsiderate and unguarded
chat, she would start from her self-complacent dream.
If she could conceive how much she may be dimi-
nishing the good impressions of young men; and if
she could imagine how little amiable levity or irreli-
gion makes her appear in the eyes of those who are
older and abler (however loose their own principles
may be), she would correct herself in the first in-
stance, from pure good nature; and in the second,

OF INFLUENCE, 7.

from worldly prudence and mere self-love. ' But on
how much higher principles would she restrain her-
self, if she habitually took into account the important
doctrine of consequences: and if she reflected that
the lesser but more habitual corruptions make up by
their number, what they may seem to come short of
by their weight: then perhaps she would find that,
among the higher class of women, inconsideration is
adding more to the daily quantity of evil than almost
all other causes put together.
There is an instrument of inconceivable force,
when it is employed against the interests of Chris-
tianity. It is not reasoning, for that may be an-
swered; it is not learning, for luckily the infidel is
not seldom ignorant; it is not invective, for we
leave so coarse an engine to the hands of the vulgar;
it is not evidence, for happily we have that on our
side: it is RIDICULE, the most deadly weapon in
the whole arsenal of impiety, and which becomes an
almost unerring shaft when directed by a fair and
fashionable hand. No maxim has been more readily
adopted, or is more intrinsically false, than that
which the fascinating eloquence of a noble sceptic
of the last age contrived to render so popular, that
“ ridicule is the test of truth.” It is no test of truth
itself; but of their firmness who assert the cause of
truth, it is indeed a severe test. This light, keen,
missile weapon, the irresolute, unconfirmed Christian
will find it harder to withstand, than the whole heav
artillery of infidelity united. . . . .
A young man of the better sort, having just entered
upon the world, with a certain share of good dispo-
sitions and right feelings, not ignorant of the evi-
dences, nor destitute of the principles of Christianity;
without parting with his respect for religion, he sets
Qut with the too natural wish of making himself a

8 ON THE EFFECTS
reputation, and of standing well with the fashionable
part of the female world. He preserves for a time a
horror of vice, which makes it not difficult for him
to resist the grosser corruptions of society; he can as
yet repel profaneness; nay, he can withstand the
banter of a club. He has sense enough to see
through the miserable fallacies of the new philoso-
phy, and spirit enough to expose its malignity. , So
far he does well, and you are ready to congratulate
him on his security. You are mistaken : the prin-
ciples of the ardent, and hitherto promising adven-
turer are shaken, just in that very society where,
while he was looking for pleasure, he doubted not of
safety. In the company of certain women of good.
fashion and no ill fame, he makes shipwreck of his
religion. He sees them treat with levity or derision
subjects which he has been used to hear named with
respect. He could confute an argument, he could
unravel a sophistry; but he cannot stand a laugh. A
sneer, not at the truth of religion, for that perhaps is
by none of the party disbelieved, but at its gravity,
its unseasonableness, its dulness, puts all his resolu-
tion to flight. He feels his mistake, and struggles to
recover his credit; in order to which, he adopts the
gay affectation of trying to seem worse than he really
is, he goes on to say things which he does not believe,
and to deny things which he does believe, and all to
efface the first impression, and to recover a reputa-
tion which he has committed to their hands on whose
report he knows he shall stand or fall, in those circles

in which he is ambitious to shine. .
That cold compound of irony, irreligion, selfish-
ness, and sneer, which make up what the French
(from whom we borrow the thing as well as the word)
so well express by the term persiflage, has of late
years made an incredible progress in blasting the

OF INFLUENCE, 9
opening buds of piety in young persons of fashion.
A cold pleasantry, a temporary cant word, the jargon
of the day (for the “great vulgar” have their jargon)
blights the first promise of seriousness. The ladies
of ton have certain watchwords, which may be de-
tected as indications of this spirit. The clergy are
º of under the contemptuous appellation of
the Parsons. Some ludicrous association is infalli-
bly combined with every idea of religion. If a
warm-hearted youth has ventured to name with en-
thusiasm some eminently pious character, his glow-
ing ardour is extinguished with a laugh; and a
drawling declaration, that the person in question is
really a mighty harmless good creature, is uttered in
a tone which leads the youth secretly to vow, that
whatever else he may be, he will never be a good
harmless creature.
Nor is ridicule more dangerous to true piety than
to true taste. An age which values itself on parody,
burlesque, irony, and caricature, produces little that
is sublime, either in genius or in virtue; but the
amuse, and we live in an age which must be amused,
though genius, feeling, truth, and principle be the
sacrifice. Nothing chills the ardours of devotion
like a frigid sarcasm ; and, in the season of youth,
the mind should be kept particularly clear of all
light associations. This is of so much importance,
that I have known persons who, having been early
accustomed to certain ludicrous combinations, were
never able to get their minds cleansed from the im-
purities contracted by this habitual levity, even after
a thorough reformation in their hearts and lives had
taken place: their principles became reformed, but
their imaginations were indelibly soiled. They
could desist from sins which the strictness of Chris-
tianity would not allow them to commit, but they
B 2

10 ON THE EFFECTS
could not dismiss from their minds images, which
her purity forbade them to entertain.
There was a time when a variety of epithets were
thought necessary to express various kinds of excel-
lence, and when the different qualities of the mind
were distinguished by appropriate and discrimi-
nating terms; when the words venerable, learned,
sagacious, profound, acute, pious, worthy, ingeni-
ous, valuable, elegant, agreeable, wise, or witty, were
used as specific marks of distinct characters. But
the legislators of fashion have of late years thought
proper to comprise all merit in one established epi-
thet, and it must be confessed to be a very desirable
one as far as it goes. This epithet is exclusively and
indiscriminately applied wherever commendation is
intended. The word pleasant now serves to combine
and express all moral and intellectual excellence.
Every individual, from the gravest professors of the
gravest profession, down to the trifler who is of no
profession at all, must earn the epithet of pleasant, or
must be contented to be nothing; and must be con-
signed over to ridicule, under the vulgar and inex-
pressive cant word of a bore. This is the mortifying
designation of many a respectable man, who, though
of much worth and much ability, cannot perhaps
clearly make out his letters patent to the title of
pleasant. For, according to this modern classifica-
tion, there is no intermediate state, but all are com-
prised within the ample bounds of one or other of
these two terms.
We ought to be more on our guard against this
spirit of ridicule, because, whatever may be the cha-
racter of the present day, its faults do not spring
from the redundancies of great qualities, or the
-overflowings of extravagant virtues. It is well if
more correct views of life, a more regular adminis-

**.
.*
OF INFLUENCE, 11
tration of laws, and a more settled state of society,
have helped to restrain the excesses of the heroic
ages, when love and war were considered as the
great and sole business of human life. Yet, if that
period was marked by a romantic extravagance, and
the present by an indolent selfishness, our superio-
rity is not so triumphantly decisive, as in the vanity
of our hearts, we may be ready to imagine.
I do not wish to bring back the frantic reign of
chivalry, nor to reinstate women in that fantastic
empire in which they then sat enthroned in the hearts,
or rather in the imaginations of men. Common sense
is an excellent material of universal application,
which the sagacity of latter ages has seized upon, and
rationally applied to the business of common life.
But let us not forget, in the insolence of acknow-
ledged superiority, that it was religion and chastity,
operating on the romantic spirit of those times,
which established the despotic sway of woman; and
though she now no longer looks down on her adoring
votaries, from the pedestal to which an absurd idola-
try had lifted her, yet let her remember that it is the
same religion and the same chastity which once
raised her to such an elevation, that must still fur-
nish the noblest energies of her character.
While we lawfully ridicule the absurdities which
we have abandoned, let us not plume ourselves on
that spirit of novelty which glories in the opposite
extreme. If the manners of the period in question
were affected, and if the gallantry was unnatural,
yet the tone of virtue was high; and let us remem-
ber that constancy, purity, and honour, are not ridi-
culous in themselves, though they may unluckily be
associated with qualities which are so: and women
of delicacy would do well to reflect, when descanting
on those exploded manners, how far it be decorous

12 ON THE EFFECTS
to deride with too broad a laugh, attachments which
could subsist on remote gratifications; or grossly to
ridicule the taste which led the admirer to sacrifice
pleasure to respect, and inclination to honour; to
sneer at that purity which made self-denial a proof
of affection, and to call in question the sound under-
standing of him who preferred the fame of his mis-
tress to his own indulgence.
One cannot but be struck with the wonderful con-
trast exhibited to our view, when we contemplate
the manners of the two periods in question. In the
former, all the flower of Europe smit with a deliri-
ous gallantry; all that was young, and noble, and
brave, and great, with a fanatic frenzy and prepos-
terous contempt of danger, traversed seas, and scaled
mountains, and compassed a large portion of the
globe, at the expense of ease, and fortune, and life,
for the unprofitable project of rescuing, by force of
arms, from the hands of infidels the sepulchre of that
Saviour, whom, in the other period, their posterity
would think it the height of fanaticism so much as
to name in good company: whose altars they desert,
whose temples they neglect; and though in more
than one country at least they still call themselves
by his name, yet too many, it is to be feared, con-
temn his precepts, still more are ashamed of his doc-
trines, and not a few reject his sacrifice. Too many
consider Christianity rather as a political than a reli-
gious distinction; too many claim the appellation
of Christians, in mere opposition to that democracy
with which they conceive infidelity to be associated,
rather than from an abhorrence of impiety for its
own sake; and dread irreligion as the supposed
badge of a reprobated party, more than on account
of that moral corruption which is its inseparable
concomitant.




OF INFLUENCE. 13
... On the other hand, in an age when inversion is
, the order of the day, the modern idea of improvement
does not consist in altering, but extirpating. We do
not reform, but subvert. We do not correct old
systems, but demolish them; fancying that when
everything shall be new it will be perfect. Not to
have been wrong, but to have been at all, is the
crime. Excellence is no longer considered as an
experimental thing which is to grow gradually out
of observation and practice, and to be improved by
the accumulating additions brought by the wisdom
of successive ages. Our wisdom is not slowly brought
by age and gradual growth to perfection, but is a
goddess which starts at once, full grown, mature,
armed cap-à-pee, from the heads of our modern
thunderers. 8. if I may change the allusion,
a perfect system is now expected inevitably to spring
at once, like the fabled bird of Arabia, from the
ashes of its parent; and, hike that, can receive its
birth no other way but by the destruction of its pre-
decessor.
. Instead of clearing away what is redundant, prun-
ing what is cumbersome, supplying what is defective,
and amending what is wrong, we adopt the inde-
finite rage for radical reform of Jack, who in altering
Lord Peter's" coat, showed his zeal by crying out,
“Tear away, brother Martin, for the love of heaven;
never mind, so you do but tear away.”
This tearing system has unquestionably rent away
some valuable parts of that strong, rich, native stuff,
which formed the ancient texture of British manners.
That we have gained much I am persuaded; that
we have lost nothing I dare not therefore affirm.
But though it fairly exhibits a mark of our improved
judgment to ridicule the fantastic notions of love and
* Swift’s “Tale of a Tub.”






14 ON THE EFFECTS
honour in the heroic ages; let us not rejoice that
that spirit of generosity in sentiment, and of ardour
in piety, the exuberancies of which were then so in-
convenient, are now sunk as unreasonably low. That
revolution of manners which the unparalleled wit
and genius of Don Quixote so happily effected, by
abolishing extravagancies the most absurd and per-
nicious, was so far imperfect, that some virtues which
he never meant to expose, fell into disrepute with the
absurdities which he did : and it is become the turn
of the present taste to attach in no small degree that
which is ridiculous to that which is serious and heroic.
Some modern works of wit have assisted in bringing
º and some of the noblest virtues into contempt,
y studiously associating them with oddity, childish
simplicity, and ignorance of the world: and unne-
cessary pains have been taken to extinguish that zeal
and ardour, which, however liable to excess and
error, are yet the spring of whatever is great and
excellent in the human character. The novel of
Cervantes is incomparable; the Tartuffe of Moliere
is unequalled; but true generosity and true religion
will never lose any thing of their intrinsic value,
because knight-errantry and hypocrisy are legitimate
objects for satire. -
But to return from this too long digression to the
subject of female influence. Those who have not
watched the united operation of vanity and feeling
on a youthful mind, will not conceive how much
less formidable the ridicule of all his own sex will
be to a very young man, than that of those women
to whom he has been taught to look up as the arbi-
tresses of elegance. Such a one, I doubt not, might
be able to work himself up, by the force of genuine ,
Christian principles, to such a pitch of true heroism,
as to refuse a challenge, (and it requires more real

OF INFLUENCE. 15
courage to refuse a challenge than to accept one,)
who would yet be in danger of relapsing into the
dreadful pusillanimity of the world, when he is told
that no woman of fashion will hereafter look on him
but with contempt. While we have cleared away
the rubbish of the Gothic ages, it were to be wished
we had not retained the most criminal of all their
institutions. Why chivalry should indicate a mad-
man, while its leading object, the single combat,
should designate a gentleman, has not yet been
explained. Nay, the original motive is lost, while
the sinful practice is continued; for the fighter of
the duel no longer pretends to be a glorious redresser
of the wrongs of strangers; no longer considers
himself as piously appealing to heaven for the justice
of his cause; but from the slavish fear of unmerited
reproach, often selfishly hazards the happiness of his
nearest connexions, and always comes forth in direct
defiance of an acknowledged command of the Al-
mighty. Perhaps there are few occasions in which
female influence might be exerted to a higher pur-
i. than in this, in which laws and conscience
ave hitherto effected so little. But while the duel-
list (who perhaps becomes a duellist only because
he was first a seducer) is welcomed with smiles;
the more hardy youth, who, not because he fears
man, but God, declines a challenge; who is re-
solved to brave disgrace rather than commit sin,
would be treated with cool contempt by those very
persons to whose esteem he might reasonably look,
as one of the rewards of his true and substantial
fortitude. *
• How then is it to be reconciled with the decisions
of *. that delicate women should receive
with complacency the successful libertine, who has
been detected by the wretched father or the injured


16 ON THE EFFECTS
husband in a criminal commerce, the discovery of
which has too justly banished the unhappy partner
of his crime from virtuous society Nay, if he hap-
pen to be very handsome, or very brave, or very
fashionable, is there not sometimes a kind of dis-
honourable competition for his favour? But, whether
his popularity be derived from birth, or parts, or
erson, or (what is often a substitute for all) from
is having made his way into good company, women
of distinction sully the sanctity of virtue by the too
visible pleasure they sometimes express at the atten-
tions of such a popular libertine, whose voluble
small-talk they admire, and whose sprightly nothings
they quote, and whom, perhaps, their very favour
tends to prevent from becoming a better character,
because he finds himself more acceptable as he is.
May I be allowed to introduce a new part of my
subject, by remarking that it is a matter of incon-
ceivable importance, though not perhaps sufficiently
considered, when any popular work, not on a reli-
gious topic, but on any common subject, such as
politics, history, or science, has happened to be
written by an author of sound Christian principles?
It may not have been necessary, nor prudently prac-
ticable, to have a single page in the whole work
professedly religious: but still, when the living
principle informs the mind of the writer, it is almost
impossible but that something of its spirit will dif-
fuse itself even into subjects with which it should
seem but remotely connected. It is at least a com-
fort to the reader, to feel that honest confidence
which results from knowing that he has put himself
into safe hands; that he has committed himself to
an author, whose known principles are a pledge that
his reader need not be driven to watch himself at
every step with anxious circumspection; that he


of INFLUENCE. 17
need not be looking on the right hand and on the
left, as if he knew there were pitfalls under the
flowers which are delighting him. And it is no
Small point gained, that on subjects in which you
do not look to improve your religion, it is at least
secured from deterioration. If the Athenian laws
were so delicate that they disgraced any one who
showed an inquiring traveller the wrong road, what
disgrace, among Christians, should attach to that
author, who, when a youth is inquiring the road to
history or philosophy, directs him to blasphemy and
unbelief? *
. In animadverting farther on the reigning evils
which the times more particularly demand that wo-
men of rank and influence should repress, Christianity
calls upon them to bear their decided testimony
against every thing which is notoriously contributing
to the public corruption. It calls upon them to
banish from their dressing-rooms, (and oh, that their
influence could banish from the libraries of their
sons and husbands!) that sober and unsuspected
mass of mischief, which, by assuming the plausible
names of Science, of Philosophy, of Arts, of Belles
Lettres, is gradually administering death to the prin-
ciples of those who would be on their guard, had
the poison been labelled with its own pernicious
title. Avowed attacks upon revelation are more
easily resisted, because the malignity is advertised.
But who suspects the destruction which lurks under
the harmless or instructive names of General History,
Natural History, Travels, Voyages, Lives, Encyclo-
pedias, Criticism, and Romance? Who will deny
that many of these works contain much admirable
matter; brilliant passages, important facts, just de-
scriptions, faithful pictures of nature, and valuable
illustrations of science? But while “the dead fly

f 8 ON THE EFFECTS
lies at the bottom,” the whole will exhale a corrupt
and pestilential stench.
Novels, which chiefly used to be dangerous in
one respect, are now become mischievous in a thou-
sand. ey are continually shifting their ground,
and enlarging their sphere, and are daily becoming
vehicles of wider mischief. Sometimes they con-
centrate their force, and are at once employed to
diffuse destructive politics, deplorable profligacy,
and impudent infidelity. Rousseau was the first
popular dispenser of this complicated drug, in which
the deleterious infusion was strong, and the effect
proportionably fatal. For he does not attempt to
seduce the affections but through the medium of the
principles. He does not paint an innocent woman,
ruined, repenting, and restored; but with a far more
mischievous refinement, he annihilates the value of
chastity, and with pernicious subtlety attempts to
make his heroine appear almost more amiable with-
out it. He exhibits a virtuous woman, the victim
not of temptation, but of reason; not of vice, but of
sentiment; not of passion, but of conviction; and
strikes at the very root of honour by elevating a
crime into a principle. With a metaphysical so-
phistry the most plausible, he debauches the heart
of woman, by cherishing her vanity in the erection
of a system of male virtues, to which, with a lofty
dereliction of those that are her more peculiar and
characteristic praise, he tempts her to aspire; power-
fully insinuating, that to this splendid system chastity
does not necessarily belong: thus corrupting the
judgment and bewildering the understanding, as the
most effectual way to inflame the imagination and
deprave the heart.
he rare mischief of this author consists in his
power of seducing by falsehood those who love
OF INFLUENCE, 1.9
truth, but whose minds are still wavering, and whose
principles are not yet formed. He allures the warm-
hearted to embrace vice, not because they prefer
vice, but because he gives to vice so natural an air
of virtue: and ardent and enthusiastic youth, too
confidently trusting in their integrity and in their
teacher, will be undone, while they fancy they are
indulging in the noblest feelings of their nature.
Many authors will more infallibly complete the ruin
of the loose and ill disposed; but perhaps (if I may
change the figure) there never was a net of such
exquisite art and inextricable workmanship, spread
to entangle innocence and ensnare inexperience, as
the writings of Rousseau: and, unhappily, the vic-
tim does not even struggle in the toils, because part
i.the delusion consists in imagining that he is set at
€rty.
sº of our recent popular publications have
adopted and enlarged all the mischiefs of this school,
and the principal evil arising from them is, that the
virtues they exhibit are almost more dangerous than
the vices. The chief materials out of which these
delusive systems are framed, are characters who
practise superfluous acts of generosity, while they
are trampling on obvious and commanded duties;
who combine inflated sentiments of honour with
actions the most flagitious; a high tone of self-con-
fidence, with a perpetual neglect of self-denial;
pathetic apostrophes to the passions, but no attempt
to resist them. They teach, that chastity is only
individual attachment; that no duty exists which is
not prompted by feeling; that impulse is the main
spring of virtuous actions, while laws and religion
are only unjust restraints; the former imposed by
arbitrary men, the latter by the absurd prejudices of
timorous and unenlightened conscience. Alas! they




2O ON THE EFFECTS
do not know that the best creature of impulse that
ever lived is but a wayward, unfixed, unprincipled
being ! that the best natural man requires a curb ;
and needs that balance to the affections which
Christianity alone can furnish, and without which
benevolent propensities are no security to virtue.
And perhaps it is not too much to say, in spite of
the monopoly of benevolence to which the new
philosophy lays claim, that the human duties of the
second table have never once been well performed
by any of the rejectors of that previous portion of
the Decalogue which enjoins duty to God. 3 .
In some of the most splendid of these characters
compassion is erected into the throne of justice, and
justice degraded into the rank of plebeian virtues.
Creditors are defrauded, while the money due to
them is lavished in dazzling acts of charity to some
object that affects the senses; which fits of charity
are made the sponge of every sin, and the substitute
of every virtue: the whole indirectly tending to inti-
mate how very benevolent people are who are not
Christians. From many of these compositions, in-
deed, Christianity is systematically, and always vir-
tually, excluded; for the law, and the prophets, and
the gospel can make no part of a scheme in which
this world is looked upon as all in all; in which
want and misery are considered as evils arising solely
from human governments, and not from the dispen-
sations of God; in which poverty is represented as
merely a political evil, and the restraints which tend
to keep the poor honest, are painted as the most
flagrant injustice. The gospel can make no part of
a system in which the chimerical project of consum-
mate earthly happiness (founded on the mad pre-
tence of loving the poor better than God loves them)
would defeat the divine plan, which meant this


OF INFLUENCE, 21
world a scene of discipline, not of remuneration.
The gospel can have nothing to do with a system in
which sin is reduced to a little human imperfection,
and Old Bailey crimes are softened down into a few
engaging weaknesses; and in which the turpitude
of all the vices a man himself commits, is done
away by his candour in tolerating all the vices com-
mitted by others. .
But the part of the system the most fatal to that
class whom I am addressing is, that even in those
works which do not go all the length of treating
marriage as an unjust infringement on liberty, and a
tyrannical deduction from general happiness; yet it
commonly happens that the hero or heroine, who
has practically violated the letter of the seventh com-
mandment, and continues to live in the allowed
violation of its spirit, is painted as so amiable and so
benevolent, so tender or so brave; and the tempta-
tion is represented as so irresistible, (for all these
philosophers are fatalists,) the predominant and
cherished sin is so filtered and defecated of its pollu-
tions, and is so sheltered and surrounded, and re-
lieved with shining qualities, that the innocent and
impressible young reader is brought to lose all horror
of the awful crime in question, in the complacency
she feels for the engaging virtues of the criminal.
But there is another object to which I would
direct the exertion of that power of female influence
of which I am speaking. Those ladies who take
the lead in society are loudly called upon to act as
the guardians of the public taste as well as of the
public virtue. They are called upon, therefore, to
oppose with the whole weight of their influence, the
irruption of those swarms of publications now daily
issuing from the banks of the Danube, which, like
their ravaging predecessors of the darker ages, though


22 ON THE EFFECTS
with far other arms, are overrunning civilized society.
Those readers, whose purer taste has been formed on
the correct models of the old classic school, see with
indignation and astonishment the Huns and Vandals
once more overpowering the Greeks and Romans.
They behold our minds, with a retrograde but rapid
motion, hurried back to the reign of “chaos and old
night,” by distorted and unprincipled compositions,
which unite the taste of the Goths with the morals of
Bagshot *, .
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire I
They terrify the weak, and disgust the discerning, by
wild and mis-shapen superstitions, in which, with
that consistency which forms so striking a feature of
the new philosophy, those who most earnestly deny
the immortality of the soul are most eager to intro-
duce the machinery of ghosts.
The writings of the French infidels were some
years ago circulated in England with uncommon in-
dustry and with some effect: but the plain sense and
good principles of the far greater part of our country-
men resisted the attack, and rose superior to the trial.
Of the doctrines and principles here alluded to, the
dreadful consequences, not only in the unhappy
country where they originated and were almost uni-
versally adopted, but in every part of Europe where
they have been received, have been such as to serve
as a beacon to surrounding nations, if any warning
can preserve them from destruction. In this country
the subject is now so well understood, that every
thing that issues from the French press is received
with jealousy; and a work, on the first appearance
* The newspapers announce that Schiller's Tragedy of the
Robbers, which inflamed the young nobility of Germany to enlist



themselves into a band of highwaymen to rob in the forests o
Bohemia, is now acting in England by persons of quality &
OF INFLUENCE. 23
of its exhibiting the doctrines of Voltaire and his
associates, is rejected with indignation.
But let us not on account of this victory repose in
confident security. The modern apostles of infi-
delity and immorality, little less indefatigable in
dispersing their pernicious doctrines than the first
apostles were in propagating gospel truths, have in-
deed changed their weapons, but they have by no
means desisted from the attack. To destroy the
principles of Christianity in this island, appears at
the present moment to be their grand aim. De-
prived of the assistance of the French press, they are
now attempting to attain their object under the close
and more artificial veil of German literature. Con-
scious that religion and morals will stand or fall
together, their attacks are sometimes levelled against
the one, and sometimes against the other. With
strong occasional professions of general attachment
to both of these, they endeavour to interest the feel-
ings of the reader, sometimes in favour of some one
particular vice, at other times on the subject of some
one objection to revealed religion. Poetry as well
38 |...} romance as well as history, writings on
philosophical as well as on political subjects, have
thus been employed to instil the principles of Illumi-
natism, while incredible pains have been taken to
obtain able translations of every book which was
supposed likely to be of use in corrupting the heart
or misleading the understanding. In many of these
translations, certain bolder passages, which, though
well received in Germany, would have excited dis-
gust in England, are wholly omitted, in order that the
mind may be more certainly, though more slowly,
prepared for the full effect of the same poison to be
administered in a stronger degree at another period.
Let not those to whom these pages are addressed


24 ON THE EFFECTS
deceive themselves by supposing this to be a fable;
and let them inquire most seriously whether I speak
truth, in asserting that the attacks of infidelity in
Great Britain are at this moment principally directed
against the female breast. Conscious of the influence
of women in civil society, conscious of the effect
which female infidelity produced in France, they
attribute the ill success of their attempts in this
country, to their having been hitherto chiefly ad-
dressed to the male sex. They are now sedulously
labouring to destroy the religious principles of
women, and in too many instances have fatally suc-
ceeded. For this purpose, not only novels and
romances have been made the vehicles of vice and
infidelity, but the same allurement has been held out
to the women of our country, which was employed
by the first philosophist to the first sinner—Know-
ledge. Listen to the precepts of the new German
enlighteners, and you need no longer remain in that
situation in which Providence has placed you! Fol-
low their examples, and you shall be permitted to
indulge in all those gratifications which custom, not
religion, has tolerated in the male sex l
Let us jealously watch every deepening shade in
the change of manners; let us mark every step,
however inconsiderable, whose tendency is down-
wards. Corruption is neither stationary nor retro-
grade ; and to have departed from modesty, is
already to have made a progress. It is not only
awfully true, that since the new principles have been
afloat, women have been too eagerly inquisitive after
these monstrous compositions; but it is true also
that, with a new and offensive renunciation of their
native delicacy, many women of character make little
hesitation in avowing their familiarity with works
abounding with principles, sentiments, and descrip-



OF INFLUENCE, 25
tions, “which should not be so much as named
among them.” By allowing their minds to come
in contact with such contagious matter, they are
irrecoverably tainting them; and by acknowledging
that they are actually conversant with such corrup-
tions, (with whatever reprobation of the author they
may qualify their perusal of the book,) they are ex-
citing in others a most mischievous curiosity for the
same unhallowed gratification. Thus they are daily
diminishing in the young and the timid those whole-
some scruples, by which, when a tender conscience
ceases to be intrenched, all the subsequent stages of
ruin are gradually facilitated. .
We have hitherto spoken only of the German
writings; but because there are multitudes who
seldom read, equal pains have been taken to promote
the same object through the medium of the stage:
and this weapon is, of all others, that against which
it is, at the present moment, the most important to
warn the more inconsiderate of my countrywomen.
As a specimen of the German drama, it may not
be unseasonable to offer a few remarks on the ad-
mired play of “The Stranger.” In this piece the
character of an adulteress, which, in all periods of the
world, ancient as well as modern, in all countries,
heathen as well as christian, has hitherto been held
in detestation, and has never been introduced but to
be reprobated, is for the first time presented to our
view in the most pleasing and fascinating colours.
The heroine is a woman who forsook a husband the
most affectionate and the most amiable, and lived
for some time in the most criminal commerce with
her seducer. Repenting at length of her crime, she
buries herself in retirement. The talents of the poet
during the whole piece are exerted in attempting to
render this woman the object not only of the com-
C
26 O N THE EFFECTS
passion and forgiveness, but of the esteem and affec-
tion of the audience. The injured husband, con-
vinced of his wife's repentance, forms a resolution,
which every man of true feeling and Christian piety
will probably approve. He forgives her offence, and
romises her through life his advice, protection, and
ortune, together with every thing which can alleviate
the misery of her situation, but refuses to replace her
in the situation of his wife. But this is not sufficient
for the German author. His efforts are employed,
and it is to be feared but too successfully, in making
the audience consider the husband as an unrelenting
savage, while they are led by the art of the poet
anxiously to wish to see an adulteress restored to that
rank of women who have not violated the most
solemn covenant that can be made with man, nor
disobeyed one of the most positive laws which has
been enjoined by God.
About the same time that this first attempt at re-
presenting an adulteress in an exemplary light was
made by a German dramatist, which forms an aera
in manners, a direct vindication of adultery was for
the first time attempted by a woman, a professed ad-
mirer and imitator of the German suicide Werter.
The Female Werter, as she is styled by her biogra-
W. asserts, in a work entitled “The Wrongs of
omen,” that adultery is justifiable, and that the
restrictions placed on it by the laws of England con-
stitute one of the Wrongs of Women.
And this leads me to dwell a little longer on this
most destructive class in the whole wide range of
modern corruptors, who effect the most desperate
work of the passions, without so much as pretending
to urge their violence in extenuation of the guilt of
indulging them. They solicit this very indulgence
with a sort of cold-blooded speculation, and invite
OF INFLUENCE. 27
the reader to the most unbounded gratifications, with
all the saturnine coolness of a geometrical calcula-
tion. Theirs is an iniquity rather of phlegm than of
spirit: and in the pestilent atmosphere they raise
about them, as in the infernal climate described by
Milton,
The parching air" -
Burns frone, and frost performs th’ effect of fire.
This cool, calculating, intellectual wickedness eats
out the very heart and core of virtue, and like a
deadly mildew blights and shrivels the blooming
promise of the human spring. Its benumbing touch
communicates a torpid sluggishness which paralyzes
the soul. It descants on depravity as gravely, and
details its grossest acts as frigidly, as if its object
were to allay the tumult of the passions, while it is
letting them loose on mankind, by “plucking off
the muzzle” of present restraint and future account-
ableness. The system is a dire infusion com-
pounded of bold impiety, brutish sensuality, and
exquisite folly, which, creeping fatally about the
heart, checks the moral circulation, and totally stops
the pulse of goodness by the extinction of the vital
principle. Thus not only choking the stream of
actual virtue, but drying up the very fountain of
future remorse and remote repentance.
The ravages which some of the old offenders
against purity made in the youthful heart, by the
exercise of a fervid but licentious imagination on
the passions, was like the mischief effected by floods,
cataracts, and volcanos. The desolation indeed was
terrible, and the ruin was tremendous: yet it was a
ruin which did not infallibly preclude the possibility

* * When the north wind bloweth it devoureth the mountains,
and burneth the wilderness, and consumeth the grass as fire.”—
Ecclus. Xl. 20.
28 ON THE EFFECTS
of recovery. The country, though deluged and de-
vastated, was not utterly put beyond the power of
restoration. The harvests indeed were destroyed,
and all was wide sterility. But, though the crops
were lost, the seeds of vegetation were not absolutely
eradicated; so that, after a long and barren blank,
fertility might finally return.
But the heart once infected with this newly medi-
cated venom, subtle though sluggish in its operation,
resembles what travellers relate of that blasted spot
the dead sea, where those devoted cities once stood
which for their pollutions were burnt with fire from
heaven. It continues a stagnant lake of putrifying
waters. No wholesome blade ever more shoots up;
the air is so tainted that no living thing subsists
within its influence. Near the sulphureous pool the
very principle of life is annihilated.—All is death,
Death, unrepealable, eternal death!
But let us take comfort. These projects are not
yet generally realised. These atrocious principles
are not yet adopted into common practice. Though
corruptions seem with a confluent tide to be pouring
in upon us from every quarter, yet there is still left
among us a discriminating judgment. Clear and
strongly marked distinctions between right and
wrong still subsist. While we continue to cherish
this sanity of mind, the case is not desperate.
Though that crime, the growth of which always ex-
hibits the most irrefragable proof of the dissoluteness
of public manners; though that crime, which cuts
up order and virtue by the roots, and violates the
sanctity of vows, is awfully increasing,

* Till senates seem,
For purposes of empire less convened
Than to release the adult’ress from her bonds;
OF INFLUENCE. 29
yet, thanks to the surviving efficacy of a holy reli-
gion, to the operation of virtuous laws, and to the
energy and unshaken integrity with which these
laws are now administered; and, most of all per-
haps, to a standard of morals which continues in
force, when the principles which sanctioned it are
no more; this crime, in the female sex at least, is
still held in just abhorrence; if it be practised, it is
not honourable; if it be committed, it is not justi-
fied; we do not yet affect to palliate its turpitude;
as yet it hides its abhorred head in lurking privacy;
and reprobation hitherto follows its publicity.
But on You R exerting your influence, with just
application and increasing energy, may in no small
degree depend whether this corruption shall still
continue to be resisted. For, from admiring to
adopting, the step is short, and the progress rapid;
and it is in the moral as in the natural world; the
motion, in the case of minds as well as of bodies, is
accelerated as they approach the centre to which
º are tending.
ye to whom this address is particularly directed
an awful charge is, in this instance, committed to
your hands; as you discharge it or shrink from it,
you promote or injure the honour of your daughters
and the happiness of your sons, of both which you
are the depositaries. And, while you resolutely
persevere in making a stand against the encroach-
ments of this crime, suffer not your firmness to be
shaken by that affectation of charity, which is grow-
ing into a general substitute for principle. , Abuse
not so noble a quality as Christian candour, by mis-
employing it in instances to which it does not apply.
Pity the wretched woman you dare not countenance;
and bless HIM who has “made you to differ.” If


30 ON THE EFFECTS
unhappily she be your relation or friend, anxiously
watch for the period when she shall be deserted by
her betrayer; and see if, by your Christian offices,
she can be snatched from a perpetuity of vice. But
if, through the Divine blessing on your patient en-
deavours, she should ever be awakened to remorse,
be not anxious to restore the forlorn penitent to that
society against whose laws she has so grievously
offended; and remember, that her soliciting such a
restoration, furnishes but too plain a proof that she
is not the penitent your partiality would believe;
since penitence is more anxious to make its peace
with Heaven than with the world. Joyfully would
a truly contrite spirit commute an earthly for an
everlasting reprobation! To restore a criminal to
public society, is perhaps to tempt her to repeat her
crime, or to deaden her repentance for having com-
mitted it, as well as to injure that society; while to
restore a strayed soul to God will add lustre to your
Christian character, and brighten your eternal
CITOWI).
In the mean time, there are other evils, ultimately
perhaps tending to this, into which we are falling,
through that sort of fashionable candour which, as
was hinted above, is among the mischievous charac-
teristics of the present day; of which period perhaps
it is not the smallest evil, that vices are made to look
so like virtues, and are so assimilated to them, that
it requires watchfulness and judgment sufficiently to
analyze and discriminate. There are certain women
of good fashion who practise irregularities not con-
sistent with the strictness of virtue; while their good
sense and knowledge of the world make them at the
same time keenly alive to the value of reputation.
They want to retain their indulgences, without quite
OF INFLUENCE. 31
forfeiting their credit; but finding their fame fast
declining, they artfully cling, by flattery and marked
attentions, to a few persons of more than ordinary
character; and thus, till they are driven to let go
their hold, continue to prop a falling fame.
On the other hand, there are not wanting women
of distinction, of very correct general conduct, and
of no ordinary sense and virtue, who, confiding with
a high mind on what they too confidently call the
integrity of their own hearts; anxious to deserve
a good fame on the one hand, by a life free from
reproach, yet secretly too desirous on the other of
securing a worldly and fashionable reputation; while
their general associates are persons of honour, and
their general resort places of safety; yet allow them-
selves to be occasionally present at the midnight
orgies of revelry and gaming, in houses of no ho-
nourable estimation; and thus help to keep u
characters, which, without their sustaining hand,
would sink to their just level of contempt and repro-
bation. While they are holding out this plank to
a drowning reputation, rather it is to be feared,
showing their own strength than assisting another's
weakness, they value themselves, perhaps, on not
partaking of the worst parts of the amusements which
may be carrying on; but they sanction them by their
presence; they lend their countenance to corrup-
tions they should abhor, and their example to the
young and inexperienced, who are looking about for
some such sanction to justify them in that to which
they were before inclined, but were too timid to have
ventured upon without the protection of such unsul-
lied names. Thus these respectable characters, with-
out looking to the general consequences of their
indiscretion, are thoughtlessly employed in break-
ing down, as it were, the broad fence which should

32 ON THE EFFECTS
ever separate two very different sorts of society, and
are becoming a kind of unnatural link between vice
and virtue.
There is a gross deception which even persons
of reputation practise on themselves. They loudly
condemn vice and irregularity as an abstract prin-
ciple; nay, they stigmatize them in persons of an
opposite party, or in those from whom they them-
selves have no prospect of personal advantage or
amusement, and in whom therefore they have no
particular interest to tolerate evil. But the same
disorders are viewed without abhorrence when prac-
tised by those who in any way minister to their
pleasures. Refined entertainments, luxurious deco-
rations, select music, whatever furnishes any delight
rare and exquisite to the senses, these soften the seve-
rity of criticism; these palliate sins, varnish over the
flaws of a broken character, and extort not pardon
merely, but justification, countenance, intimacy 1
The more respectable will not, perhaps, go all the
length of vindicating the disreputable vice, but they
affect to disbelieve its existence in the individual in-
stance; or, failing in this, they will bury its acknow-
ledged turpitude in the seducing qualities of the
agreeable delinquent. Talents of every kind are
considered as a commutation for a few vices, and
such are made a passport to introduce into honour-
able society characters whom their profligacy ought
to exclude from it.
But the great object to which you who are, or
may be mothers, are more especially called, is the
education of your children. If we are responsible
for the use of influence in the case of those over
whom we have no immediate control, in the case of
our children we are responsible for the exercise of
acknowledged power: a power wide in its extent,

OF INFLUENCE. 33
indefinite in its effects, and inestimable in its impor-
tance. On You, depend in no small degree the
principles of the whole rising generation. To your
direction the daughters are almost exclusively com-
mitted; and until a certain age, to you also is con-
signed the mighty privilege of forming the hearts
and minds of your infant sons. By the blessing of
God on the principles you shall, as far as it depends
on you, infuse into both sons and daughters, they
will hereafter “arise and call you blessed.” And
in the great day of general account, may every
Christian mother be enabled through divine grace
to say, with humble confidence, to her Maker and
Redeemer, “Behold the children whom thou hast
given me!”
Christianity, driven out from the rest of the world,
has still, blessed be God l a “strong hold” in this
country. And though it be the special duty of the
appointed “watchman, now that he seeth the sword
come upon the land, to blow the trumpet and warn
the people, which if he neglect to do, their blood
shall be required of the watchman's hand *:” yet,
in this sacred garrison, impregnable but by neglect,
You too have an awful post, that of arming the
minds of the rising generation with the “shield of
faith, whereby they shall be able to quench the fiery
darts of the wicked;” that of girding them with
“ that sword of the Spirit which is the word of
God.” If you neglect this your bounden duty, you
will have effectually contributed to expel Chris-
tianity from her last citadel. And, remember, that
the dignity of the work to which you are called, is
no less than that of preserving the ark of the Lord.
* Ezekiel xxxiii. 6.
C 2.
34
CHAP. II.
On the Education of Women.—The prevailing System
tends to establish the Errors which it ought to
correct.—Langers arising from an excessive Culti-
vation of the Arts.
It is far from being the object of this slight work to
offer a regular plan of female education, a task
which has been often more properly assumed by far
abler writers; but it is intended rather to suggest a
few remarks on the reigning mode, which, though it
has had many panegyrists, appears to be defective,
not only in a few particulars, but as a general system.
There are, indeed, numberless honourable excep-
tions to an observation which will be thought severe;
yet the author questions if it be not the natural and
direct tendency of the prevailing and popular system
to excite and promote those very defects which it
ought to be the main end and object of Christian
education to remove; whether, instead of directing
this important engine to attack and destroy vanity,
selfishness, and inconsideration, that triple alliance
in strict and constant league against female virtue;
the combined powers of instruction are not sedu-
lously confederated in confirming their strength and
establishing their empire?
If indeed the material substance, if the body and
limbs, with the organs and senses, be really the
more valuable objects of attention, then there is
little room for animadversion and improvement.
But if the immaterial and immortal mind ; if the
heart, “ out of which are the issues of life,” be the
main concern; if the great business of education be
to implant ideas, to communicate knowledge, to form
a correct taste and a sound judgment, to resist evil
ON THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 35
propensities, and, above all, to seize the favourable
season for infusing principles and confirming habits;
if education be a school to fit us for life, and life be
a school to fit us for eternity; if such, I repeat it, be
the chief work and grand ends of education, it may
then be worth inquiring how far these ends are likely
to be effected by the prevailing system.
Is it not a fundamental error to consider children
as innocent beings, whose little weaknesses may,
perhaps, want some correction, rather than as beings
who bring into the world a corrupt nature and evil
dispositions, which it should be the great end of
education to rectify This appears to be such a
foundation-truth, that if I were asked what quality
is most important in an instructor of youth, I should
not hesitate to reply, Such a strong impression of
the corruption of our nature, as should insure a
disposition to counteract it; together with such a
deep view and thorough knowledge of the human
heart, as should be necessary for developing and
controlling its most secret and complicated workings.
And let us remember, that to know the world, as it is
called, that is, to know its local manners, temporary
usages, and evanescent fashions, is not to know
human nature; and that where this prime knowledge
is wanting, those natural evils which ought to be
counteracted will be fostered.
Vanity, for instance, is reckoned among the light
and venial errors of youth; nay, so far from being
treated as a dangerous enemy, it is often called in as
an auxiliary. At worst, it is considered as a harm-
less weakness, which subtracts little from the value
of a character; as a natural effervescence, which will
subside of itself, when the first ferment of the youth-
ful passions shall have done working. But those
36 ON THE EDUCATION
know little of the conformation of the human, and
especially of the female heart, who fancy that vanity
is ever exhausted by the mere operation of time and
events. Let those who maintain this opinion look
into our places of public resort, and there behold if
the ghost of departed beauty is not to its last flitting
fond of haunting the scenes of its past pleasures; the
soul, unwilling (if I may borrow an allusion from the
Platonic mythology) to quit the spot in which the
body enjoyed its former delights, still continues to
hover about the same place, though the same plea-
sures are no longer to be found there. Disappoint-
ments, indeed, may divert vanity into a new direction;
prudence may prevent it from breaking out into
excesses, and age may prove that it is “ vexation of
spirit;” but neither disappointment, prudence, nor
age can cure it; for they do not correct the principle.
Nay, the very disappointment itself serves as a pain-
ful evidence of its protracted existence.
Since, then, there is a season when the youthful
must cease to be young, and the beautiful to excite
admiration ; to learn how to grow old gracefully is,
perhaps, one of the rarest and most valuable arts
which can be taught to woman. It is for this sober
season of life that education should lay up its rich
resources. However disregarded they may hitherto
have been, they will be wanted now. When admirers
fall away, and flatterers become mute, the mind will
be driven to retire into itself, and if it find no enter-
tainment at home, it will be driven back again upon
the world with increased force. Yet, forgetting this,
do we not seem to educate our daughters, exclusively,
for the transient period of youth, when it is to
maturer life we ought to advert? Do we not educate
them for a crowd, forgetting that they are to live
OF WOMEN. 37
at home 1 for the world, and not for themselves 2
for show, and not for use ? for time, and not for
eternity?
Vanity (and the same may be said of selfishness)
is not to be resisted like any other vice, which is
sometimes busy and sometimes quiet; it is not to be
attacked as a single fault, which is indulged in
opposition to a single virtue; but it is uniformly to
be controlled, as an active, a restless, a growing
principle, at constant war with all the Christian
graces; which not only mixes itself with all our
faults, but insinuates itself into all our virtues too;
and will, if not checked effectually, rob our best
actions of their reward. Vanity, if I may use the
analogy, is, with respect to the other vices, what
feeling is in regard to the other senses; it is not
confined in its operation to the eye, or the ear, or
any single organ, but diffused through the whole
being, alive in every part, awakened and communi-
cated by the slightest touch.
Not a few of the evils of the present day arise from
a new and perverted application of terms; among
these, perhaps, there is not one more abused, mis-
understood, or misapplied, than the term accomplish-
ments. This word in its original meaning signifies
completeness, perfection. But I may safely appeal
to the observation of mankind, whether they do not
meet with swarms of youthful females, issuing from
our boarding schools, as well as emerging from the
more private scenes of domestic education, who are
introduced into the world under the broad and uni-
versal title of accomplished young ladies, of all of
whom it cannot very truly and correctly be pro-
nounced, that they illustrate the definition by a com-
pleteness which leaves nothing to be added, and a
perfection which leaves nothing to be desired.
38 ON THE EDUCATION
This frenzy of accomplishments, unhappily, is
no longer restricted within the usual limits of rank
and fortune; the middle orders have caught the
contagion, and it rages downward with increasing
and destructive violence, from the elegantly dressed
but slenderly portioned curate's daughter, to the
equally fashionable daughter of the little tradesman,
and of the more opulent but not more judicious
farmer. And is it not obvious, that as far as this
epidemical mania has spread, this very valuable
part of society is declining in usefulness, as it rises
in its unlucky pretensions to elegance 2 till this rapid
revolution of the manners of the middle class has so
far altered the character of the age, as to be in danger
of rendering obsolete the heretofore common saying,
“That most worth and virtue are to be found in the
middle station.” For I do not scruple to assert, that
in general, as far as my little observation has ex-
tended, this class of females, in what relates both to
religious knowledge and to practical industry, falls
short both of the very high and the very low. Their
new course of education, and the habits of life and
elegance of dress connected with it, peculiarly unfits
them for the active duties of their own very import-
ant condition; while, with frivolous eagerness, and
second-hand opportunities, they run to snatch a few
of those showy acquirements which decorate the
great. This is done apparently with one or other of
these views; either to make their fortune by mar-
riage, or if that fail, to qualify them to become
teachers of others: hence the abundant multiplication
of superficial wives, and of incompetent and illiterate
governesses. The use of the pencil, the performance
of exquisite but unnecessary works, the study of
foreign languages and of music, require (with some
exceptions which should always be made in favour
OF WOMEN, 39
of great natural genius) a degree of leisure which
belongs exclusively to affluence”. One use of learn-
ing languages is, not that we may know what the
terms which express the articles of our dress and our
table are called in French or Italian ; not that we
may think over a few ordinary phrases in English,
and then translate them, without one foreign idiom ;
for he who cannot think in a language cannot be said
to understand it: but the great use of acquiring any
foreign language is, either that it enables us occasion-
ally to converse with foreigners, unacquainted with
any other, or that it is a key to the literature of the
country to which it belongs; and those humbler
females, the chief part of whose time is required for
domestic offices, are little likely to fall in the way of
foreigners; and so far from enjoying opportunities
for the acquisition of foreign literature, they have
seldom time to possess themselves of all that valuable
knowledge which the books of their own country so
abundantly furnish; and the acquisition of which
would be so much more useful and honourable than
the paltry accessions they make, by hammering out
the meaning of a few passages in a tongue they but
imperfectly understand, and of which they are likely
to make no use.
It would be well if the reflection how eagerly this
redundancy of accomplishments is seized on by their
inferiors, were to operate as in the case of other
absurd fashions; the rich and great being seldom
brought to renounce any mode or custom, from the
mere consideration that it is preposterous, or that it
is wrong; while they are frightened into its imme-
* Those among the class in question, whose own good sense
leads them to avoid these mistaken pursuits, cannot be offended at
a reproof which does not belong to them.
40 ON THE EDUCATION
diate relinquishment from the pressing consideration
that the vulgar are beginning to adopt it.
But, to return to that more elevated, and, on
account of their more extended influence only, that
more important class of females, to whose use this
little work is more immediately dedicated. Some
popular authors, on the subject of female instruction,
had for a time established a fantastic code of artificial
manners. They had refined elegance into insipidity,
frittered down delicacy into frivolousness, and re-
duced manner into mimauderie. But “to lisp, and
to amble, and to nickname God's creatures,” has
nothing to do with true gentleness of mind; and to
be silly makes no necessary part of softness. Another
class of contemporary authors turned all the force of
their talents to excite emotions, to inspire sentiment,
and to reduce all mental and moral excellence into
sympathy and feeling. These softer qualities were
elevated at the expense of principle; and young
women were incessantly hearing unqualified sensi-
bility extolled as the perfection of their nature; till
those who really possessed this amiable quality,
instead of directing, and chastising, and restraining
it, were in danger of fostering it to their hurt, and
began to consider themselves as deriving their excel-
lence from its excess; while those less interesting
damsels, who happened not to find any of this
amiable sensibility in their hearts, but thought it
creditable to have it somewhere, fancied its seat was
in the nerves; and here indeed it was easily found
or feigned; till a false and excessive display of
feeling became so predominant, as to bring in ques-
tion the actual existence of that true tenderness,
without which, though a woman may be worthy, she
can never be amiable. -
OF WOMEN. 41
Fashion then, by one of her sudden and rapid
turns, instantaneously struck out both real sensibility
and the affectation of it from the standing list of
female perfections; and, by a quick touch of her
magic wand, shifted the scene, and at once produced
the bold and independent beauty, the intrepid fe-
male, the hoyden, the huntress, and the archer; the
Swinging arms, the confident address, the regimental,
and the four-in-hand. Such self-complacent heroines
made us ready to regret their softer predecessors, who
had aimed only at pleasing the other sex, while these
aspiring fair ones struggled for the bolder renown of
rivalling them; the project failed; for, whereas the
former had sued for admiration, the latter challenged,
seized, compelled it; but the men, as was natural,
continued to prefer the more modest claimant to the
Sturdy competitor.
It were well if we, who have the advantage of con-
templating the errors of the two extremes, were to
look for truth where she is commonly to be found,
in the plain and obvious middle path, equally remote
from each excess; and, while we bear in mind that
helplessness is not delicacy, let us also remember
that masculine manners do not necessarily include
strength of character or vigour of intellect. Should
we not reflect also, that we are neither to train up
Amazons nor Circassians, but that it is our business
to form Christians? that we have to educate not only
rational, but accountable beings? and, remembering
this, should we not be solicitous to let our daughters
learn of the well-taught, and associate with the well-
bred In training them, should we not carefully
Cultivate intellect, implant religion, and cherish mo-
desty? Then, whatever is engaging in manners
would be the natural result of whatever is just in
sentiment, and correct in principle; softness would
42 ON THE EDUCATION
grow out of humility, and external delicacy would
spring from purity of heart: then the decorums, the
proprieties, the elegancies, and even the graces, as far
as they are simple, pure, and honest, would follow
as an almost inevitable consequence; for to follow in
the train of the Christian virtues, and not to take the
lead of them, is the proper place which religion
assigns to the graces.
Whether we have made the best use of the errors
of our predecessors, and of our own numberless
advantages, and whether the prevailing system be
really consistent with sound policy, true taste, or
Christian principle, it may be worth our while to
Inquire.
Would not a stranger be led to imagine by a view
of the reigning mode of female education, that human
life consisted of one universal holiday, and that the
grand contest between the several competitors was,
who should be most eminently qualified to excel,
and carry off the prize, in the various shows and
games which were intended to be exhibited in it?
And to the exhibitors themselves, would he mot be
ready to apply Sir Francis Bacon's observation on
the Olympian victors, that they were so excellent in
these unnecessary things, that their perfection must
needs have been acquired by the neglect of whatever
was necessary?
What would the polished Addison, who thought
that one great end of a lady's learning to dance was,
that she might know how to sit still gracefully; what
would even the Pagan historian * of the great Roman
conspirator, who could commemorate it among the
defects of his hero's accomplished mistress, “that she
was too good a singer and dancer for a virtuous
woman ;”—what would these refined critics have
* Sallust.

OF WOMEN. 43
said, had they lived, as we have done, to see the art
of dancing º into such importance, that it cannot
with any degree of safety be confided to one instruc-
tor, but a whole train of successive masters are
considered as absolutely essential to its perfection ?
What would these accurate judges of female man-
ners have said, to see a modest young lady first
delivered into the hands of a military serjeant to
instruct her in the feminine art of marching? and
when this delicate acquisition is attained, to see her
transferred to a professor, who is to teach her the
Scotch steps; which professor, having communi-
cated his indispensable portion of this indispensa-
ble art, makes way for the professor of French
dances; and all perhaps, in their turn, either yield
to, or have the honour to cooperate with, a finishing
master; each probably receiving a stipend which
would make the pious curate or the learned chaplain
ch and happy?
The science of music, which used to be com-
unicated in so competent a degree to a young
ady by one able instructor, is now distributed
mong a whole band. She now requires, not a
master, but an orchestra. And my country readers
would accuse me of exaggeration were I to hazard
numerating the variety of musical teachers who
ttend at the same time in the same family; the
laughters of which are summoned, by at least as
any instruments as the subjects of Nebuchadnez-
ar, to worship the idol which fashion has set up.
They would be incredulous were I to produce real
nstances, in which the delighted mother has been
heard to declare, that the visits of masters of every
irt, and the different masters for various gradations
of the same art, followed each other in such close
ind rapid succession during the whole London resi-




















44 - ON THE EDUCATION
dence, that her girls had not a moment's interval to
look into a book; nor could she contrive any method
to introduce one, till she happily devised the scheme
of reading to them herself for half an hour while they
were drawing, by which means no time was lost.*.
Before the evil is past redress, it will be prudent
to reflect, that in all polished countries an entire
devotedness to the fine arts has been one grand
source of the corruption of the women; and so
justly were these pernicious consequences appre-
ciated by the Greeks, among whom these arts were
carried to the highest possible perfection, that they
seldom allowed them to be cultivated to a very ex-
''. degree by women of great purity of character.
And if the ambition of an elegant British lady should
be fired by the idea that the accomplished females
of those polished states were the admired compa-
nions of the philosophers, the poets, the wits, and
the artists of Athens; and their beauty or talents, so
much the favourite subjects of the muse, the lyre, the
pencil, and the chisel; that their pictures and statues
furnished the most consummate models of Grecian
art: if, I say, the accomplished females of our days
are panting for similar renown, let their modesty chas-
tise their ambition, by recollecting that these cele-
brated women are not to be found among the chaste
* Since the first edition of this Work appeared, the author has
received from a person of great eminence the following statement,
ascertaining the time employed in the acquisition of music in one
instance. As a general calculation, it will be found to be so far
from exaggerated, as to be below the truth. The statement con-
cludes with remarking, that the individual who is the subject of it
is now married to a man who dislikes music!
Suppose your pupil to begin at six years of age, and to continue
at the average of four hours a day only, Sunday excepted, and
thirteen days allowed for ºft annually, till she is eighteen,
the state stands thus: 300 days multiplied by four, the number of
hours amonnt to 1200; that number multiplied by twelve, which
is the number of years, amounts to 14,400 hours!



OF WOMEN. 45
women and the virtuous daughters of the Aristides's,
the Agis's, and the Phocions; but that they are to be
looked for among the Phrynes, the Lais's, the Aspa-
sias, and the Glyceras. I am persuaded the Chris-
tian female, whatever be her taste or her talents, will
renounce the desire of any celebrity when attached
to impurity of character, with the same noble indig-
nation with which the virtuous biographer of the
bove-named heroes renounced any kind of disho-
est fame, by exclaiming, “I had rather it should
e said there never was a Plutarch, than that they
hould say Plutarch was malignant, unjust, or
nvious”.”
And while this corruption, brought on by an ex-
essive cultivation of the arts, has contributed its
ull share to the decline of states, it has always fur-
lished an infallible symptom of their impending
all. The satires of the most penetrating and judi-
ious of the Roman poets, corroborating the testi-
onies of the most accurate of their historians,
ound with invectives against the general depra-
ty of manners introduced by the corrupt habits of
male education. The bitterness and gross inde-
acy of some of these satirists (too gross to be
her quoted or referred to) make little against
eir authority in these points; for how shocking
ust those corruptions have been, and how obvi-
sly offensive their causes, which could have ap-
ared so highly disgusting to minds so coarse as
t likely to be scandalized by slight deviations
m decency! The famous ode of Horace, attri-
ting the vices and disasters of his degenerate
No censure is levelled at the exertions of real genius, which
as, valuable as it is rare; but at the absurdity of that system
ich is erecting the whole sex into artists.





















46 ON THE EDUCATION
country to the same cause, might, were it quite free
from the above objections, be produced, I will not
presume to say as an exact picture of the existing
manners of this country; but may I not venture to
say, as a prophecy, the fulfilment of which cannot
be very remote It may however be observed, that
the modesty of the Roman matron, and the chaste
demeanour of her virgin daughters, which amidst
the stern virtues of the state were as immaculate and
pure as the honour of the Roman citizen, fell a
sacrifice to the luxurious dissipation brought in by
their Asiatic conquests; after which the females
were soon taught a complete change of character.
They were instructed to accommodate their talents
of pleasing to the more vitiated tastes of the other
sex; and began to study every grace and every art
which might captivate the exhausted hearts, and ex-
cite the wearied and capricious inclinations of the
men; till by a rapid and at length complete ener-
vation, the Roman character lost its signature, and
through a quick succession of slavery, effeminacy,
and vice, sunk into that degeneracy of which some
of the modern Italian states serve to furnish a too
just specimen.
It is of the essence of human things that the same
objects which are highly useful in their season, mea-
sure, and degree, become mischievous in their ex-
cess, at other periods and under other circumstances.
In a state of barbarism, the arts are among the best
reformers; and they go on to be improved them-
selves, and improving those who cultivate them,
till, having reached a certain point, those very
arts which were the instruments of civilization and
refinement, become instruments of corruption and
decay; enervating and depraving in the second


OF WOMEN. 47
instance, by the excess and universality of their
cultivation, as certainly as they refined in the first.
They become agents of voluptuousness. They ex-
cite the imagination; and the imagination thus
excited, and no longer under the government of
strict principle, becomes the most dangerous stimu-
lant of the passions; promotes a too keen relish for
pleasure, teaching how to multiply its sources, and
inventing new and pernicious modes of artificial
gratification.
May we not rank among the present corrupt con-
sequences of this unbounded cultivation, the un-
| chaste costume, the impure style of dress, and that
indelicate statue-like exhibition of the female figure,
which by its artfully-disposed folds, its seemingly
wet and adhesive drapery, so defines the form as to
revent covering itself from becoming a veil? This
icentious mode, as the acute Montesquieu observed
on the dances of the Spartan virgins, has taught us
‘to strip chastity itself of modesty.”
May the author be allowed to address to our own
country and our own circumstances, to both of
which they seem peculiarly applicable, the spirit of
that beautiful apostrophe of the most polished poet
of antiquity to the most victorious nation “Let us
ve to the inhabitants of conquered countries the
raise of carrying to the very highest degree of per-
ction, sculpture and the sister arts; but let this
ountry direct her own exertions to the art of go-
erning mankind in equity and peace, of showing
mercy to the submissive, and of abasing the proud
mong surrounding nations”.”
;
* Let me not be suspected of bringing into any sort of com:
rison the gentleness of British government with the rapacity of
oman conquests, or the principles of Roman dominion. To
il, to butcher, and to commit every kind of violence, they call,
ys one of the ablest of their historians, by the lying name of
























48
CHAP. III.
Erternal Improvement.—Children's Balls.-French
Governesses.
LET me not however be misunderstood. The cus-
toms which fashion has established, when not in
direct opposition to what is right, should unques-
tionably be pursued in the education of ladies,
Piety maintains no natural war with elegance, and
Christianity would be no gainer by making her dis-
ciples unamiable. Religion does not forbid that
the exterior be made to a certain degree the object
of attention. But the admiration bestowed, the
sums expended, and the time lavished on arts which
add little to the intrinsic value of life, should have
limitations. While these arts should be admired,
let them not be admired above their just value:
while they are practised, let it not be to the exclu-
sion of higher employments: while they are culti-
vated, let it be to amuse leisure, not to engross life.
But it happens unfortunately, that to ordinary
observers, the girl who is really receiving the worst
instruction often makes the best figure; while in
the more correct but less ostensible education, the
deep and sure foundations to which the edifice will
owe its strength and stability lie out of sight. The
government, and when they have spread a general desolation, they
call it peace”.
With such dictatorial, or, as we might now read, directorial in-
quisitors, we can have no point of contact; and if I have applied
the servile flattery of a delightful poet to the purpose of English
happiness, it was only to show wherein true national grandeur
consists, and that every country pays too dear a price for those
arts and embellishments of society which endanger the loss of its
morals and manners.
* Tacitus' Life of Agricola, speech of Galgacus to his soldiers.
EXTERNAL IMPROVEMENT. 49
utward accomplishments have the dangerous ad-
antage of addressing themselves more immediately
o the senses, and of course meet everywhere with
nose who can in some measure appreciate as well
admire them; for all can see and hear, but all
annot scrutinize and discriminate. External ac-
Huirements too recommend themselves the more
because they are more rapidly as well as more visibly
progressive. While the mind is led on to improvement
by slow motions and imperceptible degrees; while
e heart must now be admonished by reproof, and
w allured by kindness; its liveliest advances being
ddenly impeded by obstinacy, and its brightest
ospects often obscured by passion; it is slow in its
quisitions of virtue, and reluctant in its approaches
piety. The unruly and turbulent propensities of
e mind are not so obedient to the forming hand as
'fects of manner or awkwardness of gait. Often
hen we fancy that a troublesome passion is com-
pletely crushed, we have the mortification to find that
e have “scotch'd the snake, not killed it.” One evil
mper starts up before another is conquered. The
bduing hand cannot cut off the ever-sprouting
ds so fast as the prolific Hydra can reproduce
lem, nor fell the stubborn Antaeus so often as he
n recruit his strength, and rise in vigorous and
peated opposition.
Hired teachers are also under a disadvantage re-
*mbling tenants at rack-rent; it is their interest to
ring in an immediate revenue of praise and profit,
l, for the sake of a present rich crop, those who
fe not strictly conscientious, do not care how much
e ground is impoverished for future produce. But
nts, who are the lords of the soil, must look to
manent value, and to continued fruitfulness. The
effects of a careful education are often very re-
D
º























50. EXTERNAL IMPROVEM. ENT.
mote; they are to be discovered in future scenes,
and exhibited in as yet untried connexions. Every
event of life will be putting the heart into fresh situ-
ations, and making new demands on its prudence,
its firmness, its integrity, or its forbearance. Those
whose business it is to form and model it, cannot
foresee those contingent situations specifically and
distinctly; yet, as far as human wisdom will allow,
they must enable it to prepare for them all by gene-
ral principles, correct habits, and an unremitted
sense of dependence on the Great Disposer of
events. The young Christian militant must learn
and practise all his evolutions, though he does not
know on what service his leader may command him,
by what particular foe he shall be most assailed, nor
what mode of attack the enemy may employ.
But the contrary of all this is the case with exter-
nal acquisitions. The master, it is his interest, will
industriously instruct his young pupil to set all her
improvements in the most immediate and conspicu-
ous point of view. To attract admiration is the great
principle sedulously inculcated into her young heart;
and is considered as the fundamental maxim; and,
perhaps, if we were required to condense the reign-
ing system of the brilliant education of a lady into
an aphorism, it might be comprised in this short
sentence, To allure and to shine. This system how-
ever is the fruitful germ, from which a thousand yet
unborn vanities, with all their multiplied ramifica-
tions, will spring. A tender mother cannot but feel
an honest triumph in completing those talents in her
daughter which will necessarily excite admiration;
but she will also shudder at the vanity that admiration
may excite, and at the new ideas it will awaken; and,
tartling as it may sound, the labours of a wise mother
anxious for her daughter's best interests, will seem to

ExTERNAL IMPRove MENT. 51
be at variance with those of all her teachers. She will
ndeed rejoice at her progress, but she will rejoice
with trembling; for she is fully aware that if all pos-
sible accomplishments could be bought at the price
of a single virtue, of a single principle, the pur-
chase would be infinitely dear, and she would reject
he dazzling but destructive acquisition. She knows
that the superstructure of the accomplishments can
be alone safely erected on the broad and solid basis
of Christian humility: may more, that as the mate-
rials of which that superstructure is to be composed,
are in themselves of so unstable and tottering a
nature, the foundation must be deepened and en-
larged with more abundant care, otherwise the
bric will be overloaded with its own ornaments,
nd what was intended only to embellish the build-
ng, will prove the occasion of its fall.
“To every thing there is a season, and a time for
very purpose under heaven,” said the wise man;
ut he said it before the invention of baby-balls; an
vention which has formed a kind of aera in the
mnals of polished education. This modern device.
a sort of triple conspiracy against the innocence,
e health, ...] the happiness of children; thus, by
ictitious amusements, to rob them of a relish for
e simple joys, the unbought delights, which natu-
ally belong to their blooming season, is like blot-
ng out spring from the year. To sacrifice the true.
nd proper enjoyments of sprightly and happy chil-
ren, is to make them pay a dear and dispropor-
onate price for their artificial pleasures. They step
t once from the nursery to the ball-room; and, by a
hange of habits as new as it is preposterous, are
hinking of dressing themselves, at an age when they
sed to be dressing their dolls. Instead of bound-
C


















52. CHILDREN’s BALLS.
ing with the unrestrained freedom of little wood-
nymphs, over hill and dale, their cheeks flushed
with health, and their hearts overflowing with hap-
piness, these gay little creatures are shut up all the
morning, demurely practising the pas grave, and
transacting the serious business of acquiring a new
step for the evening, with more cost of time and
pains than it would have taken them to acquire
twenty new ideas.
Thus they lose the amusements which naturally
belong to their smiling period, and naturally antici-
pate those pleasures (such as they are) which would
come in, too much of course, on their introduction
into fashionable life. The true pleasures of child-
hood are cheap and natural; for every object teems
with delight to eyes and hearts new to the enjoyment
of life; nay, the hearts of healthy children abound
with a general disposition to mirth and joyfulness,
even without a specific object to excite it; like our
first parent, in the world's first spring, when all was
new, and fresh, and gay about him,
they live and move,
And feel that they are happier than they know.
Only furnish them with a few simple and harmless
materials, and a little, but not too much, leisure, and
they will manufacture their own pleasures with more
skill, and success, and satisfaction, than they will
receive from all that your money can purchase.
Their bodily recreations should be such as will pro-
mote their health, quicken their activity, enliven their
spirits, whet their ingenuity, and qualify them for
their mental work. But, if you begin thus early to
create wants, to invent gratifications, to multiply
desires, to waken dormant sensibilities, to stir up

childr EN's BALLs. 53
hidden fires, you are studiously laying up for your
children a store of premature caprice, and irritabi-
lity, and discontent.
While childhood preserves its native simplicity,
every little change is interesting, every gratification
is a luxury; a ride or a walk, a garland of flowers
of her own forming, a plant of her own cultivating,
will be a delightful amusement to a child in her na-
tural state; but it will be dull and tasteless to a
sophisticated little creature, nursed in these forced,
and costly, and vapid pleasures. Alas! that we
should throw away this first grand opportunity of
working into a practical habit the moral of this im-
portant truth, that the chief source of human discon-
tent is to be looked for, not in our real, but in our
factitious wants; not in the demands of nature, but
in the artificial cravings of desire!
When one sees the growing zeal to crowd the mid-
night ball with these pretty fairies, one would be
lmost tempted to fancy it was a kind of pious emu-
tion among the mothers to cure their infants of a
ndness for vain and foolish pleasures, by tiring
em out by this premature familiarity with them;
nd that . were actuated by something of the
ame principle which led the Spartans to introduce
eir sons to scenes of riot, that they might conceive
n early disgust at vice! or possibly, that they imi-
ited those Scythian mothers who used to plunge
heir new-born infants into the flood, thinking none
be worth saving who could not stand this early
ruggle for their lives: the greater part, indeed, as
might have been expected, perished; but the pa-
ants took comfort, that if many were lost, the few
tho escaped would be the stronger for having been
us exposed. .
To behold lilliputian coquettes, projecting dresses,




















54 cHILDREN's BALLS.
studying colours, assorting ribands and feathers,
their little hearts beating with hopes about partners
and fears about rivals; and to see their fresh cheeks
pale after the midnight supper, their aching heads
and unbraced nerves, disqualifying the little languid
beings for the next day's task; and to hear the grave
apology, “that it is owing to the wine, the crowd,
the heated room of the last night's ball;” all this, I
say, would really be as ludicrous, if the mischief of
the thing did not take off from the merriment of it,
as any of the ridiculous and preposterous dispropor-
tions in the diverting travels of Captain Lemuel
Gulliver.
Under a just impression of the evils which we are
sustaining from the principles and the practices of
modern France, we are apt to lose sight of those
deep and lasting mischiefs which so long, so regu-
larly, and so systematically, we have been importing
from the same country, though in another form and
under another government. In one respect, indeed,
the first were the more formidable, because we em-
braced the ruin without suspecting it; while we
defeat the malignity of the latter, by detecting the
turpitude and defending ourselves against it. This
is not the place to descant on that levity of manners,
that contempt of the Sabbath, that fatal familiarity
with loose principles, and those relaxed notions of
conjugal fidelity, which have often been transplanted
into this country by women of fashion, as a too com-
mon effect of a long residence in that: but it is pecu-
liarly suitable to my subject to advert to another
domestic mischief derived from the same foreign
extraction: I mean the risks that have been run,
and the sacrifices which have been made, in order
to furnish our young ladies with the means of ac-
quiring the French language in the greatest possible
FR EN CH GOVERN ESSES. 55
purity. Perfection in this accomplishment has been
so long established as the supreme object; so long
considered as the predominant excellence to which
all other excellencies must bow down, that it would
be hopeless to attack a law which fashion has immu-
tably decreed, and which has received the stamp of
long prescription. We must, therefore, be contented
with expressing a wish, that this indispensable per-
fection could have been attained at the expense of
sacrifices less important. It is with the greater re-
gret I animadvert on this and some other prevailing
practices, as they are errors into which the wise and
º: have, through want of consideration, or
rather through want of firmness to resist the tyranny
of fashion, sometimes fallen. It has not been un-
usual when mothers of rank and reputation have been
asked how they ventured to intrust their daughters
to foreigners, of whose principles they knew nothing,
except that they were Roman Catholics, to answer,
“That they had taken care to be secure on that sub-
ect; for that it had been stipulated that the question
of religion should never be agitated between the
.eacher and the pupil.” This, it must be confessed,
§ a most desperate remedy; it is like starving to
death, to avoid being poisoned. And one cannot
help trembling for the event of that education, from
which religion, as far as the governess is concerned,
s thus formally and systematically excluded. Surely
it would not be exacting too much, to suggest at least
that an attention no less scrupulous should be exerted
to insure the character of our children's instructor,
for piety and knowledge, than is thought necessary to
certain that she has nothing patois in her dialect.
I would rate a correct pronunciation and an ele-
gant phraseology at their just price, and I would not
rate them low; but I would not offer up principle as






















56 FR EN CH GOVERN ESSE.S.
a victim to sounds and accents. And the matter is
now made more easy; for whatever disgrace it might
once have brought on an English lady to have had
it suspected from her accent that she had the misfor-
tune not to be born in a neighbouring country; some
recent events may serve to reconcile her to the sus-
picion of having been bred in her own : a country,
to which (with all its sins, which are many () the
whole world is looking up with envy and admiration,
as the seat of true glory and of comparative happi-
ness: a country, in which the exile, driven out by
the crimes of his own, finds a home; a country, to
obtain the protection of which it was claim enough
to be unfortunate; and no impediment to have been
the subject of her direst foe! a country which, in
this respect humbly imitating the Father of compas-
sion, when it offered mercy to a suppliant enemy,
never conditioned for merit, nor insisted on the vir-
tues of the miserable as a preliminary to its own
bounty
CHAP. IV.
Comparison of the Mode of Female Education in the
last Age with the present.
To return, however, to the subject of general educa-
tion. A young lady may excel in speaking French
and Italian, may repeat a few passages from a vo-
lume of extracts; play like a professor, and sing
like a siren ; have her dressing-room decorated with
her own drawings, tables, stands, flower-pots, screens,
and cabinets; nay, she may dance like Sempronia”
herself, and yet may have been very badly educated.
I am far from meaning to set no value whatever on


* See Catiline's Conspiracy.
EDUCATION OF THE LAST AGE. 57
any or all of these qualifications; they are all of
them elegant, and many of them properly tend to the
perfecting of a polite education. These things in
their measure and degree, may be done, but there
are others which should not be left undone. Many
things are becoming, but “one thing is needful.”
Besides, as the world seems to be fully apprized of
the value of whatever tends to embellish life, there is
less occasion here to insist on its importance.
But, though a well-bred young lady may law-
fully learn most of the fashionable arts, yet it does
not seem to be the true end of education to make
women of fashion dancers, singers, players, painters,
actresses, sculptors, gilders, varnishers, engravers,
and embroiderers. Most men are commonly des-
tined to some profession, and their minds are con-
sequently turned each to its respective object. Would
it not be strange if they were called out to exercise
their profession, or to set up their trade, with only a
little general knowledge of the trades of all other
men, and without any previous definite application
to their own peculiar calling? The profession of
ladies, to which the bent of their instruction should
be turned, is that of daughters, wives, mothers, and
mistresses of families. They should be therefore
trained with a view to these several conditions, and
be furnished with a stock of ideas, and principles,
and qualifications, and habits ready to be applied
and appropriated, as occasion may demand, to each
of these respective situations: for though the arts
which merely embellish life must claim admiration;
yet when a man of sense comes to marry, it is a
companion whom he wants and not an artist. It is
not merely a creature who can paint, and play, and
dress, and dance; it is a being who can comfort and
counsel him; one who can reason, and reflect, and


D 2
58 EDUCATION OF THE LAST AGE
feel, and judge, and act, and discourse, and discri-
minate; one who can assist him in his affairs, lighten
his cares, sooth his sorrows, purify his joys, strengthen
his principles, and educate his children.
Almost any ornamental talent is a good thing,
when it is not the best thing a woman has ; and
talents are admirable when not made to stand proxy
for virtues. The writer of these pages is intimately
acquainted with several ladies who, excelling most
of their sex in the art of music, but excelling them
also in prudence and piety, find little leisure or temp-
tation, amidst the delights and duties of a large and
lovely family, for the exercise of this talent, and
regret that so much of their own youth was wasted
in acquiring an art which can be turned to so little
account in married life; and are now conscientiously
restricting their daughters in the portion of time
allotted to its acquisition.
Far be it from me to discourage the cultivation of
any existing talent; but may it not be questioned of
the fond believing mother, whether talents, like the
spirits of Owen Glendower, though conjured by
parental partiality with ever so loud a voice, -
Yet will they come when you do call for them :
That injudicious practice, therefore, cannot be too
much discouraged, of endeavouring to create talents
which do not exist in nature. That their daughters
shall learn every thing, is so general a maternal
maxim, that even unborn daughters, of whose ex-
pected abilities and conjectured faculties, it is pre-
sumed, no very accurate judgment can previously be
formed, are yet predestined to this universality of
accomplishments. This comprehensive maxim, thus
almost universally brought into practice, at once
weakens the general powers of the mind, by draw-

COMPARED WITH THE PRESENT. 59
ing off its strength into too great a variety of direc-
tions; and cuts up time into too many portions, by
splitting it into such an endless multiplicity of em-
ployments. I know that I am treading on tender
ground; but I cannot help thinking that the restless
º we take to cram up every little vacuity of life,
y crowding one new thing upon another, rather
creates a thirst for novelty than knowledge; and is
but a well disguised contrivance to keep us in after-
life more effectually from conversing with ourselves.
The care taken to prevent ennui is but a creditable
plan for promoting self-ignorance. We run from
one occupation to another (I speak of those arts to
which little intellect is applied), with a view to
lighten the pressure of time; above all, we fly to
them to save us from our own thoughts; whereas
were we thrown a little more on our own hands, we
might at last be driven, by way of something to do,
to try to get acquainted with our own hearts; and
though our being less absorbed by this busy trifling,
which dignifies its inanity with the imposing name
of occupation, might render us somewhat more sen-
sible of the tedium of life; yet might not this very
sensation tend to quicken our pursuit of a better?
For an awful thought here suggests itself. If life be
so long that we are driven to set at work every en-
gine to pass away the tediousness of time; how shall
we do to get rid of the tediousness of eternity ? an
eternity in which not one of the acquisitions which
life has been exhausted in acquiring, will be of the
least use? Let not then the soul be starved by feed-
ing it on such unsubstantial aliment, for it can be no
more nourished by these empty husks than the body
can be fed with ideas and principles. rº.
Among the boasted improvements of the present
age, none affords more frequent matter of peculiar

60 EDUCATION OF THE LAST AGE
exultation, than the manifest superiority in the em-
ployments of the young ladies of our time over those
of the good housewives of the last century. It is
matter of triumph, that they are at present employed
in learning the polite arts, or in acquiring liberal
accomplishments; while the others wore out their
joyless days in adorning the mansion-house with
hangings of hideous tapestry and disfiguring tent-
stitch. Most cheerfully do I allow to the reigning
modes their boasted superiority; for certainly there
is no piety in bad taste. Still, granting all the de-
formity of the exploded ornaments, one advantage
attended them: the walls and floors were not vain of
their decorations; and it is to be feared, that the
little person sometimes is. The flattery bestowed on
the obsolete employments, for probably even they
had their flatterers, furnished less aliment and less
gratification to vanity, and was less likely to impair
the delicacy and modesty of the sex than the exqui-
site cultivation of personal accomplishments or per-
sonal decorations; and every mode which keeps
down vanity and keeps back self, has at least a
moral use. And while one admires the elegant fin-
gers of a young lady, busied in working or painting
her ball dress, one cannot help suspecting that her
alacrity may be a little stimulated by the animating
idea, how very well she shall look in it. Nor was
the industrious matron of Ithaca more soothed at her
solitary loom with the sweet reflection that by her
labour she was gratifying her filial and conjugal
feelings, than the pleasure-loving damsel of Britain,
by the anticipated admiration which her ingenuity is
procuring for her beauty.
Might not this propensity be a little checked, and
an interesting feeling combined with her industry,
were the fair artist habituated to exercise her skill in



COMPARED WITH THE PRESENT. 61
adorning some one else rather than herself? For it
will add no lightness to the lightest head, nor vanity
to the vainest heart, to take pleasure in reflecting
how exceedingly the gown she is working will be-
come her mother. This suggestion, trifling as it may
seem, of habituating young ladies to exercise their
taste and devote their leisure, not to the decoration
of their own persons, but to the service of those to
whom they are bound by every tender tie, would
not only help to repress vanity, but by thus asso-
ciating the idea of industry with that of filial affec-
tion, would promote, while it gratified some of the
best affections of the heart. The Romans (and it is
mortifying on the subject of Christian education to
be driven so often to refer to the superiority of Pa-
gans) were so well aware of the importance of keep-
ing up a sense of family fondness and attachment by
the very same means which promoted simple and
domestic employment, that no citizen of note ever
appeared in public in any garb but what was spun
by his wife and daughter; and this virtuous fashion
was not confined to the days of republican severity,
but even in all the pomp and luxury of imperial
power, Augustus preserved in his own family this
simplicity of manners.
Let me be allowed to repeat, that I mean not
with preposterous praise to descant on the ignorance
or the prejudices of past times, nor absurdly to regret
that vulgar system of education which rounded the
little circle of female acquirements within the limits
of the sampler and the receipt-book. Yet if a pre-
ference almost exclusive was then given to what was
merely useful, a preference almost exclusive also is
now assigned to what is merely ornamental. And
it must be owned, that if the life of a young lady,
formerly, too much resembled the life of a confec-
62 EDUCATION OF THE LAST AGE
tioner, it now too much resembles that of an actress;
the morning is all rehearsal, and the evening is all
performance: and those who are trained in this
regular routine, who are instructed in order to be
exhibited, soon learn to feel a sort of impatience in
those societies in which their kind of talents are not
likely to be brought into play; the task of an audi-
tor becomes dull to her who has been used to be a
performer. Esteem and kindness become but cold
substitutes to her who has been pampered with plau-
dits and acclamations. And the excessive commen-
dation which the visiter is expected to pay for his
entertainment not only keeps alive the flame of
vanity in the artist by constant fuel, but is not sel-
dom exacted at a price which a veracity at all strict
would grudge; but when a whole circle are obliged
to be competitors who shall flatter most, it is not
easy to be at once very sincere and very civil. And
unluckily, while the age is become so knowing and
so fastidious, that if a young lady does not play like
a public performer, no one thinks her worth attend-
ing to; yet if she does so excel, some of the soberest
of the admiring circle feel a strong alloy to their
pleasure, on reflecting at what a vast expense of time
this perfection must probably have been acquired *.
The study of the fine arts indeed is forced on
young persons, with or without genius (fashion as
was said before having swallowed up that distinc-
tion), to such excess, as to vex, fatigue, and disgust
those who have no talents, and to determine them,


* That accurate judge of the human heart, Madame de Mainte-
non, was so well aware of the danger resulting from some kinds
of excellence, that after the young ladies of the court of Louis
Quatorze had distinguished themselves by the performance of some
dramatic pieces of Racine, when her friends told her how admir-
ably they had played their parts; * Yes,” answered this wise
woman, “so admirably that they shall never play again.” --

COMPARED witH THE PRESENT. 63
as soon as they become free agents, to abandon all
such tormenting acquirements. While by this inces-
Sant pursuit still more pernicious effects are often
produced on those who actually possess genius; for
the natural constant reference to that public perform-
ance for which they are sedulously cultivating this
talent, excites the same passions of envy, vanity, and
competition in the dilettanti performers, as might
be supposed to stimulate professional candidates for
fame and profit at public games and theatrical exhi-
bitions. Is this emulation, is this spirit of rivalry
the temper which prudent parents would wish to ex-
cite and foster 7 Besides, in any event the issue is
not favourable: if the young performers are timid,
they disgrace themselves and distress their friends;
if courageous, their boldness offends still more than
their bad performance. Shall they then be studiously
brought into situations in which failure discredits and
success disgusts?
May I venture, without being accused of pedan-
try, to conclude this chapter with another reference
to Pagan examples? The Hebrews, Egyptians, and
Greeks, believed that they could more effectually
teach their youth maxims of virtue, by calling in the
aid of music and poetry; these maxims, therefore,
they put into verses, and these again were set to the
most popular and simple tunes, which the children
sang; thus was their love of goodness excited by the
very instruments of their pleasure; and the senses,
the taste, and the imagination, as it were, pressed
into the service of religion and morals. Daré I ap-
peal to Christian parents, if these arts are commonly
used by them, as subsidiary to religion and to a sys-
tem of morals much more worthy of every ingenious
aid and association, which might tend to recommend
them to the youthful mind? Dare I appeal to Chris-
64 EDUCATION OF THE LAST AGE, ETC.
tian parents, whether music, which fills up no trifling
portion of their daughters' time, does not fill it with-
out any moral end, or even specific object? Nay,
whether some of the favourite songs of polished
societies are not amatory, are not Anacreontic, more
than quite become the modest lips of innocent youth.
and delicate beauty’.
CHAP. V.

On the Religious Employment of Time-On the
Manner in which Holidays are passed.—Selfishness
and Inconsideration considered.—Dangers arising
from the World. .
THERE are many well disposed parents who, while
they attend to these fashionable acquirements, do
not neglect to infuse religious knowledge into the
minds of their children; and having done this are
but too apt to conclude that they have fully acquitted
themselves of the important duties of education. For
having, as they think, sufficiently grounded them in
religion, they do not scruple to allow their daughters
to spend almost the whole of their time exactly like
the daughters of worldly people. Now, though it be
one great point gained, to have imbued their young
minds with the best knowledge, the work is not
therefore by any means accomplished. “What do
ye more than others?” is a question which, in a
more extended sense, religious parents must be pre-
pared to answer.
Such parents should go on to teach children the
religious use of time, the duty of consecrating to
God every talent, every faculty, every possession,
and of devoting their whole lives to his glory. Peo-




THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME, 65
ple of piety should be more peculiarly on their guard .
against a spirit of idleness, and a slovenly habitual
wasting of time, because this practice, by not assuming
a palpable shape of guilt, carries little alarm to the
conscience. Even religious characters are in danger
on this side; for not allowing themselves to follow
the world in its excesses and diversions, they have
consequently more time upon their hands; and in-
stead of dedicating the time so rescued to its true pur-
poses, they sometimes make as it were compensation
to themselves for their abstinence from dangerous
places of public resort, by an habitual frivolousness
at home; by a superabundance of unprofitable small-
talk, idle reading, and a quiet and dull frittering away
of time. Their day perhaps has been more free from
actual evil; but it will often be found to have been
as unproductive as that of more worldly characters;
and they will be found to have traded to as little
purpose with their master's talents. But a Chris-
tian must take care to keep his conscience peculiarly
alive to the unapparent, though formidable perils of
wº
o these, and to all, the author would earnestly
recommend to accustom their children to pass at
once from serious business to active and animated
recreation; they should carefully preserve them from
those long and torpid intervals between both, that
languid indolence and spiritless trifling, which wears
out such large portions of life in both young and
old. It has indeed passed into an aphorism, that
activity is necessary to virtue, even among those
who are not apprized that it is also indispensable to
happiness. So far are many parents from being
sensible of this truth, that vacations from school are
not merely allowed, but appointed, to pass away in
wearisome sauntering and indeterminate idleness,


66 0 N SELFISHN ESS,
and this by way of converting the holidays into plea-
sure! Nay, the idleness is specifically made over to
the child's mind, as the strongest expression of the
fondness of the parent! A dislike to learning is thus
systematically excited by preposterously erecting
indolence into a reward for application 1 And the
promise of doing nothing is held out as the best re-
compense for having done well !
These and such like errors of conduct arise from
the latent but very operative principle of selfishness.
This principle is obviously promoted by many
habits and practices seemingly of little importance;
and indeed selfishness is so commonly interwoven
with vanity and inconsideration, that I have not
always thought it necessary to mark the distinction.
They are alternately cause and effect; and are pro-
duced and reproduced by reciprocal operation. They
are a joint confederacy who are mutually promoting
each other's strength and interest. Ill judging ten-
derness is in fact only a concealed self-love, which
cannot bear to be witness to the uneasiness which a
present disappointment, or difficulty, or vexation
would cause to a darling child, yet does not scruple
by improper gratification to store up for it future
miseries, which the child will infallibly suffer, though
it may be at a distant period which the mother will
be saved the pain of beholding.
Another principle something different from this,
though it may properly fall under the head of selfish-
ness, seems to actuate some parents in their conduct
towards their children: I mean, a certain slothful-
ness of mind, a love of ease, which imposes a volun-
tary blindness, and makes them not choose to see
what will give them trouble to combat. From the
persons in question we frequently hear such expres-
isions as these : “Children will be children:”—
ON SELFISHN ESS, 67
“My children, I suppose, are much like those of
other people,” &c. Thus we may observe this dan-
gerous and delusive principle frequently turning off
with a smile from the first indications of those tem-
pers, which from their fatal tendency ought to be
very seriously taken up. I would be understood
now as speaking to conscientious parents, who con-
sider it as a duty to correct the faults of their chil-
dren, but who, from this indolence of mind, are
extremely backward in discovering such faults, and
not very well pleased when they are pointed out by
others. Such parents will do well to take notice
that whatever they consider it as a duty to correct,
must be equally a duty to endeavour to find out.
And this love of ease is the more to be guarded
against, as it not only leads parents into erroneous con-
duct towards their children, but is peculiarly danger-
ous to themselves. It is a fault frequently cherished
from ignorance of its real character; for, not bearing
on it the strong features of deformity which mark
many other vices, but on the contrary bearing some
resemblance to virtue, it is frequently mistaken for
the Christian graces of patience, meekness, and for-
bearance, than which nothing can be more opposite;
these proceeding from the Christian principle of
self-denial, the other from self-indulgence.
In this connexion may I be permitted to remark
on the practice at the tables of many families when
the children are at home for the holidays; every de-
licacy is forced upon them, with the tempting remark,
“that they cannot have this or that dainty at school;”
and they are indulged in irregular hours for the same
motive, “because they cannot have that indulgence
at school.” Thus the natural seeds of idleness, sen-
suality, and sloth, are at once cherished, by convert-

68 ON SELFISHNESS.
ing the periodical visit at home into a season of
intemperance, late hours, and exemption from study;
so that children are habituated, at an age when last-
ing associations are formed in the mind, to connect
the idea of study with that of hardship, of happiness
with gluttony, and of pleasure with loitering, feast-
ing, or sleeping. Would it not be better to make
them combine the delightful idea of home, with the
gratification of the social affections, the fondness of
maternal love, the kindness, and warmth, and con-
fidence of the sweet domestic attachments,
— And all the charities
Of father, son, and brother?
I will venture to say, that those listless and vacant
days, when the thoughts have no precise object;
when the imagination has nothing to shape; when
industry has no definite pursuit; when the mind
and the body have no exercise, and the ingenuity
no acquisition either to anticipate or to enjoy, are
the longest, the dullest, and the least happy, which
children of spirit and genius ever pass. Yes! it is
a few short but keen and lively intervals of ani-
mated pleasure, snatched from between the succes-
sive labours and duties of a busy day, looked forward
to with hope, enjoyed with taste, and recollected
without remorse, which, both to men and to chil-
dren, yield the truest portions of enjoyment. O
snatch your offspring from adding to the number of
those objects of supreme commiseration, who seek
their happiness in doing nothing ! Life is but a
short day; but it is a working day. Activity may
lead to evil; but inactivity cannot be led to good.
Young ladies should also be accustomed to set
apart a fixed portion of their time, as sacred to the


THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. 69
poor”, whether in relieving, instructing, or working
for them; and the performance of this duty must
not be left to the event of contingent circumstances,
or the operation of accidental impressions; but it
must be established into a principle, and wrought
into a habit. A specific portion of time must be
allotted to it, on which no common engagement must
be allowed to intrench. This will help to furnish a
powerful remedy for that selfishness whose strong
holds, the truth cannot be too often repeated, it is
the grand business of Christian education perpe-
tually to attack. If we were but aware how much
better it makes ourselves to wish to see others better,
and to assist in making them so, we should find that
the good done would be of as much importance by
the habit it would induce in our own minds, as by
its beneficial effects on otherst.
In what relates to pecuniary bounty, it will be
requiring of children a very small sacrifice, if you
teach them merely to give that money to the poor
which properly belongs to the parent; this sort of
charity commonly subtracts little from their own
pleasures, especially when what they have bestowed
* It would be a noble employment, and well becoming the ten-
derness of their sex, if ladies were to consider the superintendence
of the poor as their immediate office. They are peculiarly fitted
for it; for from their own habits of life they are more intimately
acquainted with domestic wants than the other sex; and in certain
instances of sickness and suffering peculiar to themselves, the
should be expected to have more sympathy; and they have obvi.
ously more leisure. There is a certain religious society, distinguished
by the simplicity of their dress, manners, and language, whose
poor are perhaps better taken care of than any other; and one
reason may be, that they are immediately under the inspection of
the women. & # $ 3.
+ In addition to the instruction of the individual poor, and the
uperintendence of charity schools, ladies might be highly useful
in assisting the parochial clergy in the adoption of that excellent
plan for the instruction of the ignorant suggested by the Bishop of
Turham in his last admirable charge to his clergy. It is with

pleasure that the author is enabled to add that the scheme has
actually been adopted with good effect in that extensive diocese.

70 THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME."
is immediately made up to them, as a reward for
their little fit of generosity. They will, on this plan,
soon learn to give, not only for praise but for profit.
The sacrifice of an orange to a little girl, or a feather
to a great one, given at the expense of their own gra-
tification, would be a better lesson of charity on its
right ground, than a considerable sum of money to
be presently replaced by the parent. And it would
be habituating . early to combine two ideas which
ought never to be separated, charity and self-denial.
As an antidote to selfishness, as well as pride and
indolence, they should also very early be taught to
perform all the little offices in their power for them-
selves; not to be insolently calling for servants where
there is no real occasion; above all, they should be
accustomed to consider the domestics' hours of meals
and rest as almost sacred, and the golden rule should
be practically and uniformly enforced, even on so
trifling an occasion as ringing a bell through mere
wantonness, or self-love, or pride.
To check the growth of inconsiderateness, young
ladies should early be taught to discharge their little
debts with punctuality. They should be made sen-
sible of the cruelty of obliging tradespeople to call
often for the money due to them; and of hindering
and detaining those whose time is the source of their
subsistence, underpretence of some frivolous engage-
ment, which ought to be made to bend to the com-
fort and advantage of others. They should consci-
entiously allow sufficient time for the execution of
their orders; and with a Christian circumspection,
be careful not to drive work-people, by needless
hurry, into losing their rest, or breaking the Sabbath.
I have known a lady give her gown to a mantua-
maker on the Saturday night, to whom she would
not for the world say in so many words, “You must


ON IN CONSIDERATION, 71
work through the whole of Sunday,” while she was
virtually compelling her to do so, by an injunction
to bring the gown home finished on the Monday
morning, on pain of her displeasure. To these hard-
ships numbers are continually driven by good-na-
tured but inconsiderate employers. As these petty
exactions of inconsideration furnish also a constant
aliment to selfishness, let not a desire to counteract
them be considered as leading to too minute details;
nothing is too frivolous for animadversion, which
tends to fix a bad habit in the superior, or to wound
the feelings of the dependant.
Would it not be turning those political doctrines,
which are now so warmly agitating, to a truly moral
account, and give the best practical answer to the
popular declamations on the inequality of human
conditions, were the rich carefully to instruct their
children to soften that inevitable inequality by the
mildness and tenderness of their behaviour to their
inferiors ? This dispensation of God, which excites
so many murmurs, would, were it thus practically
improved, tend to establish the glory of that Being
who is now so often reviled for his injustice; for God
himself is covertly attacked in many of the invectives
against laws and governments, and the supposed un-
just disproportion of ranks.
This dispensation, thus properly improved, would
at once call into exercise the generosity, kindness,
and forbearance of the superior; and the patience,
resignation, and gratitude of the inferior ; and thus,
while we were vindicating the ways of Providence,
we should be accomplishing his plan, by bringing
into action those virtues of both classes which would
have had little exercise had there been no inequality


in fortune. Those who are so zealously contending
for the privileges of rank and power, should never
72 ON IN CONSIDERATION.
lose sight of the religious duties and considerate vir-
tues which the possession of rank and power imposes
on themselves; duties and virtues which should ever
be inseparable from those privileges. As the inferior
classes have little real right to complain of laws, in
this respect let the great be watchful to give them as
little cause to complain of manners. In order to this,
let them carefully train up their children to supply
by individual kindness those cases of hardship which
laws cannot reach ; let them obviate, by an active
and well directed compassion, those imperfections of
which the best constructed human institutions must
unavoidably partake; and, by the exercise of private
bounty, early inculcated, soften those distresses which
can never come under the cognizance of public laws:
by such means every lesson of politics may be con-
verted into a lesson of piety; and a spirit of conde-
scending love might win over some, whom a spirit of
invective will only inflame. .
It can never be too often repeated, that one of the
great objects of education is the forming of habits,
Among the instances of negligence into which even
religiously disposed parents and teachers are apt to
fall, one is, that they are not sufficiently attentive in
finding interesting employment for the Sunday. They
do not make a scruple of sometimes allowing their
children to fill up the intervals of public worship
with their ordinary employments and common school
exercises. They are not aware that they are thus
training their offspring to an early and a systematic
profanation of the Sabbath by this habit; for to chil-
dren, their tasks are their business; to them a French
or Latin exercise is as serious an occupation as the
exercise of a trade or profession is to a man; and if
they are allowed to think the one right now, they
will not be brought hereafter to think that the other is
THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME, 73
wrong; for the opinions and practices fixed at this
early season are not easily altered. By this oversight
even the friends of religion may be contributing
eventually to that abolition of the Lord's day, so de-
voutly wished by its enemies, as the desired prelimi-
nary to the destruction of whatever is most dear to
Christians. What obstruction would it offer to the
general progress of youth, if all their Sunday exer-
cises (which, with reading, composing, transcribing,
and getting by heart, might be extended to an enter-
taining variety) were adapted to the peculiar nature
of the day ? It is not meant to impose on them such
rigorous study as shall convert the day they should
be taught to love into a day of burdens and hard-
ships, or to abridge their innocent enjoyments; but
it is intended merely to suggest that there should be
a marked distinction in the nature of their employ-
ments and studies; for on the observance or neglect
of this, as was before observed, their future notions
and principles will in a good degree be formed. The
gospel, in rescuing the Lord's day from the rigorous
bondage of the Jewish Sabbath, never lessened the
obligation to keep it holy, nor meant to sanction any
secular occupation.
Though the author, chiefly writing with a view to
domestic instruction, has purposely avoided entering
on the disputed question, whether a school or home
education be best; a question which perhaps must
generally be decided by the state of the individual
home, and the state of the individual school; yet she
begs leave to suggest one remark, which peculiarly
belongs to a school education; namely, the general
habit of converting the Sunday into a visiting day by
way of gaining time; as if the appropriate instruc-
tions of the Sunday were the cheapest sacrifice which
could be made to pleasure. Even in those schools,
E.


74 THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.
in which religion is considered as an indispensable
part of instruction, this kind of instruction is almost
exclusively limited to Sundays: how then are girls
ever to make any progress in this most important
article, if they are habituated to lose the religious ad-
vantages of the school, for the sake of having more
dainties for dinner abroad 2 This remark cannot be
supposed to apply to the visits which children make
to religious parents, and indeed it only applies to
those cases where the school is a conscientious school,
and the visit a trifling visit.
Among other subjects which engross a good share
of worldly conversation, one of the most attracting is
beauty. Many ladies have often a random way of
talking rapturously on the general importance of
beauty, who are yet prudent enough to be very un-
willing to let their own daughters find out they are
handsome. Perhaps the contrary course might be
safer. If the little listener were not constantly hear-
ing that beauty is the best gift, she would not be so
vain from fancying herself to be the best gifted. Be
less solicitous, therefore, to conceal from her a secret
which with all your watchfulness she will be sure to
find out, without your telling; but rather seek to
lower the general value of beauty in her estimation.
Use your daughter in all things to a different standard
from that of the world. It is not by vulgar people
and servants only that she will be told of her being
pretty. She will be hearing it not only from gay
ladies, but from grave men; she will be hearing it
from the whole world around her. The antidote to
the present danger is not now to be searched for; it
must be already operating; it must have been pro-
vided for in the foundation laid in the general prin-
ciple she had been imbibing, before this particular
temptation of beauty came in question. And this



DANGER OF WORLDLY MAXIMS, 75
general principle is an habitual indifference to flat-
tery. She must have learnt not to be intoxicated by
the praise of the world. She must have learnt to
estimate things by their intrinsic worth, rather than
by the world's estimation. Speak to her with par-
ticular kindness and commendation of plain but
amiable girls; mention with compassion such as are
handsome but ill educated; speak casually of some
who were once thought pretty, but have ceased to be
good; make use of the shortness and uncertainty of
beauty, as strong additional reasons for making that
which is little valuable in itself, still less valuable.
As it is a new idea which is always dangerous, you
may thus break the force of this danger by allowing
her an early introduction to this inevitable knowledge,
which would become more interesting, and of course
more perilous by every additional year: and if you
can guard against that fatal error of letting her see
that she is more loved on account of her beauty, her
familiarity with the idea may be less fatal than its
novelty afterwards would prove. 3.
But the great and constant danger to which young
persons in the higher walks of life are exposed, is the
prevailing turn and spirit of general conversation.
Even the children of better families, who are well in-
structed when at their studies, are yet at other times
continually beholding the world set up in the highest
and most advantageous point of view. Seeing the
world ! knowing the world! standing well with the
world ! making a figure in the world ! is spoken of
as including the whole sum and substance of human
advantages. They hear their education almost ex-
clusively alluded to with reference to the figure it
will enable them to make in the world. In almost
all companies, they hear all that the world admires
spoken of with admiration; rank flattered, fame co-



76 DANGER OF WORLDLY MAXIMS,
veted, power sought, beauty idolized, money con-
sidered as the one thing needful, and as the atoning
substitute for the want of all other things; profit held
up as the reward of virtue, and worldly estimation
as the just and highest prize of lawful ambition; and
after the very spirit of the world has been thus ha-
bitually infused into them all the week, one cannot
expect much effect from their being coldly told now
and then on Sundays, that they must not “love the
world, nor the things of the world.” To tell them
once in seven days that it is a sin to gratify an appe-
tite which you have been whetting and stimulating
the preceding six, is to require from them a power of
self-control, which our knowledge of the impetuosity
of the passions, especially in early age, should have
taught us is impossible. .
This is not the place to animadvert on the usual
misapplication of the phrase, “knowing the world;”
which term is commonly applied, in the way of pa-
negyric, to keen, designing, selfish, ambitious men,
who study mankind in order to turn it to their own
account. But in the true sense of the expression,
the sense which Christian parents would wish to im-
press on their children, to know the world, is to know
its emptiness, its vanity, its futility, and its wicked-
ness. To know it, is to despise it; and in this view,
an obscure Christian in a village may be said to
know the world better than a hoary courtier or wily
politician; for how can they be said to know it, who
go on to love it, to value it, to be led captive by its
allurements, to give their soul in exchange for its
lying promises 7
But while so false an estimate is often made in
fashionable society of the real value of things; that
is, while Christianity does not furnish the standard,
and human opinion does; while the multiplying our

DANGER OF WORLDLY MAX IMS, 77
desires is considered as asymptom of elegance, though
to subdue them is made the grand criterion of re-
ligion; while moderation is beheld as indicating a
poorness of spirit, though to that very poverty of
spirit the highest promise of the gospel is assigned ;
while worldly wisdom is enjoined by worldly friends,
in contradiction to that assertion, “that the wisdom
of the world is foolishness with God;” while the
praise of man is to be anxiously sought in opposition
to that assurance, that “the fear of man worketh a
snare;” while these things are so, and that they are
so in a good degree who will deny 1 may we not
venture to affirm that a Christian education, though
it be not an impossible, is yet a very difficult work?
CHAP. VI.
Filial Obedience not the Character of the Age.—A
Comparison with the preceding Age in this Respect.
—Those who cultivate the Mind advised to study
the Nature of the Soil-Unpromising Children
often make strong Characters.--Teachers too apt
to devote their Pains almost exclusively to Children
of Parts. .
AMoNG the real improvements of modern times, and
they are not a few, it is to be feared that the growth
of filial obedience cannot be included. Who can
forbear observing and regretting in a variety of in-
stances, that not only sons but daughters have adopted
something of that spirit of independence, and disdain
of control which characterise the times? And is it
not obvious that domestic manners are not slightly
tinctured with the hue of public principles? The
rights of man have been discussed, till we are some-




78 The BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT.
what wearied with the discussion. To these have
been opposed, with more presumption than pru-
dence, the rights of woman. It follows, according
to the natural progression of human things, that the
next stage of that irradiation which our enlighteners
are pouring in upon us will illuminate the world with
grave descants on the rights of children.
This revolutionary spirit in families suggests the
remark, that among the faults with which it has been
too much the fashion of recent times to load the me-
mory of the incomparable Milton, one of the charges
brought against his private character (for with his
political character we have here nothing to do) has
been, that he was so severe a father as to have com-
pelled his daughters, after he was blind, to read aloud
to him, for his sole pleasure, Greek and Latin au-
thors of which they did not understand a word. But
this is in fact nothing more than an instance of the
strict domestic regulations of the age in which Milton
lived; and should not be brought forward as a proof
of the severity of his individual temper. Nor indeed
in any case should it ever be considered as a hard-
ship for an affectionate child to amuse an afflicted
parent, even though it should be attended with a
heavier sacrifice of her own pleasure than in the pre-
sent instance *.
Is the author then inculcating the harsh doctrine
* In spite of this too prevailing spirit, and at a time when, by an
inverted state of society, sacrifices of ease and pleasure are rather
exacted by children from parents, than required by parents from
children, numberless instances might be adduced of filial affection
º honourable to the present period. And the author, records
with pleasure, that she has seen amiable young ladies of high rank
conducting the steps of a blind but illustrious parent with true filial
fondness; and has often contemplated, in another family, the inte-
resting attentions of daughters who were both hands and eyes to
an infirm and nearly blind father. It is but justice to add, that
these examples are not taken from that middle rank of life which
Milton filled, but from the daughters of the highest officers in the
State. *

THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT. 79
of parental austerity ? By no means. It drives the
gentle spirit to artifice, and the rugged to despair.
It generates deceit and cunning, the most hopeless
and hateful in the whole catalogue of female failings.
Ungoverned anger in the teacher, and inability to
discriminate between venial errors and premeditated
offence, though they may lead a timid creature to
hide wrong tempers, or to conceal bad actions, will
not help her to subdue the one or correct the other.
Severity will drive terrified children to seek, not for
reformation, but for impunity. A readiness to for-
give them promotes frankness. And we should,
above all things, encourage them to be frank, in
order to come at their faults. They have not more
faults for being open, they only discover more.
Discipline, however, is not cruelty, and restraint
is not severity. We must strengthen the feeble, while
we repel the bold. We cannot educate by a receipt;
for after studying the best rules, and after digesting
them into a system, much must depend on contingent
circumstances. The cultivator of the human mind
must, like the gardener, study diversities of soil, or
he may plant diligently and water faithfully with
little fruit. The skilful labourer knows that even
where the surface is not particularly promising, there
is often a rough strong ground which will amply re-
pay the trouble of breaking it up; yet we are often
most taken with a soft surface, though it conceal a
shallow depth, because it promises present reward
and little trouble. But strong and pertinacious tem-
pers, of which perhaps obstinacy is the leading vice,
under skilful management often turn out steady and
sterling characters; while from softer clay a firm and
vigorous virtue is but seldom produced.
But these revolutions in character cannot be effect-
ed by mere education. Plutarch has observed that


80 THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT.
the medical science would never be brought to per-
fection till poisons should be converted into physic.
What our late improvers in natural science have
done in the medical world, by converting the most
deadly ingredients into instruments of life and health,
Christianity with a sort of divine alchymy has effected
in the moral world, by that transmutation which
makes those passions which have been working for
sin become active in the cause of religion. The vio-
lent temper of Saul of Tarsus, which was “exceed-
ingly mad” against the saints of God, did God see
fit to convert into that burning zeal which enabled
Paul the apostle to labour so unremittingly for the
conversion of the Gentile world. Christianity indeed
does not so much give us new affections or faculties,
as give a new direction to those we already have.
She changes that sorrow of the world which worketh
death, into “godly sorrow which worketh repentance.”
She changes our anger against the persons we dislike
into hatred of their sins. “The fear of man which
worketh a snare,” she transmutes into “that fear of
God which worketh salvation.” That religion does
not extinguish the passions, but alters their object,
the animated expressions of the fervid apostle con-
firm—“Yea, what fearfulness; yea, what clearing
of yourselves; yea, what indignation; yea, what fear;
yea, what vehement desire; yea, what zeal; yea,
what revenge”!”
Thus, by some of the most troublesome passions
of our nature being converted by the blessing of God
on a religious education to the side of virtue, a double
purpose is effected. Because, if I may be allowed
to change the metaphor, it is the character of the
passions never to observe a neutrality. If they are
no longer rebels, they become auxiliaries; and a foe
-- * 2 Corinthians, vii. 11.

THE BENEFITS OF RESTRA INT. 81
subdued is an ally obtained. And it is the effect of
religion on the passions, that when she seizes the
enemy's garrison, she does not content herself with
defeating its future mischiefs, she does not destroy
the works, she does not burn the arsenal and spike
the cannon; but the artillery she seizes, she turns to
her own use; she attacks in her turn, and plants its
whole force against the enemy from whom she has
taken it. -
But while I would deprecate harshness, I would
enforce discipline; and that not merely on the ground
of religion, but of happiness also. One reason, not
seldom brought forward by tender but mistaken mo-
thers as an apology for their unbounded indulgence,
especially to weakly children, is, that they probably
will not live to enjoy the world when grown up, and
that therefore they would not abridge the little plea-
sure they may enjoy at present. But a slight degree
of observation would prove that this is an error in
judgment as well as in principle. For, omitting any
considerations respecting their future welfare, and
entering only into their immediate interests; it is an
indisputable fact that children who know no control,
whose faults encounter no contradiction, and whose
humours experience constant indulgence, grow more
irritable and capricious, invent wants, create desires,
lose all relish for the pleasures which they know they
may reckon upon; and become perhaps more mi-
serable than even those unfortunate children who
labour under the more obvious and more commise-
rated misfortune of suffering under the tyranny of
unkind parents.
An early habitual restraint is peculiarly important
to the future character and happiness of women. A
judicious, unrelaxing, but steady and gentle curb on
their tempers and passions can alone ensure their


E 2
82 THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAIN F.
peace and establish their principles. It is a habit
which cannot be adopted too soon, nor persisted in
too pertinaciously. They should when very young
be inured to contradiction. Instead of hearing their
bon-mots treasured up, and repeated to the guests, till
they begin to think it dull when they themselves are
not the little heroine of the theme, they should be
accustomed to receive but little praise for their vi-
vacity or their wit, though they should receive just
commendation for their patience, their industry, their
humility, and other qualities which have more worth
than splendour. They should be led to distrust their
own judgment; they should learn not to murmur at
expostulation; but should be accustomed to expect
and to endure opposition. It is a lesson with which
the world will not fail to furnish them; and they
will not practise it the worse for having learnt it the
sooner. It is of the last importance to their happi-
ness even in this life that they should early acquire
a submissive temper and a forbearing spirit. They
must even endure to be thought wrong sometimes,
when they cannot but feel they are right. And while
they should be anxiously aspiring to do well, they
must not expect always to obtain the praise of having
done so. But while a gentle demeanour is inculcated,
let them not be instructed to practise gentleness
merely on the low ground of its being decorous, and
feminine, and pleasing, and calculated to attract hu-
man favour; but let them be carefully taught to cul-
tivate it on the high principle of obedience to Christ;
on the practical ground of labouring after conformity
to HIM, who, when he proposed himself as a perfect
pattern of imitation, did not say, Learn of me, for I
am great, or wise, or mighty, but “Learn of me, for
I am meek and lowly:” and graciously promised
that the reward should accompany the practice, by

THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT. 83
encouragingly adding, “ and ye shall find rest to
your souls.” Do not teach them humility on the
ordinary ground that vanity is unamiable, and that
no one will love them if they are proud; for that will
only go to correct the exterior, and make them soft
and smiling hypocrites. But inform them, that
“God resisteth the proud,” while “them that are
meek he shall guide in judgment, and such as are
gentle, them shall he teach his way.” In these, as
in all other cases, an habitual attention to the motives
should be carefully substituted in their young hearts,
in the place of too much anxiety about the event of
actions. Principles, aims, and intentions should be
invariably insisted on, as the only true ground of
right practice, and they should be carefully guarded
against too much solicitude for that human praise
which attaches to appearances as much as to realities,
to success more than to desert.
Let me repeat, that it will be of vast importance
not to let slip the earliest occasions of working gentle
manners into a habit on their only true foundation,
Christian meekness. For this purpose I would again
urge your calling in the example of our Redeemer in
aid of his precepts. Endeavour to make your pupil
feel that all the wonders exhibited in his life do not
so overwhelm the awakened heart with rapture, love,
and astonishment, as the perpetual instances of his
humility and meekness. Stupendous miracles, exer-
cises of infinite power prompted by infinite mercy,
are actions which we should naturally enough con-
ceive as growing out of the divine perfections: but
silence under cruel mockings, patience under re-
proach, gentleness of demeanour under unparalleled
injuries; these are perfections of which unassisted
nature not only has no conception in a Divine Being,
but at which it would revolt, had not the reality beeſ,

84 THE BENEFITS OF RESTRA IN T.
exemplified by our perfect pattern. Healing the
sick, feeding the multitude, restoring the blind,
raising the dead, are deeds of which we could form
some adequate idea, as necessarily flowing from
Almighty goodness: but to wash his disciples' feet,
—to preach the gospel to the poor, to renounce not
only ease, for that heroes have done on human mo-
tives, but to renounce praise, to forgive his perse-
cutors, to love his enemies, to pray for his murderers
with his last breath ;-these are things which, while
they compel us to cry out with the centurion, “Truly
this was the Son of God,” should remind us also,
that they are not only adorable but imitable parts of
his character. These are perfections which we are
not barely to contemplate with holy awe and distant
admiration, as if they were restricted to the divine
nature of our Redeemer; but we must consider them
as suited to the human nature also, which he conde-
scended to participate; in contemplating, we must
imitate; in admiring, we must practise; and in our
measure and degree go and do likewise. Elevate
your thoughts for one moment to this standard (and
never allow yourself to be contented with a lower),
and then go, if you can, and teach your children to
be mild, and soft, and gentle on worldly grounds, on
human motives, and as an external attraction.
— There is a custom among teachers, which is not
the more right for being common; they are apt to
bestow an undue proportion of pains on children of
the best capacity, as if only geniuses were worthy of
attention. They should reflect that in moderate ta-
lents, carefully cultivated, we are perhaps to look for
the chief happiness and virtue of society. If super-
lative genius had been generally necessary, its ex-
istence would not have been so rare; for Omnipotence
could easily have made those talents common which

THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT, 85
we now consider as extraordinary, had they been
necessary to the perfection of his plan. Besides,
while we are conscientiously instructing children of
moderate capacity, it is a comfort to reflect, that if
no labour will raise them to a high degree in the
scale of intellectual excellence, yet they may be led on
to perfection in that road in which “a wayfaring man,
though simple, shall not err.” And when a mother
feels disposed to repine that her family is not likely
to exhibit a groupe of future wits and growing beau-
ties, let her console herself by looking abroad into the
world, where she will quickly perceive that the mo-
nopoly of happiness is not engrossed by beauty, nor
that of virtue by genius.
Perhaps mediocrity of parts was decreed to be the
ordinary lot, by way of furnishing a stimulus to in-
dustry, and strengthening the motives to virtuous ap-
plication. For is it not obvious that moderate abilities,
carefully carried to that measure of perfection of which
they are capable, often enable their possessors to out-
strip, in the race of knowledge and of usefulness, their
more brilliant but less persevering competitors? It is
with mental endowments, as with other rich gifts of
Providence; the inhabitant of the luxuriant southern
clime, where Nature has done every thing in the way
of vegetation, indolently lays hold on this very fertility
as a plea for doing nothing himself; so that the soil
which teems with such encouraging abundance leaves


the favoured possessor idle; while the native of the

less genial region, supplying by his labours the defi-
ciencies of his lot, overtakes his more favoured com-
petitor; by substituting industry for opulence, he
improves the riches of his native land beyond that
which is blessed with warmer suns, and thus vindi-
cates Providence from the charge of partial distribu-


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86 THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT.
A girl who has docility will seldom be found to
want understanding sufficient for all the purposes of
a useful, a happy, and a pious life. And it is as wrong
for parents to set out with too sanguine a dependence
on the figure their children are to make in life, as it
is unreasonable to be discouraged at every disappoint-
ment. Want of success is so far from furnishing a
motive for relaxing their energy, that it is a reason for
redoubling it. Let them suspect their own plans,
and reform them; let them distrust their own prin-
ciples, and correct them. The generality of parents
do too little; some do much, and miss their reward,
because they look not to any strength beyond their
own : after much is done, much will remain undone;
for the entire regulation of the heart and affections is
not the work of education alone, but the operation of
divine grace. Will it be accounted enthusiasm to
suggest, “that the fervent effectual prayer of a right-
eous parent availeth much 7" and perhaps the reason
why so many anxious mothers fail of success is, be-
cause they repose with confidence in their own skill
and labour, without looking to HIM without whose
blessing they do but labour in vain.
On the other hand, is it not to be feared that some
pious parents have fallen into an error of an opposite
kind? From a full conviction that human endeavours
are vain, and that it is God alone who can change the
heart, they are earnest in their prayers, but not so
earnest in their endeavours. Such parents should be
reminded, that if they do not add their exertions to
their prayers, their children are not likely to be more
benefited than the children of those who do not add
their prayers to their exertions. What God has joined,
let no man presume to separate. It is the work of
God, we readily acknowledge, to implant religion in
the heart, and to maintain it there as a ruling prin-
*
*
!
:
:

THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT. 87
ciple of conduct. And is it not the same God which
causes the corn to grow? Are not our natural lives
constantly preserved by his power? Who will deny
that in him we live, and move, and have our being !
But how are these works of God carried on ? By
means which he has appointed. By the labour of
the husbandman the corn is made to grow : by food
the body is sustained : and by religious instruction
God is pleased to work upon the human heart. As
far as we see of the ways of God, all his works are
carried on by means. It becomes therefore our duty
to use the means, and trust in God; to remember that
God will not work without the means; and that the
means can effect nothing without his blessing. “Paul
may plant and Apollos water, but it is God, must
give the increase.” But to what does he give the in-
crease? To the exertions of Paul and Apollos. It is
never said, because God only can give the increase,
that Paul and Apollos may spare their labour.
It is one grand object to give the young proba-
tioner just and sober views of the world on which she
is about to enter. Instead of making her bosom
bound at the near prospect of emancipation from her
instructors; instead of teaching her young heart to
dance with premature flutterings as the critical winter
draws near in which she is to come out ; instead of
raising a tumult in her busy imagination at the ap-
proach of her first grown up ball; endeavour to con-
vince her, that the world will not turn out to be that
scene of unvarying and never ending delights which
she has perhaps been led to expect, not only from the
sanguine temper and warm spirits natural to youth,
but from the value she has seen put on those showy
accomplishments which have too probably been fitting
her for her exhibition in life. Teach her that this


88 THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT.
world is not a stage for the display of superficial or
even of shining talents, but for the strict and sober
exercise of fortitude, temperance, meekness, faith, di-
ligence, and self-denial; of her due performance of
which Christian graces, angels will be spectators, and
God the judge. Teach her that human life is not a
splendid romance, spangled over with brilliant ad-
ventures, and enriched with extraordinary occurrences,
and diversified with wonderful incidents ; lead her
not to expect that it will abound with scenes which
will call shining qualities and great powers into per-
petual action; and for which if she acquit herself
well she will be rewarded with proportionate fame and
certain commendation. But apprize her that human
life is a true history, many passages of which will be
dull, obscure, and uninteresting; some perhaps tra-
gical; but that whatever gay incidents and pleasing
scenes may be interspersed in the progress of the
piece, yet finally “one event happeneth to all;” to
all there is one awful and infallible catastrophe. Ap-
prize her that the estimation which mankind forms of
merit is not always just, nor is its praise exactly pro-
portioned to desert; that the world weighs actions in
far different scales from “the balance of the sanc-
tuary,” and estimates worth by a far different standard
from that of the gospel; apprize her that while her
purest intentions may be sometimes calumniated, and
her best actions misrepresented, she will be liable to
receive commendation on occasions wherein her con-
science will tell her she has not deserved it; and may
be extolled by others for actions for which, if she be
honest, she may condemn herself.
Do not however give her a gloomy and discou-
raging picture of the world, but rather seek to give
her a just and sober view of the part she will have to


THE BENEFITS OF RESTRAINT. 80
act in it. And humble the impetuosity of hope, and
cool the ardour of expectation, by explaining to her,
that this part, even her best estate, will probably con-
sist in a succession of petty trials, and a round of
quiet duties which, however well performed, though
they will make little or no figure in the book of
fame, will prove of vast importance to her in that
day when another “book is opened, and the judg-
ment is set, and every one will be judged according
to the deeds done in the body, whether they be good
or bad.”
Say not that these just and sober views will cruelly
wither her young hopes, and deaden the innocent
atisfactions of life. It is not true. There is, hap-
pily, an active spring in the mind of youth which
bounds with fresh vigour and uninjured elasticity
from any such temporary depression. It is not
meant that you should darken her prospect, so much
as that you should enlighten her understanding to
contemplate it. And though her feelings, tastes,
and passions, will all be against you, if you set be-
fore her a faithful delineation of life, yet it will be
something to get her judgment on your side. It is
no unkind office to assist the short view of youth
with the aids of long-sighted experience, to enable
them to discover spots in the brightness of that life
which dazzles them in prospect, though it is probable
they will after all choose to believe their own eyes
rather than the offered glass.
:














90
CHAP. VII.
On Female Study, and Initiation into Knowledge.—
Error of cultivating the Imagination to the Neg-
lect of the Judgment.—Books of Reasoning recom-
mended.
As this little work by no means assumes the cha-
racter of a general scheme of education, the author
has purposely avoided expatiating largely on any
kind of instruction ; but so far as it is connected,
either immediately or remotely, with objects of a
moral or religious nature. Of course she has been
so far from thinking it necessary to enter into the
enumeration of those books which are used in gene-
ral instruction, that she has purposely forborne to
mention any. With such books the rising generation
is far more copiously and ably furnished than any pre-
ceding period has been ; and out of an excellent va-
riety the judicious instructor can hardly fail to make
such a selection as shall be beneficial to the pupil.
But while due praise ought not to be withheld
from the improved methods of communicating the
elements of general knowledge; yet is there not
some danger that our very advantages may lead us
into error, by causing us to repose so confidently on
the multiplied helps which facilitate the entrance
into learning, as to render our pupils superficial
through the very facility of acquirement? Where so
much is done for them, may they not be led to do
too little for themselves? and besides that exertion
may slacken for want of a spur, may there not be a
moral disadvantage in possessing them with the no-
tion that learning may be acquired without diligence
and without labour? Sound education never can be
made a “primrose path of dalliance.” Do what we



oN FEMALE STUDY. 91
will, we cannot cheat children into learning, or play
them into knowledge, according to the smoothness of
the modern creed, and the indolence of modern ha-
bits. There is no idle way to any acquisitions which
really deserve the name. And as Euclid, in order to
repress the impetuous vanity of greatness, told his
sovereign that there was no royal way to geometry,
so the fond mother may be assured that there is no
short cut to any other kind of learning. The tree of
knowledge, as a punishment, perhaps, for its having
been at first unfairly tasted, cannot now be climbed
without difficulty; and this very circumstance serves
afterwards to furnish not only literary pleasures, but
moral advantages: for the knowledge which is ac-
quired by unwearied assiduity is lasting in the pos-
session, and sweet to the possessor; both perhaps in
proportion to the cost and labour of the acquisition.
And though an able teacher ought to endeavour, by
improving the communicating faculty in himself, (for
many know what they cannot teach,) to soften every
difficulty; yet in spite of the kindness and ability
with which he will smooth every obstruction, it is
probably among the wise institutions of Providence
that great difficulties should still remain. For edu-
cation is but an initiation into that life of trial to
hich we are introduced on our entrance into this
orld. It is the first breaking in to that state of toil
nd labour to which we are born, and to which sin has
ade us liable; and in this view of the subject the
aborious acquisition of learning may be converted
o higher uses than such as are purely literary.
Will it not be ascribed to a captious singularity, if
venture to remark that real knowledge and real
iety, though they may have gained in many in-
tances, have suffered in others from that profusion
f little, amusing, sentimental books with which the



















92 ON FEMA LE STUDY.
youthful library overflows 7 Abundance has its dan-
gers as well as scarcity. In the first place may not
the multiplicity of these alluring little works increase
the natural reluctance to those more dry and uninte-
resting studies, of which, after all, the rudiments of
every part of learning must consist? And, secondly,
is there not some danger (though there are many ho-
nourable exceptions) that some of those engaging
narratives may serve to infuse into the youthful heart
a sort of spurious goodness, a confidence of virtue, a
parade of charity ? And that the benevolent actions
with the recital of which they abound, when they are
not made to flow from any source but feeling, may
tend to inspire a self-complacency, a self-gratulation,
a “stand by, for I am holier than thou?” May they
not help to suggest a false standard of morals, to
infuse a love of popularity and an anxiety for praise,
in the place of that simple and unostentatious rule of
doing whatever good we do, because it is the will of
God? The universal substitution of this principle
would tend to purify the worldly morality of many a
popular little story. And there are few dangers
which good parents will more carefully guard against
than that of giving their children a mere political
piety; that sort of religion which just goes to make
people more respectable, and to stand well with the
world; a religion which is to save appearances with-
out inculcating realities, a religion which affects to
“preach peace and goodwill to men.” but which for-
gets to give “glory to God on high *.”
* An ingenious (and in many respects useful) French Treatise on
Education, has too much encouraged this political piety; by con-
sidering religion as a thing of human convention, rather than of
divine institution ; as a thing creditable, rather than commanded:
by erecting the doctrine of expediency in the place of Christian
simplicity; and wearing away the spirit of truth, by the substitu-


tion of occasional deceit, equivocation, subterfuge, and mental re-
servation. z
ON FEMA LE STUDY. 93
There is a certain precocity of mind which is much
helped on by these superficial modes of instruction ;
for frivolous reading will produce its correspondent
effect, in much less time than books of solid instruc-
tion; the imagination being liable to be worked
upon, and the feelings to be set a going, much faster
than the understanding can be opened and the judg-
ment enlightened. A talent for conversation should
be the result of education, not its precursor; it is a
golden fruit when suffered to ripen gradually on the
tree of knowledge; but if forced in the hot-bed of a
circulating library, it will turn out worthless and
vapid in proportion as it was artificial and premature.
Girls who have been accustomed to devour frivolous
books, will converse and write with a far greater ap-
pearance of skill as to style and sentiment at twelve
or fourteen years old, than those of a more advanced
age who are under the discipline of severer studies;
but the former having early attained to that low
tandard which had been held out to them, become
ationary; while the latter, quietly progressive, are
passing through just gradations to a higher strain of
ind; and those who early begin with talking and
riting like women, commonly end with thinking
'd acting like children. -
The irregular fancy of women is not sufficiently
bdued by early application, nor tamed by labour,
ind the kind of knowledge they commonly do acquire
easily attained: and being chiefly an acquisition
the memory, something which is given them to get
by themselves, and not grounded in their minds
comment and conversation, it is easily lost. The
perficial question-and-answer way, for instance, in
hich they often learn history, furnishes the mind
ith little to lean on: the events being detached and
parated, the actions having no links to unite them
t





















94 ON FEMALE STUDY.
with each other, the characters not being interweaved
by mutual relation, the chronology being reduced to
disconnected dates, instead of presenting an unbroken
series; of course, neither events, actions, characters,
nor chronology, fasten themselves on the understand-
ing, but rather float in the memory than contribute
to form the mind of the reader, or enrich his judg-
ment in the important science of men and manners.
The swarms of Abridgments, Beauties, and Com-
pendiums, which form too considerable a part of a
young lady's library, may be considered in many in-
stances as an infallible receipt for making a super-
ficial mind. The names of the renowned characters
in history thus become familiar in the mouths of
those who can neither attach to the ideas of the person,
the series of his actions, nor the peculiarities of his
character. A few fine passages from the poets (pas-
sages perhaps which derived their chief beauty from
their position and connexion) are huddled together
by some extract maker, whose brief and disconnected
patches of broken and discordant materials, while
they inflame young readers with the vanity of recit-
ing, neither fill the mind nor form the taste: and it is
not difficult to trace back to their shallow sources the
hackneyed quotations of certain accomplished young
ladies, who will be frequently found not to have
come legitimately by any thing they know: I mean,
not to have drawn it from its true spring, the original
works of the author from which some beauty-monger
has severed it. Human inconsistency in this, as in
other cases, wants to combine two irreconcilable
things; it strives to unite the reputation of know-
ledge with the pleasures of idleness, forgetting that
nothing that is valuable can be obtained without sa-
crifices, and that if we would purchase knowledge,
we must pay for it the fair and lawful price of time


ON FEMALE STUDY. 95
and industry. For this extract-reading, while it ac-
commodates itself to the convenience, illustrates the
character of the age in which we live. The appetite
for pleasure, and that love of ease and indolenee
which is generated by it, leave little time or taste for
sound improvement; while the vanity, which is
equally a characteristic of the existing period, puts
in its claim also for indulgence, and contrives to
igure away by these little snatches of reading, caught
n the short intervals of successive amusements.
Besides, the taste, thus pampered with delicious
morsels, is early vitiated. The young reader of these
lustered beauties conceives a disrelish for every
hing which is plain, and grows impatient if obliged
o get through those equally necessary though less
howy parts of a work, in which perhaps the author
gives the best proof of his judgment by keeping under
hat occasional brilliancy and incidental ornament,
of which these superficial students are in constant
pursuit. In all well written books, there is much
hat is good which is not dazzling; and these shallow
ritics should be taught, that it is for the embellish-
ent of the more tame and uninteresting parts of
s work, that the judicious poet commonly reserves
ose flowers, whose beauty is defaced when they
e º: from the garland into which he had so
ilfully woven them.
The remark, however, as far as it relates to abridg-
ents, is by no means of general application; there
e many valuable works which from their bulk would
almost inaccessible to a great number of readers,
ld a considerable part of which may not be gene-
lly useful. Even in the best written books there is
en superfluous matter; authors are apt to get en-
noured of their subject, and to dwell too long on it:
ery person cannot find time to read a long work





















96 ON FEMALE STUDY.
on any subject, and yet it may be well for them to
know something on almost every subject; those,
therefore, who abridge voluminous works judiciously,
render service to the community. But there seems,
if I may venture the remark, to be a mistake in the
use of abridgments. They are put systematically
into the hands of youth, who have, or ought to have,
leisure for the works at large; while abridgments
seem more immediately calculated for persons in
more advanced life, who wish to recall something
they had forgotten; who want to restore old ideas
rather than acquire new ones; or they are useful for
ersons immersed in the business of the world, who
ave little leisure for voluminous reading. They are
excellent to refresh the mind, but not competent to
form it.
Perhaps there is some analogy between the mental
and bodily conformation of women. The instructor
therefore should imitate the physician. If the latter
prescribe bracing medicines for a body of which de-
licacy is the disease, the former would do well to
prohibit relaxing reading for a mind which is already
of too soft a texture, and should strengthen its feeble
tone by invigorating reading.
By softness, I cannot be supposed to mean imbe-
cility of understanding, but natural softness of heart,
and pliancy of temper, together with that indolence
of spirit which is fostered by indulging in seducing
books, and in the general habits of fashionable life.
I mean not here to recommend books which are
immediately religious, but such as exercise the rea-
soning faculties, teach the mind to get acquainted
with its own nature, and to stir up its own powers.
Let not a timid young lady start if I should venture
to recommend to her, after a proper course of pre-
paration, to swallow and digest such strong meat as

ON FEMALE STUDY. 97.
Watts's or Duncan's little book of Logic, some parts
of Mr. Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding,
and Bishop Butler's Analogy. Where there is leisure,
and capacity, and an able friend to comment and to
counsel, works of this nature might be profitably
substituted in the place of so much English Senti-
ment, French Philosophy, Italian Love Songs, and
fantastic German imagery and magic wonders.
While such enervating or absurd books sadly dis-
qualify the reader for solid pursuit or vigorous think-
ng, the studies here recommended would act upon
he constitution of the mind as a kind of alterative,
nd, if I may be allowed the expression, would help
o brace the intellectual stamina. .
This is however by no means intended to exclude
works of taste and imagination, which must always
make the ornamental part, and of course a very con-
iderable part, of female studies. . It is only sug-
gested, that they should not form them entirely and
exclusively. For what is called dry tough reading,
independent of the knowledge it conveys, is useful
as a habit, and wholesome as an exercise. Serious
tudy serves to harden the mind for more trying con-
flicts; it lifts the reader from sensation to intellect;
t abstracts her from the world and its vanities; it
ixes a wandering spirit, and fortifies a weak one; it
divorces her from matter; it corrects that spirit of
rifling which she naturally contracts from the frivo-
ous turn of female conversation, and the petty na-
ſure of female employments; it concentrates her
tention, assists her in a habit of excluding trivial
oughts, and thus even helps to qualify her for re-
ious pursuits. Yes, I repeat it, there is to woman
Christian use to be made of sober studies; while
books of an opposite cast, however unexceptionable
ey may be sometimes found in point of expression,
F
























98 ON FEMALE STUDY.
however free from evil in its more gross and palpable
shapes, yet from their very nature and constitution
they excite a spirit of relaxation, by exhibiting scenes
and suggesting ideas which soften the mind and set
the fancy at work; they take off restraint, diminish
sober-mindedness, impair the general powers of re-
sistance, and at best feed habits of improper indul-
gence, and nourish a vain and visionary indolence,
which lays the mind open to error and the heart to
seduction.
Women are little accustomed to close reasoning
on any subject; still less do they inure their minds
to consider particular parts of a subject; they are
not habituated to turn a truth round, and view it in
all its varied aspects and positions; and this perhaps
is one cause (as will be observed in another” place)
of the too great confidence they are disposed to place
in their own opinions. Though their imagination is
already too lively, and their judgment naturally in-
correct; in educating them we go on to stimulate the
imagination, while we neglect the regulation of the
judgment. They already want ballast, and we make
their education consist in continually crowding more
sail than they can carry. Their intellectual powers
being so little strengthened by exercise, makes every
little business appear a hardship to them : whereas
serious study would be useful, were it only that it
leads the mind to the habit of conquering difficulties.
But it is peculiarly hard to turn at once from the
indolent repose of light reading, from the concerns of
mere animal life, the objects of sense, or the frivolous-
ness of chit chat; it is peculiarly hard, I say, to a
mind so softened, to rescue itself from the dominion
of self-indulgence, to resume its powers, to call home
its scattered strength, to shut out every foreign intru-
* Chapter on Conversation.

ON FEMALE STUDY. 99
sion, to force back a spring so unnaturally bent, and
to devote itself to religious reading, to active business,
to sober reflection, to self-examination: whereas to
an intellect accustomed to think at all, the difficulty
of thinking seriously is obviously lessened.
Far be it from me to desire to make scholastic
ladies or female dialecticians; but there is little fear
that the kind of books here recommended, if tho-
roughly studied, and not superficially skimmed, will
make them pedants or induce conceit; for by show-
ing them the possible powers of the human mind,
you will bring them to see the littleness of their own;
and to get acquainted with the mind, and to regulate
and inform it, and to show it its own ignorance, does
not seem the way to puff it up. But let her who is
disposed to be elated with her literary acquisitions,
check her vanity by calling to mind the just remark
of Swift, “that after all her boasted acquirements, a
woman will, generally speaking, be found to possess
. ºf what is called learning than a common school-
ov.”
Neither is there any fear that this sort of reading
will convert ladies into authors. The direct contrary
effect will be likely to be produced by the perusal of
writers who throw the generality of readers at such
an unapproachable distance as to check presump-
tion, instead of exciting it. Who are those ever
multiplying authors, that with unparalleled fecundity
are overstocking the world with their quick-succeed-
ing progeny? They are Novel writers; the easi-
ness of whose productions is at once the cause of
their own fruitfulness, and of the almost infinitely
numerous race of imitators to whom they give birth.
Such is the frightful facility of this species of com-
position, that every raw girl, while she reads, is
tempted to fancy that she can also write. And as

100 ON FEMALE STUDY.
Alexander, on perusing the Iliad, found by conge-
nial sympathy the image of Achilles stamped on his
own ardent soul, and felt himself the hero he was
studying; and as Corregio, on first beholding a pic-
ture which exhibited the perfection of the graphic
art, prophetically felt all his own future greatness,
and cried out in rapture, “And I too am a painter!”
so a thorough-paced novel-reading Miss, at the close
of every tissue of hackneyed adventures, feels within
herself the stirring impulse of corresponding genius,
and triumphantly exclaims, “And I too am an au-
thorl." The glutted imagination soon overflows with
the redundance of cheap sentiment and plentiful in-
cident, and by a sort of arithmetical proportion, is
enabled by the perusal of any three novels, to pro-
duce a fourth ; till every fresh production, like the
progeny of Banquo, is followed by &
Another, and another, and another
Is a lady, however destitute of talents, education, or
knowledge of the world, whose studies have been
completed by a circulating library, in any distress of
mind? the writing a novel suggests itself as the best
soother of her sorrows! Does she labour under any
depression of circumstances? writing a novel occurs
as the readiest receipt for mending them And she
solaces her imagination with the conviction that the
subscription which has been extorted by her impor-
tunity, or given to her necessities, has been offered
as a homage to her genius. And this confidence
instantly levies a fresh contribution for a succeeding
work. Capacity and cultivation are so little taken
into the account, that writing a book seems to be
now considered as the only sure resource which the
idle and the illiterate have always in their power.
* . .”
º
*
#
May the Author be indulged in a short digression
º2.
:



ON FEMALE STUDY. 101
while she remarks, though rather out of its place,
that the corruption occasioned by these books has
spread so wide, and descended so low, as to have
become one of the most universal as well as most
pernicious sources of corruption among us. Not
only among milliners, mantua-makers, and other
trades where numbers work together, the labour of
one girl is frequently sacrificed that she may be
spared to read those mischievous books to the others;
but she has been assured by clergymen who have
witnessed the fact, that they are procured and
greedily read in the wards of our hospitals l an awful
hint, that those who teach the poor to read, should
not only take care to furnish them with principles
which will lead them to abhor corrupt books, but
that they should also furnish them with such books
as shall strengthen and confirm their principles”.
And let every Christian remember, that there is no
other way of entering truly into the spirit of that di-
vine prayer, which petitions that the name of God
may be “hallowed,” that “his kingdom (of grace)
may come,” and that “his will may be done on
earth as it is in heaven,” than by each individual
contributing according to his measure to accomplish
the work for which he prays; for to pray that these
great objects may be promoted, without contributing
to their promotion by our exertions, our money, and
our influence, is a palpable inconsistency.
* The above facts furnish no argument on the side of those who
would keep the poor in ignorance. Those who cannot read can
hear, and are likely to hear to worse purpose than those who have
been better taught. And that ignorance furnishes no security for
integrity either in morals or politics, the late revolts in more than
ºne country, remarkable, for the ignorance of the poor, fully il-
lustrate. It is earnestly, hoped that the above facts may tend to
impress ladies with the importance of superintending the instruc-
tion of the poor, and of making it an indispensable part of their
charity to give them moral and religious books,

102
CHAP. VIII.
On the religious and moral Use of History and
Geography.
But while every sort of useful knowledge should be
carefully imparted to young persons, it should be
imparted not merely for its own sake, but also for
the sake of its subserviency to higher things. All
human learning should be taught, not as an end, but
a means; and in this view even a lesson of history
or geography may be converted into a lesson of re-
ligion. In the study of history, the instructor will
accustom the pupil not merely to store her memory
with facts and anecdotes, and to ascertain dates and
epochas; but she will accustom her also to trace
effects to their causes, to examine the secret springs
of action, and accurately to observe the operation of
the passions. It is only meant to notice here some
few of the moral benefits which may be derived from
a judicious perusal of history; and from among other
points of instruction, I select the following:
The study of history may serve to give a clearer
insight into the corruption of human nature:
It may show the plan of Providence in the direc-
tion of events, and in the use of unworthy instru-
ments:
It may assist in the vindication of Providence, in
the common failure of virtue and the success of vice:
It may lead to a distrust of our own judgment:
It may contribute to our improvement in self-
knowledge.
But to prove to the pupil the important doctrine
of human corruption from the study of history, will
require a truly Christian commentator; for, from the
low standard of right established by the generality



ON THE RELIGIOUS USE OF HISTORY. 103

of historians, who erect so many persons into good
characters who fall short of the true idea of Christian
virtue, the unassisted reader will be liable to form
very imperfect views of what is real goodness; and
will conclude, as his author sometimes does, that the
true idea of human nature is to be taken from the
medium between his best and his worst characters;
without acquiring a just notion of that prevalence of
evil, which, in spite of those few brighter luminaries
that here and there just serve to gild the gloom of
history, tends abundantly to establish the doctrine.
It will indeed be continually establishing itself by
those who, in perusing the history of mankind, care-
fully mark the rise and progress of sin, from the first
timid irruption of an evil thought, to the fearless ac-
complishment of the abhorred crime in which that
thought has ended: from the indignant question,
“Is thy servant a dog that he should do this great
thing **", to the perpetration of that very enormity
of which he could not endure the slightest suggestion.
In this connexion may it not be observed, that
young persons should be put on their guard against
a too implicit belief in the flattering accounts which
some voyage-writers are fond of exhibiting of the
virtue, amiableness, and benignity of some of the
countries newly discovered by our circumnavigators,
the superior goodness ascribed to the Hindoos, and
particularly the account of the inhabitants of the
Pellew Islands? These last indeed have been almost
represented as having escaped the universal taint of
our common nature, and would seem by their purity
to have sprung from another ancestor than Adam.
One cannot forbear suspecting that these pleasing
but somewhat overcharged portraits of man, in his
natural state, are drawn with the invidious design,
* 2 Kings, viii. 13.






104 ON THE RELIGIOUS
by counteracting the doctrine of human corruption,
to degrade the value and even destroy the necessity
of the Christian religion. That in countries profess-
ing Christianity, very many are not Christians will
be too readily granted. Yet, to say nothing of the
vast superiority of goodness in the lives of those who
are really governed by Christianity, is there not
something even in her reflex light which guides to
greater purity many of those who do not profess to
walk by it? I doubt much, if numbers of the unbe-
lievers of a Christian country, from the sounder views
and better habits derived incidentally and collate-
rally, as it were, from the influence of the gospel, the
truth of which however they do not acknowledge,
would not start at many of the actions which these
heathen perfectionists daily commit without hesita-
tion. -
The religious reader of general history will observe
the controlling hand of Providence in the direction
of events, and in turning the most unworthy actions
and instruments to the accomplishment of his own
purposes. She will mark infinite Wisdom directing
what appears to be casual occurrences, to the com-
pletion of his own plan. She will point out how
causes seemingly the most unconnected, events seem-
ingly the most unpromising, circumstances seemingly
the most incongruous, are all working together for
some final good. She will mark how national as
well as individual crimes are often overruled to some
hidden purpose far different from the intention of the
actors: how Omnipotence can and often does bring
about the best purposes by the worst instruments:
how the bloody and unjust conqueror is but “the
rod of His wrath,” to punish or to purify his offend-
ing children: how “the fury of the oppressor,” and
the sufferings of the oppressed, will one day vindi-

USE OF HISTORY. 105
cate His righteous dealings. She will unfold to the
less enlightened reader, how infinite Wisdom often
mocks the insignificance of human greatness, and the
shallowness of human ability, by setting aside instru-
ments the most powerful, while He works by agents
comparatively contemptible. But she will carefully
guard this doctrine of Divine Providence, thus work-
ing out his own purposes through the sins of his
creatures, and by the instrumentality of the wicked,
by calling to mind, while the offender is but a tool
in the hands of the great Artificer, “the woe de-
nounced against him by whom the offence cometh !”
She will explain how those mutations and revolutions
in states which appear to us so unaccountable, and
how those operations of Providence which seem to
us so entangled and complicated, all move harmo-
niously and in perfect order: that there is not an
event but has its commission; not a misfortune which
breaks its allotted rank; not a trial which moves out
of its appointed track. While calamities and crimes
seem to fly in casual confusion, all is commanded or
permitted; all is under the control of a wisdom
which cannot err, of a goodness which cannot do
wrong.
To explain my meaning by a few instances. When
the spirit of the youthful reader rises in honest indig-
nation at that hypocritical piety which divorced an
unoffending queen to make way for the lawful crime
of our eighth Henry's marriage with Ann Boleyn;
and when that indignation is increased by the more
open profligacy which brought about the execution
of the latter; the instructor will not lose so fair an
occasion for unfolding how in the councils of the
Most High the crimes of the king were overruled to
the happiness of the country; and how, to this in-
auspicious marriage, from which the heroic Elizabeth




F 2
106 ON THE RELIGIOUS
sprung, the Protestant religion owed its firm sta-
bility.
She will explain to her, how even the conquests
of ambition, after having deluged a land with blood,
and involved the perpetrator in guilt, and the inno-
cent victim in ruin, may yet be made the instruments
of opening to future generations the way to com-
merce, to civilization, to Christianity. She may re-
mind her, as they are following Caesar in his invasion
of Britain, that whereas the conqueror fancied he was
only gratifying his own inordinate ambition, extend-
ing the flight of the Roman Eagle, immortalizing his
own name, and proving that “this world was made
for Caesar;” he was in reality becoming the effectual
though unconscious instrument of leading a land of
barbarians to civilization and to science: and was in
fact preparing an island of Pagans to embrace the
religion of Christ. She will inform her, that when
the abovenamed victorious nation had made Judea a
Roman province, and the Jews had become their
tributaries, the Romans did not know, nor did the
indignant Jews suspect, that this circumstance was
operating to the confirmation of an event the mos
important the world ever saw. *
For when “Augustus sent forth a decree that all
the world should be taxed;” he vainly thought he
was only enlarging his own imperial power, whereas
he was acting in unconscious subservience to the de-
cree of a higher sovereign, and was helping to ascer-
tain by a public act the exact period of Christ's birth,
and furnishing a record of his extraction from that
family from which it was predicted by a long line of
prophets that he should spring. Herod's atrocious
murder of the innocents has added an additional
circumstance for the confirmation of our faith; the
incredulity of Thomas has strengthened our belief;



*
USE OF HISTORY. 107
may, the treachery of Judas, and the injustice of
Pilate, were the human instruments employed for
the salvation of the world.
The youth that is not armed with Christian prin-
ciples, will be tempted to mutiny not only against
the justice, but the very existence of a superintending
Providence, in contemplating those frequent instances
which occur in history of the ill success of the more
virtuous cause, and the prosperity of the wicked.
He will see with astonishment that it is Rome which
triumphs, while Carthage, which had clearly the
better cause, falls. Now and then indeed a Cicero
prevails, and a Catiline is subdued : but often, it is
Caesar successful against the somewhat juster preten-
sions of Pompey, and against the still clearer cause
of Cato. It is Octavius who triumphs, and it is over
Brutus that he triumphs . It is Tiberius that is en-
throned, while Germanicus falls | .
Thus his faith in a righteous Providence at first
view is staggered, and he is ready to say, “Surely it
is not God that governs the earth !” But on a fuller
consideration, (and here the suggestions of a Chris-
tian instructor are peculiarly wanted), there will ap-
pear great wisdom in this very confusion of vice and
virtue; for it is calculated to send one's thoughts
forward to a world of retribution, the principle of
retribution being so imperfectly established in this.
It is indeed so far common for virtue to have the
advantage here, in point of happiness at least, though
not of glory, that the course of Providence is still
calculated to prove that God is on the side of virtue;
but still, virtue is so often unsuccessful, that clearly
the God of virtue, in order that his work may be
erfect, must have in reserve a world of retribution.
his confused state of things therefore is just that
state which is most of all calculated to confirm the

108 ON THE RELIGIOUS
deeply considerate mind in the belief of a future
state: for if all were even here, or very nearly so,
should we not say, “Justice is already satisfied, and
there needs no other world !” On the other hand, if
vice always triumphed, should we not then be ready
to argue in favour of vice rather than virtue, and to
wish for no other world?
It seems so very important to ground young per-
sons in the belief that they will not inevitably meet
in this world with reward and success according to
their merit, but to habituate them to expect even the
most virtuous attempts to be often, though not always
disappointed, that I am in danger of tautology on
this point. This fact is precisely what history teaches.
The truth should be plainly told to the young reader;
and the antidote to that evil, which mistaken and
worldly people would expect to arise from divulging
this discouraging doctrine, is faith. The importance
of faith therefore, and the necessity of it to real, un-
bending, and persevering virtue, is surely made plain
by profane history itself. For the same thing which
happens to states and kings, happens to private life
and to individuals. Thus there is scarcely a page,
even of Pagan history, which may not be made in-
strumental to the establishing of the truth of revela-
tion: and it is only by such a mode of instruction
that some of the evils of the study of ancient litera-
ture can be obviated. % w
Distrust and diffidence in our own judgment seems
to be also an important instruction to be learnt from
history. How contrary to all expectation do the
events therein recorded commonly turn out! and yet
we proceed to foretell this and that event from the
appearances of things under our own observation,
with the same arrogant certainty as if we had never
been warned by the monitory annals of mankind. .

USE OF HISTORY. 109
There is scarcely one great event in history which
does not, in the issue, produce effects upon which
human foresight could never have calculated. The
success of Augustus against his country produced
peace in many distant provinces, who thus ceased to
be harassed and tormented by this oppressive re-
public. Could this effect have been foreseen, it
might have sobered the despair of Cato, and checked
the vehemence of Brutus. In politics, in short in
every thing except in morals and religion, all is, to
a considerable degree, uncertain. This reasoning is
not meant to show that Cato ought not to have
fought, but that he ought not to have desponded
even after the last battle; and certainly, even upon
his own principles, ought not to have killed himself.
It would be departing too much from my object to
apply this argument, however obvious the applica-
tion, against those who were driven to unreasonable
distrust and despair by the late successes of a neigh-
bouring nation.
But all knowledge will be comparatively of little
value, if we neglect self-knowledge; and of self-
knowledge history and biography may be made suc-
cessful vehicles. It will be to little purpose that our
pupils become accurate critics on the characters of
others, while they remain ignorant of themselves;
for while to those who exercise a habit of self-appli-
cation a book of profane history may be made an
instrument of improvement in this difficult science;
so without this habit the Bible itself may, in this
view, be read with little profit.
It will be to no purpose that the reader weeps over
the fortitude of the Christian hero, or the constancy
of the martyr, if she do not bear in mind that she
herself is called to endure her own common trials
with something of the same temper: if she do not





110 ON THE RELIGIOUS
bear in mind that, to control irregular humours, and
to submit to the daily vexations of life, will require,
though in a lower degree, the exertion of the same
principle, and supplication for the aid of the same
spirit which sustained the Christian hero in the trying
conflicts of life, or the martyr in his agony at the
stake.
May I be permitted to suggest a few instances, by
way of specimen, how both sacred and common his-
tory may tend to promote self-knowledge And let
me again remind the warm admirer of suffering piety
under extraordinary trials, that if she now fail in the
petty occasions to which she is actually called out,
she would not be likely to have stood in those more
trying occasions which excite her admiration.
While she is applauding the self-denying saint
who renounced his ease, or chose to embrace death,
rather than violate his duty, let her ask herself if she
has never refused to submit to the paltry inconve-
nience of giving up her company, or even altering her
dinner-hour on a Sunday, though by this trifling sa-
crifice her family might have been enabled to attend
the public worship in the afternoon.
While she reads with horror that Belshazzar was
rioting with his thousand nobles at the very moment
when the Persian army was bursting through the
brazen gates of Babylon; is she very sure that she
herself, in an almost equally imminent moment of
public danger, has not been nightly indulging in
every species of dissipation? ×. . . . . .
When she is deploring the inconsistency of the
human heart, while she contrasts Mark Antony's
bravery and contempt of ease at one period, with his
licentious indulgences at another; or while she la-
ments over the intrepid soul of Caesar, whom she had
been following in his painful marches, or admiring


USE OF HISTORY. 111
in his contempt of death, dissolved in dissolute plea-
sures with the ensnaring queen of Egypt; let her
examine whether she herself has never, though in a
much lower degree, evinced something of the same
inconsistency whether she who lives perhaps an
orderly, sober, and reasonable life during her sum-
mer residence in the country, does not plunge with
little scruple in the winter into all the most extrava-
gant pleasures of the capital? whether she never car-
ries about with her an accommodating kind of re-
ligion, which can be made to bend to places and
seasons, to climates and customs; which takes its
tincture from the fashion without, and not its habits
from the principle within; which is decent with the
pious, sober with the orderly, and loose with the
licentious?
While she is admiring the generosity of Alexander
in giving away kingdoms and provinces, let her, in
order to ascertain whether she could imitate this
magnanimity, take heed if she herself is daily seizing
all the little occasions of doing good, which every
day presents to the affluent? Her call is not to sacri-
fice a province; but does she sacrifice an opera ticket?
She who is not doing all the good she can under her
present circumstances, would not do all she foresees
she could, in imaginary ones, were her power en-
larged to the extent of her wishes.
While she is inveighing with patriotic indignation,
that in a neighbouring metropolis thirty theatres
were open every night in time of war and public ca-
lamity, is she very clear, that in a metropolis which
contains only three, she was not almost constantly at
one of them in time of war and public calamity also?
For though in a national view it may make a wide dif-
ference whether there be in the capital three theatres
or thirty, yet, as the same person can only go to one of







112 ON THE RELIGIOUS
them at once, it makes but little difference as to the
quantum of dissipation in the individual. She who
rejoices at successful virtue in a history, or at the
rosperity of a person whose interests do not inter-
ere with her own, may exercise her self-knowledge,
by examining whether she rejoices equally at the
happiness of every one about her; and let her re-
member, she does not rejoice at it in the true sense, if
she does not labour to promote it. She who glows
with rapture at a virtuous character in history, should
ask her own heart, whether she is equally ready to
do justice to the fine qualities of her acquaintance,
though she may not particularly love them; and
whether she takes unfeigned pleasure in the superior
talents, virtues, fame, and fortune of those whom she
professes to love, though she is eclipsed by them?
# # # * * # *
In like manner, in the study of geography and
natural history, the attention should be habitually
turned to the goodness of Providence, who com-
monly adapts the various productions of climates to
the peculiar wants of the respective inhabitants. To
illustrate my meaning by one or two instances out
of a thousand. The reader may be led to admire
the considerate goodness of Providence in having
caused the spiry fir, whose slender foliage does not
obstruct the beams of the sun, to grow in the dreary
regions of the North, whose shivering inhabitants.
could spare none of its scanty rays; while in the
torrid zone, the palm-tree, the plantane, and the
banana, spread their umbrella leaves to break the
almost intolerable fervors of a vertical sun. How
the camel, who is the sole carrier of all the merchan-
dise of Turkey, Persia, Egypt, Arabia, and Barbary,
who is obliged to transport his incredible burthens
through countries in which pasture is so rare, can

USE OF HISTORY. 113
subsist twenty-four hours without food, and can
travel, loaded, many days without water, through
dry and dusty deserts, which supply none; and all
this, not from the habit but from the conformation of
the animal: for naturalists make this conformity of
powers to climates a rule of judgment in ascertaining
the native countries of animals, and always determine
it to be that to which their powers and properties are
most appropriate.
Thus the writers of natural history are perhaps
unintentionally magnifying the operations of Provi-
dence, when they insist that animals do not modify
and give way to the influence of other climates; but
here they too commonly stop; neglecting, or perhaps
refusing, to ascribe to infinite goodness this wise and
merciful accommodation; and here the pious in-
structor will come in, in aid of their deficiency: for
philosophers too seldom trace up causes, and won-
ders, and blessings to their Author. And it is pecu-
liarly to be regretted that a late justly celebrated
French naturalist, who, though not famous for his
accuracy, possessed such diversified powers of de-
scription that he had the talent of making the driest
subjects interesting; together with such a liveliness
of delineation, that his characters of animals are
drawn with a spirit and variety rather to be looked
for in an historian of men than of beasts: it is to be
regretted that this writer, with all his excellences, is
absolutely inadmissible into the library of a young
lady, both on account of his immodesty and his im-
piety; and if, in wishing to exclude him, it may be
thought wrong to have given him so much com-
mendation, it is only meant to show that the author
is not led to reprobate his principles from insensi-
bility to his talents. The remark is rather made to





114 ON THE RELIGIOUS USE OF HISTORY.
put the reader on remembering that no brilliancy of
genius, no diversity of attainments, should ever be
allowed as a commutation for defective principles
and corrupt ideas”.

CHAP. IX.
On the Use of Definitions, and the moral Benefits of
Accuracy in Language.
“PERsons having been accustomed from their cra-
dles to learn words before they knew the ideas for
which they stand, usually continue to do so all their
lives, never taking the pains to settle in their minds
the determined ideas which belong to them. This
want of a precise signification in their words, when
they come to reason, especially in moral matters, is
the cause of very obscure and uncertain notions.
They use these undetermined words confidently,
without much troubling their heads about a certain
fixed meaning, whereby, besides the ease of it, they
obtain this advantage, that as in such discourse they
are seldom in the right, so they are as seldom to be
convinced that they are in the wrong, it being just
the same to go about to draw those persons out of
their mistakes, who have no settled notions, as to
dispossess a vagrant of his habitation who has no
settled abode.—The chief end of language being to
be understood, words serve not for that end when
they do not excite in the hearer the same idea which
they stand for in the mind of the speakert.”
* Goldsmith's History of animated Nature has many references
to a Divine Author. It is to be wished that some judicious person








would publish a new edition of this work, purified from the inde-
lº, and offensive parts.
ke.
ON DEFINITIONS. 115
I have chosen to shelter myself under the broad
sanction of the great author here quoted, with a view
to apply this rule in philology to a moral purpose;
for it applies to the veracity of conversation as much
as to its correctness; and as strongly recommends
unequivocal and simple truth, as accurate and just
expression. Scarcely any one perhaps has an ade-
quate conception how much clear and correct ex-
pressions favour the elucidation of truth; and the
side of truth is obviously the side of morals; it is in
fact one and the same cause ; and it is of course the
same cause with that of true religion also.
It is therefore no worthless part of education to
study the precise meaning of words, and the appro-
priate signification of language. To this end I know
no better method than to accustom young persons
very early to a habit of defining common words and
things; for, as definition seems to lie at the root of
correctness, to be accustomed to define English
words in English, would improve the understanding
more than barely to know what those words are called
in French or Italian. Or rather, one use of learning
other languages is, because definition is often in-
volved in etymology; that is, since many English
words take their derivation from foreign languages,
they cannot be so accurately understood without
some knowledge of those languages: but precision
of any kind, either moral or philological, too seldom
finds its way into the education of women.
It is perhaps going out of my province to observe,
that it might be well if young men also, before they
entered on the world, were to be furnished with cor-
rect definitions of certain words, the use of which
is become rather ambiguous. For instance; they
should be provided with a good definition of the
word honour in the fashionable sense, showing what







116 ON DEFINITIONS.
vices it includes, and what virtues it does not in-
clude; the term good company, which even the
courtly Petronius of our days has defined as some-
times including not a few immoral and disreputable
characters; religion, which in the various senses
assigned it by the world, sometimes means super-
stition, sometimes fanaticism, and sometimes a mere
disposition to attend on any kind of form of worship:
the word goodness, which is made to mean every
thing that is not notoriously bad ; and sometimes
even that too, if what is notoriously bad be accom-
panied by good humour, pleasing manners, and a
little alms-giving. By these means they would go
forth armed against many of the false opinions which
through the abuse or ambiguous meaning of words
pass so current in the world. :
But to return to the youthful part of that sex which
is the more immediate object of this little work.
With correct definition they should also be taught to
study the shades of words, and this not merely with
a view to accuracy of expression, but to moral truth.
It may be thought ridiculous to assert, that morals
have any connexion with the purity of language, or
that the precision of truth may be violated through
defect of critical exactness in the three degrees of
comparison: yet how frequently do we hear from
the dealers in superlatives, of “most admirable,
superexcellent, and quite perfect” people, who, to
plain persons, not bred in the school of exaggeration,
would appear mere common characters, not rising
above the level of mediocrity | By this negligence in
the just application of words, we shall be as much
misled by these trope and figure ladies, when they
degrade as when they panegyrize; for to a plain and
sober judgment, a tradesman may not be “the most
good-for-nothing fellow that ever existed,” merely



ON DEFINITIONS. 117
because it was impossible for him to execute in an
hour an order which required a week; a lady may
not be “the most hideous fright the world ever saw,”
though the make of her gown may have been obso-
lete for a month ; nor may one's young friend's
father be “a monster of cruelty,” though he may be
a quiet gentleman who does not choose to live at
watering-places, but likes to have his daughter stay
at home with him in the country.
But of all the parts of speech the interjection is
the most abundantly in use with the hyperbolical
fair ones. Would it could be added that these em-
phatical expletives (if I may make use of a contra-
dictory term) were not sometimes tinctured with
profaneness! Though I am persuaded that idle habit
is more at the bottom of this deep offence than in-
tended impiety, yet there is scarcely any error of
youthful talk which wants severer castigation. And
a habit of exclamation should be rejected by polished
people as vulgar, even if it were not abhorred as
profane. w
The habit of exaggerating trifles, together with the
grand female failing of excessive mutual flattery, and
elaborate general professions of fondness and attach-
ment, is inconceivably cherished by the voluminous
private correspondences in which some girls are in-
dulged. A facility of style, and an easy turn of ex-
pression, are acquisitions said to be derived from an
early interchange of sentiments by letter-writing;
but these would be dearly purchased by the sacrifice
of that truth, sobriety, and correctness of language,
and that ingenuous simplicity of character and man-
ners so lovely in female youth. - º
But antecedent to this epistolary period of life,
they should have been accustomed to the most scru-
pulous exactness in whatever they relate. They






118 ON DEFINITIONS.
should maintain the most critical accuracy in facts,
in dates, in numbering, in describing, in short, in
whatever pertains, either directly or indirectly, closely
or remotely, to the great fundamental principle, truth.
It is so very difficult for persons of great liveliness to
restrain themselves within the sober limits of strict
veracity, either in their assertions or narrations, espe-
cially when a little undue indulgence of fancy is apt
to procure for them the praise of genius and spirit,
that this restraint is one of the earliest principles
which should be worked into the youthful mind.
The conversation of young females is also in danger
of being overloaded with epithets. As in the warm
season of youth hardly any thing is seen in the true
point of vision, so hardly any thing is named in naked
simplicity; and the very sensibility of the feelings is
partly a cause of the extravagance of the expression.
But here, as in other points, the sacred writers, par-
ticularly of the New Testament, present us with the
purest models; and its natural and unlaboured style
of expression is perhaps not the meanest evidence of
the truth of the gospel. There is throughout the
whole narratives, no overcharged character, no elabo-
rate description, nothing studiously emphatical, as
if truth of itself were weak, and wanted to be helped
out. There is little panegyric, and less invective;
none but on great, and awful, and justifiable occa-
sions. The authors record their own faults with the
same honesty as if they were the faults of other men,
and the faults of other men with as little amplifica-
tion as if they were their own. There is perhaps no
book in which adjectives are so sparingly used. A
modest statement of the fact, with no colouring and
little comment, with little emphasis and no varnish,
is the example held out to us for correcting the exu-
berances of passion and of language, by that divine






on DEFINITIons. 119
volume which furnishes us with the still more impor-
tant rule of faith and standard of practice. Nor is
the truth lowered by any feebleness, nor the spirit
diluted, nor the impression weakened by this sober-
ness and moderation; for with all this plainness there
is so much force, that a few simple touches and art-
less strokes of Scripture characters convey a stronger
outline of the person delineated, than is sometimes
given by the most elaborate and finished portrait of
artificial historians.
If it be objected to this remark, that many parts of
the sacred writings abound in a lofty, figurative, and
even hyperbolical style; this objection applies chiefly
to the writings of the Old Testament, and to the pro-
phetical and poetical parts of that. But the metapho-
rical and florid style of those writings is distinct from
the inaccurate and over-strained expression we have
been censuring; for that only is inaccuracy which



leads to a false and inadequate conception in the
reader or hearer. The lofty style of the Eastern, and
of other heroic poetry, does not so mislead; for the
metaphor is understood to be a metaphor, and the
imagery is understood to be ornamental. The style
of the Scriptures of the Old Testament is not, it is
true, plain in opposition to figurative, nor simple in
opposition to florid; but it is plain and simple in the
best sense, as opposed to false principles and false
taste; it raises no wrong idea; it gives an exact im-
pression of the thing it means to convey; and its very
tropes and figures, though bold, are never unnatural
or affected : when it embellishes it does not mislead;
even when it exaggerates, it does not misrepresent; if
it be hyperbolical, it is so either in compliance with
the genius of Oriental language, or in compliance with
contemporary customs, or because the subject is one
which will be most forcibly impressed by a strong





120 ON DEFINITIONS.
figure. The loftiness of the expression deducts nothing
from the weight of the circumstance; the imagery ani-
mates the reader without misleading him; the boldest
illustration, while it dilates his conception of the sub-
ject, detracts nothing from its simplicity; and truth,
instead of being injured by the opulence of the figures,
contrives to make them fresh and varied avenues to the
heart and the understanding. w


CHAP. X.
On Religion.—The Necessity and Duty of early In-
struction shown by Analogy with human Learning.
It has been the fashion of our late innovators in phi-
losophy, who have written some of the most brilliant
and popular treatises on education, to decry the prac-
tice of early instilling religious knowledge into the
minds of children : it has been alleged that it is of
the utmost importance to the cause of truth, that the
mind of man should be kept free from prepossessions;
and in particular, that every one should be left to form
such judgment on religious subjects as may seem best
to his own reason in maturer years. -
This sentiment has received some countenance from
those better characters who have wished, on the fair-
est principle, to encourage free inquiry in religion;
but it has been pushed to the blameable excess here
censured, chiefly by the new philosophers; who, while
they profess only an ingenuous zeal for truth, are in fact
slily endeavouring to destroy Christianity itself, by
discountenancing, under the plausible pretence of free
inquiry, all attention whatever to the religious educa-
tion of our youth. º
It is undoubtedly our duty, while we are instilling
principles into the tender mind, to take peculiar care






WITH HUMAN LEARNING. 121.
that those principles be sound and just ; that the
religion we teach be the religion of the Bible, and
not the inventions of human error or superstition:
that the principles we infuse into others, be such as
we ourselves have well scrutinized, and not the result
of our credulity or bigotry; nor the mere hereditary,
unexamined prejudices of our own undiscerning
childhood. It may also be granted, that it is the
duty of every parent to inform the youth, that when
his faculties shall have so unfolded themselves, as to
enable him to examine for himself those principles
which the parent is now instilling, it will be his |.
so to examine them. .
But after making these concessions, I would most
seriously insist that there are certain leading and fun-
damental truths; that there are certain sentiments on
the side of Christianity, as well as of virtue and
benevolence, in favour of which every child ought to
be prepossessed; and may it not be also added, that
to expect to keep the mind void of all prepossession,
even upon any subject, appears to be altogether a
vain and impracticable attempt? an attempt, the
very suggestion of which argues much ignorance of
human nature.
Let it be observed here, that we are not combating
the infidel; that we are not producing evidences and
arguments in favour of Christianity, or trying to win
over the assent of the reader to that which he disputes;
but that we are taking it for granted, not only that
Christianity is true, but that we are addressing those
who believe it to be true : an assumption which has
been made throughout this work. Assuming, there-
fore, that there are religious principles which are true,
and which ought to be communicated in the most
effectual mannner, the next question which arises
seems to be, at what age and in what manner these

122 AN ALOGY OF RELIGION
ought to be inculcated 2 That it ought to be at an
early period we have both the example and the com-
mand of Christ; for he himself attended his parents
in their annual public devotions at Jerusalem during
his own infancy; and afterwards in his public minis-
tration encouragingly said, “Suffer little children to
come unto me.” …
But here conceding for the sake of argument what
yet cannot be conceded, that some good reasons may
be brought in favour of delay; allowing that such
impressions as are communicated early may not be
very deep ; allowing them even to become totally
effaced by the subsequent corruptions of the heart
and of the world; still I would illustrate the import-
ance of early infusing religious knowledge, by an
allusion drawn from the power of early habit in
human learning. Put the case, for instance, of a
person who was betimes initiated in the rudiments of
classical studies. Suppose him after quitting school
to have fallen, either by a course of idleness or of
vulgar pursuits, into a total neglect of study. Should
this person at any future period happen to be called
to some profession, which should oblige him, as we
say, to rub up his Greek and Latin ; his memory
still retaining the unobliterated though faint traces of
his early pursuits, he will be able to recover his
neglected learning with less difficulty than he could
now begin to learn; for he is not again obliged to
set out with studying the simple elements; they come
back on being pursued; they are found on being
searched for; the decayed images assume shape, and
strength, and colour; he has in his mind first princi-
Fº to which to recur ; the rules of grammar which
he has allowed himself to violate, he has not however
forgotten ; he will recall neglected ideas, he will
resume slighted habits far more easily than he could

WITH HUMAN LEARNING. 123
now begin to acquire new ones. I appeal to clergy-
men who are called to attend the dying beds of such
as have been bred in gross and stupid ignorance of
religion, for the justness of this comparison. Do they
not find that these unhappy people have no ideas in
common with them that they possess no intelligible
medium by which to make themselves understood 1
that the persons to whom they are addressing them-
selves have no first principles to which they can be
referred 1 that they are ignorant not only of the
science, but the language of Christianity ?
But at worst, whatever be the event to the child,
though in general we are encouraged, from the tenor
of Scripture and the course of experience, to hope
that that event would be favourable, is it nothing
for the parent to have acquitted himself of this
#. duty And will not the parent who so acquits
himself, with better reason and more lively hope,
supplicate the Father of mercies for the reclaiming
of a prodigal, who has wandered out of that right
path in which he has set him forward, than for the
conversion of a neglected creature, to whose feet the
Gospel had never been offered as a light? And how
different will be the dying reflections even of that
parent whose earnest endeavours have been unhappily
defeated by the subsequent and voluntary perversion
of his child, from his who will reasonably aggravate
his pangs by transferring the sins of his neglected
...if to the number of his own transgressions.
And to such well-intentioned but ill-judging pa-
rents as really wish their children to be hereafter pious,
but erroneously withhold instruction till the more
advanced period prescribed by the great master of
splendid paradoxes” shall arrive; who can assure
them that while they are withholding the good seed,



* Rousseau.


124 AN ALOGY OF RELIGION
the great and ever vigilant enemy, who assiduously
seizes hold on every opportunity which we slight, and
cultivates every advantage which we neglect, may not
be stocking the fallow ground with tares? Nay, who
in this fluctuating scene of things can be assured,
even if this were not certainly to be the case, that to
them the promised period ever shall arrive at all !
Who shall ascertain to them that their now neglected
child shall certainly live to receive the delayed in-
struction? Who can assure them that they themselves
will live to communicate it?
It is almost needless to observe that parents who
are indifferent about religion, much more those who
treat it with scorn, are not likely to be anxious on
this subject; it is therefore the attention of religious
parents which is here chiefly called upon; and the
more so, as there seems, on this point, an unaccount-
able negligence in many of these, whether it arise
from indolence, false principles, or whatever other
motive. -
- But independent of knowledge, it is something,
nay, let philosophers say what they will, it is much,
to give youth prepossessions in favour of religion, to
secure their prejudices on its side before you turn
them adrift into the world; a world in which, before
they can be completely armed with arguments and
reasons, they will be assailed by numbers whose
prepossessions and prejudices, far more than their
arguments and reasons, attach them to the other side.
Why should not the Christian youth furnish himself
in a good cause with the same natural armour which
the enemies of religion wear in a bad one? It is cer-
tain that to set out with sentiments in favour of the
religion of our country is no more an error or a
weakness, than to grow up with a fondness for our
country itself. If the love of our country be judged

WITH HUMAN LEARNING, 125
a fair principle, surely a Christian, who is “a citizen
of no mean city,” may lawfully have his attachments
too. If patriotism be an honest prejudice, Christianity
is not a servile one. Nay, let us teach the youth to
hug his prejudices rather than to acquire that ver-
satile º accommodating citizenship of the world,
by which he may be an Infidel in Paris, a Papist at
Rome, and a Mussulman at Cairo.
Let me not be supposed so to elevate politics, or
so to depress religion, as to make any comparison
of the value of the one with the other, when I observe,
that between the true British patriot and the true
Christian, there will be this common resemblance:
the more deeply each of them inquires, the more
will he be confirmed in his respective attachment,
the one to his country, the other to his religion. I
speak with reverence of the immeasurable distance;
but the more the one presses on the firm arch of our
constitution, and the other on that of Christianity,
the stronger he will find them both. Each challenges
scrutiny; each has nothing to dread but from shal-
low politicians, and shallow philosophers; in each.
intimate knowledge justifies prepossession; in each
investigation confirms attachment. .
If we divide the human being into three compo-
ment parts, the bodily, the intellectual, and the spi-
ritual, is it not reasonable that a portion of care and
attention be assigned to each in some degree adequate
to its importance Should I venture to say a due
portion, a portion adapted to the real comparative
value of each, would not that condemn in one word.
the whole system of modern education ? Yet the ra-
tional and intellectual part being avowedly morevalu-
able than the bodily, while the spiritual and immortal
part exceeds even the intellectual still more than that
surpasses what is corporeal; is it then acting accord-

126 A NALOGY OF RELIGION
ing to the common rules of proportion; is it acting
on the principles of distributive justice; is it acting
with that good sense and right judgment with which
the ordinary business of this world is usually trans-
acted, to give the larger proportion of time and care
to that which is worth the least? Is it fair that what
relates to the body and the organs of the body, I mean
those accomplishments which address themselves to
the eye and the ear, should occupy almost the whole
thoughts; that the intellectual part should be robbed
of its due proportion, and that the spiritual part should
have almost no proportion at all ! Is not this prepar-
ing your children for an awful disappointment in the
tremendous day when they shall be stripped of that
body, of those senses and organs, which have been
made almost the sole objects of their attention, and
shall feel themselves left in possession of nothing but
that spiritual part which in education was scarcely
taken into the account of their existence 2 .
Surely it should be thought a reasonable compro-
mise (and I am in fact undervaluing the object for
the importance of which I plead) to suggest, that at
least two thirds of that time which is now usurped
by externals, should be restored to the rightful own-
ers, the understanding and the heart; and that the
acquisition of religious knowledge in early youth,
should at least be no less an object of sedulous atten-
tion than the cultivation of human learning or of out-
ward embellishments. It is also not unreasonable to
suggest, that we should in Christianity, as in arts,
sciences, or languages, begin with the beginning,
set out with the simple elements, and thus “go on
unto perfection.”
Why in teaching to draw do you begin with straight
lines and curves, till by gentle steps the knowledge
of outline and proportion be attained, and your pic-

WITH HUMAN LEARNING. 127
ture be completed; never losing sight, however, of
the elementary lines and curves why in music do
you set out with the simple notes, and pursue the
acquisition through all its progress, still in every
stage recurring to the notes? why in the science of
numbers do you invent the simplest methods of con-
veying just ideas of computation, still referring to
the tables which involve the fundamental rules why
in the science of quantity do men introduce the pu-
pil at first to the plainest diagrams, and clear up one
difficulty before they allow another to appear? why
in teaching languages to the youth do you sedulously
infuse into his mind the rudiments of syntax why
in parsing is he led to refer every word to its part of
speech, to resolve every sentence into its elements, to
reduce every term to its original, and from the first
case of nouns, and the first tense of verbs, to explain
their formations, changes, and dependencies, till the
principles of language become so grounded, that, by
continually recurring to the rules, the speaking and
writing correctly are fixed into a habit? why all this,
but because you uniformly wish him to be grounded
in each of his acquirements? why, but because you are
persuaded that a slight, and slovenly, and superficial,
and irregular way of instruction will never train him
to excellence in any thing?
Do young persons then become musicians, and
painters, and linguists, and mathematicians, by early
study and regular labour; and shall they become
Christians by accident? or rather, is not this acting
on that very principle of Dogberry, at which you
probably have often laughed 1 Is it not supposing
that religion, like “reading and writing, comes by
Nature?” Shall all those accomplishments “which
perish in the using,” be so assiduously, so systema-
tically taught ! Shall all these habits, which are








128 AN A LOGY OF RELIGION
limited to the things of this world, be so carefully
formed, so persisted in, as to be interwoven with our
very make, so as to become as it were a part of our-
selves; and shall that knowledge which is to make
us “wise unto salvation” be picked up at random,
cursorily, or perhaps not picked up at all ! Shall
that difficult divine science which requires “line
upon line, and precept upon precept,” here a little
and there a little; that knowledge which parents,
even under a darker dispensation, were required
“to teach their children diligently, and to talk of it
when they sat down in their house, and when they
walked by the way, and when they lay down, and
when they rose up ;” shall this knowledge be by
Christian parents deferred, or taught slightly; or be
superseded by things of little comparative worth
Shall the lively period of youth, the soft and im-
pressible season when lasting habits are formed, when
the seal cuts deep into the yielding wax, and the im-
pression is more likely to be clear, and strong, and
lasting; shall this warm and favourable season be
suffered to slide by, without being turned to the great
purpose for which not only youth, but life, and breath,
and being were bestowed Shall not that “faith with-
out which it is impossible to please God;” shall not
that “holiness without which no man can see the
Lord;” shall not that knowledge which is the founda-
tion of faith and practice; shall not that charity with-
out which all knowledge is sounding brass and a tink-
ling cymbal, be impressed, be inculcated, be enforced,
as early, as constantly, as fundamentally, with the
same earnest pushing on to continual progress, with
the same constant reference to first principles, as are
used in the case of those arts which merely adorn hu-
man life? Shall we not seize the happy period when
the memory is strong, the mind and all its powers

WITH HUMAN LEARNING. 129
vigorous and active, the imagination busy and all
alive; the heart flexible, the temper ductile, the
conscience tender, curiosity awake, fear powerful,
hope eager, love ardent; shall we not seize this pe-
riod for inculcating that knowledge, and impressing .
those principles which are to form the character, and
fix the destination for eternity?
Or, if I may be allowed to address another and a
still more dilatory class, who are for procrastinating
all concern about religion till we are driven to it by
actual distress, and who do not think of praying till
they are perishing, like the sailor who said, “he
thought it was always time enough to begin to pray
when the storm began.” Of these I would ask, shall
we, with an unaccountable deliberation, defer our
anxiety about religion till the busy man or the dissi-
pated woman are become so immersed in the cares
of life, or so entangled in its pleasures, that they will
have little heart or spirit to embrace a new principle 1
a principle whose precise object it will be to con-
demn that very life into which they have already
embarked ; nay, to condemn almost all that they
have been doing and thinking ever since they first
began to act or think? Shall we, I say, begin now 1
or shall we suffer those instructions, to receive which
requires all the concentrated powers of a strong and
healthy mind, to be put off till the day of excru-
ciating pain, till the period of debility and stupefac-
tion? Shall we wait for that season, as if it were the
most favourable for religious acquisitions, when the
senses shall have been palled by excessive gratifica-
tion, when the eye shall be tired with seeing, and
the ear with hearing Shall we, when the whole man
is breaking up by disease or decay, expect that the
dim apprehension will discern a new science, or the
obtuse feelings delight themselves with a new plea-


- G 2
130 AN ALOGY OF RELIGION
sure ? a pleasure too, not only incompatible with
many of the hitherto indulged pleasures, but one
which carries with it a strong intimation that those
pleasures terminate in the death of the soul.
But, not to lose sight of the important analogy on
which we have already dwelt so much ; how prepos-
terous would it seem to you to hear any one propose
to an illiterate dying man, to set about learning even
the plainest and easiest rudiments of any new art;
to study the musical notes; to conjugate an auxiliary
verb; to learn, not the first problem in Euclid, but
even the numeration table; and yet you do not think
it absurd to postpone religious instruction, on prin-
ciples which, if admitted at all, must terminate either
in ignorance, or in your proposing too late to a dying
man to begin to learn the totally unknown scheme of
Christianity. You do not think it impossible that he
should be brought to listen to the “voice of this
charmer,” when he can no longer listen to “the
voice of singing men and singing women.” You do
not think it unreasonable that immortal beings should
delay to devote their days to Heaven, till they have
“no pleasure in them” themselves. You will not
bring them to offer up the first fruits of their lips,
and hearts, and lives, to their Maker, because you
persuade yourselves that he who has called himself
a “jealous God,” may however be contented here-
after with the wretched sacrifice of decayed appe-
tites, and the worthless leavings of almost extin-
guished affections. .
For one cannot believe, even with all the melan-
choly procrastination we see around us, that there is
scarcely any one, except he be a decided infidel,
who does not consider religion as at least a good
reversionary thing; as an object which ought always
to occupy a little remote corner of his map of life;

WITH HUMAN LEARNING. 131
the study of which, though it is always to be i.
poned, is however not to be finally rejected; which,
though it cannot conveniently come into his present
scheme of life, it is intended somehow or other to
take up before death. This awful deception, this
defect in the intellectual vision, arises, partly from
the bulk which the objects of time and sense acquire
in our eyes by their nearness; while the invisible
realities of eternity are but faintly discerned by a
feeble faith, through a dim and distant medium. It
arises also partly from a totally false idea of the na-
ture of Christianity, from a fatal fancy that we can
repent at any future period, and that as amendment
is a thing which will always be in our own power, it
will be time enough to think of reforming our life,
when we should only think of closing it.
- But depend upon it, that a heart long hardened,
I do not mean by gross vices merely, but by a fond-
ness for the world, by an habitual and excessive in-
dulgence in the pleasures of sense, will by no means
be in a favourable state to admit the light of divine
truth, or to receive the impressions of divine grace.
God indeed sometimes shows us by an act of his
sovereignty, that this wonderful change, the conver-
sion of a sinner's heart, may be produced without
the intervention of human means, to show that the
work is His. But as this is not the way in which
the Almighty usually deals with his creatures, it
would be nearly as preposterous for men to act on
this presumption, and sin on in hopes of a miracu-
lous conversion, as it would be to take no means for
the preservation of our lives, because Jesus Christ
raised Lazarus from the dead.

132
CHAP. XI.
On the Manner of instructing young Persons in Re-
ligion.—General Remarks on the Genius of Chris-
tianity.
I would now with great deference address those re-
spectable characters who are really concerned about
the best interests of their children; those to whom
Christianity is indeed an important consideration,
but whose habits of life have hitherto hindered them
from giving it its due degree in the scale of edu-
cation. .
Begin then with considering that religion is a part,
and the most prominent part, in your system of in-
struction. Do not communicate its principles in a
random desultory way; nor scantily stint this busi-
ness to only such scraps and remnants of time as may
be casually picked up from the gleanings of other
acquirements. “Will you bring to God for a sacri-
fice that which costs you nothing?” Let the best part
of the day, which with most people is the earliest
part, be steadily and invariably dedicated to this
work by your children, before they are tired with
their other studies, while the intellect is clear, the
spirits light, and the attention unfatigued.
Confine not your instructions to mere verbal rituals
and dry systems; but instruct them in a way which
shall interest their feelings; by lively images, and
by a warm practical application of what they read
to their own hearts and circumstances. If you do
not study the great but too much slighted art of
fixing, of commanding, of chaining the attention,
you may throw away much time and labour, with
little other effect than that of disgusting your pupil
and wearying yourself. There seems to be no good

MANNER of INSTRUCTING IN RELIGION. 133
reason that while every other thing is to be made
amusing, religion alone must be dry and uninviting.
Do not fancy that a thing is good merely because it
is dull. Why should not the most entertaining
powers of the human mind be supremely conse-
crated to that subject which is most worthy of their
full exercise? The misfortune is, that religious learn-
ing is too often rather considered as an act of the
memory than of the heart and feelings; and that
children are turned over to the dry work of getting
by rote as a task that which they should get from
example and animated conversation, from lively dis-
cussion, in which the pupil should learn to bear a
part. Teach them rather, as their Blessed Saviour
taught, by interesting parables, which, while they
corrected the heart, left some exercise for the inge-
nuity in the solution, and for the feelings in their
application. Teach, as HE taught, by seizing on
surrounding objects, passing events, local circum-
stances, peculiar characters, apt allusions, just ana-
logy, appropriate illustration. Call in all creation,
animate and inanimate, to your aid, and accustom
your young audience to

Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
Even when the nature of your subject makes it ne-
cessary for you to be more plain and didactic, do
not fail frequently to enliven these less engaging
parts of your discourse with some incidental imagery
which shall captivate the fancy. Relieve what
would otherwise be too dry and preceptive, with
some striking exemplification in point, some touching
instance to be imitated, some awful warning to be
avoided; something which shall illustrate your in-
struction, which shall realize your position, which

134 ON THE MANNER OF
shall embody your idea, and give shape and form,
colour and life, to your precept. Endeavour unre-
mittingly to connect the reader with the subject, by
making her feel that what you teach is neither an
abstract truth, nor a thing of mere general informa-
tion, but that it is a business in which she herself is
individually and immediately concerned; in which
not only her eternal salvation but her present happi-
ness is involved. Do, according to your measure of
ability, what the Holy Spirit which indited the
Scriptures has done, always take the sensibility of
the learner into your account of the faculties which
are to be worked upon. “For the doctrines of the
Bible,” as the profound and enlightened Bacon ob-
serves, “are not proposed to us in a naked logical
form, but arrayed in the most beautiful and striking
colours which creation affords.” By those affecting
illustrations used by Him “who knew what was in
man,” and therefore best knew how to address him,
it was, that the unlettered audiences of Christ and
his apostles were enabled both to comprehend and
to relish doctrines, which would not readily have
made their way to their understandings, had they
not first touched their hearts; and which would have
found access to neither the one nor the other, had
they been delivered in dry scholastic disquisitions.
Now those audiences not being learned, may be sup-
posed to have been nearly in the state of children,
as to their receptive faculties, and to have required
nearly the same sort of instruction; that is, they
were more capable of being affected with what was
simple, and touching, and lively, than what was ela-
borate, abstruse, and unaffecting. Heaven and earth
were made to furnish their contributions, when man
was to be taught that science which was to make him
wise unto salvation. If that be the purest eloquence

INSTRUCTING IN RELIGION. 135
which most persuades, and which comes home to
the heart with the fullest evidence and the most irre-
sistible force, then no eloquence is so powerful as
that of Scripture: and an intelligent Christian teacher
will be admonished by the mode of Scripture itself,
how to communicate its truths with life and spirit;
“while he is musing, the fire burns:” that fire which
will preserve him from an insipid and freezing mode
of instruction. He will moreover, as was said above,
always carefully keep up a quick sense of the per-
sonal interest the pupil has in every religious instruc-
tion which is impressed upon him. He will teach
as Paul prayed, “with the spirit, and with the un-
derstanding also;” and in imitating this great model,
he will necessarily avoid the opposite faults of two
different sorts of instructors; for while some of our
divines of the higher class have been too apt to preach
as if mankind had only intellect, and the lower and
more popular sort as if they had only passions, do
you borrow what is good from both, and address
your pupils as beings compounded of both under-
standing and affections*. x- -
Fancy not that the Bible is too difficult and intri-
cate to be presented in its own naked form, and that
it puzzles and bewilders the youthful understanding.
In all needful and indispensable points of knowledge,
the darkness of Scripture, as a great Christian phi-
losopher + has observed, “is but a partial darkness,
* The zeal and diligence with which the Bishop of London's
weekly lectures have been attended by persons of all ranks, and
descriptions, but more especially by that class to whom this little
work is addressed, is a very promising circumstance for the age.
And while one considers with pleasure the advantages peculiarly
to be derived by the young from so interesting and animated an
exposition of the gospel, one is further led to rejoice at the coun-
tenance given by such high authority to the revival of that excel-
lent, but too much neglected practice of lectures,
t Mr. Boyle.

136 ON THE MANNER OF

like that of Egypt, which benighted only the enemies
of God, while it left his children in clear day.” It
is not pretended that the Bible will find in the reader
clear views of God and of Christ, of the soul and
eternity, but that it will give them. And if it be
really the appropriate character of Scripture, as it
tells us itself that it is, “to enlighten the eyes of the
blind,” and “to make wise the simple,” then it is
as well calculated for the youthful and uninformed
as for any other class; and as it was never expected
that the greater part of Christians should be learned,
so is learning, though of inestimable value in a teacher
of theology, no essential qualification for a common
Christian: for which reason Scripture truths are ex-
pressed with that clear and simple evidence adapted
to the kind of assent which they require; an assent
materially different from that sort of demonstration
which a mathematical theorem demands. He who
could bring an unprejudiced heart and an unper-
verted will, would bring to the Scriptures the best
qualification for understanding and receiving them.
And though they contain things which the pupil
cannot comprehend, (as what ancient poet, historian,
or orator does not,) the teacher may address to him
the words which Christ addressed to Peter, “What
I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know
hereafter.”
Young people who have been taught religion in
a formal and superficial way, who have had all its
drudgeries and none of its pleasures, will probably
have acquired so little relish for it, as to consider the
continued prosecution of their religious studies as a
badge of their tutelage, as a mark that they are still
under subjection; and will look forward with impa-
ience to the hour of their emancipation from the
ectures on Christianity, as the era of their promised


INSTRUCTING IN RELIGION. 137
liberty. They will long for the period when its les-
sons shall cease to be delivered ; will conclude that,
having once attained such an age, and arrived at the
required proficiency, the object will be accomplished
and the labour at an end. But let not your children
“so learn Christ.” Apprize them that no specific
day will ever arrive on which they shall say, I have
attained ; but inform them, that every acquisition
must be followed up; knowledge must be increased;
prejudices subdued; good habits rooted; evil ones
eradicated; dispositions strengthened; principles
confirmed; till, going on from light to light, and
from strength to strength, they come “to the measure
of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” .
But though serious instruction will not only be
uninteresting but irksome if conveyed to youth in a
cold didactic way, yet if their affections are suitably
engaged, while their understandings are kept in ex-
ercise, their hearts, so far from necessarily revolting,
as some insist, will often receive the most solemn
truths with alacrity. It is, as we have repeated, the
manner which revolts them, and not the thing.
As it is notorious that men of wit and sprightly
fancy have been the most formidable enemies to
Christianity; while men, in whom those talents have
been consecrated to God, have been some of her
most useful champions, take particular care to press
that ardent and ever active power, the imagination,
into the service of religion; this bright and busy
faculty will be leading its possessor into perpetual
peril, and is an enemy of peculiar potency till it
come to be employed in the cause of God. It is a
lion, which though worldly prudence indeed may
chain so as to prevent outward mischief, yet the ma-
lignity remains within; but when sanctified by
Christianity, the imagination is a lion tamed ; you
. .

138 ON THE MANNER OF
have all the benefit of its strength and its activity,
divested of its mischief. God never bestowed that
noble but restless faculty, without intending it to be
an instrument of his own glory; though it has been
too often set up in rebellion against him; because,
in its youthful stirrings, while all alive and full of
action, it has not been seized upon to fight for its
rightful Sovereign, but was early enlisted with little
opposition under the banners of the world, the flesh,
and the devil. Religion is the only subject in which,
under the guidance of a severe and sober-minded
prudence, this discursive faculty can safely stretch its
powers and expand its energies. But let it be re-
membered, that it must be a sound and genuine
Christianity which can alone so chastise and regulate
the imagination, as to restrain it from those errors
and excesses into which a false, a mistaken, an irre-
gular religion, has too often led its injudicious and
ill instructed professor. Some of the most fatal ex-
tremes into which a wild enthusiasm or a frightful
superstition has plunged its unhappy votaries, have
been owing to the want of a due direction, of a strict
and holy castigation of this ever-working faculty.
To secure imagination therefore on the safe side, and,
if I may change the metaphor, to put it under the
direction of its true pilot in the stormy voyage of
life, is like engaging those potent elements, the wind
and tide, in your favour.
In your communications with young people, take
care to convince them that as religion is not a busi-
ness to be laid aside with the lesson, so neither is it
a single branch of duty; some detached thing, which,
like the acquisition of an art or a language, is to be
practised separately, and to have its distinct periods
and modes of operation. But let them understand,
that common acts, by the spirit in which they are to

INSTRUCTING IN RELIGION. 139
be performed, are to be made acts of religion; that
Christianity may be considered as having something
of that influence over the conduct which external
grace has over the manners; for as it is not the per-
formance of some particular act which denominates
any one to be graceful, grace being a spirit diffused
through the whole system, which animates every sen-
timent, and informs every action; as she who has
true personal grace has it uniformly, and is not some-
times awkward and sometimes elegant; does not
sometimes lay it down and sometimes take it up;
so religion is not an occasional act, but an indwelling
rinciple, an inwrought habit, a pervading and in-
%rming spirit, from which indeed every act derives
all its life, and energy, and beauty.
Give them clear views of the broad discrimination
between practical religion and worldly morality; in
short, between the virtues of Christians and of Pagans.
Show them that no good qualities are genuine but
such as flow from the religion of Christ. Let them
learn that the virtues which the better sort of people,
who yet are destitute of true Christianity, inculcate
and practise, resemble those virtues which have the
love of God for their motive, just as counterfeit coin
resembles sterling gold; they may have, it is true,
certain points of resemblance with the others; they
may be bright and shining; they have perhaps the
image and the superscription, but they ever want the
true distinguishing properties; they want sterling
value, purity, and weight. They may indeed pass
current in the traffic of this world, but when brought
to the touchstone, they will be found full of alloy;
when weighed in the balance of the sanctuary, “they
will be found wanting;” they will not stand that
final trial which is to separate “the precious from



140 - ON THE GENIUS
the vile;” they will not abide the day “ of His coming
who is like a refiner's fire.”
One error into which even some good people are
apt to fall, is that of endeavouring to deceive young
minds by temporising expedients. In order to allure
them to become religious, they exhibit false, or faint,
or inadequate views of Christianity; and while they
represent it as it really is, as a life of superior happi-
ness and advantage, they conceal its difficulties, and
like the Jesuitical Chinese missionaries, extenuate,
or sink, or deny, such parts of it as are least alluring
to human pride. In attempting to disguise its prin-
ciple, they destroy its efficacy. But besides that,
the project fails with them as it did with the Jesuits;
all fraud is bad in itself; and a pious fraud is a con-
tradiction in terms which ought to be buried in the
rubbish of papal desolation.
... Instead of representing to the young Christian,
that it may be possible by a prudent ingenuity at
once to pursue, with equal ardour and success,
worldly fame and eternal glory, would it not be
more honest to tell him fairly and unambiguously
that there are two distinct roads between which there
is a broad boundary line ! that there are two con-
tending and irreconcilable interests? that he must
forsake the one if he would cleave to the other? that
there are two sorts of characters at eternal variance?
that he must renounce the one if he is in earnest
for the other? that nothing short of absolute decision
can make a confirmed Christian 2 Point out the dif-
ferent sorts of promises annexed to these different
sorts of characters. Confess in the language of
Christ how the man of the world often obtains (and
it is the natural course of human things) the recom-,
pence he sedulously seeks. “Verily I say unto you



OF CHRISTIANITY. 141
º
they have their reward.” Explain the beatitudes on
the other hand, and unfold what kind of specific re-
ward is there individually promised to its concomitant
virtue. Show your pupil that to that “poverty of
spirit” to which the kingdom of heaven is promised,
it would be inconsistent to expect that the recom-
pence of human commendation should be also at-
tached; that to that “purity of heart” to which the
beatific vision is annexed, it would be unreasonable
to suppose you can unite the praise of licentious wits,
or the admiration of a catch-club. These will be be-
stowed on their appropriate and corresponding merits.
Do not enlist them under false colours; disappoint-
ment will produce desertion. Different sorts of re-
wards are attached to different sorts of services; and
while you truly assert that religious ways are “ways
of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace,” take
care that you do not lead them to depend too exclu-
sively on worldly happiness and earthly peace, for
these make no part of the covenant; they may be
superadded, but they were never stipulated in the
COntract. ; ºf
But if, in order to attract the young to a religious
course, you disingenuously conceal its difficulties,
while you are enlarging upon its pleasures, you will
tempt them to distrust the truth of Scripture itself.
For what will they think, not only of a few detached
texts, but of the general cast and colour of the gospel
when contrasted with your representation of it?
What notion will they conceive of “the strait gate”
and “narrow way?” of the amputation of a “right
hand t” of the excision of a “right eye?” of the other
strong metaphors by which the Christian warfare is
shadowed out? of “crucifying the flesh?” of “mor-
tifying the oldman?” of “dying unto sin!” of “over-
coming the world?” Do you not think their meek


142 ON THE GENIUS
º
and compassionate Saviour who died for your chil-
dren loved them as well as you love them And if
this were his language, ought it not to be yours? It
is the language of true love; of that love with which
a merciful God loved the world, when he spared not
his own Son. Do not then try to conceal from them,
that the life of a Christian is necessarily opposite to
the life of the world; and do not seek, by a vain at-
tempt at accommodation, to reconcile that difference
which Christ himself has pronounced to be irrecon-
cilable.
May it not be partly owing to the want of a due
introduction to the knowledge of the real nature and
spirit of religion, that so many young Christians, who
set out in a fair and flourishing way, decline and
wither when they come to perceive the requisitions
of experimental Christianity ? requisitions which they
had not suspected of making any part of the plan;
and from which, when they afterwards discover them,
they shrink back, as not prepared for the unexpected
COnteSt.
People are no more to be cheated into religion
than into learning. The same spirit which influences
your oath in a court of justice should influence your
discourse in that court of equity—your family. Your
children should be told the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth. It is unnecessary to add,
that it must be done gradually and discreetly. We
know whose example we have for postponing that
which the mind is not yet prepared to receive: “I
have many things yet to say to you, but ye cannot
bear them now.” Accustom them to reason by ana-
logy. Explain to them that great worldly attain-
ments are never made without great sacrifices; that
the merchant cannot become rich without industry;
the statesman eminent without labour; the scholar





OF CHRISTIANITY. 143
learned without study; the hero renowned without
danger: would it not then, on human principles, be
unreasonable to think that the Christian alone should
obtain a triumph without a warfare? the highest
prize with the lowest exertions? an eternal crown
without a present cross? and that heaven is the only
reward which the idle may reckon upon 7 No:
though salvation “be the gift of God,” yet it must
be “worked out.” Convince your young friends,
however, that in this case the difficulty of the battle
bears no proportion to the prize of the victory. In
one respect, indeed, the point of resemblance fails,
and that most advantageously for the Christian; for
while, even by the most probable means, which are
the union of talents with diligence, no human pros-
perity can be insured to the worldly candidate ;
while the most successful adventurer may fail by
the fault of another; while the best concerted pro-
ject of the statesman may be crushed; the bravest
hero lose the battle; the brightest genius fail of
getting bread; and while, moreover, the pleasure
arising even from success in these may be no sooner
tasted than it is poisoned by a more prosperous rival;
the persevering Christian is safe and certain of ob-
taining his object; no misfortunes can defeat his
hope; no competition can endanger his success; for
though another gain, he will not lose; nay, the suc-
cess of another, so far from diminishing his gain, is
an addition to it; the more he diffuses, the richer he
grows; his blessings are enlarged by communication;
and that mortal hour which cuts off for ever the hopes
of worldly men, crowns and consummates his.
Beware at the same time of setting up any act of
self-denial or mortification as the procuring cause of
salvation. This would be a presumptuous project
to purchase that eternal life which is declared to be


144 ON THE GENIUS,
the “free gift of God.” This would be to send your
children, not to the gospel to learn their Christianity,
but to the monks and ascetics of the middle ages; it
would be sending them to Peter the Hermit, and the
holy fathers of the desert, and not to Peter the Apos-
tle and his Divine Master. Mortification is not the
price; it is nothing more than the discipline of a
soul of which sin is the disease, the diet prescribed
by the great physician. Without this guard the
young devout Christian would be led to fancy that
abstinence, pilgrimage, and penance might be adop-
ted as the cheap substitute for the subdued desire,
the resisted temptation, the conquered corruption,
and the obedient will; and would be almost in as
much danger, on the one hand, of self-righteousness
arising from austerities and mortification, as she
would be, on the other, from self-gratification in the
indulgences of the world. And while you carefully
impress on her the necessity of living a life of strict
obedience if she would please God, do not neglect
to remind her also that a complete renunciation of
her own performances as a ground of merit, pur-
chasing the favour of God by their own intrinsic
worth, is included in that obedience. w
It is of the last importance, in stamping on young
minds a true impression of the genius of Christianity,
to possess them with a conviction that it is the purity
of the motive which not only gives worth and beauty,
but which, in a Christian sense, gives life and soul to
the best action : nay, that while a right intention will
be acknowledged and accepted at the final judgment,
even without the act, the act itself will be disowned,
which wanted the basis of a pure design. “Thou
didst well that it was in thy heart to build me a
temple,” said the Almighty to that monarch whom
yet he permitted not to build it. How many splen-


OF CHRISTIANITY. 145
did actions will be rejected in the great day of retri-
bution, to which statues and monuments have been
raised on earth, while their almost deified authors
shall be as much confounded at their own unex-
pected reprobation, as at the divine acceptance of
those “whose life the world counted madness.” It
is worthy of remark, that “Depart from me, I never
knew you,” is not the malediction denounced on the
sceptic or the scoffer, but on the high professor, on
the unfruitful worker of “miracles,” on the unsanc-
tified utterer of “prophecies;” for even acts of piety
wanting the purifying principle, however they may
dazzle men, offend God. Cain sacrificed, Balaam
prophesied, Rousseau wrote the most sublime pane-
gyric on the Son of Mary, Volta IRE BUILT a
church 1 nay, so superior was his affectation of
sanctity, that he ostentatiously declared, that while
others were raising churches to Saints, there was one
man at least who would erect his church to God * :
that God whose altars he was overthrowing, whose
name he was vilifying, whose gospel he was exter-
minating, and the very name of whose Son he had
solemnly pledged himself to blot from the face of the
earth ! - -
Though it be impossible here to enumerate all
those Christian virtues which should be impressed
in the progress of a Christian education, yet in this
connexion I cannot forbear mentioning one which
more immediately grows out of the subject; and to
remark that the principle which should be the inva-
riable concomitant of all instruction, and especially
of religious instruction, is humility. As this temper
is inculcated in every page of the Gospel; as it is
deducible from every precept and every action of


* Deo ererit Voltaire, is the inscription affixed by himself on his
church at Ferney.
H
146 ON THE GENIUS
Christ; that is a sufficient intimation that it should
be made to grow out of every study, that it should
be grafted on every acquisition. It is the turning
point, the leading principle indicative of the very
genius, of the very being of Christianity. This chas-
tising quality should therefore be constantly made
in education to operate as the only counteraction
of that “ knowledge which puffeth up.” Youth
should be taught that as humility is the discrimi-
nating characteristic of our religion, therefore a proud
Christian, a haughty disciple of a crucified Master,
furnishes perhaps a stronger opposition in terms than
the whole compass of language can exhibit. They
should be taught that humility being the appropriate
grace of Christianity, is precisely the thing which
makes Christian and Pagan virtues essentially diffe-
rent. The virtues of the Romans, for instance, were
obviously founded in pride; as a proof of this, they
had not even a word in their copious language to
express humility, but what was used in a bad sense,
and conveyed the idea of meanness or vileness, of
baseness and servility. Christianity so stands on its
own single ground, is so far from assimilating itself
to the spirit of other religions, that, unlike the Ro-
man emperor, who though he would not become a
Christian, yet ordered that the image of Christ
should be set up in the Pantheon with those of the
heathen gods, and be worshiped in common with
them; Christianity not only rejects all such partner-
ships with other religions, but it pulls down their
images, defaces their temples, tramples on their
honours, founds its own existence on the ruins of
spurious religions and spurious virtues, and will be
every thing when it is admitted to be any thing.
Will it be going too much out of the way to
observe, that Christian Britain retaliates upon Pagan




OF CHRISTIANITY, 147
Rome? For if the former used humility in a bad
sense, has not latter learned to use pride in a good
one 7 May we without impertinence, venture to
remark, that, in the deliberations of as honourable
and upright political assemblies as ever adorned, or,
under Providence, upheld a country; in orations
which leave us nothing to envy in Attic or Roman
eloquence in their best days: it were to be wished
that we did not borrow from Rome an epithet which
suited the genius of her religion, as much as it mili-
tates against that of ours? The panegyrist of the
battle of Marathon, of Platea, or of Zama, might
with propriety speak of a “proud day,” or a “proud
event,” or a “proud success.” But surely the Chris-
tian encomiasts of the battle of the Nile might, from
their abundance, select an epithet better appropri-
ated to such a victory—a victory which, by preserv-
ing Europe, has perhaps preserved that religion
which sets its foot on the very neck of pride, and in
which the conqueror himself, even in the first ardours
of triumph, forgot not to ascribe the victory to AL-
Mighty God. Let us leave to the enemy both the
term and the thing; arrogant words being the only
weapons in which we must ever vail to their decided
superiority. As we must despair of the victory, let
us disdain the contest.
Above all things then you should beware that
your pupils do not take up with a vague, general,
and undefined religion; but look to it that their
Christianity be really the religion of Christ. Instead
of slurring over the doctrines of the Cross, as disre-
putable appendages to our religion, which are to be
disguised or got over as well as we can, but which
are never to be dwelt upon, take care to make these
your grand fundamental articles. Do not dilute, or
explain away these doctrines, and by some elegant



148 ON THE GENIUS -
periphrasis hint at a Saviour, instead of making him
the foundation stone of your system. Do not convey
primary, and plain, and awful, and indispensable
truths elliptically, I mean as something that is to
be understood without being expressed; nor study
fashionable circumlocutions to avoid names and
things on which our salvation hangs, in order to
prevent your discourse from being offensive. Per-
sons who are thus instructed in religion with more
good breeding than seriousness and simplicity, im-
bibe a distaste for plain scriptural language; and
the Scriptures themselves are so little in use with a
certain fashionable class of readers, that when the
doctrines and language of the Bible occasionally
occur in other authors, or in conversation, they pre-
sent a sort of novelty and peculiarity which offend;
and such readers as disuse the Bible are apt, from a
supposed delicacy of taste, to call that precise and
uritanical which is in fact sound and scriptural.
ay, it has several times happened to the author to
hear persons of sense and learning ridicule insulated
sentiments and expressions that have fallen in their
way, which they would have treated with decent
respect had they known them to be, as they really
were, texts of Scripture. This observation is hazarded
with a view to enforce the importance of early com-
municating religious knowledge, and of infusing an
early taste for the venerable phraseology of Scrip-
ture.
The persons in question thus possessing a kind of
Pagan Christianity, are apt to acquire a sort of Pagan
expression also, which just enables them to speak
with complacency of the “Deity,” of a “first cause,”
and of “conscience.” Nay, some may even go so
far as to talk of “the Founder of our religion,” of
the “Author of Christianity,” in the same general

OF CHRISTIANITY. 149
terms, as they would talk of the prophet of Arabia,
or the lawgiver of China, of Athens, or of the Jews.
But their refined ears revolt not a little at the un-
adorned name of Christ; and even the naked and
unqualified term of our Saviour, or Redeemer, car-
ries with it a queerish, inelegant, not to say a suspi-
cious sound. They will express a serious disappro-
bation of what is wrong, under the moral term of
vice, or the forensic term of crime; but they are apt
to think that the Scripture term of sin has something
fanatical in it; and, while they discover a great re-
spect for morality, they do not much relish holiness,
which is indeed the specific and only morality of a
Christian. They will speak readily of a man’s re-
forming, or leaving off a vicious habit, or growing
more correct in some individual practice; but the
idea conveyed under any of the Scripture phrases
signifying a total change of heart, they would stig-
matize as the very shibboleth of a sect, though it is
the language of a Liturgy they affect to admire, and
of a Gospel which they profess to receive. .
CHAP. XII.

Hints suggested for furnishing young Persons with a
Scheme of Prayer.
Those who are aware of the inestimable value of
prayer themselves, will naturally be anxious not
only that this duty should be earnestly inculcated
on their children, but that they should be taught it
in the best manner; and such parents need little
persuasion or counsel on the subject. Yet children
of decent and orderly (I will not say of strictly reli-
gious) families are often so superficially instructed in

150 A SCHEME OF PRAYER.
this important business, that it is not unusual, when
they are asked what prayers they use, to answer,
“the Lord's Prayer and the Creed.” And even
some who are better taught, are not always made to
understand with sufficient clearness the specific dis-
tinction between the two ; that the one is the confes-
sion of their faith, and the other the model for their
supplications. By this confused and indistinct be-
ginning, they set out with a perplexity in their ideas,
which is not always completely disentangled in more
advanced life.
An intelligent mother will seize the first occasion
which the child's opening understanding shall allow,
for making a little course of lectures on the Lord's
Prayer, taking every division or short sentence sepa-
rately; for each furnishes valuable materials for a
distinct lecture. The child should be led gradually
through every part of this divine composition; she
should be taught to break it into all the regular divi-
sions, into which indeed it so naturally resolves itself.
She should be made to comprehend one by one each
of its short but weighty sentences; to amplify and
spread them out for the purpose of better under-
standing them, not in their most extensive and
critical sense, but in their most simple and obvious
meaning. For in those condensed and substantial
expressions, every word is an ingot, and will bear
beating out; so that the teacher's difficulty will not
so much be what she shall say as what she shall sup-
press; so abundant is the expository matter which
this succinct pattern suggests. %
When the child has a pretty good conception of
the meaning of each division, she should then be
made to observe the connexion, relation, and de-
pendance of the several parts of this prayer one upon
another; for there is great method and connexion in



A SCHEME OF PRAYER. 151
it. We pray that the “kingdom of God may come,”
as the best means to “ hallow his name;” and that
by us, the obedient subjects of his kingdom, “ his
will may be done.” A judicious interpreter will
observe how logically and consequently one clause
grows out of another, though she will use neither the
word logical nor consequence; for all explanations
should be made in the most plain and familiar terms,
it being words, and not things, which commonly
perplex children, if, as it sometimes happens, the
teacher, though not wanting sense, want perspicuity
and simplicity.
The young person, from being made a complete
mistress of this short composition (which as it is to
be her guide and model through life, too much pains
cannot be bestowed on it), will have a clearer con-
ception, not only of its individual contents, but of
prayer in general, than many ever attain, though
their memory has been perhaps loaded with long
and unexplained forms, which they have been ac-
customed to swallow in the lump without scrutiny,
and without discrimination. Prayer should not be
so swallowed. It is a regular prescription, which
should stand analysis and examination: it is not a
charm, the successful operation of which depends on
your blindly taking it, without knowing what is in
it, and in which the good you receive is promoted
by your ignorance of its contents.
I would have it understood that by these little
comments, I do not mean that the child should be
put to learn dry, and to her unintelligible exposi-
tions; but that the exposition is to be colloquial.
And here I must remark in general, that the teacher
is sometimes unreasonably apt to relieve herself at
the child's expense, by loading the memory of a
little creature on occasions in which far other facul-

152 A SCHEME OF PRAY ER,
ties should be put in exercise. The child herself
should be made to furnish a good part of this extem-
poraneous commentary by her answers; in which
answers she will be much assisted by the judgment
the teacher uses in her manner of questioning. And
the youthful understanding, when its powers are
properly set at work, will soon strengthen by exer-
cise, so as to furnish reasonable if not very correct
anSWerS.
Written forms of prayer are not only useful and
proper, but indispensably necessary to begin with.
But I will hazard the remark, that if children are
thrown exclusively on the best forms, if they are
made to commit them to memory like a copy of
verses, and to repeat them in a dry, customary way,
they will produce little effect on their minds. They
will not understand what they repeat, if we do not
early open to them the important scheme of prayer.
Without such an elementary introduction to this
duty, they will afterwards be either ignorant or en-
thusiasts, or both. We should give them knowledge
before we can expect them to make much progress
in piety, and as a due preparative to it: Christian
instruction in this resembling the sun, who, in the
course of his communications, gives light before he
gives heat. And to labour to excite a spirit of devo-
tion without first infusing that knowledge out of
which it is to grow, is practically reviving the popish
maxim, that Ignorance is the mother of Devotion,
and virtually adopting the popish rule, of praying in
an unknown tongue.
Children, let me again observe, will not attend to
their prayers if they do not understand them; and
they will not understand them, if they are not taught
to analyse, to dissect them, to know their component
parts, and to methodise them.


A SCHEME OF PRAYER. 153
It is not enough to teach them to consider prayer
under the general idea that it is an application to
God for what they want, and an acknowledgment to
Him for what they have. This, though true in the
gross, is not sufficiently precise and correct. The
should learn to define and to arrange all the different
parts of prayer. And as a preparative to prayer itself,
they should be impressed with as clear an idea as
their capacity and the nature of the subject admit, of
“HIM with whom they have to do.” His omnipre-
sence is perhaps, of all his attributes, that of which
we may make the first practical use. Every head of
prayer is founded on some great scriptural truths,
which truths the little analysis here suggested will
materially assist to fix in their minds.
On the knowledge that “ God is,” that he is
an infinitely holy Being, and that “he is the re-
warder of all them that diligently seek him,” will be
grounded the first part of prayer, which is adoration.
The creature devoting itself to the Creator, or self-
dedication, next presents itself. And if they are first
taught that important truth, that as needy creatures
they want help, which may be done by some easy
analogy, they will be easily led to understand how
naturally petition forms a most considerable branch
of prayer: and divine grace being among the things
for which they are to petition, this naturally suggests
to the mind the doctrine of the influences of the Holy
Spirit. And when to this is added the conviction,
which will be readily worked into an ingenuous
mind, that as offending creatures they want pardon,
the necessity of confession will easily be made intelli-
gible to them. But they should be brought to under-
stand that it must not be such a general and vague
confession as awakens no sense of personal humilia-
tion, as excites no recollection of their own more




II 2

154 A SCHEME OF PRAY ER.
peculiar and individual faults. But it must be a
confession founded on self-knowledge, which is itself
to arise out of the practice of self-examination : for
want of this sort of discriminating habit, a well-
meaning but ill-instructed girl may catch herself
confessing the sins of some other person, and omit-
ting those which are more especially her own. On
the gladness of heart natural to youth, it will be less
difficult to impress the delightful duty of thanksgiv-
ing, which forms so considerable a branch of prayer.
In this they should be habituated to recapitulate not
only their general, but to enumerate their peculiar,
daily, and incidental mercies, in the same specific
manner as they should have been taught to detail
their wants in the petitionary, and their faults in the
confessional part. The same warmth of feeling
which will more readily dispose them to express
their gratitude to God in thanksgiving, will also lead
them more gladly to express their love to their
parents and friends, by adopting another indispens-
able, and to an affectionate heart, pleasing part of
prayer, which is intercession.
When they have been made, by a plain and per-
spicuous mode of instruction, fully to understand the
different nature of all these; and when they clearly
comprehend that adoration, self-dedication, confes-
sion, petition, thanksgiving, and intercession, are
distinct heads, which must not be involved in each
other, you may exemplify the rules by pointing out
to them these successive branches in any well writ-
ten form. And they will easily discern, that ascrip-
tion of glory to that God to whom we owe so much,
and on whom we so entirely depend, is the conclu-
sion into which a Christian's prayer will naturally
resolve itself. It is hardly needful to remind the
teacher that our truly Scriptural Liturgy invariably

A SCHEME OF PRAY ER, 155
furnishes the example of presenting every request in
the name of the great Mediator. In the Liturgy too
they will meet with the best exemplifications of
prayers, exhibiting separate specimens of each of
the distinct heads we have been suggesting.
But in order that the minds of young persons
may, without labour or difficulty, be gradually
brought into such a state of preparation as to be
benefited by such a little course of lectures as we
have recommended; they should, from the time
when they were first able to read, have been employ-
ing themselves at their leisure hours, in laying in a
store of provision for their present demands. And
here the memory may be employed to good purpose;
for being the first faculty which is ripened, and
which is indeed perfected when the others are only
beginning to unfold themselves, this is an intimation
of Providence that it should be the first seized on
for the best uses. It should therefore be devoted to
Iay in a stock of the more easy and devotional parts
of Scripture. The Psalms alone are an inexhausti-
ble storehouse of rich materials”. Children whose
minds have been early well furnished from these,
will be competent at nine or ten years old to pro-
duee from them, and to select with no contemptible
judgment suitable examples of all the parts of prayer;
and will be able to extract and appropriate texts
under each respective head, so as to exhibit, without
help, complete specimens of every part of prayer.
By confining them entirely to the sense, and nearly
to the words of Scripture, they will be preserved


* This wil be so far from spoiling the cheerfulness, or impeding
the pleasures of childhood, that the author knows a little girl who,
before she was seven years old, had learned the whole Psalter
through a second time; and that without any diminution of mn-
common gaiety of, spirits, or any interference with the elegant
acquirements suited to her station. ". . . . ;
156 A SCHEME OF PRAY ER.
from enthusiasm, from irregularity, and conceit. By
being obliged continually to apply for themselves,
they will get a habit in all their difficulties of “search-
ing the Scriptures,” which may be useful to them on
future and more trying occasions. But I would at
first confine them to the Bible; for were they allowed
with equal freedom to ransack other books with a
view to get helps to embellish their little compositions,
or rather compilations, they might be tempted to
pass off for their own what they pick up from others,
which might tend at once to make them both vain
and deceitful. This is a temptation to which they
are too much laid open when they get extravagantly
commended for any pilfered passage with which they
decorate their little themes and letters. But in the
present instance there is no danger of any similar de-
ception, for there is such a sacred signature stamped
on every Scripture phrase, that the owner's name can
never be defaced or torn off from the goods, either by
fraud or violence.
It would be well, if in those Psalms which children
were first directed to get by heart, an eye were had
to this their future application; and that they were
employed, but without any intimation of your subse-
quent design, in learning such as may be best turned
to this account. In the hundred and thirty-ninth,
the first great truth to be imprinted on the young
heart, the divine omnipresence, as was before ob-
served, is unfolded with such a mixture of majestic
grandeur, and such an interesting variety of intimate
and local circumstances, as is likely to seize on the
quick and lively feelings of youth. The awful idea
that that Being whom she is taught to reverence, is
not only in general “acquainted with all her ways,”
but that “he is about her path, and about her bed,”
bestows such a sense of real and present existence on

A SCHEME OF PRAYER. 157
Him of whom she is apt to conceive as having his
distant habitation only in Heaven, as will greatly
help her to realize the sense of his actual presence.
The hundred and third Psalm will open to the
mind rich and abundant sources of expression for
gratitude and thanksgiving, and it includes spiritual
as well as temporal favours. It illustrates the com-
passionate mercies of God by familiar and domestic
images, of such peculiar tenderness and exquisite
endearment, as are calculated to strike upon every
chord of filial fondness, in the heart of an affectionate
child. The fifty-first supplies an infinite variety of
matter in whatever relates to confession of sin, or to
supplication for the aids of the Spirit. The twenty-
third abounds with captivating expressions of the
rotecting goodness and tender love of their heavenly
father, conveyed by pastoral imagery of uncommon
beauty and sweetness: in short, the greater part of
these charming compositions overflows with materials
for every head of prayer.
The child who, while she was engaged in learning
these Scriptures, was not aware that there was any
specific object in view, or any farther end to be an-
swered by it, will afterwards feel an unexpected plea-
sure arising from the application of her petty labours,
when she is called to draw out from her little treasury
of knowledge the stores she has been insensibly col-
lecting; and will be pleased to find that without any
fresh application to study, for she is now obliged to
exercise a higher faculty than memory, she has lying
ready in her mind the materials with which she is at
length called upon to work. Her judgment must be
set about selecting one or two, or more texts which
shall contain the substance of every specific head of
prayer before noticed; and it will be a farther exer-
cise to her understanding to concatenate the detached

158 A SCHEME OF PRAYER.
parts into one regular whole, occasionally varying the
arrangement as she likes; that is, changing the order,
sometimes beginning with invocation, sometimes
with confession; sometimes dwelling longer on one
part, sometimes on another. As the hardships of a
religious Sunday are often so pathetically pleaded,
as making one of the heavy burdens of religion; and
as the friends of religion are so often called upon to
mitigate its intolerable rigours, might not such an
exercise as has been here suggested help, by varying
its occupations, to lighten its load 7 -:
The habits of the pupil being thus early formed,
her memory, attention, and intellect being bent in a
right direction, and the exercise invaribly maintained,
may one not reasonably hope that her affections also,
through divine grace, may become interested in the
work, till she will be enabled “to pray with the
spirit and with the understanding also 2° She will
now be qualified to use a well composed form with
seriousness and advantage; for she will now use it
not mechanically, but rationally. That which before
appeared to her a mere mass of good words will now
appear a significant composition, exhibiting variety,
and regularity, and beauty; and while she will have
the farther advantage of being enabled by her im-
proved judgment to distinguish and select for her own
purpose such prayers as are more judicious and more
scriptural, it will also habituate her to look for plan,
and design, and lucid order, in other works.
A
W H E W
GE THE
PRINCIPLES AND CONDUCT
Prº EWALENT ºxº
WOMEN OF RANK AND FORTUNE.
CHAP. XIII.
The practical Use of Female Knowledge, with a Sketch
of the Female Character, and a comparative View
of the Seres.
The chief end to be proposed in cultivating the
understandings of women, is to qualify them for the
practical purposes of life. Their knowledge is not
often, like the learning of men, to be reproduced in
some literary composition, nor ever in any learned
profession; but it is to come out in conduct. A
lady studies, not that she may qualify herself to be-
come an orator or a pleader; not that she may learn
to debate, but to act. She is to read the best books,
not so much to enable her to talk of them, as to bring
the improvement which they furnish to the rectifica-
tion of her principles, and the formation of her habits.
The great uses of study are to enable her to regulate
her own mind, and to be useful to others.
To woman, therefore, whatever be her rank, I
would recommend a predominance of those more
sober studies, which, not having display for their ob-
ject, may make her wise without vanity, happy with-


160 PRACTICAL USE OF
out witnesses, and content without panegyrists; the
exercise of which will not bring celebrity, but improve
usefulness. She should pursue every kind of study
which will teach her to elicit truth ; which will
lead her to be intent upon realities; will give preci-
sion to her ideas; will make an exact mind ; every
study which, instead of stimulating her sensibility,
will chastise it; which will give her definite notions;
will bring the imagination under dominion; will
lead her to think, to compare, to combine, to metho-
dise; which will confer such a power of discrimina-
tion, that her judgment shall learn to reject what is
dazzling, if it be not solid; and to prefer, not what
is striking, or bright, or new, but what is just. That
kind of knowledge which is rather fitted for home
consumption than foreign exportation, is peculiarly
adapted to women.
It is because the superficial nature of their educa-
tion furnishes them with a false and low standard of
intellectual excellence, that women have sometimes
become ridiculous by the unfounded pretensions of
literary vanity: for it is not the really learned, but
the smatterers, who have generally brought their sex
into discredit, by an absurd affectation, which has
set them on despising the duties of ordinary life.
There have not indeed been wanting (but the charac-
ter is not now common) precieuses ridicules, who,
assuming a superiority to the sober cares which
ought to occupy their sex, have claimed a lofty and
supercilious exemption from the dull and plodding
drudgeries
Of this dim speck called earth !


who have affected to establish an unnatural separation
between talents and usefulness, instead of bearing in
mind that talents are the great appointed instruments

FEMALE KNOWLEDGE. 161
of usefulness; who have acted as if knowledge were
to confer on woman a kind of fantastic sovereignty,
which should exonerate her from female duties;
whereas it is only meant the more eminently to
qualify her for the performance of them. For a wo-
man of real sense will never forget, that while the
greater part of her proper duties are such as the most
moderately gifted may fulfil with credit, (since Pro-
vidence never makes that to be very difficult which
is generally necessary,) yet the most highly endowed
are equally bound to fulfil them; and the humblest of
these offices, performed on Christian principles, are
wholesome for the minds even of the most enlightened,
and tend to the casting down of those high imagina-
tions which women of genius are too much tempted
to indulge. *
For instance; ladies whose natural vanity has been
aggravated by a false education, may look down on
economy as a vulgar attainment, unworthy of the
attention of a highly cultivated intellect; but this is
the false estimate of a shallow mind. Economy,
such as a woman of fortune is called on to practise,
is not merely the petty detail of small daily expenses,
the shabby curtailments and stinted parsimony of a
little mind, operating on little concerns; but it is
the exercise of a sound judgment exerted in the com-
prehensive outline of order, of arrangement, of distri-
bution; of regulations by which alone well governed
societies, great and small, subsist. She who has the
best regulated mind will, other things being equal,
have the best regulated family. As in the superin-
tendence of the universe, wisdom is seen in its effects;
and as in the visible works of Providence that which
goes on with such beautiful regularity is the result
not of chance but of design; so that management
which seems the most easy is commonly the conse-
162 PRACTICAL USE OF
quence of the best concerted plan: a well concerted
plan is seldom the offspring of an ordinary mind.
A sound economy is a sound understanding brought
into action; it is calculation realized; it is the doc-
trine of proportion reduced to practice; it is foreseeing
consequences, and guarding against them ; it is ex-
pecting contingencies and being prepared for them.
The difference is, that to a narrow minded vulgar
economist the details are continually present; she is
overwhelmed by their weight, and is perpetually be-
speaking your pity for her labours and your praise
for her exertions; she is afraid you will not see
how much she is harassed. Little events and trivial
operations engross her whole soul; while a woman
of sense, having provided for their probable recur-
rence, guards against the inconveniencies, without
being disconcerted by the casual obstructions which
they offer to her general scheme. Subordinate
expenses and inconsiderable retrenchments should
not swallow up that attention which is better be-
stowed on regulating the general scale of expense,
and correcting and reducing an overgrown establish-
ment.
Superior talents, however, are not so common, as,
by their frequency, to offer much disturbance to the
general course of human affairs; and many a lady,
who tacitly accuses herself of neglecting her ordinary
duties because she is a genius, will perhaps be found
often to accuse herself as unjustly as good St Jerome,
when he laments that he was beaten by the angel for
being too Ciceronian in his style”.
The truth is, women who are so puffed up with
the conceit of talents as to neglect the plain duties of
life, will not frequently be found to be women of the
best abilities. And here may the author be allowed the
* * See Dr. Owen,


FEMALE KNOWLEDGE. 163
gratification of observing, that those women of real
genius and extensive knowledge, whose friendship
has conferred honour and happiness on her own
life, have been in general eminent for economy and
the practice of domestic virtues; and greatly superior
to the poor affectation of neglecting the duties and
despising the knowledge of common life, with which
literary women have been frequently, and not always
unjustly, accused.
A romantic girl with a pretension to sentiment,
which her still more ignorant friends mistake for ge-
nius, (for in the empire of the blind, the one-eyed
are kings,) and possessing something of a natural ear,
has perhaps in her childhood exhausted all the images
of grief, and love, and fancy, picked up in her desul-
tory poetical reading, in an elegy on a sick linnet
or a dead lapdog; she begins thenceforward to be
considered as a prodigy in her little circle; sur-
rounded with flatterers, she has no opportunity of .
getting to know that her fame is derived not from
her powers, but her position; and that when an im-
partial critic shall have made all the necessary deduc-
tions, such as-that she is a neighbour, that she is a
relation, that she is a female, that she is young, that
she has had no advantages, that she is pretty per-
haps—when her verses come to be stripped of all
their extraneous appendages, and the fair author is
driven off her 'vantage ground of partiality, sex, and
favour, she will commonly sink to the level of ordinary
capacities; while those quieter women, who have
meekly sat down in the humble shades of prose and
prudence, by a patient perseverance in rational studies,
rise afterwards much higher in the scale of intellect,
and acquire a stock of sound knowledge for far better
purposes than mere display. And, though it may
seem a contradiction, yet it will generally be found


164 PRACTICAL USE OF
true, that girls who take to scribbling are the least
studious, the least reflecting, and the least rational.
They early acquire a false confidence in their own
unassisted powers; it becomes more gratifying to their
natural vanity to be always pouring out their minds
on paper, than to be drawing into them fresh ideas
from richer sources. The original stock, small per-
haps at first, is soon spent; and the subsequent efforts
grow more and more feeble, if the mind which is
continually exhausting itself, be not also continually
replenished; till the latter compositions become little
more than reproductions of the same ideas, and
fainter copies of the same images, a little varied and
modified perhaps, and not a little diluted and en-
feebled.
These self-taught, and self-dependent scribblers
pant for the unmerited and unattainable praise of
fancy and of genius, while they disdain the commen-
dation of judgment, knowledge, and perseverance
which would be within their reach. To extort admi-
ration they are accustomed to boast of an impossible
rapidity in composing; and while they insinuate
how little time their performances cost them, they
intend you should infer how perfect they might have
made them had they condescended to the drudgery
of application. They take superfluous pains to con-
vince you that there was neither learning nor labour
employed in the work for which they solicit your
praise: the judicious eye too soon perceives it! though
it does not perceive that native strength and mother-
wit, which in works of real genius make some amends
for the negligence, which yet they do not justify.
But instead of extolling these effusions for their faci-
lity, it would be kind in friends rather to blame them
for their crudeness: and when the young pretenders
are eager to prove in how short a time such a poem

FEMALE KNOWLEDGE. 1.65
has been struck off, it would be well to regret that
they had not either taken a longer time, or forborne
from writing at all; as in the former case the work
would have been less defective, and in the latter the
writer would have discovered more humility and
self-distrust.
A general capacity for knowledge, and the culti-
vation of the understanding at large, will always put
a woman into the best state for directing her pur-
suits into those particular channels which her desti-
nation in life may afterwards require. But she
should be carefully instructed that her talents are
only a means to a still higher attainment, and that
she is not to rest in them as an end; that merely to
exercise them as instruments for the acquisition of
fame and the promoting of pleasure, is subversive of
her delicacy as a woman, and contrary to the spirit
of a Christian.
Study, therefore, is to be considered as the means
of strengthening the mind, and of fitting it for higher
duties, just as exercise is to be considered as an in-
strument for strengthening the body for the same
end. And the valetudinarian who is religiously
punctual in the observance of his daily rides to pro-
mote his health, and rests in that as an end, without
so much as intending to make his improved health
an instrument of increased usefulness, acts on the
same low and selfish principle with her who reads
merely for pleasure and for fame, without any design
of devoting the more enlarged and invigorated mind.
to the glory of the Giver.
But there is one human consideration which would
perhaps more effectually tend to damp in an aspiring
woman the ardours of literary vanity (I speak not of
real genius, though there the remark often applies)
than any which she will derive from motives of

166 PRACTICAL USE OF

humility, or propriety, or religion; which is, that in
the judgment passed on her performances, she will
have to encounter the mortifying circumstance of
having her sex always taken into account, and her
highest exertions will probably be received with the
ualified approbation, that it is really ertraordinary
for a woman. Men of learning, who are naturally
inclined to estimate works in proportion as they
appear to be the result of art, study, and institution,
are apt to consider even the happier performances of
the other sex as the spontaneous productions of a
fruitful but shallow soil; and to give them the same
sort of praise which we bestow on certain salads,
which often draw from us a sort of wondering com-
mendation; not indeed as being worth much in
themselves, but because by the lightness of the
earth, and a happy knack of the gardener, these
indifferent cresses spring up in a night, and therefore
one is ready to wonder they are no worse.
As to men of sense, however, they need be the
less inimical to the improvement of the other sex, as
they themselves will be sure to be gainers by it; the
enlargement of the female understanding being the
most likely means to put an end to those petty cavils
and contentions for equality which female smatterers
so anxiously maintain. I say smatterers, for between
the first class of both sexes the question is much
more rarely and always more temperately agitated.
Cooperation and not competition is indeed the clear
principle we wish to see reciprocally adopted by
those higher minds in each sex which really approxi-
mate the nearest to each other. The more a woman's
understanding is improved, the more obviously she
will discern that there can be no happiness in any
society where there is a perpetual struggle for power;
and the more her judgment is rectified, the more






FEMALE KNOWLEDGE. 167
accurate views will she take of the station she her-
self was born to fill, and the more readily will she
accommodate herself to it; while the most vulgar
and ill-informed women are ever most inclined to be
tyrants, and those always struggle most vehemently
for power, who would not fail to make the worst use
of it when attained. Thus the weakest reasoners are
always the most positive in debate; and the cause is
obvious, for they are unavoidably driven to maintain
their pretensions by violence who want arguments
and reasons to prove that they are in the right.
There is this singular difference between a woman
vain of her wit, and a woman vain of her beauty;
that the beauty, while she is anxiously alive to her
own fame, is often indifferent enough about the
beauty of other women; and provided she herself is
sure of your admiration, she does not insist on your
thinking that there is another handsome woman in
the world: while she who is vain of her genius,
more liberal at least in her vanity, is jealous for the
honour of her whole sex, and contends for the equa-
lity of their pretensions, in which she feels that her
own are involved. The beauty vindicates her own
rights, the wit, the rights of women; the beauty
fights for herself, the wit for a party; and while the
more selfish though more moderate beauty
would but be Queen for life,
the public spirited wit struggles to abrogate the
Salique law of intellect, and to enthrone
a whole sex of Queens.
At the revival of letters in the sixteenth and the
following century, the controversy about this equality
was agitated with more warmth than wisdom; and
the process was instituted and carried on, on the
168 COMPARATIVE VIEW
part of the female complainant, with that sort of
acrimony which always raises a suspicion of the
justice of any cause. The novelty of that knowledge
which was then bursting out from the dawn of a long
dark night, kindled all the ardours of the female
mind, and the ladies fought zealously for a portion
of that renown which the reputation of learning was
beginning to bestow. Besides their own pens, they
had for their advocates all those needy authors who
had any thing to hope from their power, their riches,
or their influence; and so giddy did some of these
literary ladies become by the adulation of their nu-
merous panegyrists, that through these repeated
draughts of inebriating praise, they grew to despise
the equality for which they had before contended, as
a state below their merit and unworthy of their
acceptance. They now scorned to litigate for what
they already thought they so obviously possessed,
and nothing short of the palm of superiority was
at length considered as adequate to their growing
claims. When court ladies and princesses were the
candidates, they could not long want champions to
support their cause ; by these champions female
authorities were produced as if paramount to facts;
quotations from these female authors were considered
as proofs, and their point blank assertions stood for
solid and irrefragable arguments. In those parasites
who offered this homage to female genius, the ho-
mage was therefore the effect neither of truth, nor of
justice, nor of conviction. It arose rather out of
gratitude, or it was a reciprocation of flattery; it
was sometimes vanity, it was often distress, which
prompted the adulation; it was the want of a pa-
troness; it was the want of a dinner. When a lady,
and especially as it then often happened, when one
who was noble or royal, sat with gratifying docility


OF THE SEXES, 169
at the foot of a professor's chair; when she admired
the philosopher, or took upon her to protect the theo-
logian, whom his rivals among his own sex were
tearing to pieces, what could the grateful professor
or delighted theologian do less in return than make
the apotheosis of her who had had the penetration to
discern his merit and the spirit to reward it? Thus
in fact it was not so much her vanity as his own that
he was often flattering, though she was the dupe of
her more deep and designing panegyrist. .
But it is a little unlucky for the perpetuity of that
fame which the encomiast had made over to his
patroness, in the never dying records of his verses
and orations, that in the revolution of a century or
two the very names of the flattered are now almost
as little known as the works of the flatterers. Their
memorial is perished with them *: an instructive
lesson, that whoever bestows, or assumes a reputa-
tion disproportioned to the merit of the claimant,
will find it as little durable as solid. For this lite-
rary warfare, which engaged such troops of the second
hand authors of the age in question in such con-
tinual skirmishes, and not a few pitched battles;
which provoked so much rancour, so many volumes,
and so little wit; so much vanity and so much flat-
tery, produced no useful or lasting effect. Those who
promised themselves that their names would outlive
“one half of round eternity,” did not reach the end
of the century in which the boast was made; and
those who offered the incense, and those who greedily
snuffed up its fumes, are buried in the same blank
oblivion!
But when the temple of Janus seemed to have
been closed, or when at worst the peace was only
occasionally broken by a slight and random shot
* See Brantome, Pere le Moine, Mons. Thomas, &c.
I

170 COMPARATIVE VIEW
from the hand of some single straggler; it appears
that though open rebellion had ceased, yet the female
claim had not been renounced ; it had only (if we
may change the metaphor) lain in abeyance. The
contest has recently been revived with added fury,
and with multiplied exactions; for whereas the an-
cient demand was merely a kind of imaginary pre-
rogative, a speculative importance, a mere titular
right, a shadowy claim to a few unreal acres of Par-
massian territory; the revived contention has taken a
more serious turn, and brings forward political as
well as intellectual pretensions: and among the in-
novations of this innovating period, the imposing
term of rights has been produced to sanctify the
claim of our female pretenders, with a view not only
to rekindle in the minds of women a presumptuous
vanity dishonourable to their sex, but produced with
a view to excite in their hearts an impious discontent
with the post which God has assigned them in this
world.
But they little understand the true interests of
woman who would lift her from the important duties
of her allotted station, to fill with fantastic dignity a
loftier but less appropriate niche. Nor do they
understand her true happiness, who seek to annihi-
late distinctions from which she derives advantages,
and to attempt innovations which would depreciate
her real value. Each sex has its proper excellencies,
which would be lost were they melted down into the
common character by the fusion of the new philoso-
phy. Why should we do away distinctions which
increase the mutual benefits and enhance the satisfac-
tions of life? Whence, but by carefully preservin
the original marks of difference stamped by the hand
of the Creator, would be derived the superior advan-
tage of mixed society? Have men no need to have





OF THE SEXES. 17.1-
their rough angles filed off, and their harshnesses
and asperities smoothed and polished by assimilating
with beings of more softness and refinement? Are
the ideas of women naturally so very judicious, are
their principles so invincibly firm, are their views so
perfectly correct, are their judgments so completely
exact, that there is occasion for no additional weight,
no superadded strength, no increased clearness, none
of that enlargement of mind, none of that additional
invigoration which may be derived from the aids of
the stronger sex What identity could advantage-
ously supersede an enlivening º and an
interesting variety of character Is it not then more
wise as well as more honourable to move contentedly
in the plain path which Providence has obviously
marked out to the sex, and in which custom has for
the most part rationally confirmed them, than to
stray awkwardly, unbecomingly, and unsuccessfully,
in a forbidden road 2 Is it not desirable to be the
lawful possessors of a lesser domestic territory, rather
than the turbulent usurpers of a wider foreign em-
pire? to be good originals, rather than bad imitators?
to be the best thing of one's own kind, rather than
an inferior thing even if it were of a higher kind
to be excellent women rather than indifferent men 7
Is the author then undervaluing her own sex 7–
No. It is her zeal for their true interests which leads
her to oppose their imaginary rights. It is her re-
gard for their happiness which makes her endeavour
to cure them of a feverish thirst for fame; of an
ambition as little becoming the delicacy of their
female character as the meekness of their religious
profession. A little Christian humility and sober-
mindedness are worth all the wild metaphysical
discussion which has unsettled the peace of vain
women, and forfeited the respect of reasonable men.



172 COMPARATIVE VIEW
And the most elaborate definition of ideal rights, and
the most hardy measures for attaining them, are of
less value in the eyes of a truly amiable woman,
than “that meek and quiet spirit, which is in the
sight of God of great price.”
Natural propensities best mark the designations of
Providence as to their application. The fin was not
more clearly bestowed on the fish that he should
swim, nor the wing given to the bird that he should
fly, than superior strength of body and a firmer tex-
ture of mind was given to man, that he might pre-
side in the deep and daring scenes of action and of
council; in government, in arms, in science, in
commerce, and in those professions which demand
a higher reach, and a wider range of powers. The
true value of woman is not diminished by the impu-
tation of inferiority in these respects; she has other
requisites better adapted to answer the ends and
purposes of her being, by “HIM who does all things
well;” who suits the agent to the action; who ac-
commodates the instrument to the work.
Let her not then view with pining envy the keen
satirist, hunting vice through all the doublings and
windings of the heart; the sagacious politician, lead-
ing senates, and directing the fate of empires; the
acute lawyer, detecting the obliquities of fraud; and
the skilful dramatist, exposing the pretensions of
folly: but let her ambition be consoled by reflecting,
that those who thus excel, to all that Nature bestows
and books can teach, must add besides that consum-
mate knowledge of the world to which a delicate
woman has no fair avenues, and which even if she
could attain, she would never be supposed to have
come honestly by.
In almost all that comes under the description of
polite letters, in all that captivates by imagery, or



OF THE SEXES. 173
warms by just and affecting sentiment, women are
excellent. They possess in a high degree that deli-
cacy and quickness of perception, and that nice
discernment between the beautiful and defective
which comes under the denomination of taste. Both
in composition and action they excel in details; but
they do not so much generalize their ideas as men,
nor do their minds seize a great subject with so large
a grasp. They are acute observers, and accurate
judges of life and manners, as far as their own sphere
of observation extends; but they describe a smaller
circle. A woman sees the world, as it were, from a
little elevation in her own garden, whence she makes
an exact survey of home scenes, but takes not in that
wider range of distant prospects which he who stands
on a loftier eminence commands. Women have a
certain tact which often enables them to feel what is
just more instantaneously than they can define it.
They have an intuitive penetration into character,
bestowed on them by Providence, like the sensitive
and tender organs of some timid animals, as a kind
of natural guard to warn of the approach of danger
beings who are often called to act defensively.
In summing up the evidence, if I may so speak,
of the different powers of the sexes, one may ven-
ture, perhaps, to assert, that women have equal
parts, but are inferior in wholeness of mind, in the
integral understanding: that though a superior wo-
man may possess single faculties in equal perfection,
yet there is commonly a juster proportion in the
mind of a superior man: that if women have in an
equal degree the faculty of fancy which creates
images, and the faculty of memory which collects
and stores ideas, they seem not to possess in equal
measure the faculty of comparing, combining, ana-
lysing, and separating these ideas; that deep and



174 COMPARATIVE VIEW

patient thinking which goes to the bottom of a sub-
ject; nor that power of arrangement which knows
how to link a thousand connected ideas in one
dependent train, without losing sight of the original
idea out of which the rest grow, and on which they
all hang. The female too, wanting steadiness in her
intellectual pursuits, is perpetually turned aside by
her characteristic tastes and feelings. Woman in the
career of genius, is the Atalanta, who will risk losing
the race by running out of her road to pick up the
golden apple; while her male competitor, without,
perhaps, possessing greater natural strength or swift-
ness, will more certainly attain his object, by direct
pursuit, by being less exposed to the seductions of
extraneous beauty, and will win the race, not by
excelling in speed, but by despising the bait”.
Here it may be justly enough retorted, that, as it
is allowed the education of women is so defective,
the alleged inferiority of their minds may be ac-
counted for on that ground more justly than by
ascribing it to their natural make. And, indeed,
there is so much truth in the remark, that till women
shall be more reasonably educated, and till the na-
tive growth of their mind shall cease to be stinted
and cramped, we have no juster ground for pro-
nouncing that their understanding has already reached
its highest attainable point, than the Chinese would
have for affirming that their women have attained to
the greatest possible perfection in walking, while the
first care is, during their infancy, to cripple their
feet. At least, till the female sex are more carefully
instructed, this question will always remain as unde-
* what indisposes even reasonable women to concede in these
points is, that the weakest man instantly lays hold on the conces-
sion; and, on the mere ground of sex, plumes himself on his own



individual superiority ; inferring, that the silliest man is superior
to the first rate woman. . x ź
OF THE SEXES. 175
cided as to the degree of difference between the mas-
culine and feminine understanding, as the question
between the understandings of blacks and whites;
for until Africans and Europeans are put more
nearly on a par in the cultivation of their minds, the
shades of distinction, if any there be, between their
native powers can never be fairly ascertained.
And when we see (and who will deny that we see
it frequently') so many women nobly rising from
under all the pressure of a disadvantageous educa-
tion and a defective system of society, and exhibiting
the most unambiguous marks of a vigorous under-
standing, a correct judgment, and a sterling piety, it
reminds one of those shining lights which have now
and then burst out through all the “darkness visi-
ble” of the Romish church, have disencumbered
themselves from the gloom of ignorance, shaken off
the fetters of prejudice, and risen superior to all the
errors of a corrupt theology. %
But whatever characteristical distinctions may
exist; whatever inferiority may be attached to wo-
man from the slighter frame of her body, or the
more circumscribed powers of her mind; from a
less systematic education, and from the subordinate
station she is called to fill in life; there is one great
and leading circumstance which raises her import-
ance, and even establishes her equality. Christianity
has exalted women to true and undisputed dignity;
in Christ Jesus, as there is neither “rich nor poor,”
“ bond nor free,” so there is neither “ male nor
female.” In the view of that immortality, which is
brought to light by the gospel, she has no superior.
Women (to borrow the idea of an excellent prelate)
make up one half of the human race; equally with
men redeemed by the blood of Christ. In this their


..176 COMPARATIVE VIEW

true dignity consists; here their best pretensions
rest, here their highest claims are allowed. :
All disputes then for preeminence between the
sexes have only for their object the poor precedence
for a few short years, the attention of which would
be better devoted to the duties of life and the inte-
rests of eternity.
And as the final hope of the female sex is equal,
so are their present means, perhaps, more favour-
able, and their opportunities, often, less obstructed
than those of the other sex. In their Christian course
women have every superior advantage, whether we
consider the natural make of their minds, their lei-
sure for acquisition in youth, or their subsequently
less exposed mode of life. Their hearts are natu-
rally soft and flexible, open to impressions of love
and gratitude; their feelings tender and lively; all
these are favourable to the cultivation of a devotional
spirit. Yet while we remind them of these benefits,
they will do well to be on their guard lest this very
softness and ductility lay them more open to the
seductions of temptation and error.
They have in the native constitution of their
minds, as well as from the relative situations they
are called to fill, a certain sense of attachment and
dependence, which is peculiarly favourable to reli-
gion. They feel, perhaps, more intimately the want
of a strength which is not their own. Christianity
brings that superinduced strength; it comes in aid
of their conscious weakness, and offers the only true
counterpoise to it. “Woman, be thou healed of
thine infirmity,” is still the heart-cheering language
of a gracious Saviour. .
Women also bring to the study of Christianity
fewer of those prejudices which persons of the other



OF THE SEXES, 177
sex too often early contract. Men, from their classi-
cal education, acquire a strong partiality for the
manners of Pagan antiquity, and the documents of
Pagan philosophy: this, together with the impure
taint caught from the loose descriptions of their
poets, and the licentious language even of their his-
torians (in whom we reasonably look for more
gravity), often weakens the good impressions of
young men, and at least confuses their ideas of
piety, by mixing them with so much heterogeneous
matter. Their very spirits are imbued all the week
with the impure follies of a depraved mythology;
and it is well if even on Sundays they get to hear of
the “true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.”
While women, though struggling with the same na-
tural corruptions, have commonly less knowledge to
unknow, and fewer schemes to unlearn; they have
not to shake off the pride of system, and to disen-
cumber their minds from the shackles of favourite
theories: they do not bring from the porch or the
academy any “oppositions of science” to obstruct
their reception of those pure doctrines taught on the
Mount: doctrines which ought to find a readier en-
trance into minds uninfected with the pride of the
school of Zeno, or the libertinism of that of Epi-
CUTU.S. -
And as women are naturally more affectionate
than fastidious; they are likely both to read and to
hear with a less critical spirit than men: they will
not be on the watch to detect errors, so much as to
gather improvement; they have seldom that hard-
ness which is acquired by dealing deeply in books
of controversy, but are more inclined to works which
quicken the devotional feelings, than to such as
awaken a spirit of doubt and scepticism. They are
less disposed to consider the compositions they

I 2
178 COMPARATIVE VIEW
peruse, as materials on which to ground objections
and answers, than as helps to faith and rules of life.
With these advantages, however, they should also
bear in mind that their impressions being often less
abiding, and their reason less open to conviction, by
means of the strong evidences which exist in favour
of the truth of Christianity, “they ought, therefore,
to give the more earnest heed to the things which
they have heard, lest at any time they should let
them slip.” Women are also, from their domestic
habits, in possession of more leisure and tranquillity
for religious pursuits, as well as secured from those
difficulties and temptations to which men are exposed
in the tumult of a bustling world. Their lives are
more uniform, less agitated by the passions, the busi-
nesses, the contentions, the shock of opinions and of
interests which convulse the world.
If we have denied them the talents which might
lead them to excel as lawyers, they are preserved
from the peril of having their principles warped by
that too indiscriminate defence of right and wrong,
to which the professors of the law are exposed. If
we should question their title to eminence as mathe-
maticians, they are happily exempt from the danger
to which men devoted to that science are said to be
liable; namely, that of looking for demonstration on
subjects, which, by their very nature, are incapable
of affording it. If they are less conversant in the
powers of nature, the structure of the human frame,
and the knowledge of the heavenly bodies, than phi-
losophers, physicians, and astronomers; they are,
however, delivered from the error into which many
of each of these have sometimes fallen, I mean from
the fatal habit of resting in second causes, instead of
referring all to the first; instead of making “the
heavens declare the glory of God, and proclaim his

OF THE SEXES. 179
* :
handy work;” instead of concluding, when they ob-
serve “how fearfully and wonderfully we are made,
marvellous are thy works, O Lord, and that my soul
knoweth right well.”
And let the weaker sex take comfort, that in their
very exemption from privileges, which they are some-
times disposed to envy, consists their security and
their happiness. If they enjoy not the distinctions
of public life and high offices, do they not escape
the responsibility attached to them, and the mortifi-
cation of being dismissed from them 2 If they have
no voice in deliberative assemblies, do they not
avoid the load of duty connected with such privi-
leges 2 Preposterous pains have been taken to excite
in women an uneasy jealousy, that their talents are
neither rewarded with public honours nor emolu-
ments in life; nor with inscriptions, statues, and
mausoleums after death. It has been absurdly re-
presented to them as a hardship, that while they are
expected to perform duties, they must yet be con-
tented to relinquish honours, and must unjustly be
compelled to renounce fame while they must sedu-
lously labour to deserve it.
But for Christian women to act on the low views
suggested to them by their ill judging panegyrists;
and to look up with a giddy head and a throbbing
heart to honours and remunerations, so little suited
to the wants and capacities of an immortal spirit,
would be no less ridiculous than if Christian heroes
should look back with envy on the Pagan rewards
of ovations, oak garlands, parsley crowns, and laurel
wreaths. The Christian hope more than reconciles
Christian women to these petty privations, by sub-
stituting a nobler prize for their ambition, “the prize
of the high-calling of God in Christ Jesus;” by
substituting, for that popular and fluctuating voice,



180 COMPARATIVE VIEW
which may cry, “Hosanna” and “crucify” in a
breath, that “favour of God which is eternal life.”
If women should lament the disadvantages at-
tached to their sex, that their character is of so deli-
cate a texture as to be sullied by the slightest breath
of calumny, and that the stain is indelible; yet are
they not led by that very circumstance more instinc-
tively to shrink from all those irregularities to which
the loss of character is so much expected to be at-
tached; and to shun with keener circumspection the
most distant approach towards the confines of dan-
ger? Let them not lament it as a hardship, but
account it to be a privilege, that the delicacy of their
sex impels them more scrupulously to avoid the very,
appearance of evil, and that the consciousness of
their danger serves to secure their purity, by placing
them at a greater distance from the evil itself.
Though it be one main object of this little work,
rather to lower than to raise any desire of celebrity
in the female heart; yet I would awaken it to a just
sensibility to honest fame: I would call on women
to reflect that our religion has not only made them
heirs to a blessed immortality hereafter, but has
greatly raised them in the scale of being here, by
lifting them to an importance in society unknown to
the most polished ages of antiquity. The religion of
Christ has even bestowed a degree of renown on the
sex beyond what any other religion ever did. Per-
haps there are hardly so many virtuous women (for
I reject the long catalogue whom their vices have
transferred from oblivion to infamy) named in all the
pages of Greek or Roman history, as are handed
down to eternal fame, in a few of those short chap-
ters with which the great apostle to the Gentiles has
concluded his epistles to his converts. Of “devout
and honourable women,” the sacred scriptures record

OF THE SEXES. 181
“not a few.” Some of the most affecting scenes,
the most interesting transactions, and the most touch-
ing conversations which are recorded of the Saviour
of the world, passed with women. They are the first
remarked as having “ministered to him of their sub-
stance.” Theirs was the praise of not abandoning
their despised Redeemer when he was led to execu-
tion, and under all the hopeless circumstances of his
ignominious death; they appear to have been the
last attending at his tomb, and the first on the morn-
ing when he arose from it. Theirs was the privilege
of receiving the earliest consolation from their risen
Lord ; theirs was the honour of being first commis-
sioned to announce his glorious resurrection to the
world. And even to furnish heroic confessors, de-
voted saints, and unshrinking martyrs to the church
of Christ, has not been the exclusive honour of the
bolder sex.
CHAP. XIV.
CoN versATIon.—Hints suggested on the Subject.—
On the Tempers and Dispositions to be introduced
in it.—Errors to be avoided.— Vanity, under vari-
ous Shapes, the Cause of those Errors.
THE sexes will naturally desire to appear to each
other, such as each believes the other will best like;
their conversation will act reciprocally; and each
sex will appear more or less rational as they perceive
it will more or less recommend them to the other.
It is therefore to be regretted, that many men, even
of distinguished sense and learning, are so apt to
consider the society of ladies as a scene in which to
rest their understandings, rather than to exercise


182 CONVERSATION.
engaged, does not so exhaust their
them; while ladies, in return, are too much addicted
to make their court by lending themselves to this
spirit of trifling; they often avoid to make use of
what abilities they have; and affect to talk below
their natural and acquired powers of mind; consi-
dering it as a tacit and welcome flattery to the under-
standing of men to renounce the exercise of their
OWI),
Now since taste and principles thus mutually ope-
rate; men, by keeping up conversation to its proper
standard, would not only call into exercise the powers
of mind which women actually possess; but would
even awaken in them new energies which they do
not know they possess; and men of sense would find
their account in doing this, for their own talents
would be more highly rated by companions who
were better able to appreciate them. And, on the
other hand, if young women found it did not often
recommend them in the eyes of those whom they
might wish to please, to be frivolous and superficial,
they would become more sedulous in correcting their
own habits. Whenever fashionable women indicate
a relish for instructive conversation, men will not be
apt to hazard what is vain, or unprofitable; much
less will they ever presume to bring forward what is
loose or corrupt, where some signal has not been
previously given, that it will be acceptable, or at least
that it will be pardoned. -
Ladies commonly bring into company minds al-
ready too much relaxed by petty pursuits, rather
than overstrained by intense application; the little-
ness of the employments in whichºkey are usually
#pirits as to make
them stand in need of that relaxation from company
which severe application or overwhelming business
makes requisite for studious or public men. The



CONVERSATION. 183.
due consideration of this circumstance might serve
to bring the sexes more nearly on a level in society;
and each might meet the other half way; for that
degree of lively and easy conversation which is a neces-
sary refreshment to the learned and the busy, would
not decrease in pleasantness by being made of so
rational a cast as would yet somewhat raise the minds
of women, who commonly seek society as a scene
of pleasure, not as a refuge from intense thought or
exhausting labour.
It is a disadvantage even to those women who
keep the best company, that it is unhappily almost
established into a system, by the other sex, to post-
pone every thing like instructive discourse till the
ladies are withdrawn; their retreat serving as a kind
of signal for the exercise of intellect. And in the
few cases in which it happens that any important
discussion takes place in their presence, they are for
the most part considered as having little interest in
serious subjects. Strong truths, whenever such hap-
pen to be addressed to them, are either diluted with
flattery, or kept back in part, or softened to their
taste; or if the ladies express a wish for information
on any point, they are put off with a compliment,
instead of a reason; and are considered as beings
who are not expected to see and to judge of things
as they really exist. .
Do we then wish to see the ladies, whose oppor-
tunities leave them so incompetent, and the modesty of
whose sex ought never to allow them even to be as
shining as they are able;—do we wish to see them
take the lead in metaphysical disquisitions? Do we
wish them to plunge into the depths of theological
polemics, . 2.
- And find no end in wand'ring mazes lost?
Do we wish them to revive the animosities of the

184 CONVERSATION.
Bangorian controversy, or to decide the process be-
tween the Jesuits and the five propositions of Janse-
nius' Do we wish to enthrone them in the professor's
chair, to deliver oracles, harangues, and dissertations !
to weigh the merits of every new production in the
scales of Quintilian, or to regulate the unities of dra-
matic composition by Aristotle's clock Or renounc-
ing those foreign aids, do we desire to behold them,
inflated with their original powers, labouring to strike
out sparks of wit, with a restless anxiety to shine,
which generally fails, and with a laboured affectation
to please, which never pleases 2
Diseurs de bons mots, fades caracteres 1
All this be far from them!—But we do wish to see
the conversation of well-bred women rescued from
vapid commonplaces, from uninteresting tattle, from
trite and hackneyed communications, from frivolous
earnestness, from false sensibility, from a warm inter-
est about things of no moment, and an indifference
to topics the most important; from a cold vanity,
from the overflowings of self-love, exhibiting itself
under the smiling mask of an engaging flattery, and
from all the factitious manners of artificial intercourse.
We do wish to see the time passed in polished and
intelligent society, considered among the beneficial,
as well as the pleasant portions of our existence, and
not consigned over, as it too frequently is, to preme-
ditated trifling, or systematic unprofitableness. Let
me not, however, be misunderstood : it is not meant
to prescribe that they should affect to talk on lofty
subjects, so much as to suggest that they should bring
good sense, simplicity, and precision, into those com-
mon subjects, of which, after all, both the business
* and the conversation of mankind must be in a great
measure made up. .


CONVERSATION . 185
It is too well known how much the dread of im-
puted pedantry keeps off every thing that verges
towards learned, and the terror of imputed enthu-
siasm staves off any thing that approaches to serious
conversation; so that the two topics which peculiarly
distinguish us, as rational and immortal beings, are
by general consent in a good degree banished from
the society of rational and immortal creatures. But
we might almost as consistently give up the comforts
of fire because a few persons have been burnt, and
the benefit of water because some others have been
drowned, as relinquish the enjoyments of intellectual,
and the blessings of religious intercourse, because
the learned world has sometimes been infested with
pedants, and the religious world with fanatics.
As in the momentous times in which we live it is
next to impossible to pass an evening in company
but the talk will so inevitably revert to politics, that,
without any premeditated design, every one present
shall infallibly get to know to which side the other
inclines; why in the far higher concern of eternal
things should we so carefully shun every offered %.
portunity of bearing even a casual testimony to the
part we espouse in religion ? Why, while we make
it a sort of point of conscience to leave no doubt on
the mind of a stranger, whether we adopt the party
of Pitt or Fox, shall we choose to leave it very pro-
blematical whether we belong to God or Baal? Why,
in religion, as well as in politics, should we not act
like people who, having their all at stake, cannot
forbear now and then adverting for a moment to the .
object of their grand concern, and dropping, at least,
an incidental intimation of the side to which they
belong?
Even the news of the day, in such an eventful



186 CONVERSATION,
period as the present, may lend frequent occasions
to a woman of principle to declare, without parade,
her faith in a moral Governor of the world; her trust
in a particular Providence; her belief in the Divine
Omnipotence; her confidence in the power of God,
in educing good from evil, in his employing wicked
nations, not as favourites but instruments; her per-
suasion that present success is no proof of the divine
favour; in short, some intimation that she is not
ashamed to declare that her mind is under the influ-
ence of Christian faith and principle. A general con-
currence in exhibiting this spirit of decided faith and
holy trust, would inconceivably discourage that pert
infidelity which is ever on the watch to produce itself:
and, as we have already observed, if women, who
derive authority from their rank or talents, did but
reflect how their sentiments are repeated and their
authority quoted, they would be so on their guard,
that general society might become a scene of general
improvement, and the young, who are looking for
models on which to fashion themselves, would be-
come ashamed of exhibiting any thing like levity, or
scepticism, or profaneness.
Let it be understood, that it is not meant to inti-
mate that serious subjects should make up the bulk
of conversation; this, as it is impossible, would also
often be improper. It is not intended to suggest
that they should be abruptly introduced, or unsuita-
bly prolonged; but only that they should not be sys-
tematically shunned, nor the brand of fanaticism be
fixed on the person who, with whatever propriety,
hazards the introduction of them. It is evident, how-
ever, that this general dread of serious topics arises a
good deal from an ignorance of the true nature of
Christianity; people avoid it on the principle ex-

CONVERSATION. 187
pressed by the vulgar phrase of the danger of playing
with edge tools. They conceive of religion as some-
thing which involves controversy, and dispute, and
mischief; something of an inflammatory nature, which
is to stir up ill humours and hatred; as of a sort of
party business which sets friends at variance. So
much is this notion adopted, that I have seen an-
nounced two works of considerable merit, in which it
was stipulated as an attraction, that the subject of
religion, as being likely to excite anger and party-
distinctions, should be carefully excluded. Such is
the worldly idea of the spirit of that religion, whose
direct object it was to bring “peace and good will
to men l’’ >
Women too little live or converse up to their un-
derstandings; and however we have deprecated
affectation or pedantry, let it be remembered, that
both in reading and conversing, the understanding
gains more by stretching than stooping. If by ex-
erting itself it may not attain to all it desires, yet it
will be sure to gain something. The mind, by always
applying itself to objects below its level, contracts
its dimensions, and shrinks itself to the size, and
lowers itself to the level, of the object about which it
is conversant: while the mind which is active and
aspiring, expands and raises itself, grows larger by
exercise, abler by diffusion, and richer by communi-
Cation.
But the taste of general society is not favourable
to improvement. The seriousness with which the
most frivolous subjects are agitated, and the levity
with which the most serious are dispatched, bear a
pretty exact proportion to each other. Society too is
a sort of magic lantern; the scene is perpetually
shifting. In this incessant change we must .
Catch, e'er she falls, the Cynthia of the minute; -

188 CONVERSATION.
and the evanescent fashion of the present minute,
which while in many it leads to the cultivation of
real knowledge, has also sometimes led even the gay
and idle to the affectation of mixing a sprinkling
of science with a mass of dissipation. The ambition
of appearing to be well informed breaks out even
in those triflers who will not spare time from their
pleasurable pursuits sufficient for acquiring that
knowledge, of which, however, the reputation is so
desirable. A little smattering of philosophy often
dignifies the pursuits of their day, without rescuing
them from the vanities of the night. A course of
lectures (that admirable assistant for enlightening
the understanding) is not seldom resorted to as a
means to substitute the appearance of knowledge
for the fatigue of application ; but where this valua-
ble help is attended merely like any other public
exhibition, and is not furthered by correspondent
reading at home, it often serves to set off the reality of
ignorance with the affectation of skill. But instead
of producing in conversation a few reigning scientific
terms, with a familiarity and readiness which
Amaze the unlearn'd, and make the learned smile,
would it not be more modest even for those who are
better informed, to avoid the common use of techni-
cal terms whenever the idea can be as well conveyed
without them 2 For it argues no real ability to know
the names of tools; the ability lies in knowing their
use: and while it is in the thing, and not in the term,
that real knowledge consists, the charge of pedantry
is attached to the use of the term, which would not
attach to the knowledge of the science.
In the faculty of speaking well, ladies have such
a happy promptitude of turning their slender advan-
tages to account, that there are many who, though

CONVERSATION. 189
they have never been taught a rule of syntax, yet by
a quick facility in profiting from the best books and
the best company, hardly ever violate one; and who
often exhibit an elegant and perspicuous arrange-
ment of style, without having studied any of the laws
of composition. Every kind of knowledge which
appears to be the result of observation, reflection, and
natural taste, sits gracefully on women. Yet on the
other hand it sometimes happens, that ladies of no
contemptible natural parts are too ready to produce,
not only pedantic expressions, but crude notions;
and still oftener to bring forward obvious and hack-
neyed remarks, which float on the very surface of a
subject, with the imposing air of recent invention,
and all the vanity of conscious discovery. This is
because their acquirements have not been worked
into their minds by early instruction; what knowledge
they have gotten stands out as it were above the very
surface of their minds, like the appliquée of the em-
broiderer, instead of having been interwoven with
the growth of the piece, so as to have become a part
of the stuff. They did not, like men, acquire what
they know while the texture was forming. Perhaps
no better preventive could be devised for this literary
vanity, than early instruction: that woman would be
less likely to be vain of her knowledge who did not
remember the time when she was ignorant. Know-
ledge that is burnt in, if I may so speak, is seldom
obtrusive, rarely impertinent. &
Their reading also has probably consisted much
in abridgments from larger works, as was observed
in a former chapter; this makes a readier talker, but
a shallower thinker, than the perusal of books of more
bulk. By these scanty sketches, their critical spirit
has been excited while their critical powers have not
been formed; for in those crippled mutilations they

190 CONVERSATION.
have seen nothing of that just proportion of parts,
that skilful arrangement of the plan, and that artful
distribution of the subject, which, while they prove
the master hand of the writer, serve also to form the
taste of the reader, far more than a disjointed skeleton,
or a beautiful feature or two, can do. The instruc-
tion of women is also too much drawn from the
scanty and penurious sources of short writings of the
essay kind : this, when it comprises the best part of
a person's reading, makes a smatterer, and spoils a
scholar; for though it supplies current talk, yet it
does not make a full mind; it does not furnish a
storehouse of materials to stock the understanding,
neither does it accustom the mind to any trains of
reflection: for the subjects, besides being each suc-
cinctly, and, on account of this brevity, superficially
treated, are distinct and disconnected : they arise out
of no concatenation of ideas, nor any dependent series
of deduction. Yet on this pleasant but desultory
reading, the mind which has not been trained to
severer exercise, loves to repose itself in a sort of
creditable indolence, instead of stretching its powers
in the wholesome labour of consecutive investiga-
tion *.
I am not discouraging study at a late period of
life, or even slender knowledge; information is good
at whatever period and in whatever degree it be ac-
quired. But in such cases it should be attended
with peculiar humility: and the new possessor should
bear in mind, that what is fresh to her has been long
known to others; and she should therefore be aware
*
* The writer cannot be supposed desirous of depreciating the
value of those many beautiful periodical essays which adorn our
language. But, perhaps, it might be better to regale the mind with
them singly, at different times, than to read at the same sitting a
multitude of short pieces on dissimilar and unconnected topics, by
way of getting through the book.

CONVERSATION. 191
of advancing as novel that which is common, and
obtruding as rare that which every body possesses.
Some ladies are eager to exhibit proofs of their read-
ing, though at the expense of their judgment, and
will introduce in conversation quotations quite irre-
levant to the matter in hand, because they happen at
the instant to recur to their recollection, or were, per-
haps, found in the book they have just been reading.
Unappropriate quotations or strained analogy may
show reading, but they do not show taste. That just
and happy allusion which knows by a word how to
awaken a corresponding image, or to excite in the
hearer the idea which fills the mind of the speaker,
shows less pedantry and more taste than bare cita-
tions; and a mind imbued with elegant knowledge
will inevitably betray the opulence of its resources,
even on topics which do not relate to science or lite-
rature. Well informed persons will easily be dis-
covered to have read the best books, though they are
not always detailing catalogues of authors. Though
honey owes its exquisite taste to the fragrance of the
sweetest flowers, yet the skill of the little artificer ap-
pears in this, that the delicious stores are so admi-
rably worked up, and there is such a due proportion
observed in mixing them, that the perfection of the
whole consists in its not tasting individually of any
of those sweets of the very essence of which it is
compounded. But true judgment will detect the in-
fusion which true modesty will not display; and
even common subjects passing through a cultivated
understanding, borrow a flavour of its richness. A
power of apt selection is more valuable than any
power of general retention; and an apposite remark,
which shoots straight to the point, demands higher
powers of mind than a hundred simple acts of me-
mory; for the business of the memory is only to





192 CONVERSATION.
store up materials which the understanding is to mix
and work up with its native faculties, and which the
judgment is to bring out and apply. But young
women who have more vivacity than sense, and more
vanity than vivacity, often risk the charge of ab-
surdity to escape that of ignorance, and will even
compare two authors who are totally unlike, rather
than miss the occasion to show that they have read
both.
Among the arts to spoil conversation, some ladies
possess that of suddenly diverting it from the channel
in which it was beneficially flowing, because some
word used by the person who was speaking has acci-
dentally struck out a new train of thinking in their
own minds, and not because the general idea ex-
pressed has struck out a corresponding idea, which
sort of collision is indeed the way of eliciting the true
fire. Young ladies, whose sprightliness has not been
disciplined by a correct education, consider how
things may be prettily said, rather than how they
may be prudently or seasonably spoken; and hazard
being thought wrong, or rash, or vain, for the chance
of being reckoned pleasant. The flowers of rhetoric
captivate them more than the justest deductions of
reason; and to repel an argument, they arm them-
selves with a metaphor. Those also who do not aim
so high as eloquence, are often surprised that you
refuse to accept of a prejudice instead of a reason;
they are apt to take up with a probability in place
of a demonstration, and cheaply put you off with an
assertion, when you are requiring a proof. The mode
of education which renders them light in assumption,
and superficial in reasoning, renders them also impa-
tient of opposition; and if they happen to possess
beauty, and to be vain of it, they may be tempted to
consider that as an additional proof of their being

CONVERSATION. 193
always in the right. In this case, they will not ask
you to submit your judgment to the force of their
argument, so much as to the authority of their
charms.
The same fault in the mind, strengthened by the
same cause, (a neglected education,) leads lively
women often to pronounce on a question without
examining it: on any given point they seldomer
doubt than men; not because they are more clear-
sighted, but because they have not been accustomed
to look into a subject long enough to discover its
depths and its intricacies; and not discerning its
difficulties, they conclude that it has none. Is it a
contradiction to say, that they seem at once to be
quick-sighted and short-sighted? What they see at
all, they commonly see at once; a little difficulty
discourages them; and, having caught a hasty glimpse
of a subject, they rush to this conclusion, that either
there is no more to be seen, or that what is behind
will not pay them for the trouble of searching. They
pursue their object eagerly, but not regularly; ra-
pidly, but not pertinaciously; for they want that ob-
stinate patience of investigation which grows stouter
by repulse. What they have not attained, they do
not believe exists; what they cannot seize at once,
they persuade themselves is not worth having.
Is a subject of moment started in company
While the more sagacious are deliberating on its dif-
ficulties, and viewing it under all its aspects, in order
to form a competent judgment before they decide,
you will often find the most superficial woman present
determine the matter, without hesitation. Not seeing
the perplexities in which the question is involved,
she wonders at the want of penetration in the man
whose very penetration keeps him silent. She se-
cretly despises the dull perception and slow decision
K …”

194 CONVERSATION.
of him who is patiently untying the knot which she
fancies she exhibits more dexterity by cutting. By
this shallow sprightliness, of which vanity is com-
monly the radical principle, the person whose opinion
was best worth having is discouraged from delivering
it, and an important subject is dismissed without dis-
cussion, by this inconsequent flippancy and voluble
rashness. It is this abundance of florid talk, from
superficial matter, which has brought on so many of
the sex the charge of inverting the apostle's precept,
and being swift to speak, slow to hear.
For if the great Roman orator could observe, that
silence was so important a part of conversation, that
“there was not only an art but an eloquence in it,”
how peculiarly does the remark apply to the modesty
of youthful females' But the silence of listless igno-
rance, and the silence of sparkling intelligence, are
two things almost as obviously distinct, as the wisdom
and the folly of the tongue. An inviolable and
marked attention may show, that a woman is pleased
with a subject, and an illuminated countenance may
prove that she understands it, almost as unequivo-
cally as language itself could do; and this, with a
modest question, which indicates at once rational
curiosity and becoming diffidence, is in many cases
as large a share of the conversation as it is decorous
for feminine delicacy to take. It is also as flattering
an encouragement as men of sense require, for pur-
suing such topics in the presence of women, which
they would be more disposed to do, did they oftener
gain by it the attention which it is natural to wish to
excite; and did women themselves discover that de-
sire of improvement which liberal-minded men are
pleased with communicating.
Yet do we not sometimes see an impatience to be
heard (nor is it a feminine failing only) which good


CONVERSATION, 195
breeding can scarcely subdue? And even when these
incorrigible talkers are compelled to be silent, is it
not evident that they are not listening to what is said,
but are only thinking of what they themselves shall
say when they can seize the first lucky interval for
which they are so narrowly watching? The very
turn of their countenance betrays that they do not
take the slightest degree of interest in any thing that
is said by others, except with a view to lie in wait for
any little chasm in the discourse, on which they may
lay hold, and give vent to their own overflowing
vanity.
But conversation must not be considered as a
stage for the display of our talents, so much as a
field for the exercise and improvement of our virtues;
as a means for promoting the glory of our Creator,
and the good and happiness of our fellow creatures.
Well bred and intelligent Christians are not, when
they join in society, to consider themselves as enter-
ing the lists like intellectual prize-fighters, in order
to exhibit their own vigour and dexterity, to discomfit
their adversary, and to bear away the palm of victory.
Truth and not triumph should be the object; and
there are few occasions in life, in which we are more
unremittingly called upon to watch ourselves nar-
rowly, and to resist the assaults of various tempta-
tions, than in conversation. Vanity, jealousy, envy,
misrepresentation, resentment, disdain, levity, impa-
tience, insincerity, and pride, will in turn solicit to
be gratified. Constantly to struggle against the de-
sire of being thought more wise, more witty, and
more knowing, than those with whom we associate,
demands the incessant exertion of Christian vigi-
lance, a vigilance which the generality are so far
from suspecting necessary in the intercourse of com-
mon society, that cheerful conversation is rather con-


196 CONVERSATION,
sidered as an exemption and release from watchful-
ness, than as an additional obligation to it. But a
circumspect soldier of Christ will never be off his
post; even when he is not called to public combat
by the open assaults of his great spiritual enemy, he
must still be acting as a sentinel, for the danger of
an ordinary Christian will arise more from these
little skirmishes which are daily happening in the
warfare of human life, than from those pitched battles
which more rarely occur, and for which he will be
more probably armed.
But society, as was observed before, is not a stage
on which to throw down our gauntlet, and prove our
own prowess by the number of falls we give to our
adversary; so far from it, good breeding as well as
Christianity, considers as an indispensable requisite
for conversation, the disposition to bring forward to
notice any talent in others, which their own modesty,
or conscious inferiority, would lead them to keep
back. To do this with effect requires a penetration
exercised to discern merit, and a generous candour
which delights in drawing it out. There are few
who cannot converse tolerably on some one topic;
what that is, we should try to find out, and in general
introduce that topic, though to the suppression of
any one on which we ourselves are supposed to
excel; and however superior we may be in other
respects to the persons in question, we may, perhaps,
in that particular point, improve by them; and if we
do not gain information, we shall at least gain a
wholesome exercise to our humility and self-denial;
we shall be restraining our own impetuosity; we
shall, if we take this course on just occasions only,
and so as to beware lest we gratify the vanity of
others, be giving confidence to a doubting, or cheer-
fulness to a depressed spirit. And to place a just


CONVERSATION, 197
remark, hazarded by the diffident, in the most ad-
vantageous point of view ; to call the attention of
the inattentive, the forward, and the self sufficient, to
the unobtrusive merit of some quiet person in the
company, who, though of much worth, is perhaps of
little note; these are requisites for conversation, less
brilliant, but far more valuable, than the power of
exciting bursts of laughter by the brightest wit, or of
extorting admiration by the most poignant sallies of
ridicule.
For wit is, of all the qualities of the female mind,
that which requires the severest castigation; yet the
temperate exercise of this fascinating quality throws
an additional lustre round the character of an amiable
woman; for to manage with discreet modesty a dan-
gerous talent, confers a higher praise than can be
claimed by those in whom the absence of the talent
takes away the temptation to misemploy it. To
women, wit is a peculiarly perilous possession, which
nothing short of the sobermindedness of religion can
keep in subjection; and perhaps there is scarcely
any one order of human beings that requires the
powerful curb of Christian control more than women
whose genius has this tendency. Intemperate wit
craves admiration as its natural aliment; it lives on
flattery as its daily bread. The professed wit is a
hungry beggar, that subsists on the extorted alms of
perpetual panegyric; and like the vulture in the
Grecian fable, its appetite increases by indulgence.
Simple truth and sober approbation become tasteless
and insipid to the palate, daily vitiated by the deli-
cious poignances of exaggerated commendation.
Under the above restrictions, however, wit may be
safely and pleasantly exercised; for chastised wit is
an elegant and well bred, and not unfeminine qua-
lity. But humour, especially if it degenerate into



ºw
1 98 CONVERSATION.
imitation, or mimicry, is very sparingly to be ven-
tured on; for it is so difficult totally to detach it
from the suspicion of buffoonery, that a woman will
be likely to lose more of that delicacy which is her
appropriate grace, than she will gain in another way
in the eyes of the judicious, by the most successful
display of humour.
|. if it be true that some women are too apt to
affect brilliancy and display in their own discourse,
and to undervalue the more humble pretensions of
less showy characters; it must be confessed also, that
some of more ordinary abilities are now and then
guilty of the opposite error, and foolishly affect to
value themselves on not making use of the under-
standing they really possess; and affect to be thought
even more silly than they are. They exhibit no
small satisfaction in ridiculing women of high intel-
lectual endowments, while they exclaim with much
affected humility, and much real envy, that “they
are thankful they are not geniuses.” Now, though
one is glad to hear gratitude expressed on any occa-
sion, yet the want of sense is really no such great
mercy to be thankful for; and it would indicate a
better spirit, were they to pray to be enabled to make
a right use of the moderate understanding they pos-
sess, instead of exposing with a visible pleasure the
imaginary or real defects of their more shining ac-
quaintance. Women of the brightest faculties should
not only “bear those faculties meekly,” but should
consider it as no derogation, cheerfully to fulfil those
humbler duties which make up the business of com-
mon life, while they should always take into the ac-
count the nobler exertions as well as the higher
responsibility attached to higher gifts. In the mean
time women of lower attainments should exert to the
utmost such abilities as Providence has assigned





CONVERSATION. 199
them; and while they should not deride excellencies
which are above their reach, they should not despond
at an inferiority which did not depend on themselves;
nor, because God has denied them ten talents, should
they forget that they are equally responsible for the
one he has allotted them, but set about devoting that
one with humble diligence to the glory of the Giver.
Vanity, however, is not the monopoly of talents;
let not a young lady, therefore, fancy that she is
humble, merely because she is not ingenious, or con-
sider the absence of talents as the criterion of worth.
Humility is not the exclusive privilege of dulness.
Folly is as conceited as wit, and ignorance many a
time outstrips knowledge in the race of vanity.
Equally earnest competitions spring from causes less
worthy to excite them than wit and genius. Vanity
insinuates itself into the female heart under a variety
of unsuspected forms, and is on the watch to seize on
many a little pass which was not thought worth
guarding. . X.
Who has not seen as restless emotion agitate the
features of an anxious matron, while peace and fame
hung trembling in doubtful suspense on the success
of a soup or a sauce, on which sentence was about to
be pronounced by some consummate critic, as could
have been excited by any competition for literary
renown, or any struggle for contested wit? Anxiety
for fame is by no means measured by the real value
of the object pursued, but by the degree of estimation
in which it is held by the pursuer. Nor was the il-
lustrious hero of Greece more effectually hindered
from sleeping by the trophies of Miltiades, than
many a modish damsel by the eclipsing superiority
of some newer decoration exhibited by her more suc-
cessful friend. .
There is another species of vanity in some women


200 CONVERSATION.
which disguises itself under the thin veil of an affected
humility; they will accuse themselves of some fault
from which they are remarkably exempt, and lament
the want of some talent which they are rather noto-
rious for possessing. This is not only a clumsy trap
for praise, but there is a disingenuous intention, by
renouncing a quality they eminently possess, to gain
credit for others in which they are really deficient.
All affectation involves a species of deceit. The
apostle when he enjoins, “not to think of ourselves
more highly than we ought,” does not exhort us to
think falsely of ourselves, but to think “ soberly;”
and it is worth observing that in this injunction he
does not use the word speak, but think, inferring pos-
sibly, that it would be safer to speak little of our-
selves or not at all; for it is so far from being an
unequivocal proof of our humility to talk even of our
defects, that while we make self the subject, in what-
ever way, self-love contrives to be gratified, and will
even be content that our faults should be talked of,
rather than that we should not be talked of at all.
Some are also attacked with such proud fits of humi-
lity, that while they are ready to accuse themselves of
almost every sin in the lump, they yet take fire at
the imputation of the slightest individual fault; and
instantly enter upon their own vindication as warmly
as if you, and not themselves, had brought forward
the charge. The truth is, they ventured to condemn
themselves, in the full confidence that you would
contradict their self-accusation; the last thing they
intended was that you should believe them, and they
are never so much piqued and disappointed as when
they are taken at their word. <3
Of the various shapes and undefined forms into
which vanity branches out in conversation, there is
no end. Out of a restless desire to please, grows the



CONVERSATION. 201
spurious desire to astonish : from vanity as much
as from credulity, arises that strong love of the
marvellous, with which the conversation of the ill
educated abounds. Hence that fondness for dealing
in narratives hardly within the compass of possibility.
Here vanity has many shades of gratification; those
shades will be stronger or weaker, whether the re-
later chance to have been an eye-witness of the
wonder she recounts; or whether she claim only the
second-hand renown of its having happened to her
friend, or the still remoter celebrity of its having
been witnessed only by her friend's friend; but even
though that friend only knew the man, who remem-
bered the woman, who actually beheld the thing
which is now causing admiration in the company,
still self, though in a fainter degree, is brought into
notice, and the relater contrives in some circuitous
way to be connected with the wonder.
o correct this propensity “to elevate and sur-
prise *,” it would be well in mixed society to abstain
altogether from hazarding stories, which though they
may not be absolutely false, yet lying without the
verge of probability, are apt to impeach the credit of
the narrator; in whom the very consciousness that
she is not believed, excites an increased eagerness to
depart still farther from the soberness of truth, and
induces a habit of vehement asseveration, which is
too often called in to help out a questionable point f.
There is another shape, and a very deformed shape
it is, in which loquacious vanity shows itself; I mean
* The Rehearsal.
+ This is also a good rule in composition. An event, though it
may actually have happened, yet if it be out of the reach of pro-
bability, or contrary to the common course of nature, will seldom
be chosen as a subject by a writer of good taste; for he knows
that a probable fiction will interest the feelings more than an un-
likely truth. Verisimilitude is indeed the poet's truth, but the
truth of the moralist is of a more sturdy wº
K


202 CON VERSATION.
the betraying of confidence. Though the act be
treacherous, yet the fault, in the first instance, is not
treachery, but vanity. It does not so often spring
from the mischievous desire of divulging a secret, as
from the pride of having been trusted with it. It is
the secret inclination of mixing self with whatever is
important. The secret would be of little value, if
the revealing it did not serve to intimate our con-
nexion with it; the pleasure of its having been de-
posited with us would be nothing, if others may not
know it has been so deposited. When we continue
to see the variety of serious evils this principle in-
volves, shall we persist in asserting that vanity is a
slender mischief?
There is one offence committed in conversation of
much too serious a nature to be overlooked, or to be
animadverted on without sorrow and indignation: I
mean, the habitual and thoughtless profaneness of
those who are repeatedly invoking their Maker's
name on occasions the most trivial. It is offensive
in all its variety of aspects;–it is very pernicious in
its effects;–it is a growing evil;-those who are
most guilty of it, are from habit hardly conscious
when they do it; are not aware of the sin; and for
both these reasons, without the admonitions of faith-
ful friendship, little likely to discontinue it. It is
utterly INExcusABLE:—it has none of the palliatives
of temptation which other vices plead, and in that
respect stands distinguished from all others both in
its nature and degree of guilt. Like many other
sins, however, it is at once cause and effect; it pro-
ceeds from want of love and reverence to the best of
Beings, and causes that want both in themselves and
others. Yet with all those aggravations, there is,
perhaps, hardly any sin so frequently committed, so
seldom repented of, and so little guarded against.



CONVERSATION. 203
On the score of impropriety too, it is additionally
offensive, as being utterly repugnant to female deli-
cacy, which often affects to be shocked at swearing
in a man. Now this species of profaneness is not
only swearing, but, perhaps, in some respects, swear-
ing of the worst sort; as it is a direct breach of an
express command, and offends against the very letter
of that law which says in so many words, Thou SHALT
Not TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GoD IN
v AIN. It offends against delicacy and good breed-
ing; for those who commit it, little think of the pain
they are inflicting on the sober mind, which is deeply
wounded when it hears the holy name it loves |.
honoured; and it is as contrary to good breeding to
give pain, as it is to true piety to be profane. It is
astonishing that the refined and elegant should not
reprobate this practice for its coarseness as much as
the pious abhor it for its sinfulness.
I would endeavour to give some faint idea of the
grossness of this offence, by an analogy, (oh how
inadequate!) with which the feeling heart, even
though not seasoned with religion, may be touched.
To such I would earnestly say:—Suppose you had
some beloved friend,-to put the case still more
strongly, a departed friend, a revered parent, per-
haps, whose image never occurs without awaking
in your bosom sentiments of tender love and lively
gratitude; how would you feel if you heard this ho-
noured name bandied about with unfeeling familiarity
and indecent levity; or at best, thrust into every
pause of speech as a vulgar expletive Does not
your affectionate heart recoil at the thought? And
yet the hallowed name of your truest Benefactor,
your heavenly Father, your best Friend, who gives
you all you enjoy, those very friends in whom you
so much delight, those very talents with which you



204 CONVERSATION.
dishonour him, that very speech with which you
blaspheme him, is treated with an irreverence, a con-
tempt, a wantonness, with which you cannot bear
the very thought or mention of treating a human
friend. His name is impiously, is unfeelingly, is
ungratefully singled out as the object of decided
irreverence, of systematic contempt, of thoughtless
levity. It is used indiscriminately to express anger,
joy, grief, surprise, impatience; and what is almost
still more unpardonable than all, it is wantonly used
as a mere unmeaning expletive, which, being excited
by no temptation, can have nothing to extenuate it;
which, causing no emotion, can have nothing to re-
commend it, unless it be the pleasure of the sin. .
Among the deep, but less obvious mischiefs of con-
versation, misrepresentation must not be overlooked.
Self-love is continually at work, to give to all we say a
bias in our own favour. The counteraction of this
fault should be set about in the earliest stages of edu-
cation. If young persons have not been discouraged
in the natural, but evil, propensity to relate every
dispute they have had with others to their own ad-
vantage; if they have not been trained to the duty of
doing justice even to those with whom they are at
variance; if they have not been led to aim at a com-
plete impartiality in their little narratives, and in-
structed never to take advantage of the absence of
the other party, in order to make the story lean to
their own side more than the truth will admit; how
shall we in advanced life look for correct habits, for
unprejudiced representations, for fidelity, accuracy,
and unbiased justice?
Yet, how often in society, otherwise respectable,
are we pained with narrations in which prejudice
warps, and self-love blinds ! How often do we see,
that withholding part of a truth answers the worst


CONVERSATION. 205
ends of a falsehood l How often regret the unfair
turn given to a business, by placing a sentiment in
one point of view, which the speaker had used in
another! the letter of truth preserved where its spirit
is violated a superstitious exactness scrupulously
maintained in the underparts of a detail, in order to
impress such an idea of integrity as shall gain credit,
while the leading principle is designedly misstated 1
may, a new character given to a fact by a different
look, tone, or emphasis, which alters it as much as
words could have done ! the false impression of a
sermon conveyed, when we do not like the preacher,
or when through him we wish to make religion itself
ridiculous! the avoiding of literal untruths, while the
mischief is better effected by the unfair quotation of
a passage divested of its context; the bringing toge-
ther detached portions of a subject, and making those
parts ludicrous, when connected, which were perfect
in their distinct position the insidious use made of
a sentiment by representing it as the opinion of him
who had only brought it forward in order to expose
it! the relating opinions which had merely been put
hypothetically, as if they were the avowed principles
of him we would discredit! that subtle falsehood
which is so made to incorporate with a certain quan-
tity of truth, that the most skilful moral chemist
cannot analyse or separate them for a good misre-
presenter knows that a successful lie must have a
certain infusion of truth, or it will not go down. And
this amalgamation is the test of his skill; for too
much truth would defeat the end of his mischief;
and too little would destroy the belief of the hearer.
All that indefinable ambiguity and equivocation; all
that prudent deceit, which is rather implied than ex-
pressed; those more delicate artifices of the school
of Loyola and of Chesterfield, which allow us when





206 CONVERSATION,
we dare not deny a truth, yet so to disguise and dis-
colour it, that the truth we relate shall not resemble
the truth we heard | These and all the thousand
shades of simulation and dissimulation will be care-
fully guarded against in the conversation of vigilant
Christians. N.
Again, it is surprising to mark the common de-
viations from strict veracity which spring, not from
enmity to truth, not from intentional deceit, not from
malevolence or envy, or the least design to injure,
but from mere levity, habitual inattention, and a
current notion that it is not worth while to be correct
in small things. But here the doctrine of habits
comes in with great force, and in that view no error
is small. The cure of this disease in its more inve-
terate stages being next to impossible, its prevention
ought to be one of the earliest objects of education*.
The grievous fault of gross and obvious detraction
which infects conversation, has been so heavily and
so justly condemned by divines and moralists, that
the subject is exhausted. But there is an error of an
opposite complexion, which we have before noticed,
and against which the peculiar temper of the times
requires that young ladies of a better cast should be
guarded. From the narrowness of their own sphere
of observation, they are sometimes addicted to accuse
of uncharitableness, that distinguishing judgment
which, resulting from a sound penetration and a zeal
for truth, forbids persons of a very correct principle
to be indiscriminately prodigal of commendation
without inquiry, and without distinction. There is
an affectation of candour, which is almost as mis-
chievous as calumny itself; nay, if it be less injurious
in its individual application, it is, perhaps, more
alarming in its general principle, as it lays waste the
º * See the Chapter on the Use of Definitions.





CONVERSATION. 207.
strong fences which separate good from evil. They
know as a general principle (though they sometimes
calumniate) that calumny is wrong; but they have
not been told that flattery is wrong also ; and youth,
being apt to fancy that the direct contrary to wrong
must necessarily be right, are apt to be driven into
violent extremes. The dread of being only suspected
of one fault, makes them actually guilty of the other;
and to avoid the charge of harshness or of envy, they
plunge into insincerity and falsehood. In this they
are actuated either by an unsound judgment which
does not see what is right, or an unsound principle
which prefers what is wrong.
In this age of high-minded independence, when
our youth are apt to set up for themselves, and every
man is too much disposed to be his own legislator
without looking, as his standard, to the established
law of the land; and to set up for his own divine,
without looking to the revealed will of God—by a
candour equally vicious with our vanity, we are also
complaisantly led to give the latitude we take: and
it is become too frequent a phrase in the mouths of
our tolerating young ladies, when speaking of their
more erring and misled acquaintance, to offer for
them this flimsy vindication, “that what they do is
right if it appear right to them :”—“if they see the
thing in that light, and act up to it with sincerity,
they cannot be materially wrong.” But the standard
of truth, justice, and religion, must neither be ele-
vated nor depressed, in order to accommodate it to
actual circumstances; it must never be lowered to
palliate error, to justify folly, or to vindicate vice.
Good natured young people often speak favourably
of unworthy, or extravagantly of common characters,
from one of these motives; either their own views of
excellence are low, or they speak respectfully of the



208 CONVERSATION.
undeserving, to purchase for themselves the reputa-
tion of tenderness and generosity; or they lavish
unsparing praise on almost all alike, in the usurious
hope of buying back universal commendation in
return; or in those captivating characters in which
the simple and masculine language of truth is sacri-
ficed to the jargon of affected softness; and in which
smooth and pliant manners are substituted for intrin-
sic worth, the inexperienced are too apt to suppose
virtues, and to forgive vices. But they should care-
fully guard against the error of making manner the
criterion of merit, and of giving unlimited credit to
strangers for possessing every perfection, only be-
cause they bring into company the engaging exterior
of urbanity and alluring gentleness. They should
also remember that it is an easy, but not an honest
way of obtaining the praise of candour, to get into
the soft and popular habit of saying of all their
acquaintance, when speaking of them, that they are
so good / True Christian candour conceals faults,
but it does not invent virtues. It tenderly forbears
to expose the evil which may belong to a character,
but it dares not ascribe to it the good which does not
exist. To correct this propensity to false judgment
and insincerity, it would be well to bear in mind,
that while every good action, come from what source
it may, and every good quality, be it found in whom-
soever it will, deserves its fair proportion of distinct
and willing commendation; yet no character is good
in the true sense of the word which is not RELI-
GIOUS,
In fine—to recapitulate what has been said, with
some additional hints:–Study to promote both in-
tellectual and moral improvement in conversation;
labour to bring into it a disposition to bear with
others, and to be watchful over yourself; keep out



CONVERSATION. 209
of sight any prominent talent of your own, which, if
indulged, might discourage or oppress the feeble
minded. If you know any one present to possess
any particular weakness or infirmity, never exercise
your wit by maliciously inventing occasions which
may lead her to expose or betray it; but give as
favourable a turn as you can to the follies which
appear, and kindly help her to keep the rest out of
sight. Never gratify your own humour, by hazard-
ing what you suspect may wound any one present in
their persons, connexions, professions in life, or reli-
gious opinions; and do not forget to examine whe-
ther the laugh your wit has raised be never bought at
this expense. Give credit to those who, without
your kindness, will get none; do not talk at any one
whom you dare not talk to, unless from motives in
which the golden rule will bear you out. Seek nei-
ther to shine nor to triumph; and if you seek to
please, take care that it be in order to convert the
influence you may gain by pleasing, to the good of
others. Cultivate true politeness, for it grows out of
true principle, and is consistent with the gospel of
Christ; but avoid those feigned attentions which are
not stimulated by good will, and those stated pro-
fessions of fondness which are not dictated by
esteem. Remember, that the praise of being thought
amiable by strangers, may be bought too dear, if it
be bought at the expense of truth and simplicity:
remember, that simplicity is the first charm in man-
ner, as truth is in mind; and could Truth make
herself visible, she would appear invested in sim-
plicity.
Remember also, that true good nature is the soul,
of which politeness is only the garb. It is not that
artificial quality which is taken up by many when
they go into society, in order to charm those whom




210 CONVERSATION.
it is not their particular business to please; and is
laid down when they return home to those to whom
to appear amiable is a real duty. It is not that fasci-
nating but deceitful softness, which after having
acted over a hundred scenes of the most lively sym-
pathy and tender interest with every slight acquaint-
ance; after having exhausted every phrase of feeling,
for the trivial sicknesses or petty sorrows of multi-
tudes who are scarcely known, leaves it doubtful
whether a grain of real feeling or genuine sympathy
be reserved for the dearest connexions; and which
dismisses a woman to her immediate friends with
little affection, and to her own family with little
attachment.
True good nature, that which alone deserves the
name, is not a holiday ornament, but an every-day
habit. It does not consist in servile complaisance,
or dishonest flattery, or affected sympathy, or unqua-
lified assent, or unwarrantable compliance, or eternal
smiles. Before it can be allowed to rank with the
virtues, it must be wrought up from a humour into a
principle, from an occasional disposition into a habit.
It must be the result of an equal and well governed
mind, not the start of casual gaiety, the trick of
designing vanity, or the whim of capricious fond-
ness. It is compounded of kindness, forbearance,
forgiveness, and self-denial; “it seeketh not its
own,” but must be capable of making continual
sacrifices of its own tastes, humours, and self-love;
but among the sacrifices it makes, it must never
include its integrity. Politeness on the one hand,
and insensibility on the other, assume its name, and
wear its honours; but they assume the honours of a
triumph, without the merit of a victory; for polite-
mess subdues nothing, and insensibility has nothing
to subdue. Good nature of the true cast, and under


CONVERSATION. 211
the foregoing regulations, is above all price in the
common intercourse of domestic society; for an
ordinary quality, which is constantly brought into
action by the perpetually recurring though minute
events of daily life, is of higher value than more
brilliant qualities which are more seldom called into
use. Small pieces of ordinary current coin are of
more importance in the commerce of the world than
the medals of the antiquary. And, indeed, Christi-
anity has given that new turn to the character of all
the virtues, that perhaps it is the best test of the
excellence of many that they have little brilliancy in
them. The Christian religion has degraded some
splendid qualities from the rank they held, and ele-
wated those which were obscure into distinction.
CHAP. XV.
On the Danger of an ill-directed Sensibility.
IN considering the human character with a view to
its improvement, it is prudent to endeavour to dis-
cover the natural bent of the mind, and having found
it, to direct your force against that side on which the
warp lies, that you may lessen by counteraction the
defect which you might be promoting, by applying
your aid in a contrary direction. But the misfortune
is, people who mean better than they judge are apt
to take up a set of general rules, good perhaps in
themselves, and originally gleaned from experience
and observation on the nature of human things, but
not applicable in all cases. These rules they keep
by them as nostrums of universal efficacy, which
they therefore often bring out for use in cases to
which they do not apply. For to make any remedy




212 ON SENSIBILITY.
effectual, it is not enough to know the medicine, you
must study the constitution also ; if there be not a
congruity between the two, you may be injuring
one patient by the means which are requisite to
raise and restore another, whose temperament is of a
contrary description. .
It is of importance in forming the female character,
that those on whom this task devolves should possess
so much penetration as accurately to discern the
degree of sensibility, and so much judgment as to
accommodate the treatment to the individual charac-
ter. By constantly stimulating and extolling feelings
naturally quick, those feelings will be rendered too
acute and irritable. On the other hand, a calm and
equable temper will become obtuse by the total want
of excitement: the former treatment converts the
feelings into a source of error, agitation, and cala-
mity; the latter starves their native energy, deadens
the affections, and produces a cold, dull, selfish
spirit; for the human mind is an instrument which
will lose its sweetness if strained too high, and will
be deprived of its tone and strength if not sufficiently
raised.
It is cruel to chill the precious sensibility of an
ingenuous soul, by treating with supercilious cold-
ness and unfeeling ridicule every indication of a
warm, tender, disinterested, and enthusiastic spirit,
as if it exhibited symptoms of a deficiency in under-
standing or prudence. How many are apt to inti-
mate, with a smile of mingled pity and contempt, in
considering such a character, that when she knows
the world, that is, in other words, when she shall be
grown cunning, selfish, and suspicious, she will be
ashamed of her present glow of honest warmth, and
of her lovely susceptibility of heart. May she never
know the world, if the knowledge of it must be




ON SENSIBILITY. 213
acquired at such an expense! But to sensible hearts,
every indication of genuine feeling will be dear, for
they well know that it is this temper which, by the
guidance of the Divine Spirit, may make her one
day become more enamoured of the beauty of holi-
ness; which, with the cooperation of principle, and
under its direction, will render her the lively agent
of Providence in diminishing the misery that is in
the world; into which misery this temper will give
her a quicker intuition than colder characters pos-
sess. It is this temper which, when it is touched
and purified by a “live coal from the altar *,” will
give her a keener taste for the spirit of religion, and
a quicker zeal in discharging its duties. But let it
be remembered likewise, that as there is no quality
in the female character which more raises its tone, so
there is none which will be so likely to endanger the
peace, and to expose the virtue of the possessor;
none which requires to have its luxuriancies more
carefully watched, and its wild shoots more closely
lopped. -
For young women of affections naturally warm,
but not carefully disciplined, are in danger of incur-
ring an unnatural irritability; and while their hap-
piness falls a victim to the excess of uncontrolled
feelings, they are liable at the same time to indulge
a vanity of all others the most preposterous, that of
being vain of their very defect. They have heard
sensibility highly commended, without having heard
any thing of those bounds and fences which were
intended to confine it, and without having been im-
bued with that principle which would have given it
a beneficial direction. Conscious that they possess
the quality itself in the extreme, and not aware that
* Isaiah vi. 6. - -



214 ON SENSIBILITY.

they want all that makes that quality safe and de-
lightful, they plunge headlong into those sins and
miseries from which they conceitedly and ignorantly
imagine, that not principle but coldness has pre-
served the more sober minded and well instructed
of their sex. .
But as it would be foreign to the present design
to expatiate on those criminal excesses which are
some of the sad effects of ungoverned passion, it is
only intended here to hazard a few remarks on those
lighter consequences of it which consist in the loss of
comfort without ruin of character, and the privation
of much of the happiness of life without involving
any very censurable degree of guilt or discredit.
Let it, however, be incidentally remarked, and let it
be carefully remembered, that if no women have
risen so high in the scale of moral excellence as those
whose natural warmth has been conscientiously go-
verned by its true guide, and directed to its true
end; so none have furnished such deplorable in-
stances of extreme depravity as those who, through
the ignorance or the dereliction of principle, have
been abandoned by the excess of this very temper to
the violence of ungoverned passions and uncontrolled
inclinations. Perhaps, if we were to inquire into
the remote cause of some of the blackest crimes
which stain the annals of mankind, profligacy, mur-
der, and especially suicide, we might trace them
º: to this original principle, an ungoverned Sen-
sibility.
Rºihanding all the fine theories in prose and
verse to which this topic has given birth, it will be
found that very exquisite sensibility contributes so
little to happiness, and may yet be made to contri-
bute so much to usefulness, that it may, perhaps, be


ON SENSIBILITY. 215
considered as bestowed for an exercise to the pos-
sessor's own virtue, and at the same time, as a keen
instrument with which he may better work for the
good of others.
Women of this cast of mind are less careful to
avoid the charge of unbounded extremes, than to
escape at all events the imputation of insensibility.
They are little alarmed at the danger of exceeding,
though terrified at the suspicion of coming short, of
what they take to be the extreme point of feeling.
They will even resolve to prove the warmth of their
sensibility, though at the expense of their judgment,
and sometimes also of their justice. Even when
they earnestly desire to be and to do right, they are
apt to employ the wrong instrument to accomplish
the right end. They employ the passions to do the
work of the judgment; forgetting, or not knowing,
that the passions were not given us to be used in the
search and discovery of truth, which is the office of
a cooler and more discriminating faculty; but that
they were given to animate us to warmer zeal in the
pursuit and practice of truth, when the judgment
shall have pointed out what is truth.
Through this natural warmth, which they have
been justly told is so pleasing, but which, perhaps,
they have not been told will be continually exposing
them to peril and to suffering, their joys and sorrows
are excessive. Of this extreme irritability, as was
before remarked, the ill educated learn to boast as if
it were a decided indication of superiority of soul,
instead of labouring to restrain it as the excess of a
temper which ceases to be amiable, when it is no
longer under the control of the governing faculty.
It is misfortune enough to be born more liable to
suffer and to sin, from this conformation of mind; it
is too much to nourish the evil by unrestrained in-


216. ON SENSIBILITY.
dulgence; it is still worse to be proud of so mislead-
ing a quality.
Flippancy, impetuosity, resentment, and violence
of spirit, grow out of this disposition, which will be
rather promoted than corrected, by the system of
education on which we have been animadverting;
in which system, emotions are too early and too
much excited, and tastes and feelings are considered
as too exclusively making up the whole of the female
character; in which the judgment is little exer-
cised, the reasoning powers are seldom brought into
action, and self-knowledge and self-denial scarcely
included.
The propensity of mind which we are considering,
if unchecked, lays its possessors open to unjust pre-
possessions, and exposes them to all the danger of
unfounded attachments. In early youth, not only
love at first sight, but also friendship, of the same
sudden growth, springs up from an ill directed sensi-
bility; and in after life, women under the powerful
influence of this temper, conscious that they have
much to be borne with, are too readily inclined to
select for their confidential connexions, flexible and
flattering companions, who will indulge and perhaps
admire their faults, rather than firm and honest
friends, who will reprove and would assist in curing
them. We may adopt it as a general maxim, that
an obliging, weak, yielding, complaisant friend, full
of small attentions, with little religion, little judg-
ment, and much natural acquiescence and civility,
is a most dangerous, though generally a too much
desired confidante: she soothes the indolence, and
gratifies the vanity of her friend, by reconciling her
to her faults, while she neither keeps the under-
standing nor the virtues of that friend in exercise;
but withholds from her every useful truth, which by

ON SENSIBILITY. 217
opening her eyes might give her pain. These obse-
quious qualities are the “soft green *” on which the
soul loves to repose itself. But it is not a refreshing
or a wholesome repose: we should not select, for
the sake of present ease, a soothing flatterer, who
will lull us into a pleasing oblivion of our failings,
but a friend who, valuing our soul's health above our
immediate comfort, will rouse us from torpid indul-
gence to animation, vigilance, and virtue.
An ill directed sensibility also leads a woman to
be injudicious and eccentric in her charities; she
will be in danger of proportioning her bounty to the
immediate effect which the distressed object pro-
duces on her senses: and she will be more liberal to
a small distress presenting itself to her own eyes,
than to the more pressing wants and better claims of
those miseries of which she only hears the relation.
There is a sort of stage effect which some people
require for their charities; she will be apt also to
desire, that the object of her compassion shall have
something interesting and amiable in it, such as shall
furnish pleasing images and lively pictures to her
imagination, and engaging subjects for description;
forgetting, that in her charities, as well as in every
thing else, she is to be a “follower of Him who
pleased not himself;” forgetting, that the most coarse
and disgusting object is as much the representative
of Him, who said, “Inasmuch as ye do it to one of
the least of these, ye do it unto me,” as the most
interesting: nay, the more uninviting and repulsive
cases may be better tests of the principle on which
we relieve, than those which abound in pathos and
interest, as we can have less suspicion of our motive
in the latter case than in the former. But, while we
ought to neglect neither of these supposed cases, yet
* Burke's “Sublime and Beautiful.” §
L

218 ON SENSIBILITY,
the less our feelings are caught by pleasing circum-
stances, the less will be the danger of our indulging
self-complacency, and the more likely shall we be to
do what we do for the sake of Him who has taught
us, that no deeds but what are performed on that
principle “shall be recompensed at the resurrection
of the just.”
But through the want of that governing principle
which should direct her sensibility, a tender hearted
woman, whose hand, if she be actually surrounded
with scenes and circumstances to call it into action,
1S
Open as day to melting charity;
nevertheless may utterly fail in the great and com-
prehensive duty of Christian love, for she has feelings
which are acted upon solely by local circumstances
and present events. Only remove her into another
scene, distant from the wants she has been relieving;
place her in the lap of indulgence, so entrenched
with ease and pleasure, so immersed in the softness
of life, that distress no longer finds any access to her
presence, but through the faint and dull medium of
a distant representation : remove her from the sight
and sound of that misery, which, when present, so
tenderly affected her—she now forgets that misery
exists; as she hears but little, and sees nothing of
want and sorrow, she is ready to fancy that the world
is grown happier than it was: in the mean time,
with a quiet conscience and a thoughtless vanity, she
has been lavishing on superfluities that money which
she would cheerfully have given to a charitable case,
had she not forgotten that any such were in exist-
ence, because pleasure had blocked up the avenues
through which misery used to find its way to her
heart; and now, when again such a case forces itself

ON SENSIBILITY. 219
into her presence, she laments with real sincerity that
the money is gone which should have relieved it.
In the meantime, perhaps, other women of less
natural sympathy, but whose sympathies are under
better regulation, or who act from a principle which
requires little stimulus, have, by an habitual course
of self-denial, by a constant determination to refuse
themselves unnecessary indulgencies, and by guard-
ing against that dissolving pleasure which melts down
the firmest virtue that allows itself to bask in its
beams, have been quietly furnishing a regular provi-
sion for miseries, which their knowledge of the state
of the world teaches them are everywhere to be found,
and which their obedience to the will of God tells
them it is their duty both to find out and to relieve; a
general expectation of being liable to be called upon
for acts of charity, will lead the conscientiously cha-
ritable always to be prepared.
On such a mind as we have been describing,
novelty also will operate with peculiar force, and
in nothing more than in the article of charity. Old
established institutions, whose continued existence
must depend on the continued bounty of that afflu-
ence to which they owed their origin, will be some-
times neglected, as presenting no variety to the ima-
gination, as having by their uniformity ceased to be
interesting; there is now a total failure of those springs
of mere sensitive feeling which set the charity agoing,
and those sudden emotions of tenderness and gusts
of pity, which once were felt, must now be excited by
newer forms of distress. As age comes on, that charity
which has been the effect of mere feeling, grows
cold and rigid ; this hardness is also increased by
the frequent disappointments charity has experienced
in its too high expectations of the gratitude and


220 ON SENSIBILITY.
subsequent merit of those it has relieved; and by
withdrawing its bounty, because some of its objects
have been underserving, it gives clear proof that what
it bestowed was for its own gratification; and now
finding that self-complacency at an end, it bestows
no longer. Probably too the cause of so much dis-
appointment may have been, that ill choice of the
objects to which feeling, rather than a discriminating
judgment, has led. The summer showers of mere
sensibility soon dry up, while the living spring of
Christian charity flows alike in all seasons.
The impatience, levity, and fickleness, of which
women have been somewhat too generally accused,
are perhaps in no small degree aggravated by the
littleness and frivolousness of female pursuits. The
sort of education they commonly receive, teaches
girls to set a great price on small things. Besides
this, they do not always learn to keep a very correct
scale of degrees for rating the value of the objects of
their admiration and attachment; but by a kind of
unconscious idolatry, they rather make a merit of
loving supremely things and persons which ought to
be loved with moderation and in a subordinate degree
the one to the other. Unluckily, they consider moder-
ation as so necessarily indicating a cold heart and
narrow soul, and they look upon a state of indifference
with so much horror, that either to love or hate with
energy is supposed by them to proceed from a
higher state of mind than is possessed by more steady
and equable characters. Whereas it is in fact the
criterion of a warm but well directed sensibility, that
while it is capable of loving with energy, it must be
enabled, by the judgment which governs it, to suit
and adjust its degree of interest to the nature and ex-
cellence of the object about which it is interested ;




ON SENSIBILITY. 221
for unreasonable prepossession, disproportionate at-
tachment, and capricious or precarious fondness, is
not sensibility.
Excessive but unintentional flattery is another fault
into which a strong sensibility is in danger of lead-
ing its possessor. A tender heart and a warm ima-
gination conspire to throw a sort of radiance round
the object of their love, till they are dazzled by a
brightness of their own creating. The worldly and
fashionable borrow the warm language of sensibility
without having the really warm feeling; and young
ladies get such a habit of saying, and especially of
writing, such over obliging and flattering things to
each other, that this mutual politeness, aided by the
self love so natural to us all, and by an unwillingness
to search into our own hearts, keeps up the illusion,
and we get a habit of taking our character from the
good we hear of ourselves, which others assume, but
do not very well know, rather than from the evil we
feel in ourselves, and which we therefore ought to be
too thoroughly acquainted with to take our opinion
of ourselves from what we hear from others.
Ungoverned sensibility is apt to give a wrong
direction to its anxieties; and its affection often falls
short of the true end of friendship. If the object of
its regard happen to be sick, what inquiries! what
prescriptions! what an accumulation is made of
cases in which the remedy its fondness suggests has
been successful ' What an unaffected tenderness for
the perishing body' Yet is this sensibility equally
alive to the immortal interests of the sufferer? Is it
not silent and at ease when it contemplates the dear-
test friend persisting in opinions essentially danger-
ous; in practices unquestionably wrong? Does it
not view all this, not only without a generous ardour
to point out the peril, and rescue the friend; but if


222 ON SENSIBILITY,
that friend be supposed to be dying, does it not even
make it the criterion of kindness to let her die unde-
ceived What a want of true sensibility, to feel for
the pain, but not for the danger of those we love!
Now see what sort of sensibility the Bible teaches!
“Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart, but
thou shalt in any wise rebuke him, and shalt not
suffer sin upon him *.” But let that tenderness
which shrinks from the idea of exposing what it loves
to a momentary pang, figure to itself the bare possi-
bility, that the object of its own fond affection may
not be the object of the Divine favour! Let it shrink
from the bare conjecture, that “the familiar friend
with whom it has taken sweet counsel,” is going down
to the gates of death, unrepenting, unprepared, and
yet unwarned.
But mere human sensibility goes a shorter way to
work. Not being able to give its friend the pain of
hearing her faults or of knowing her danger, it works
itself up into the quieting delusion that no danger
exists, at least not for the objects of its own affection;
it gratifies itself by inventing a salvation so compre-
hensive as shall take in all itself loves with all their
faults; it creates to its own fond heart an ideal
and exaggerated divine mercy, which shall pardon
and receive all in whom this blind sensibility has an
* whether they be good or whether they be
eVII.
In regard to its application to religious purposes, it
is a test that sensibility has received its true direction
when it is supremely turned to the love of God; for
to possess an overflowing fondness for our fellow-
creatures and fellow-sinners, and to be cold and
insensible to the Essence of goodness and perfec-
tion, is an inconsistency to which the feeling heart is
. * Leviticus xix. 17.

ON SENSIBILITY. 223
awfully liable. God has himself the first claim to the
sensibility he bestowed. “He first loved us:” this is
a natural cause of love. “He loved us while we were
sinners:” this is a supernatural cause. He continues
to love us though we neglect his favours, and slight
his mercies: this would wear out any earthly kind-
ness. He forgives us, not petty neglects, not occa-
sional slights, but grievous sins, repeated offences,
broken vows, and unrequited love. What human
friendship performs offices so calculated to touch the
soul of sensibility
Those young women in whom feeling is indulged
to the exclusion of reason and examination, are
peculiarly liable to be the dupes of prejudice, rash
decisions, and false judgment. The understanding
having but little power over the will, their affections
are not well poised, and their minds are kept in a state
ready to be acted upon by the fluctuations of alter-
nate impulses; by sudden and varying impressions;
by casual and contradictory circumstances; and by
emotions excited by every accident. Instead of
being guided by the broad views of general truth,
and having one fixed principle, they are driven on
by the impetuosity of the moment. And this impe-
tuosity blinds the judgment as much as it misleads
the conduct; so that for want of a habit of cool in-
vestigation and inquiry, they meet every event with-
out any previously formed opinion or rule of action.
And as they do not accustom themselves to appreci-
ate the real value of things, their attention is as likely
to be led away by the under parts of a subject, as to
seize on the leading feature. The same eagerness of
mind which hinders the operation of the discrimi-
nating faculty, leads also to the error of determining
on the rectitude of an action by its success, and to
that of making the event of an undertaking decide



224 ON SENSIBILITY.
on its justice or propriety: it also leads to that super-
ficial and erroneous way of judging which fastens on
exceptions, if they make in one's own favour, as
grounds of reasoning, while they lead us to overlook
received and general rules which tend to establish a
doctrine contrary to our wishes.
Open-hearted, indiscreet girls, often pick up a few
strong notions, which are as false in themselves as
they are popular among the class in question: such as,
that “warm friends must make warm enemies”—
that “the generous love and hate with all their
hearts;”—that “a reformed rake makes the best
husband;”—that “there is no medium in marriage,
but that it is a state of exquisite happiness or exqui-
site misery;” with many other doctrines of equal
currency and equal soundness! These they consider
as axioms, and adopt as rules of life. From the two
first of these oracular sayings, girls are in no small
danger of becoming unjust through the very warmth
of their hearts: for they will get a habit of making
their estimate of the good or ill qualities of others,
merely in proportion to the greater or less degree
of kindness which they themselves have received
from them. Their estimation of general character is
thus formed on insulated and partial grounds; on
the accidental circumstance of personal predilection
or personal pique. Kindness to themselves or their
friends involves all possible excellence; neglect, all
imaginable defects. Friendship and gratitude can
and should go a great way; but as they cannot con-
vert vice into virtue, so they ought never to convert
truth into falsehood. And it may be the more neces-
sary to be upon our guard in this instance, because
the very idea of gratitude may mislead us, by con-
verting injustice into the semblance of a virtue.
Warm expressions should therefore be limited to the



ON SENSIP. IILITY. 225
conveying a sense of our own individual obligations
which are real, rather than employed to give an im-
pression of general excellence in the person who has
obliged us, which may be imaginary. A good man
is still good, though it may not have fallen in his
way to oblige or serve us, nay, though he may have
neglected, or even unintentionally hurt us ; and
sin is still sin, though committed by the person in
the world to whom we are the most obliged, and
whom we most love.
We come next to that fatal and most indelicate,
may gross maxim, that “a reformed rake makes the
best husband;” an aphorism to which the principles
and the happiness of so many young women have
been sacrificed. . It goes upon the preposterous sup-
position, not only that effects do not follow causes,
but that they oppose them; on the supposition, that
habitual vice creates rectitude of character, and that
sin produces happiness: thus flatly contradicting
what the moral government of God uniformly exhi-
bits in the course of human events, and what Reve-
lation so evidently and universally teaches.
For it should be observed, that the reformation is
generally, if not always supposed to be brought about
by the all-conquering force of female charms. Let
but a profligate young man have a point to carry by
winning the affections of a vain and thoughtless girl;
he will begin his attack upon her heart by under-
mining her religious principles, and artfully remov-
ing every impediment which might have obstructed
her receiving the addresses of a man without charac-
ter. And while he will lead her not to hear without
ridicule the mention of that change of heart which
Scripture teaches and experience proves that the
power of Divine grace can work on a vicious charac-
ter; while he will teach her to sneer at a change



L 2
226 ON SENSIBILITY.
which he would treat with contempt, because he
denies the possibility of so strange and miraculous a
conversion; yet he will not scruple to swear, that the
power of her beauty has worked a revolution in his
own loose practices which is equally complete and
instantaneous. -
But supposing it possible that his reformation were
genuine, it would even then by no means involve the
truth of her proposition, that past libertinism insures
future felicity; yet many a weak girl, confirmed in
this palatable doctrine by examples she has fre-
quently admired of those surprising reformations so
conveniently effected in the last scene of most of our
comedies, has not scrupled to risk her earthly and
eternal happiness with a man, who is not ashamed
to ascribe to the influence of her beauty that power
of changing the heart which he impiously denies to
Omnipotence itself.
As to the last of these practical aphorisms, that
“there is no medium in marriage, but that it is a
state of exquisite happiness or exquisite misery;”
this, though not equally sinful, is equally delusive:
for marriage is only one modification of human life,
and human life is not commonly in itself a state of
exquisite extremes; but is for the most part that
mixed and moderate state, so naturally dreaded by
those who set out with fancying this world a state of
rapture, and so naturally expected by those who
know it to be a state of probation and discipline.
Marriage, therefore, is only one condition, and often
the best condition, of that imperfect state of being
which, though seldom very exquisite, is often very
tolerable; and which may yield much comfort to
those who do not look for constant transport. But
unfortunately, those who find themselves disap-
pointed of the unceasing raptures they had antici-

ON SENSIBILITY. 227
pated in marriage, disdaining to sit down with so
poor a provision as comfort, and scorning the ac-
ceptance of that moderate lot which Providence com-
monly bestows with a view to check despondency
and to repress presumption; give themselves up to
the other alternative; and, by abandoning their
hearts to discontent, make to themselves that misery
with which their fervid imaginations had filled the
opposite scale.
The truth is, these young ladies are very apt to
pick up their opinions, less from the divines than the
poets; and the poets, though it must be confessed
they are some of the best embellishers of life, are not
quite the safest conductors through it. In travelling
through a wilderness, though we avail ourselves of
the harmony of singing-birds to render the grove
delightful, yet we never think of following them as
guides to conduct us through its labyrinths.
Those women, in whom the natural defects of a
warm temper have been strengthened by an educa-
tion which fosters their faults, are very dexterous in
availing themselves of a hint, when it favours a ruling
inclination, soothes vanity, indulges indolence, or
gratifies their love of power. They have heard so
often from their favourite sentimental authors, and
their more flattering male friends, “that when Na-
ture denied them strength, she gave them fascinating
graces in compensation; that their strength consists
in their weakness;” and that “they are endowed
with arts of persuasion which supply the absence of
force, and the place of reason;” that they learn, in
time, to pride themselves on that very weakness, and
to become vain of their imperfections; till at length
they begin to claim for their defects, not only pardon,
but admiration. Hence they get to cherish a species
of feeling which, if not checked, terminates in ex-

228 ON SENSIBILITY,
cessive selfishness; they learn to produce their ina-
bility to bear contradiction as a proof of their tender-
mess; and to indulge in that sort of irritability in all
that relates to themselves, which inevitably leads to
the utter exclusion of all interest in the sufferings of
others. Instead of exercising their sensibility in the
wholesome duty of relieving distress and visiting
scenes of sorrow, that sensibility itself is pleaded as
a reason for their not being able to endure sights of
woe, and for shunning the distress it should be ex-
erted in removing. That exquisite sense of feeling
which God implanted in the heart as a stimulus to
quicken us in relieving the miseries of others, is thus
introverted, and learns to consider self not as the
agent, but the object of compassion. Tenderness is
made an excuse for being hard-hearted; and instead
of drying the weeping eyes of others, this false deli-
cacy reserves its selfish and ready tears for the more
elegant and less expensive sorrows of the melting
novel or the pathetic tragedy. .
When feeling stimulates only to self-indulgence;
when the more exquisite affections of sympathy and
pity evaporate in sentiment, instead of flowing out
in active charity, and affording assistance, protection,
or consolation to every species of distress within its
reach; it is an evidence that the feeling is of a spu-
rious kind; and instead of being nourished as an
amiable tenderness, it should be subdued as a fond
and base self-love.
That idleness, to whose cruel inroads many women
of fortune are unhappily exposed, from not having
been trained to consider wholesome occupation,
vigorous exertion, and systematic employment, as
making part of the indispensable duties of life, lays
them open to a thousand evils of this kind, from
which the useful and the busy are exempted; and,


ON SENSIBILITY, . 229
perhaps, it would not be easy to find a more pitiable
object than a woman with a great deal of time and a
great deal of money on her hands, who, never having
been taught the conscientious use of either, squanders
both at random, or rather moulders both away, with-
out plan, without principle, and without pleasure :
all whose projects begin and terminate in self; who
considers the rest of the world only as they may be
subservient to her gratification; and to whom it never
occurred, that both her time and money were given
for the gratification and good of others.
It is not much to the credit of the other sex, that
they now and then lend themselves to the indulgence
of this selfish spirit in their wives, and cherish by a
kind of false fondness those faults which should be
combated by good sense and a reasonable counterac-
tion: slothfully preferring a little false peace, the
purchase of precarious quiet, and the reputation of
good-nature, to the higher duty of forming the mind,
fixing the principles, and strengthening the character
of her with whom they are connected. Perhaps too,
a little vanity in the husband helps out his good-na-
ture; he secretly rewards himself for his sacrifice by
the consciousness of his superiority; he feels a self-
complacency in his patient condescension to her
weakness, which tacitly flatters his own strength:
and he is, as it were, paid for stooping, by the in-
creased sense of his own tallness. Seeing also, per-
haps, but little of other women, he gets to believe
that they are all pretty much alike, and that, as a
man of sense, he must content himself with what he
takes to be the common lot. Whereas, in truth, by
his misplaced indulgence, he has rather made his
own lot than drawn it; and thus, through an indo-
lent despair in the husband of being able to effect
any improvement by opposition, and through the

230 ON SENSIBILITY.
want of that sound affection which labours to im-
prove and exalt the character of its object; it hap-
pens, that many a helpless, fretful, and daudling
wife acquires a more powerful ascendancy than the
most discreet and amiable woman ; and that the most
absolute female tyranny is established by these sickly
and capricious humours.
The poets again, who, to do them justice, are always
ready to lend a helping hand when any mischief is
to be done, have contributed their full share towards
confirming these feminine follies: they have strength-
ened by adulatory maxims, sung in seducing strains,
those faults which their talents and their influence
should have been employed in correcting. By fair
and youthful females an argument, drawn from sound
experience and real life, is commonly repelled by a
stanza; and a couplet is considered as nearly of the
same validity with a text. When ladies are compli-
mented with being
Fine by defect and delicately weak!
is not a standard of feebleness held out to them, to
which vanity will gladly resort, and to which softness
and indolence can easily act up, or rather act down,
if I may be allowed the expression ?
When ladies are told by the same misleading, but
to them high, authority, that “smiles and tears are
the irresistible arms with which Nature has furnished
the weak for conquering the strong,” will they not
eagerly fly to this cheap and ready artillery, instead
of labouring to furnish themselves with a reasonable
mind, an equable temper, and a meek and quiet
spirit”
Every animal is endowed by Providence with the
peculiar powers adapted to its nature and its wants;
while none, except the human, by grafting art on

ON SENSIBILITY. 231
natural sagacity, injures or mars the gift. Spoilt
women, who fancy there is something more picquant
and alluring in the mutual graces of caprice, than in
the monotonous smoothness of an even temper, and
who also having heard much, as was observed before,
about their “amiable weakness,” learn to look about
them for the best succedaneum to strength, the sup-
posed absence of which they sometimes endeavour
to supply by artifice. By this engine the weakest
woman frequently furnishes the converse to the fa-
mous reply of the French minister, who, when he
was accused of governing the mind of that feeble
Queen Mary de Medicis by sorcery, replied, “that
the only sorcery he had used, was that influence which
strong minds naturally have over weak ones.”
But though it be fair so to study the tempers,
defects, and weaknesses of others, as to convert our
knowledge of them to the promotion of their benefit
and our own ; and though it be making a lawful use
of our penetration to avail ourselves of the faults of
others for “their good to edification;” yet all devia-
tions from the straight line of truth and simplicity;
every plot insidiously to turn influence to unfair
account; all contrivances to extort from a bribed
complaisance what reason and justice would refuse to
our wishes; these are some of the operations of that
lowest and most despicable engine, selfish cunning,
by which little minds sometimes govern great ones.
And unluckily, women from their natural desire to
please, and from their sometimes doubting by what
means this grand end may be best effected, are in
more danger of being led into dissimulation than men;
for dissimulation is the result of weakness; it is the
refuge of doubt and distrust, rather than of conscious
strength, the dangers of which lie another way.
Frankness, truth, and simplicity, therefore, as they

232 ON SENSIBILITY,
are inexpressibly charming, so are they peculiarly
commendable in women, and nobly evince that
while the possessors of them wish to please, (and
why should they not wish it?) they disdain to have
recourse to any thing but what is fair, and just, and
honourable to effect it; that they scorn to attain the
most desired end by any but the most lawful means.
The beauty of simplicity is indeed so intimately felt
and generally acknowledged by all who have a true
taste for personal, moral, or intellectual beauty, that
women of the deepest artifice often find their account
in assuming an exterior the most foreign to their
character, and by affecting the most studied naïveté.
It is curious to see the quantity of art some people
put in practice in order to appear natural; and the
º design which is set at work to exhibit simplicity.
And indeed this feigned simplicity is the most mis-
chievous, because the most engaging of all the
Proteus forms which dissimulation can put on. For
the most free and bold sentiments have been some-
times hazarded with fatal success under this unsus-
pected mask. And an innocent, quiet, indolent,
artless manner, has been adopted as the most refined
and successful accompaniment of sentiments, ideas,
and designs, neither artless, quiet, nor innocent.
CHAP. XVI.
On Dissipation, and the modern Habits of fashionable
Life. N.
PERHAPs, the interests of true friendship, elegant
conversation, mental improvement, social pleasure,
maternal duty, and conjugal comfort, never received
such a blow as when Fashion issued out that arbi-

on DISSIPATION, ETC. 233
trary and universal decree, that every body must be
acquainted with every body; together with that con-
sequent, authoritative, but rather inconvenient clause,
that every body must also go every where every
night. The implicit and devout obedience paid to
this law is incompatible with the very being of friend-
ship; for as the circle of acquaintance expands, and
it will be continually expanding, the affections will
be beaten out into such thin lamina as to leave little
solidity remaining. The heart which is continually
exhausting itself in professions grows cold and hard.
The feelings of kindness diminish in proportion as
the expression of it becomes more diffuse and indis-
criminate. The very traces of “simplicity and godly
sincerity,” in a delicate female, wear away imper-
ceptibly by constant collision with the world at large.
And perhaps no woman takes so little interest in the
happiness of her real friends, as she whose affections
are incessantly evaporating in universal civilities; as
she who is saying fond and flattering things at random
to a circle of five hundred people every night.
. The decline and fall of animated and instructive
conversation has been in a good measure effected by
this barbarous project of assembling en masse. An
excellent prelate*, with whose friendship the author
was long honoured, and who himself excelled in the
art of conversation, used to remark, that a few years
had brought about a great revolution in the manners
of society; that it used to be the custom, previously
to going into company, to think that something was
to be communicated or received, taught or learnt ;
that the powers of the understanding were expected
to be brought into exercise, and that it was therefore
necessary to quicken the mind, by reading and think-
ing, for the share the individual might be expected
* The late Bishop Horne. §



234. oN DISSIPATION, AND THE
to take in the general discourse; but that now, know-
ledge, and taste, and wit, and erudition, seemed to
be scarcely considered as necessary materials to be
brought into the pleasurable commerce of the world;
because now there was little chance of turning them
to much account; and therefore he who possessed
them, and he who possessed them not, were nearly
on a footing. &
It is obvious also that multitudinous assemblies are
so little favourable to that cheerfulness which it should
seem to be their very end to promote, that if there
were any chemical process by which the quantum of
spirits animal or intellectual could be ascertained,
the diminution would be found to have been incon-
ceivably great, since the transformation of man and
woman from a social to a gregarious animal.
But if it be true that friendship, society, and cheer-
fulness, have sustained so much injury by this change
of manners, how much more pointedly does the re-
mark apply to family happiness.
Notwithstanding the known fluctuation of manners
and the mutability of language, could it be foreseen,
when the apostle Paul exhorted “married women to
be keepers at home,” that the time would arrive
when that very phrase would be selected to designate
one of the most decided acts of dissipation ? Could
it be foreseen that when a fine lady should send out
a notification that on such a night she shall be AT
Home, these two significant words (besides intimating
the rarity of the thing) would present to the mind an
image the most undomestic which language can con-
vey ! Could it be anticipated that the event of one
lady's being at home could only be effected by the
universal concurrence of all her acquaintance to be
abroad 2 That so simple an act should require such
complicated cooperation? And that the report that

MODERN HABITS OF LIFE. 235
one person would be found in her own house should
operate with such an electric force as to empty the
houses of all her friends !
My country readers, who may require to have it
explained that these two magnetic words at home,
now possess the powerful influence of drawing toge-
ther every thing fine within the sphere of their attrac-
tion, may need also to be apprized, that the guests
afterwards are not asked what was said by the com-
pany, but whether the crowd was prodigious, the
rule for deciding on the merit of a fashionable so-
ciety not being by the taste or the spirit, but by the
score and the hundred. The question of pleasure,
like a parliamentary question, is now carried by
numbers. And when two parties modish, like two
parties political, are run one against another on the
same night, the same kind of mortification attends
the leader of a defeated minority, the same triumph
attends the exulting carrier of superior numbers, in
the one case as in the other. The scale of enjoyment
is rated by the measure of fatigue, and the quantity
of inconvenience furnishes the standard of gratifica-
tion; the smallness of the dimensions to which each
person is limited on account of the multitudes which
must divide among them a certain given space, adds
to the sum total of general delight; the aggregate of
pleasure is produced by the proportion of individual
suffering; and not till every guest feels herself in the
state of a cat in an exhausted receiver, does the
delighted hostess attain the consummation of that
renown which is derived from such overflowing rooms
as shall throw all her competitors at a disgraceful
distance.
An eminent divine has said, that “perseverance
in prayer will either make a man leave off sinning, or
a continuance in sin will make him leave off prayer.”

236 oN DISSIPATION, AND THE
This remark may be accommodated to those ladies
who, while they are devoted to the enjoyments of
the world, yet retain considerable solicitude for the
instruction of their daughters. But if they are really
in earnest to give them a Christian education, they
must themselves renounce a dissipated life. Or if
they resolve to pursue the chase of pleasure, they
must renounce this prime duty. Contraries cannot
unite. The moral nurture of a tall daughter can no
more be administered by a mother whose time is
absorbed by crowds abroad, than the physical nurture
of her infant offspring can be supplied by her in a
perpetual absence from home. And is not that a
preposterous affection which, after leading a mother
to devote a few months to the inferior duty of fur-
nishing aliment to the mere animal life, allows her
to desert her post when the more important moral
and intellectual cravings require sustenance 2 This
great object is not to be effected with the shreds and
parings rounded off from the circle of a dissipated
life; but in order to its adequate execution, the
mother should carry it on with the same spirit and
perseverance at home, which the father thinks it
necessary to be exerting abroad in his public duty
or professional engagements.
The usual vindication (and in theory it has a plau-
sible sound) which has been offered for the large
portion of time spent by women in acquiring orna-
mental talents is, that they are calculated to make
the possessor love home, and that they innocently fill
up the hours of leisure. The plea has indeed so
promising an appearance, that it is worth inquiring
whether it be in fact true. Do we then, on fairly
pursuing the inquiry, discover that those who have
spent most time in such light acquisitions, are really
remarkable for loving home or staying quietly there?


MOD ERN HABITS OF LIFE. 237,
or that when there, they are sedulous in turning time
to the best account? I speak not of that rational and
respectable class of women, who, applying (as many
of them do) these elegant talents to their true purpose,
employ them to fill up the vacancies of better occu-
pations, and to embellish the leisure of a life actively
good. But do we generally see that even the most
valuable and sober part of the reigning female acqui-
sitions leads their possessor to scenes most favour-
able to the enjoyment of them 1 to scenes which we
should naturally suppose she would seek, in order to
the more effectual cultivation of such rational plea-
sures 7
Would not those delightful pursuits, botany and
drawing, for instance, seem likely to court the fields,
the woods, and gardens of the paternal seat, as more
congenial to their nature, and more appropriate to
their exercise, than barren watering places, destitute
of a tree, or a herb, or a flower, and not affording an
hour's interval from successive pleasures, to profit by
the scene even if it abounded with the whole vege-
table world, from the “Cedar of Lebanon to the
hyssop on the wall.”
From the mention of watering places, may the
author be allowed to suggest a few remarks on the
evils which have arisen from the general conspiracy
of the gay to usurp the regions of the sick; and from
their converting the health-restoring fountains, meant
as a refuge for disease, into the resorts of vanity for
those who have no disease but idleness 1 N.
This inability of staying at home, as it is one of
the most infallible, so it is one of the most dangerous
symptoms of the reigning mania. It would be more
tolerable, did this epidemic malady only break out,
as formerly, during the winter, or some one season.
Heretofore, the tenantry and the poor, the natural

238 on DissLPATION, AND THE
dependants on the rural mansions of the opulent, had
some definite period to which they might joyfully
look forward for the approach of those patrons, part
of whose business in life it is to influence by their
presence, to instruct by their example, to sooth by
their kindness, and to assist by their liberality, those
whom Providence, in the distribution of human lots,
has placed under their more immediate protection.
Though it would be far from truth to assert, that
dissipated people are never charitable, yet I will
venture to say, that dissipation is inconsistent with
the spirit of charity. That affecting precept followed
by so gracious a promise, “Never turn away thy face
rom any poor man, and then the face of the Lord
shall never be turned away from thee,” cannot lite-
rally mean that we should give to all, as then we
should soon have nothing left to give : but it seems
to intimate the habitual attention, the duty of in-
quiring out all cases of distress, in order to judge
which are fit to be relieved; now for this inquiry,
for this attention, for this sympathy, the dissipated
have little taste, and less leisure.
Let a reasonable conjecture (for calculation would
fail!) be made of how large a diminution of the
general good has been effected in this single respect,
by causes which, though they do not seem important
in themselves, yet make no inconsiderable part of the
mischief arising from modern manners: and I speak
now to persons who intend to be charitable. What
a deduction will be made from the aggregate of
charity, by a circumstance apparently trifling, when
we consider what would be the beneficial effects of
that regular bounty which must almost unavoidably
result from the evening walks of a great and benevo-
lent family among the cottages of their own domain :
the thousand little acts of, comparatively, unexpen-


MODERN HABITS OF LIFE. 239
sive kindness which the sight of petty wants and
difficulties would excite; wants, which will scarcely
be felt in the relation; and which will probably be
neither seen, nor felt, nor fairly represented, in their
long absences, by an agent. And what is even almost
more than the good done, is the habit of mind kept
up in those who do it. Would not this habit, exer-
cised on the Christian principle, that “even a cup
of cold water,” given upon right motives, shall not
lose its reward; while the giving “all their goods to
feed the poor,” without the true principle of charity,
shall profit them nothing; would not this habit, I
say, and the inculcation of the spirit which produces
it, be almost the best part of the education of daugh-
terS* !
But transplant this wealthy and bountiful family
periodically to the frivolous and uninteresting bustle
of the watering place; there it is not denied that
frequent public and fashionable acts of charity may
make a part (and it is well they do) of the business
and amusement of the day; with this latter, indeed,
they are sometimes good-naturedly mixed up. But
how shall we compare the regular systematical good
these persons would be doing at their own home,
with the light, and amusing, and bustling bounties
of the public place? The illegal raffle at the toy-shop,
* It would be a pleasant summer amusement for our young ladies
of fortune, if they were to preside at such spinning feasts as are in-
stituted at Nuneham for the promotion of virtue and industry in
their own sex. Pleasurable anniversaries of this kind would serve
to combine in the minds of the poor two ideas which ought never
to be separated, but which they are not very forward to unite.-
that the great wish to make them happy as well as good. Occa-
sional approximations of the rich and poor, for the purposes of re-
lief and instruction, and annual meetings for the purpose of inno-
cent pleasure, would do much towards wearing away discontent,
and the conviction that the rich really take an interest in their
comfort, would contribute to reconcile the lower class to that stat
in which it has pleased God to place them. -


240, oN DISSIPATION, AND THE
may relieve, it is true, some distress; but this dis-
tress, though it may be real, and though if real it
ought to be relieved, is far less easily ascertained
than the wants of the poor round a person's own
door, or the debts of a distressed tenant. How shall
we compare the broad stream of bounty which should
be flowing through and refreshing whole districts
with the penurious current of the subscription break-
fast for the needy musician, in which the price of the
gift is taken out in the diversion, and in which plea-
sure dignifies itself with the name of bounty How
shall we compare the attention, and time, and zeal,
which would otherwise, perhaps, be devoted to the
village school, spent in hawking about benefit tickets
for a broken player, while the kindness of the bene-
factress, perhaps, is rewarded by scenes in which her
charity is not always repaid by the purity of the
exhibition ? .
Far be it from the author to wish to check the full
tide of charity wherever it is disposed to flow ! Would
she could multiply the already abundant streams,
and behold every source purified But in the public
resorts there are many who are able and willing to
give. In the sequestered, though populous village,
there is, perhaps, only one affluent family: the dis-
tress which they do not behold will probably not be
attended to: the distress which they do not relieve
will probably not be relieved at all: the wrongs
which they do not redress will go unredressed: the
oppressed whom they do not rescue will sink under
the tyranny of the oppressor. Through their own
rural domains too, charity runs in a clearer current,
and is under less suspicion of being polluted by
that muddy tincture which it is sometimes apt to
* in passing through the impure soil of the
WOrld.

MODERN HABITS OF LIFE, 241
But to return from this too long digression: the
old standing objection formerly brought forward by
the prejudices of the other sex, and too eagerly laid
hold on as a shelter for indolence and ignorance by
ours, was, that intellectual accomplishments too much
absorbed the thoughts and affections, took women off
from the necessary attention to domestic duties, and
superinduced a contempt or neglect of whatever was
useful. But it is peculiarly the character of the pre-
sent day to detect absurd opinions, and expose plau-
sible theories by the simple and decisive answer of
experiments; and it is presumed that this popular
error, as well as others, is daily receiving the refuta-
tion of actual experience. For it cannot surely be
maintained on ground that is any longer tenable,
that acquirements truly rational are calculated to
draw off the mind from real duties. Whatever re-
moves prejudices, whatever stimulates industry,
whatever rectifies the judgment, whatever corrects
self-conceit, whatever purifies the taste, and raises
the understanding, will be likely to contribute to
moral excellence: to woman moral excellence is the
grand object of education; and of moral excellence,
domestic life is to woman the proper sphere.
Count over the list of females who have made
shipwreck of their fame and virtue, and have fur-
nished the most lamentable examples of the derelic-
tion of family duties; and the number will not be
found considerable who have been led astray by the
pursuit of knowledge. And if a few deplorable
instances of this kind be produced, it will commonly
be found that there was little infusion into the minds
of such women of that correcting principle without
which all other knowledge only “puffeth up.”
The time nightly expended in late female vigils is
expended by the light of far other lamps than those
M

242 on DISSIPATION, AND THE
which are fed by the student's oil; and if families
are to be found who are neglected through too much
study in the mistress, it will probably be proved to
be Hoyle, and not Homer, who has robbed her chil-
dren of her time and affections. For one family
which has been neglected by the mother's passion
for books, a hundred have been deserted through her
passion for play. The husband of a fashionable
woman will not often find that the library is the
apartment the expenses of which involve him in debt
or disgrace. And for one literary slattern, who now
manifests her indifference to her husband by the neg-
lect of her person, there are scores of elegant spend-
thrifts who ruin theirs by excess of decoration.
May I digress a little while I remark, that I am
far from asserting that literature has never filled
women with vanity and self-conceit; the contrary is
too obvious : and it happens in this as in other cases,
that a few characters conspicuously absurd, have
served to bring a whole order or body into ridicule.
But I will assert, that in general those whom books
are supposed to have spoiled, would have been
spoiled in another way without them. She who is a
vain pedant because she has read much, has proba-
bly that defect in her mind which would have made
her a vain fool if she had read nothing. It is not her
having more knowledge, but less sense, which makes
her insufferable: and ignorance would have added
little to her value, for it is not what she has, but
what she wants, which makes her unpleasant. The
truth, however, probably lies here, that while her
understanding was improved, the tempers of her
heart were neglected, and that in cultivating the
fame of a savante, she lost the humility of a Chris-
tian. But these instances, too, furnish only a fresh
argument for the general cultivation of the female



MODERN HABITS OF LIFE. 243
mind. The wider diffusion of sound knowledge,
would remove that temptation to be vain which may
be excited by its rarity.
But while we would assert that a woman of a cul-
tivated intellect is not driven by the same necessity
as others into the giddy whirl of public resort; who
but regrets that real cultivation does not inevitably
preserve her from it? No wonder that inanity or
character, that vacuity of mind, that torpid igno-
rance, should plunge into dissipation as their natural
refuge; should seek to bury their insignificance in
the crowd of pressing multitudes, and hope to escape
analysis and detection in the undistinguished masses
of mixed assemblies' There attrition rubs all bodies
smooth, and makes all surfaces alike; thither super-
ficial and external accomplishments naturally fly as
to their proper scene of action; as to a field where
competition in such perfections is in perpetual exer-
cise; where the laurels of admiration are to be won;
whence the trophies of vanity may be carried off
triumphantly.
It would indeed be matter of little comparative
regret, if this corrupt air were breathed only by those
whose natural element it seems to be; but who can
forbear lamenting that the power of fashion attracts
into this impure and unwholesome atmosphere, minds
also of a better make, of higher aims and ends, of
more ethereal temper? that it attracts even those
who, renouncing enjoyments for which they have a
genuine taste, and which would make them really
happy, neglect society they love and pursuits they
admire, in order that they may seem happy and be
fashionable in the chase of pleasures they despise,
and in company they disapprove! But no correct-
ness of taste, no depth of knowledge, will infallibly
preserve a woman from this contagion, unless her





244 on DIssipATION, AND THE
heart be impressed with a deep Christian conviction
that she is accountable for the application of know-
ledge as well as for the dedication of time. Perhaps
if there be any one principle which should be more
sedulously than another worked into the youthful
mind, it is the doctrine of particular as well as general
responsibility.
he contagion of dissipated manners is so deep,
so wide, and fatal, that if I were called upon to
assign the predominant cause of the greater part of
the misfortunes and corruptions of the great and gay
in our days, I should not look for it principally in
any obviously great or striking circumstance; not in
the practice of notorious vices; not originally in the
dereliction of Christian principle ; but I should
without hesitation ascribe it to a growing, regular,
systematic series of amusements; to an incessant,
boundless, and not very disreputable Diss IPATIon.
Other corruptions, though more formidable in ap-
pearance, are yet less fatal in some respects, because
they leave us intervals to reflect on their turpitude,
and spirit to lament their excesses; but dissipation
is the more hopeless, as by engrossing almost the
entire life, and enervating the whole moral and in-
tellectual system, it leaves neither time for reflection,
nor space for self-examination, nor temper for the
cherishing of right affections, nor leisure for the
operation of sound principles, nor interval for regret,
nor vigour to resist temptation, nor energy to struggle
for amendment.
The great master of the science of pleasure among
the ancients, who reduced it into a system, which he
called the chief good of man, directed that there
should be interval enough between the succession of
delights to sharpen inclination; and accordingly in-
stituted periodical days of abstinence; well knowing




MODERN HABITS OF LIFE. 245
that gratification was best promoted by previous self-
denial. But so little do our votaries of fashion under-
stand the true nature of pleasure, that one amusement
is allowed to overtake another without any interval,
either for recollection of the past or preparation for
the future. Even on their own selfish principle,
therefore, nothing can be worse understood than this
continuity of enjoyment: for to such a degree of
labour is the pursuit carried, that the pleasures
exhaust instead of exhilarating, and the recreations
require to be rested from.
For, not to argue the question on the ground of
religion, but merely on that of present enjoyment;
look abroad and see who are the people that com-
plain of weariness, listlessness, and dejection. You
will not find them among the class of such as are
overdone with work, but with pleasure. The natural
and healthful fatigues of business may be recruited
by simple and cheap gratifications; but a spirit worn
down with the toils of amusement, requires pleasures
of poignancy; varied, multiplied, stimulating ! -
t has been observed by medical writers, that that
sober excess in which many indulge, by eating and
drinking a little too much at every day's dinner and
every night's supper, more effectually undermines
the health, than those more rare excesses by which
others now and then break in upon a life of general
sobriety. This illustration is not introduced with a
design to recommend occasional deviations into gross
vice, by way of a pious receipt for mending the mo-
rals; but merely to suggest that there is a probability
that those who are sometimes driven by unresisted
passion into irregularities which shock their cooler
reason, are more liable to be roused to a sense of
their danger, than persons whose perceptions of evil
are blunted hº a round of systematical, unceas-


246 on DISSIPATION, AND THE
ing, and yet not scandalous dissipation. And when
I affirm that this system of regular indulgence re-
laxes the soul, enslaves the heart, bewitches the
senses, and thus disqualifies for pious thought or
useful action, without having any thing in it so gross
as to shock the conscience; and when I hazard an
opinion that this state is more formidable, because
less alarming, than that which bears upon it a more
determined character of evil, I no more mean to
speak of the latter in slight and palliating terms,
than I would intimate, because the sick sometimes
recover from a fever, but seldom from a palsy, that a
fever is therefore a safe or a healthy state.
But there seems to be an error in the first concoc-
tion, out of which the subsequent errors successively
grow. First then, as has been observed before, the
showy education of women tends chiefly to qualify
them for the glare of public assemblies; secondly,
they seem in many instances to be so educated, with
a view to the greater probability of their being splen-
didly married; thirdly, it is alleged in vindication of
those dissipated practices, that daughters can only
be seen, and admirers procured at balls, operas, and
assemblies: and that therefore, by a natural and
necessary consequence, balls, operas, and assemblies
must be followed up without intermission till the
object be effected. For the accomplishment of this
object it is that all this complicated machinery had
been previously set agoing, and kept in motion with
an activity not at all slackened by the disordered
state of the system; for some machines, instead of
being stopped, go faster because the true spring is
out of order; the only difference being that they go
wrong, and so the increased rapidity adds only to
the quantity of error.
It is also, as we have already remarked, an error
#

MODERN HABITS OF LIFE, 247
to fancy that the love of pleasure exhausts itself by
indulgence, and that the very young are chiefly
addicted to it. The contrary appears to be true.
The desire often grows with the pursuit in the same
degree as motion is quickened by the continuance of
the gravitating force.
First then, it cannot be thought unfair to trace
back the excessive fondness for amusement to that
mode of education we have elsewhere reprobated.
Few of the accomplishments, falsely so called, assist
the developement of the faculties: they do not exer-
cise the judgment, nor bring into action those powers
which fit the heart and mind for the occupations of
life; they do not prepare women to love home, to
understand its occupations, to enliven its uniformity,
to fulfil its duties, to multiply its comforts: they do
not lead to that sort of experimental logic, if I may
so speak, compounded of observation and reflection,
which makes up the moral science of life and man-
ners. Talents which have display for their object
despise the narrow stage of home : they demand
mankind for their spectators, and the world for their
theatre. x 3.
While one cannot help shrinking a little from the
idea of a delicate young creature, lovely in person,
and engaging in mind and manners, sacrificing
nightly at the public shrine of Fashion, at once the
votary and the victim; one cannot help figuring to
one's self how much more interesting she would ap-
p. in the eyes of a man of feeling, did he behold
her in the more endearing situations of domestic life.
And who can forbear wishing, that the good sense,
good taste, and delicacy of the men had rather led
them to prefer seeking companions for life in the
almost sacred quiet of a virtuous home? There they
might have had the means of seeing and admiring


248 oN DISSIPATION, AND THE
those amiable beings in the best point of view:
there they might have been enabled to form a juster
estimate of female worth, than is likely to be ob-
tained in scenes where such qualities and talents as
might be expected to add to the stock of domestic
comfort must necessarily be kept in the back ground,
and where such only can be brought into view as are
not particularly calculated to insure the certainty of
home delights. . x
O ! did they keep their persons fresh and new,
How would they pluck allegiance from men's hearts,
And win by rareness!
But by what unaccountable infatuation is it that
men too, even men of sense, join in the confederacy
against their own happiness, by looking for their
home companions in the resorts of vanity ? Why do
not such men rise superior to the illusions of fashion ?
Why do they not uniformly seek her who is to pre-
side in their families in the bosom of her own, in
the practice of every domestic duty, in the exercisé
of every amiable virtue, in the exertion of every
elegant accomplishment; those accomplishments of
which we have been reprobating, not the possession,
but the application ? There they would find her
exerting them to their true end, to enliven business,
to animate retirement, to embellish the charming
scene of family delights, to heighten the interesting
pleasures of social intercourse, and, rising in just
gradation to their noblest object, to adorn the doc-
trine of God her Saviour.
If, indeed, woman were mere outside, form and
face only, and if mind made up no part of her com-
position, it would follow that a ball room was quite
as appropriate a place for choosing a wife, as an
exhibition room for choosing a picture. But, inas-

MODERN HABITS OF LIFE. 249
much as women are not mere portraits, their value
not being determinable by a glance of the eye, it
follows that a different mode of appreciating their
value, and a different place for viewing them ante-
cedent to their being individually selected, is desir-
able. The two cases differ also in this, that if a man
select a picture for himself from among all its exhi-
bited competitors, and bring it to his own house, the
picture being passive, he is able to fix it there:
while the wife, picked up at a public place, and
accustomed to incessant display, will not, it is pro-
bable, when brought home, stick so quietly to the
spot where he fixes her; but will escape to the exhi-
bition room again, and continue to be displayed at
every subsequent exhibition, just as if she were not
become private property, and had never been defi-
nitely disposed of.
It is the novelty of a thing which astonishes us,
and not its absurdity: objects may be so long kept
before the eye that it begins no longer to observe
them; or may be brought into such close contact
with it, that it does not discern them. Long habit so
reconciles us to almost any thing, that the grossest
improprieties cease to strike us when they once
make a part of the common course of action. This,
by the way, is a strong reason for carefully sifting
every opinion and every practice before we let them
incorporate into the mass of our habits, for after that
time they will be no more examined. Would it not
be accounted preposterous for a young man to say
he had fancied such a lady would dance a better
minuet because he had seen her behave devoutly at
church, and therefore had chosen her for his part-
ner? And yet he is not thought at all absurd when
he intimates that he chose a partner for life because
he was pleased with her at a ball. Surely the place



M 2
250 on DISSIPATION, AND THE
of choosing and the motive of choice, would be just
as appropriate in one case as in the other, and the
mistake, if the judgment failed, not quite so serious.
There is, among the more elevated classes of
society, a certain set of persons who are pleased
exclusively to call themselves, and whom others by
a sort of compelled courtesy are pleased to call, the
fine world. This small detachment consider their
situation with respect to the rest of mankind, just as
the ancient Grecians did theirs; that is, as the Gre-
cians thought there were but two sorts of beings, and
that all who were not Grecians were barbarians; so
this certain set conceives of society as resolving itself
into two distinct classes, the fine world and the peo-
ple; to which last class they turn over all who do
not belong to their little coterie, however high their
rank, or fortune, or merit. Celebrity, in their esti-
mation, is not bestowed by birth or talents, but by
being connected with them. They have laws, im-
munities, privileges, and almost a language of their
own; they form a kind of distinct caste, and with a
sort of esprit du corps detach themselves from others,
even in general society, by an affectation of distance
and coldness, and only whisper and smile in their
own little groups of the initiated; their confines are
jealously guarded, and their privileges are incom-
municable. .
In this society a young man loses his natural cha-
racter, which, whatever it might have been originally,
is melted down and cast into the one prevailing
mould of Fashion; all the strong, native, discrimi-
nating qualities of his mind being made to take one
shape, one stamp, one superscription l However
varied and distinct might have been the materials
which Nature threw into the crucible, plastic Fashion
takes care that they shall all be the same, or at least

MoDERN HABITS OF LIFE. 251
appear the same, when they come out of the mould.
A young man in such an artificial state of Society,
accustomed to the voluptuous ease, refined luxuries,
soft accommodations, obsequious attendance, and all
the unrestrained indulgencies of a fashionable club,
is not to be expected after marriage to take very cor-
dially to a home, unless very extraordinary exertions
are made to amuse, to attach, and to interest him :
and he is not likely to lend a very helping hand to
the happiness of the union, whose most laborious
exertions have hitherto been little more than a selfish
stratagem to reconcile health with pleasure. Excess
of gratification has only served to make him irritable
and exacting; it will of course be no part of his
project to make sacrifices, he will expect to receive
them : and what would appear incredible to the
Palladins of gallant times, and the Chevaliers Preux
of more heroic days, even in the necessary business
of establishing himself for life, he sometimes is
more disposed to expect attentions than to make
advances.
Thus the indolent son of fashion, with a thousand
fine, but dormant qualities, which a bad tone of man-
ners forbids him to bring into exercise; with real
energies which that tone does not allow him to
discover, and an unreal apathy which it commands
him to feign; with the heart of a hero, perhaps, if
called into the field, affects at home the manners of a
Sybarite; and he who, with a Roman, or what is
more, with a British valour, would leap into the gulf
at the call of public duty,
Yet in the soft and piping time of peace,
when fashion has resumed her rights, would murmur
if a rose leaf lay double under him.
* The clubs above alluded to, as has been said, ge-

252 on DISSIPATION, AND THE
nerate and cherish luxurious habits, from their perfect
ease, undress, liberty, and inattentions to the distinc-
tions of rank: they promote a love of play, and in
short, every temper and spirit which tends to undo-
mesticate; and what adds to the mischief is, all this
is attained at a cheap rate compared with what may
be procured at home in the same style.
These indulgencies, and this habit of mind, imply
so much gratification of the passions, that a woman
can never hope successfully to counteract the evil by
supplying at home gratifications in a superior degree,
which are of the same kind. If she should attempt
this, in a little time she will find that those passions,
to which she has trusted for making pleasant the
married life of her husband, will crave the still higher
pleasures of the club ; and while these are pursued,
she will be consigned over to solitary evenings at
home, or driven back to the old dissipations.
To conquer the passion for club gratifications, a
woman must not strive to feed it with sufficient ali-
ment of the same kind in her society, either at home
or abroad; she must supplant and overcome it by a
passion of a different nature, which Providence has
kindly planted within us; I mean, by inspiring him
with the love of fireside enjoyments. But to qualify
herself for administering these, she must cultivate
her understanding, and her heart, and her temper,
acquiring at the same time that modicum of accom-
plishments suited to his taste, wheih may qualify her
for possessing, both for him and for herself, greater
varieties of safe recreation. -
One great cause of the want of attachment in these
modish couples is, that by living in the world at
large they are not driven to depend on each other as
the chief source of comfort. Now it is pretty clear,
in spite of modern theories, that the very frame and




MODERN HABITS OF LIFE. 253
being of societies, whether great or small, public or
private, is jointed and glued together by depend-
ence. Those attachments which arise from, and are
compacted by, a sense of mutual wants, mutual affec-
tion, mutual benefit, and mutual obligation, are the
cement which secure the union of the family as well
as of the state.
Unfortunately, when two young persons of the
above description marry, the union is sometimes con-
sidered rather as the end than the beginning of an
engagement: the attachment of each to the other is
rather viewed as an object already completed, than
as one which marriage is to confirm more closely.
But the companion for life is not always chosen from
the purest motive; she is selected, perhaps, because
she is admired by other men, rather than because
she possesses in an eminent degree those peculiar
qualities which are likely to constitute the individual
happiness of the man who chooses her. Vanity usurps
the place of affection; and indolence swallows up
the judgment. Not happiness, but some easy substi-
tute for happiness, is pursued; and a choice which
may excite envy, rather than produce satisfaction, is
adopted as the means of effecting it.
he pair, not matched but joined, set out sepa-
rately with their independent and individual pur-
suits; whether it made a part of their original plan
or not, that they should be indispensably necessary
to each other's comfort, the sense of this necessity,
probably not very strong at first, rather diminishes
than increases by time; they live so much in the
world, and so little together, that to stand well with
their own set continues the favourite project of each;
while to stand well with each other is considered
as an under-part of the plot in the drama of life.
Whereas, did shey start in the conjugal race with




254 on Diss IPATION, AND THE
the fixed idea that they were to look to each other
for their chief worldly happiness, not only principle,
but prudence, and even selfishness, would convince
them of the necessity of sedulously cultivating each
other's esteem and affection as the grand means of
promoting that happiness. But vanity and the de-
sire of flattery and applause, still continue to operate.
Even after the husband is brought to feel a perfect
indifference for his wife, he still likes to see her
decorated in a style which may serve to justify his
choice. He encourages her to set off her person, not
so much for his own gratification, as that his self-love
may be flattered, by her continuing to attract the
admiration of those whose opinion is the standard by
which he measures his fame, and which fame is to
stand him in the stead of happiness. Thus is she neces-
sarily exposed to the twofold temptation of being at
once neglected by her husband, and exhibited as an
object of attraction to other men. If she escape
this complicated danger, she will be indebted for her
preservation not to his prudence, but to her own
principles.
In some of these modish marriages, instead of the
decorous neatness, the pleasant intercourse, and the
mutual warmth of communication of the once social
dinner; the late and uninteresting meal is commonly
hurried over by the languid and slovenly pair, that
the one may have time to dress for his club, and the
other for her party. And in these cold abstracted
têtes-à-têtes, they often take as little pains to enter-
tain each other, as if the one was precisely the only
human being in the world in whose eyes the other
did not feel it necessary to appear agreeable.
But if these young and perhaps really amiable
persons could struggle against the imperious tyranny
of fashion, and contrive to pass a little time together,


MODERN HABITS OF LIFE, 25.5
so as to get acquainted with each other ; and if each
would live in the lively and conscientious exercise of
those talents and attractions which they sometimes
know how to produce on occasions not quite so justi-
fiable; they would, I am persuaded, often find out
each other to be very agreeable people. And both
of them, delighted and delighting, receiving and
bestowing happiness, would no longer be driven to
the necessity of perpetually escaping from home as
from the only scene which offers no possible mate-
rials for pleasure. The steady and growing attach-
ment, improved by unbounded confidence and mu-
tual interchange of sentiments; judgment ripening,
and experience strengthening that esteem which taste
and inclination first inspired; each party studying
to promote the eternal as well as temporal happiness
of the other; each correcting the errors, improvin
the principles, and confirming the faith of the beloved
object; this would enrich the feeling heart with grati-
fications which the insolvent world has not to bestow:
such a heart would compare its interesting domestic
scenes with the vapid pleasures of public resort, till
it would fly to its own home, not from necessity, but
taste; not from custom, but choice; not from duty,
... but delight. -
It may seem a contradiction to have asserted, that
beings of all ages, tempers, and talents, should with
such unremitting industry follow up any way of life,
if they do not find some enjoyment in it; yet I ap-
peal to the bosoms of these incessant hunters in the
chase of pleasure, whether they are really happy.
No :—in the full tide and torrent of diversion, in the
full blaze of gaiety,
The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy 7
But there is an anxious restlessness excited by the

256 on DISSIPATION, AND THE
pursuit, which, if not interesting, is bustling. There
is the dread, and partly the discredit, of being sus-
pected of having one hour unmortgaged, not only
to successive, but contending engagements; this it
is, and not the pleasure of the engagement itself,
which is the object. There is an agitation in the
arrangements which imposes itself on the vacant
heart for happiness. There is a tumult kept up in
the spirits which is a busy though treacherous
substitute for comfort. The multiplicity of solicita-
tions soothes vanity. The very regret that they can-
not be all accepted has its charms; for dignity is
flattered because refusal implies importance, and
pre-engagement intimates celebrity. Then there is
the joy of being invited when others are neglected;
the triumph of showing one's less modish friend that
one is going where she cannot come; and the feigned
regret of being obliged to go, assumed before her
who is half wild at being obliged to stay away.
These are some of the supplemental shifts for happi-
ness with which vanity contrives to feed her hungry
followers, too eager to be nice.
In the succession of open houses, in which plea-
sure is to be started and pursued on any given night,
the actual place is never taken into the account of
enjoyment: the scene of which is always supposed to
lie in any place where her votaries happen not to be.
Pleasure has no present tense: but in the house
which her pursuers have just quitted, and in the
house to which they are just hastening, a stranger
might conclude the slippery goddess had really fixed
her throne, and that her worshippers considered the
existing scene, which they seem compelled to suffer,
but from which they are eager to escape, as really
detaining them from some positive joy to which they
are flying in the next crowd; till, if he met them




MODERN HABITS OF LIFE. 257
there, he would find the component parts of each
precisely the same. He would hear the same stated
phrases interrupted, not answered, by the same stated
replies; the unfinished sentence “driven adverse to
the winds,” by pressing multitudes; the same warm
regret mutually exchanged by two friends (who had
been expressly denied to each other all the winter)
that they had not met before; the same soft and
smiling sorrow at being torn away from each other
now ; the same anxiety to renew the meeting, with
perhaps the same secret resolution to avoid it. He
would hear described with the same pathetic earnest-
ness the difficulties of getting into this house, and
the dangers of getting out of the last! the perilous
retreat of former nights, effected amidst the shock of
chariots, and the clang of contending coachmen 1 a
retreat indeed effected with a skill and peril little
inferior to that of the Ten Thousand, and detailed with
far juster triumph : for that which happened only
once in a life to the Grecian hero, occurs to these
British heroines every night. There is one point of
resemblance, indeed, between them in which the com-
parison fails; for the commander, with a mauvaise
honte at which a true female veteran would blush, is
remarkable for never naming himself.
With “mysterious reverence” I forbear to descant
on those serious and interesting rites, for the more
august and solemn celebration of which Fashion
nightly convenes these splendid myriads to her more
sumptuous temples. Rites! which, when engaged
in with due devotion, absorb the whole soul, and
call every passion into exercise, except indeed those
of love, and peace, and kindness, and gentleness.
Inspiring rites! which stimulate fear, rouse hope,
kindle zeal, quicken dulness, sharpen discernment,
exercise memory, inflame curiosity Rites! in short,



258 ON DISSIPATION.
in the due performance of which all the energies and
attentions, all the powers and abilities, all the ab-
straction and exertion, all the diligence and devoted-
ness, all the sacrifice of time, all the contempt of ease,
all the neglect of sleep, all the oblivion of care, all
the risks of fortune (half of which, if directed to their
true objects, would change the very face of the world);
all these are concentrated to one point: a point in
which the wise and the weak, the learned and the
ignorant, the fair and the frightful, the sprightly and
the dull, the rich and the poor, the patrician and
plebeian, meet in one common and uniform equality;
an equality as religiously respected in these solemni-
ties, in which all distinctions are levelled at a blow,
and of which the very spirit is therefore democratical,
as it is combated in all other instances. º
Behold four Kings in º revered,
With hoary whiskers and a forked beard;
And four fair Queens, whose hands sustain a flow'r,
The' expressive emblem of their softer pow'r; .
Four Knaves in garbs succinct, a trusty band,
Caps on their heads, and halberts in their hand;
And party-colour'd troops, a shining train,
Drawn forth to combat on the velvet plain *.
CHAP. XVII.
On public Amusements.
It is not proposed to enter the long contested field
of controversy as to the individual amusements which
may be considered as safe and lawful for those wo-
men of the higher class who make a strict profession
of Christianity. The judgment they will be likely to
form for themselves on the subject, and the plan they
will consequently adopt, will depend much on the
* * x- * Rape of the Lock.


ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 259
clearness or obscurity of their religious views, and on
the greater or less progress they have made in their
Christian course. It is in their choice of amusements
that you get in some measure to know the real dis-
positions of mankind. In their business, in the
leading employments of life, their path is in a good
degree chalked out for them : there is in this respect
a sort of general character, wherein the greater part,
more or less, must coincide. But in their pleasures
the choice is voluntary, the taste is self-directed, the
propensity is independent; and of course the habitual
state, the genuine bent and bias of the temper, are
most likely to be seen in those pursuits which every
person is at liberty to choose for himself. %.
When a truly religious principle shall have ac-
quired such a degree of force as to produce that
conscientious and habitual improvement of time be-
fore recommended, it will discover itself by an in-
creasing indifference and even deadness to those
pleasures which are interesting to the world at large.
A woman under the predominating influence of such
a principle, will begin to discover that the same
thing which in itself is innocent may yet be compa-
ratively wrong. She will begin to feel that there are
many amusements and employments which, though
they have nothing censurable in themselves, yet if
they be allowed to intrench on hours which ought to
be dedicated to still better purposes; or if they are
protracted to an undue length; or above all, if by
softening and relaxing her mind and dissipating her
spirits, they so indispose her for better pursuits as to
render subsequent i. a burden, they become in
that case clearly wrong for her, whatever they may
be for others. Now as temptations of this sort are
the peculiar dangers of better kind of characters, the
sacrifice of such little gratifications as may have no.





260 ON PUBLIC AM USEMENTS.
great harm in them, come in among the daily calls to
self-denial in a Christian. .”
The fine arts, for instance, polite literature, elegant
society, these are among the lawful, and liberal, and
becoming recreations of higher life; yet if even these
be cultivated to the neglect or exclusion of severer
duties; if they interfere with serious studies, or dis-
qualify the mind for religious exercises, it is an inti-
mation that they have been too much indulged ; and,
under such circumstances, it might be the part of
Christian circumspection to inquire if the time de-
voted to them ought not to be abridged. Above all,
a tender conscience will never lose sight of one safe
rule of determining in all doubtful cases: if the point
be so nice that though we hope upon the whole there
may be no harm in engaging in it, we may at least
be always quite sure that there can be no harm in
letting it alone. The adoption of this simple rule
would put a period to much unprofitable casuistry.
. The principle of being responsible for the use of
time once fixed in the mind, the conscientious Chris–
tian will be making a continual progress in the great
art of turning time to account. In the first stages of
her religion she will have abstained from pleasures
which began a little to wound the conscience, or
which assumed a questionable shape; but she will
probably have abstained with regret, and with a
secret wish that conscience could have permitted her
to keep well with pleasure and religion too. But
you may discern in her subsequent course that she
has reached a more advanced stage, by her begin-
ning to neglect even such pleasures or employments
as have no moral turpitude in them, but are merely
what are called innocent. This relinquishment arises,
not so much from her feeling still more the restraints
of religion, as from the improvement in her religious

ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 261
&
taste. Pleasures cannot now attach her merely from
their being innocent, unless they are interesting also,
and to be interesting they must be consonant to her
superinduced views. She is not contented to spend
a large portion of her time harmlessly, it must be
spent profitably also. Nay, if she be indeed earnestly
“pressing towards the mark,” it will not be even
enough for her that her present pursuit be good, if she
be convinced that it might be still better. Her con-
tempt of ordinary enjoyments will increase in a
direct proportion to her increased relish for those
pleasures which religion enjoins and bestows. So
that at length if it were possible to suppose that an
angel could come down to take off as it were the
interdict, and to invite her to resume all the pleasures
she had renounced, and to resume them with com-
plete impunity, she would reject the invitation, be-
cause she would despise, from an improvement in her
spiritual taste, those delights from which she had at
first abstained through fear. Till her will and affec-
tions come heartily to be engaged in the service of
God, the progress will not be comfortable; but when
once they are so engaged, the attachment to this
service will be cordial, and her heart will not desire
to go back and toil again in the drudgery of the
world. For her religion has not so much given her
a new creed, as a new heart, and a new life. -
As her views are become new, so her tempers,
dispositions, tastes, actions, pursuits, choice of com-
pany, choice of amusements, are new also ; her em-
ployment of time is changed; her turn of conversation
is altered; “old things are passed away, all things
are become new.” In dissipated and worldly so-
ciety, she will seldom fail to feel a sort of uneasiness,
which will produce one of these two effects; she will

262 on PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS.


either, as proper seasons present themselves, struggle
hard to introduce such subjects as may be useful to
others; or, supposing that she finds herself unable
to effect this, she will, as far as she prudently can,
absent herself from all unprofitable kind of society.
Indeed her manner of conducting herself under these
circumstances may serve to furnish her with a test of
her own sincerity. For while people are contending
for a little more of this amusement, and pleading for
a little extension of that gratification, and fighting in
order that they may hedge in a little more territory
to their pleasure ground, they are exhibiting a kind
of evidence against themselves, that they are not yet
“renewed in the spirit of their mind.”
It has been warmly urged as an objection to cer-
tain religious books, and particularly against a recent
work of high worth and celebrity, by a distinguished
layman *, that they have set the standard of self-
denial higher than reason or even than Christianity
requires. These works do indeed elevate the general
tone of religion to a higher pitch than is quite conve-
nient to those who are at infinite pains to construct a
eomfortable and comprehensive plan, which shall
unite the questionable pleasures of this world with
the promised happiness of the next. I say it has
been sometimes objected, even by those readers who
on the whole greatly admire the particular work
alluded to, that it is unreasonably strict in the pre-
ceptive and prohibitory parts; and especially that it
individually and specifically forbids certain fashion-
able amusements, with a severity not to be found in
the scriptures; and is scrupulously rigid in con-
demning diversions against which nothing is said in
the New Testament: each objector, however, is so
* Practical View, &c. by Mr. Wilberforce. .


ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS, 263
far reasonable, as only to beg quarter for her own
favourite diversion, and generously abandons the de-
fence of those in which she herself has no pleasure.
But these objectors do not seem to understand the
true genius of Christianity. They do not consider
that it is the character of the gospel to exhibit a
scheme of principles, of which it is the tendency to
infuse such a spirit of holiness as must be utterly
incompatible, not only with customs decidedly vici-
ous, but with the very spirit of worldly pleasure.
They do not consider that Christianity is neither a
table of ethics, nor a system of opinions, nor a
bundle of rods to punish, nor an exhibition of re-
wards to allure, nor a scheme of restraints, nor
merely a code of laws; but it is a new principle
infused into the heart by the word and the Spirit of
God, out of which principle will inevitably grow
right opinions, renewed affections, correct morals,
pure desires, heavenly tempers, and holy habits,
with an invariable desire of pleasing God, and a
constant fear of offending him. A real Christian,
whose heart is once thoroughly imbued with this
principle, can no more return to the amusements of
the world, than a philosopher can be refreshed with
the diversions of the vulgar, or a man be amused
with the recreations of a child. The New Testament
is not a mere statute book: it is not a table where
every offence is detailed, and its corresponding pe-
nalty annexed: it is not so much a compilation, as a
spirit of laws: it does not so much prohibit every
individual wrong practice, as suggest a temper and
implant a general principle with which every wrong
practice is incompatible. It did not, for instance, so
much attack the then reigning and corrupt fashions,
which were probably, like the fashions of other coun-
tries, temporary and local ; but it struck at that







264 ON PUBLIC AM USEMENTS.
worldliness, which is the root and stock from which
all corrupt fashions proceed. .
The prophet Isaiah, who addressed himself more
particularly to the Israelitish women, inveighed not
only against vanity, luxury, and immodesty, in gene-
ral; but with great propriety blamed even those pre-
cise instances of each, to which the women of rank
in the particular country he was addressing were
especially addicted; nay, he enters into the minute
detail” of their very personal decorations, and brings
specific charges against their levity and extravagance
of apparel; meaning, however, chiefly to censure
the turn of character which these indicated. But
the Gospel of Christ, which was to be addressed to
all ages, stations, and countries, seldom contains any
such detailed animadversions; for though many of
the censurable modes which the prophet so severely
reprobated, continued probably to be still prevalent
in Jerusalem in the days of our Saviour, yet how
little would it have suited the universality of his mis-
sion, to have confined his preaching to such local,
limited, and fluctuating customs 1 not but that there
are many texts which actually do define the Chris-
tian conduct as well as temper, with sufficient parti-
cularity to serve as a condemnation of many practices
which are º for, and often to point pretty
directly at them +. .
Had Peter, on that memorable day when he added
three thousand converts to the church by a single
sermon, narrowed his subject to a remonstrance
* Isaiah, chap. iii. .
+ By the way, it would be well for those modish Christians who
vindicate excessive vanity in dress and decoration on the principle
of their being mere matters of indifference, to consider that such
practices strongly mark the temper and spirit with which they are
connected, and in that view are so little creditable to the Christian





profession, as to furnish a just subject of suspicion against the piety
of those who indulge in them.
ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 265
against this diversion, or that public place, or the
other vain amusement, it might indeed have suited
the case of some of the female Jewish converts who
were present; but such restrictions as might have
been appropriate to them, would probably not have
applied to the cases of the Parthians and Medes, of
which his audience was partly composed; or such as
might have belonged to them would have been totally
inapplicable to the Cretes and Arabians; or again,
those which suited these would not have applied to
the Elamites and Mesopotamians. By such partial
and circumscribed addresses, his multifarious audi-
ence, composed of all nations and countries, would
not have been, as we are told they were, “pricked to
the heart.” But when he preached on the broad
ground of general “repentance and remission of sins
in the name of Jesus 8. it was no wonder that
they all cried out, “What shall we do?” These col-
lected foreigners, at their return home, must have
found very different usages to be corrected in their
different countries; of course a detailed restriction of
the popular abuses at Jerusalem, would have been of
little use to strangers returning to their respective
nations. The ardent apostle, therefore, acted more
consistently in communicating to them the large and
comprehensive spirit of the gospel, which should at
once involve all their scattered and separate duties,
as well as reprove all their scattered and separate
corruptions; for the whole always includes a part,
and the greater involves the less. Christ and his
disciples, instead of limiting their condemnation to
the peculiar vanities reprehended by Isaiah, em-
braced the very soul and principle of them all, in
such exhortations as the following: “Be ye not con-
formed to the world:”—“If any man love the world,
the love of the Father is not in him:”—“The fashion
N



266 ON PUBLIC AM USEMENTS.
of this world passeth away.” Our Lord and his
apostles, whose future unlimited audience was to be
made up out of the whole world, attacked the evil
heart, out of which all those incidental, local, pecu-
liar, and popular corruptions proceeded. .
In the time of Christ and his immediate followers,
the luxury and intemperance of the Romans had
arisen to a pitch before unknown in the world; but
as the same gospel which its divine Author and his
disciples were then preaching to the hungry and
necessitous, was afterwards to be preached to high
and low, not excepting the Roman emperors them-
selves; the large precept, “Whether ye eat or drink,
or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God,” was
likely to be of more general use, than any separate
exhortation to temperance, to thankfulness, to mode-
ration as to quantity or expense; which last, indeed,
must always be left in some degree to the judgment
and circumstances of the individual.
When the apostle of the Gentiles visited the
“saints of Caesar's household,” he could hardly fail
to have heard, nor could he have heard without ab-
horrence, of some of the fashionable amusements in
the court of Nero. He must have reflected with
peculiar indignation on many things which were
practised in the Circensian games; yet, instead of
pruning this corrupt tree, and singling out even the
inhuman gladiatorial sports for the object of his con-
demnation, he laid his axe to the root of all corrup-
tion, by preaching to them that gospel of Christ of
which “he was not ashamed;” and showing to them
that believed, that “it was the power of God and the
wisdom of God.” Of this gospel the great object
was, to attack not one popular evil, but the whole
body of sin. Now the doctrine of Christ crucified
was the most appropriate means for destroying this;




ON PUBLIC AM USEMENTS. 267
for how could the fervid imagination of the apostle
so powerfully enforce the heinousness of sin, as by
insisting on the costliness of the sacrifice which was
offered for its expiation ? It is somewhat remarkable,
that about the very time of his preaching to the Ro-
mans, the public taste had sunk to such an excess of
depravity, that the very women engaged in those
shocking encounters with the gladiators.
But, in the first place, it was better that the right
practice of his hearers should grow out of the right
principle; and next, his specifically reprobating these
diversions might have had this ill effect, that succeed-
ing ages, seeing that they in their amusements came
somewhat short of those dreadful excesses of the
polished Romans, would only have plumed them-
selves on their own comparative superiority; and,
on this principle, even the bull-fights of Madrid
might have had their panegyrists. The truth is, the
apostle knew that such abominable corruptions could
never subsist together with Christianity, and, in fact,
the honour of abolishing these barbarous diversions,
was reserved for Constantine, the first Christian em-
peror.
Besides, the apostles, by inveighing against some
particular diversions, might have seemed to sanction
all which they did not actually censure: and as, in
the lapse of time and the revolution of governments,
customs change and manners fluctuate; had a minute
reprehension of the fashions of the then existing age
been published in the New Testament, that portion
of scripture must in time have become obsolete, even
in that very same country, when the fashions them-
selves should have changed. Paul and his brother
apostles knew that their epistles would be the oracles
of the Christian world, when these temporary diver-
sions would be forgotten. In consequence of this




268 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS,
knowledge, by the universal precept to avoid “the
lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of
life,” they have prepared a lasting antidote against
the principle of all corrupt pleasures, which will ever
remain equally applicable to the loose fashions of all
ages and of every country to the end of the world.
Therefore, to vindicate diversions which are in
themselves unchristian, on the pretended ground that
they are not specifically condemned in the Gospel,
would be little less absurd than if the heroes of New-
market should bring it as a proof that their periodical
meetings are not condemned in Scripture, because
St. Paul, when writing to the Corinthians, did not
º: against these, or because in availing himself of
the Isthmian games, as a happy illustration of the
Christian race, he did not drop any censure on the
practice itself: a practice which was indeed as much
more pure than the races of Christian Britain, as the
moderation of being contented with the triumph of a
crown of leaves is superior to that criminal spirit of
gambling which iniquitously enriches the victor by
beggaring the competitor.
Local abuses, as we have said, were not the object
of a book whose instructions were to be of universal
and lasting application. As a proof of this, little is
said in the Gospel of the then prevailing corruption
of polygamy; nothing against the savage custom of
exposing children, or even against slavery; nothing
expressly against suicide or duelling; the last Gothic
custom, indeed, did not exist among the crimes
of Paganism. But is there not an implied prohi-
bition against polygamy in the general denunciation
against adultery 7 Is not exposing of children con-
demned in that charge against the Romans, that
“they were without natural affection?” Is there not






a strong censure against slavery conveyed in the com-
ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 269
mand to “do unto others as you would have them do
unto you?” and against suicide and duelling, in the
general prohibition against murder, which is strongly
enforced and affectingly amplified by the solemn
manner in which murder is traced back to its first
seed of anger, in the sermon on the mount.”
Thus it is clear, that when Christ sent the Gospel
to all nations, he meant that that Gospel should pro-
claim those prime truths, general laws, and funda-
mental doctrines, which must necessarily involve the
prohibition of all individual, local, and inferior errors;
errors which could not have been specifically guarded
against, without having a distinct Gospel for every
country, or without swelling the divine volume into
such inconvenient length as would have defeated one
great end of its promulgation*. And while its lead-
ing principles are of universal application, it must
always, in some measure, be left to the discretion of
the preacher, and to the conscience of the hearer, to
examine whether the life and habits of those who
profess it are conformable to its spirit.
The same Divine Spirit which indited the Holy
Scriptures, is promised to purify the hearts and renew
the natures of repenting and believing Christians;
and the compositions it inspired are in some degree
analogous to the workmanship it effects. It prohi-
bited the vicious practices of the apostolical days, by
prohibiting the passions and principles which ren-
dered them gratifying; and still working in like
manner on the hearts of real Christians, it corrects the
taste which was accustomed to find its proper grati-
fication in the resorts of vanity; and thus effectually
provides for the reformation of the habits, and infuses
a relish for rational and domestic enjoyments, and
for whatever can administer pleasure to that spirit of
- * “To the poor the Gospel is preached.”—Luke, vii, 22.

270 ON PUBLIC AMUSE.M. ENTS,
peace, and love, and hope, and joy, which animates
and rules the renewed heart of the true Christian.
But there is a portion of Scripture which, though
to a superficial reader it may seem but very remotely
connected with the present subject, yet to readers of
another cast, seems to settle the matter beyond con-
troversy. In the parable of the great supper, this
important truth is held out to us, that even things
good in themselves may be the means of our eternal
ruin, by drawing our hearts from God, and causing
us to make light of the offers of the Gospel. One
invited guest had bought an estate, another had made
a purchase equally blameless of oxen, a third had
married a wife, an act not illaudable in itself. They
had all different reasons; but they all agreed in this,
to decline the invitation to the supper. The worldly
possessions of one, the worldly business of another,
and what should be particularly attended to, the love
to his dearest relative, of a third, (a love, by the way,
not only allowed but commanded in Scripture,) were
brought forward as excuses for not attending to the
important business of religion. The consequence,
however, was the same to all. “None of those
which were bidden shall taste of my supper.” If
then things innocent, things necessary, things laud-
able, things commanded, become sinful, when by
unseasonable or excessive indulgence they detain the
heart and affections from God, how vain will all
those arguments necessarily be rendered, which are
urged by the advocates for certain amusements, on
the ground of their harmlessness; if those amuse-
ments serve (not to mention any positive evil which
may belong to them) in like manner to draw away
the thoughts and affections from all spiritual objects!
To conclude; when this topic happens to become
the subject of conversation, instead of addressing se-






ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. 271
vere and pointed attacks to young ladies on the sin
of attending places of diversion, would it not be bet-
ter first to endeavour to excite in them that principle
of Christianity, with which such diversions seem not
quite compatible; as the physician, who visits a
patient in an eruptive fever, pays little attention to
those spots which to the ignorant appear to be the
disease, except indeed so far as they serve as indica-
tions to let him into its nature, but goes straight to
the root of the malady ? He attacks the fever, he
lowers the pulse, he changes the system, he corrects
the general habit; well knowing that if he can but
restore the vital principle of health, the spots, which
were nothing but symptoms, will die away of them-
selves. -
In instructing others, we should imitate our Lord
and his Apostles, and not always aim our blow at
each particular corruption; but making it our busi-
ness to convince our pupil that what brings forth the
evil fruit she exhibits, cannot be a branch of the true
vine; we should thus avail ourselves of individual
corruptions, for impressing her with a sense of the
necessity of purifying the common source from which
they flow—a corrupt nature. Thus making it our
grand business to rectify the heart, we pursue the
true, the compendious, the only method of universal
holiness. #.
I would, however, take leave of those amiable and
not ill-disposed young persons, who complain of the
rigour of human prohibitions, and declare, “they
meet with no such strictness in the Gospel,” by ask-
ing them, with the most affectionate earnestness, if
they can conscientiously reconcile their mightly at-
tendance at every public place which they frequent,
with such precepts as the following: “Redeeming
the time:”—“Watch and pray:”—“Watch, for ye

272 ON PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS.
know not at what time your Lord cometh:”—“Ab-
stain from all appearance of evil:”—“Set your affec-
tions on things above:”—“Beyespiritually-minded:”
—“Crucify the flesh, with its affections and lusts?”
And I would venture to offer one criterion, by which
the persons in question may be enabled to decide on
the positive innocence and safety of such diversions;
I mean, provided they are sincere in their scrutiny
and honest in their avowal. If, on their return at
might from those places, they find they can retire,
and “commune with their own hearts;” if they find
the love of God operating with undiminished force
on their minds; if they can “bring every thought
into subjection,” and concentrate every wandering
imagination; if they can soberly examine into their
own state of mind : I do not say if they can do all
this perfectly and without distraction, (for who can
do this at any time?) but if they can do it with the
same degree of seriousness, pray with the same de-
gree of fervour, and renounce the world in as great a
measure as at other times; and if they can lie down
with a peaceful consciousness of having avoided in
the evening that “temptation” which they had prayed
not to be “led into” in the morning, they may then
more reasonably hope that all is well, and that they
are not speaking false peace to their hearts. If this
test were fairly used, if this experiment were honestly
tried, if this examination were conscientiously made,
may we not without offence presume to ask,+Could
our numerous places of public resort, could our ever-
multiplying scenes of more select but not less dan-
gerous diversion, nightly overflow with an excess
hitherto unparalleled in the annals of pleasure"?


* If I might presume to recommend a book which of all others
exposes the insignificance, vanity, littleness, and emptiness of the
world, I should not hesitate to name Mr. Law’s “Serious Call to a
devout and holy Life.” Few writers, except Pascal, have directed
273
CHAP. XVIII.
A Worldly Spirit incompatible with the Spirit of
Christianity.
Is it not whimsical to hear such complaints against
the strictness of religion as we are frequently hear-
ing, from beings who are voluntarily pursuing, as has
been shown in the preceding chapters, a course of
life which fashion makes infinitely more laborious?
How really burdensome would Christianity be if she
enjoined such sedulous application, such unremit-
ting labours, such a succession of fatigues! If reli-
gion commanded such hardships and self-denial,
such days of hurry, such evenings of exertion, such
nights of broken rest, such perpetual sacrifices of
quiet, such exile from family delights, as fashion im-
poses, then indeed the service of Christianity would
no longer merit its present appellation of being a
so much acuteness of reasoning and so much pointed wit to this
object. He not only makes the reader afraid of a worldly life on
account of its sinfulness, but ashamed of it on account of its folly.
Few men perhaps have had a deeper insight into the human heart,
or have more skilfully probed its corruptions: yet on points of
doctrine his views do not seem to be just; and his disquisitions
are often unsound and fanciful; so that a general perusal of his
works would neither be profitable or intelligible. To a fashion-
able woman immersed in the vanities of life, or to a busy man
overwhelmed with its cares, I know no book so applicable, or
likely to exhibit with equal force the vanity of the shadows they
are pursuing. . But, even in this work, he is not a safe guide to
evangelical light; and, in many of his others, he is highly visionary
and whimsical: and I have known some excellent persons who
were first led by this admirable genius to see the wants of their own
hearts, and the utter insufficiency of the world to fill up the crav-
ing vºid, who, though they, became eminent for piety and self-
denial, have had their usefulness abridged, and whose ininds have
contracted something of a monastic severity by an unqualified pe.
rusal of Mr. Law. True Christianity does not call on us to starve
our bodies, but our corruptions. As the mortified Apostle of the
holy and self-denying Baptist, preaching repentance because the
kingdom of Heaven is at hand, Mr. Law, has no superior. As a
preacher of salvation on scriptural grounds, I would follow other
guides.

N 2
274 ON A won LDLY SPIRIT.
“reasonable service: ” then the name of perfect
slavery might be justly applied to that which we are
told in the beautiful language of our church, is “a
service of perfect freedom:” a service, the great ob-
ject of which is “to deliver us from the bondage of
corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of
God.”
A worldly temper, by which I mean a disposition
to prefer worldly pleasures, worldly satisfactions,
and worldly advantages, to the immortal interests of
the soul; and to let worldly considerations actuate
us instead of the dictates of religion in the concerns
of ordinary life; a worldly temper, I say, is not, like
almost any other fault, the effect of passion or the
consequence of surprise when the heart is off its
guard. It is not excited incidentally by the opera-
tion of external circumstances on the infirmity of
nature; but it is the vital spirit, the essential soul,
the living principle of evil. It is not so much an
act, as a state of being; not so much an occasional
complaint, as a tainted constitution of mind. If it
do not always show itself in extraordinary excesses,
it has no perfect intermission. Even when it is not
immediately tempted to break out into overt and
specific acts, it is at work within, stirring up the
heart to disaffection against holiness, and infusing a
kind of moral disability to whatever is intrinsically
good. It infects and depraves all the powers and
faculties of the soul; for it operates on the under-
standing by blinding it to whatever is spiritually
good; on the will, by making it averse from God;
on the affections, by disordering and sensualizing
them; so that one may almost say to those who are
under the supreme dominion of this spirit, what was
said to the hosts of Joshua, “Ye cannot serve the
Lord.”

oN A world LY SPIRIT. 275
This worldliness of mind is not at all commonly
understood, and for the following reason :-People
suppose that in this world our chief business is with
the things of this world, and that to conduct the
business of this world well, that is, conformably to
moral principles, is the chief substance of moral and
true goodness. Religion, if introduced at all into
the system, only makes its occasional, and if I may
so speak, its holiday appearance. To bring religion
into every thing, is thought incompatible with the
due attention to the things of this life. And so it
would be, if by religion were meant talking about
religion. The phrase, therefore, is: “One cannot
always be praying; we must mind our business and
our social duties as well as our devotion.” Worldly
business being thus subjected to worldly, though in
some degree moral, maxims, the mind during the
conduct of business grows worldly; and a continu-
ally increasing worldly spirit dims the sight and
relaxes the moral principle on which the affairs of
the world are conducted, as well as indisposes the
mind for all the exercises of devotion. 3-
But this temper, as far as relates to business, so
much assumes the semblance of goodness, that those
who have not right views are apt to mistake the car-
rying on the affairs of life on a tolerably moral prin-
ciple, for religion. They do not see that the evil
lies not in their so carrying on business, but in their
not carrying on the things of this life in subserviency
to the things of eternity; in their not carrying them
on with the unintermitting idea of responsibility.
The evil does not lie in their not being always on
their knees, but in their not bringing their religion
from the closet into the world: in their not bringing
the spirit of the Sunday's devotions into the transac.
tions of the week: in not transforming their religion

276 ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT.
from a dry, and speculative, and inoperative system,
into a lively, and influential, and unceasing principle
of action.
Though there are, blessed be God! in the most
exalted stations, women who adorn their Christian
profession by a consistent conduct; yet are there not
others who are labouring hard to unite the irrecon-
cilable interests of earth and heaven who, while
they will not relinquish one jot of what this world
has to bestow, yet by no means renounce their
hopes of a better? who did not think it unreasonable
that their indulging in the fullest possession of pre-
sent pleasure should interfere with the most certain
reversion of future glory? who, after living in the
most unbounded gratification of ease, vanity, and
luxury, fancy that heaven must be attached of course
to a life of which Christianity is the outward profes-
sion, and which has not been stained by any flagrant
or dishonourable act of guilt? :
Are there not many who, while they entertain a
respect for religion, (for I address not the unbelieving
or the licentious,) while they believe its truths, ob-
serve its forms, and would be shocked not to be
thought religious, are yet immersed in this life of
disqualifying worldliness? who, though they make a
conscience of going to the public worship once on a
Sunday, and are scrupulously observant of the other
rites of the church, yet hesitate not to give up all the
rest of their time to the very same pursuits and plea-
sures which occupy the hearts and lives of those
looser characters whose enjoyment is not obstructed
by any dread of a future account? and who are acting
on the wise principle of “the children of this world,”
in making the most of the present state of being from
the conviction that there is no other to be expected ?
It must be owned, indeed, that faith in unseen

ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT. 277
things is at times sadly weak and defective even in
the truly pious; and that it is so, is the subject of
their ...} and humiliation. O ! how does the real
Christian take shame in the coldness of his belief, in
the lowness of his attainments How deeply does he
lament that “when he would do good, evil is present
with him l’”—“that the life he now lives in the flesh,
is” not, in the degree it ought to be, “by faith in
the son of God l’” Yet one thing is clear; however
weak his belief may seem to be, it is evident that his
actions are mainly governed by it; he evinces his
sincerity to others by a life in some good degree
analogous to the doctrines he professes: while to
himself he has at least this conviction, that faint as
his confidence may be at times, low as may be his
hope, and feeble as his faith may seem, yet at the
worst of times he would not exchange that faint mea-
sure of trust and hope for all the actual pleasures
and possessions of his most splendid acquaintance;
and what is a proof of his sincerity he never seeks
the cure of his dejection, where they seek theirs, in
the world, but in God.
But as to the faith of worldly persons, however
strong it may be in speculation, however orthodox
their creed, however stout their profession, one can-
not help fearing that it is a little defective in sin-
cerity: for if there were in the mind a full persuasion
of the truth of revelation, and of the eternal bliss it
promises, would it not be obvious to them that there
must be more diligence for its attainment 2 We dis-
cover great ardour in carrying on worldly projects,
because we believe the good which we are pursuing
is real, and will reward the trouble of the pursuit:
we believe that good to be attained by diligence, and
we prudently proportion our earnestness to this con-
viction: when therefore we see persons professing a





278 ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT, .
lively faith in a better world, yet labouring little to
obtain an interest in it, can we forbear suspecting
that their belief, not only of their own title to eternal
happiness, but of eternal happiness itself, is not well
grounded ? and that, if they were to “examine them-
selves truly,” and produce the principle of such a
relaxed morality, the faith would be found to be
much of a piece with the practice?
Even that very spirit of enjoyment which leads the
persons in question so studiously to possess them-
selves of the qualifications for the pleasures of the
present scene; that understanding which leads them
to acquire such talents as may enable them to relish
the resorts of gaiety here; that very spirit should in-
duce those who are really looking for a future state
of happiness, to wish to acquire something of the
taste, and temper, and talents, which may be con-
sidered as qualifications for its enjoyment. The neg-
lect to do this must proceed from one of these two
causes; either they must think their present course
a safe and proper course; or they must think that
death is to produce some sudden and surprising
alteration in the human character. But the office of
death is to transport us to a new state, not to trans-
form us to a new nature; the stroke of death is
intended to effect our deliverance out of this world,
and our introduction into another; but it is not likely
to effect any sudden and wonderful or total change
in our hearts or our tastes: so far from this, that we
are assured in Scripture, “that he that is filthy will
be filthy still, and he that is holy will be holy still.”
Though we believe that death will completely cleanse
the holy soul from its remaining pollutions, that it
will exchange defective sanctification into perfect
purity, entangling temptation into complete freedom,
want and pain into health and fruition, doubts and



ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT. 279
fears into perfect security, and oppressive weariness
into everlasting rest; yet there is no magic in the
wand of death which will convert an unholy Soul
into a holy one. And it is awful to reflect, that such
tempers as have the allowed predominance here will
maintain it for ever; that such as the will is when
we close our eyes upon the things of time, such it
will be when we open them on those of eternity.
The mere act of death no more fits us for heaven,
than the mere act of the mason who pulls down our
old house fits us for a new one. If we die with our
hearts running over with the love of the world, there
is no promise to lead us to expect that we shall rise
with them full of the love of God. Death indeed
will show us to ourselves such as we are, but will
not make us such as we are not: and it will be too
late to be acquiring self-knowledge when we can no
longer turn it to any account but that of tormenting
ourselves. To illustrate this truth still farther by an
allusion familiar to the persons I address: the draw-
ing up the curtain at the theatre, though it serves
to introduce us to the entertainments behind it, does
not create in us any new faculties to understand or
to relish those entertainments: these must have been
long in acquiring; they must have been provided
beforehand, and brought with us to the place, if we
would relish the pleasures of it; for the entertain-
ment can only operate on that taste we carry to it.
It is too late to be acquiring when we ought to be
enjoying.
That spirit of prayer and praise, those dispositions
of love, meekness, “peace, quietness, and assurance;”
that indifference to the fashion of a world which is
passing away; that longing after deliverance from
sin, that desire of holiness, together with all the
specific marks of our having “the fruits of the Spirit”

280 ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT.
here, must surely make some part of our qualifica-
tion for the enjoyment of a world, the pleasures of
which are all spiritual. And who can conceive any
thing comparable to the awful surprise of a soul long
immersed in the indulgences of vanity and pleasure,
yet all the while lulled by the self-complacency of a
religion of mere forms; who, while it counted upon
heaven as a thing of course, had made no preparation
for it? Who can conceive any surprise comparable
to that of such a soul on shutting its eyes on a world
of sense, of which all the objects and delights were
so congenial to its nature, and opening them on a
world of spirits of which all the characters of enjoy-
ment are of a nature new, unknown, surprising, and
specifically different? pleasures more inconceivable
to its apprehension and more unsuitable to its taste,
than the gratifications of one sense are to the organs
of another, or than the most exquisite works of genius
to absolute imbecility of mind.
While we would with deep humility confess tha
we cannot purchase heaven by any works or right
dispositions of our own; while we gratefully ac-
knowledge that it must be purchased for us by “Him
who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his
blood;” yet let us remember that we have no reason
to expect we could be capable of enjoying the plea-
sures of a heaven so purchased without heavenly
mindedness. When those persons who are apt to
expect as much comfort from religion as if their
hearts were not full of the world, now and then, in a
fit of honesty or low spirits, complain that Chris-
tianity does not make them as good and as happy as
they were led to expect from that assurance, that
“great peace have they who love the Lord,” and
that “they who wait on him shall want no manner
of thing that is good;” when they lament that the





ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT. 281
paths of religion are not those “paths of pleasantness”
they were led to expect; their case reminds one of
a celebrated physician, who used to say, that the
reason why his prescriptions, which commonly cured
the poor and the temperate, did so little good among
his rich luxurious patients, was, that while he was
labouring to remove the disease by medicines, of
which they only took drams, grains, and scruples;
they were inflaming it by a multiplicity of injurious
aliments, which they swallowed by ounces, pounds,
and pints.
These fashionable Christians should be reminded,
that there was no half engagement made for them at
their baptism; that they are not partly their own
and partly their Redeemer's. He that is “bought
with a price,” is the sole property of the purchaser.
Faith does not consist merely in submitting the opi-
nions of the understanding, but the dispositions of
the heart: religion is not a sacrifice of sentiments,
but of affections: it is not the tribute of fear extorted
from a slave, but the voluntary homage of love paid
by a child. -
Neither does a Christian's piety consist in living
in retreat, and railing at the practices of the world,
while, perhaps, her heart is full of the spirit of that
world at which she is railing : but it consists in sub-
duing the spirit of the world, resisting its temptations,
and opposing its practices, even while her duty
obliges her to live in it.
Nor is the spirit or the love of the world confined
to those only who are making a figure in it; nor are
its operations bounded by the precincts of the metro-
polis, nor by the limited regions of first-rate rank
and splendour. She who inveighs against the luxury
and excesses of London, and solaces herself in her
own comparative sobriety, because her more circum-



282 ON A WORLD LY SPIRIT.
scribed fortune compels her to take up with the
second-hand pleasures of successive watering-places,
if she pursue these pleasures with avidity, is governed
by the same spirit: and she whose still narrower
opportunities stint her to the petty diversions of her
provincial town, if she be busied in swelling and
enlarging her smaller sphere of vanity and idleness,
however she may comfort herself with her own com-
parative goodness, by railing at the unattainable
pleasures of the watering-place, or the still more
unapproachable joys of the capital, is governed by
the same spirit: for she who is as vain, as dissipated,
and as extravagant as actual circumstances admit,
would be as vain, as dissipated, and as extravagant
as the gayest objects of her invective actually are, if
she could change places with them. It is not merely
by what we do that we can be sure the spirit of the
world has no dominion over us, but by fairly con-
sidering what we should probably do if more were in
our power. .
The worldly Christian, if I may be allowed such
a palpable contradiction in terms, must not imagine
that she acquits herself of her religious obligations by
paying in her mere weekly oblation of prayer. There
is no covenant by which communion with God is
restricted to an hour or two on Sunday: she must
not imagine she acquits herself by setting apart a
few particular days in the year for the exercise of a
periodical devotion, and then flying back to the
world as eagerly as if she were resolved to repay
herself with large interest for her short fit of self-
denial; the stream of pleasure running with a more
rapid current, from having been interrupted by this
forced obstruction. And the avidity with which one
has seen certain persons of a still less correct cha-
racter than the class we have been considering, return




ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT. 283
to a whole year's carnival, after the self-imposed
penance of a Passion week, gives a shrewd intima-
tion that they considered the temporary abstraction
less as an act of penitence for the past, than as a
purchase of indemnity for the future. Such bare-
weight protestants prudently condition for retaining
the popish doctrine of indulgences, which they buy,
not indeed of the late spiritual court of Rome, but of
that secret, self-acquitting judge, which ignorance of
its own turpitude, and of the strict acquirements
of the divine law, has established supreme in the
tribunal of every unrenewed heart.
But the practice of self-examination is impeded
with one clog, which renders it peculiarly inconve-
nient to the gay and worldly : for the royal prophet
(who was, however, himself as likely as any one to
be acquainted with the difficulties peculiar to great-
ness) has annexed as a concomitant to “communing
with our own heart,” that we should “be still.”
Now this clause of the injunction annihilates the
other, by rendering it incompatible with the present
habits of fashionable life, of which stillness is clearly
not one of the constituents. It would, however,
greatly assist those who do not altogether decline
the practice, if they were to establish into a rule the
habit of detecting certain suspicious practices, b
realizing them, as it were, to their own minds, º
the means of drawing them out in detail, and of
placing them before their eyes clothed in language;
for there is nothing that so effectually exposes an
absurdity which has hitherto passed muster for want
of such an inquisition, as giving it shape, and form,
and body. How many things which now silently
work themselves into the habit, and pass current
without inquiry, would then shock us by their pal-
pable inconsistency! Who, for instance, could stand

284 ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT.
the sight of such a debtor and creditor account as
this:—Item; so many card-parties, balls, and operas
due to me in the following year, for so many manuals,
prayers, and meditations paid beforehand during the
last six days in Lent? With how much indignation
soever this suggestion may be treated; whatever
offence may be taken at such a combination of the
serious and the ludicrous; however we may revolt
at the idea of such a composition with our Maker,
when put into so many words; does not the habitual
course of some go near to realize such a statement 2
But “a Christian's race,” as a venerable prelate *
observes, “is not run at so many heats,” but is a
constant course, a regular progress by which we are
continually gaining ground upon sin, and approach-
ing nearer to the kingdom of God. ;
Am I then ridiculing this pious seclusion of con-
trite sinners? Am I then jesting at that “troubled
spirit” which God has declared is his “acceptable
sacrifice?” God forbid Such reasonable retirements
have been the practice, and continue to be the com-
fort of some of the sincerest Christians; and will
continue to be resorted to as long as Christianity,
that is, as long as the world, shall last. It is well
to call off the thoughts, even for a short time, not
only from sin and vanity, but even from the lawful
pursuits of business and the laudable concerns of
life; and, at times, to annihilate, as it were, the
space which divides us from eternity:
'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours,


And ask them what report they bore to heaven,
And how they might have borne more welcome news.
Yet as to those who seek a short annual retreat as
a mere form; who dignify with the idea of a reli-
* Bishop Hopkins.
ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT. 285
gious retirement a week in which it is rather unfa-
shionable to be seen in town; who retire with an
unabated resolution to return to the maxims, the
pleasures, and the spirit of that world which they do
but mechanically renounce; is it not to be feared
that such a short secession, which does not even
pretend to subdue the principle, but merely suspends
the act, may only serve to set a keener edge on the
appetite for the pleasures they are quitting 2 Is it
not to be feared that the bow may fly back with
redoubled violence from having been unnaturally
bent? that by varnishing over a life of vanity with
the transient externals of a formal and temporary
piety, they may the more dangerously skin over the
troublesome soreness of a tender conscience, by laying

This flattering unction to the soul ?
And is it not awfully to be feared, that such devo-
tions come in among those vain oblations which the
Almighty has declared he will not accept For, is it
not among the delusions of a worldly piety, to con-
sider Christianity as a thing which cannot, indeed,
safely be omitted, but which is to be got over; a
certain quantity of which is, as it were, to be taken
in the lump, with long intervals between the repeti-
tions? Is it not among its delusions to consider reli-
gion as imposing a set of hardships, which must be
occasionally encountered in order to procure a peace-
able enjoyment of the long respite, a short penalty
for a long pleasure ? that these severe conditions
thus fulfilled, the acquitted Christian, having paid
the annual demand of a rigorous requisition, she
may now lawfully return to her natural state; and
the old reckoning being adjusted, she may begin a
new score, and receive the reward of her punctual


2.86. ON A WORLD LY SPIRIT,
obedience, in the resumed indulgence of those grati-
fications which she had for a short time laid aside as
a hard task to please a hard master: but this task
performed, and the master appeased, the mind may
discover its natural bent, in joyfully returning to the
objects of its real choice? Whereas, is it not clear on
the other hand, that if the religious exercises had
produced the effect which it is the nature of true
religion to produce, the penitent could not return
with her old genuine alacrity to those habits of the
world, from which the pious weekly manuals through
which she has been labouring with the punctuality
of an almanack as to the day, and the accuracy of a
beadroll as to the number, was intended by the
devout authors to rescue their reader f
I am far from insinuating, that this literal seques-
tration ought to be prolonged throughout the year, or
that all the days of business are to be made equally
days of solemnity and continued meditation. This
earth is a place in which a much larger portion of a
common Christian's time must be assigned to action
than to contemplation. Women of the higher class
were not sent into the world to shun society, but to
improve it. They were not designed for the cold
and visionary virtues of solitudes and monasteries,
but for the amiable and endearing and useful offices
of social life: they are of a religion which does not
impose idle austerities, but enjoins active duties; a
religion of which the most benevolent actions require
to be sanctified by the purest motives; a religion
which does not condemn its followers to the compa-
ratively easy task of seclusion from the world, but
assigns them the more difficult province of living
uncorrupted in it; a religion which, while it forbids
them to “follow a multitude to do evil,” includes






ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT. 287
in that prohibition the sin of doing nothing, and
which moreover enjoins them to be followers of him
“who went about doing good.”
But may we not reasonably contend, that though
the same sequestration is not required, yet that the
same spirit and temper which one hopes is thought
necessary by all during the occasional humiliation,
must, by every real Christian, be extended throughout
all the periods of the year ! And when that is really
the case, when once the spirit of religion shall indeed
govern the heart, it will not only animate her reli-
gious actions and employments, but will gradually
extend itself to the chastising her conversation, will
discipline her thoughts, influence her common busi-
mess, and sanctify her very pleasures.
But it should seem that many, who entertain a ge-
neral notion of Christian duty, do not consider it as
of universal and unremitting obligation, but rather
as a duty binding at times on all, and at all times on
some. To the attention of such we would recommend
that very explicit address of our Lord on the subject
of self-denial, the temper directly opposed to a
worldly spirit: “And he said unto them ALL, if any
man will come after me, let him deny himself, and
take up his cross DAILY.” Those who think self-
denial not of universal obligation, will observe the
word all, and those who think the obligation not con-
stant will attend to the term daily. These two little
words cut up by the root all the occasional religious
observances grafted on a worldly life; all transient,
periodical, and temporary acts of piety, which some
seem willing to commute for habitual thoughtless-
The SS,
There is indeed scarcely a more pitiable being
than one who, instead of making her religion the in-
forming principle of all she does, has only just enough



288 ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT.
to keep her in continual fear; who drudges through
her stinted exercises with a superstitious kind of
terror, while her general life shows that the love of
holiness is not the governing principle in her heart;
who seems to suffer all the pains and penalties of
Christianity, but is a stranger to “that liberty where-
with Christ has made us free.” Let it not be thought
a ludicrous invention, if the author hazard the pro-
ducing a real illustration of these remarks, in the
instance of a lady of this stamp, who returning from
church on a very cold day, and remarking with a
good deal of self-complacency how much she had
suffered in the performance of her duty, comforted
herself with emphatically adding “ that she hoped
however it would answer.”
But there is no permanent comfort in any religion,
short of that by which the diligent Christian strives
that all his actions shall have the love of God for their
motive, and the glory of God, as well as his own sal-
vation, for their end ; while to go about to balance
one's good and bad actions one against the other,
and to take comfort in the occasional predominance
of the former, while the cultivation of the principle
from which, they should spring is neglected, is not
the road to all those peaceful fruits of the Spirit to
which true Christianity conducts the humble and
penitent believer. For after all we can do, Christian
tempers and a Christian spirit are perhaps the true
criterion of a Christian character, and serve to furnish
the most unequivocal test of our attainments in reli-
gion. Our doctrines may be sound, but they may
not be influential; our actions may be correct, but
they may want the sanctifying principle ; our frames
and feelings may seem, may they may be devout, but
they may be heightened by mere animal fervour;
even if genuine they are seldom lasting; and to many

ox. A WORLDLY SPIRIT. 289
pious persons they are not given: but it is the Chris-
tian tempers which most infallibly indicate the sincere
Christian, and best prepare him for the heavenly state.
But I am aware that a better cast of characters
than those we have been contemplating, that even the
amiable and the well-disposed, who, while they want
courage to resist what they have too much principle
to think right, and too much sense to justify, will
yet plead for the palliating system, and accuse these
remarks of unnecessary rigour. They will declare
“that really they are as religious as they can be ;
they wish they were better; they have little satis-
faction in the life they are leading, yet they cannot
break with the world; they cannot fly in the face of
custom ; it does not become individuals like them to
oppose the torrent of fashion.” Beings so interesting,
abounding with engaging qualities; who not only
feel the beauty of goodness, but reverence the truths
of Christianity, and are awfully looking for a general
judgment, one is grieved to hear lament “that they
only do as others do,” when they are perhaps them-
selves of such rank and importance, that if they
would begin to do right, others would be brought to
do as they did. One is grieved to hear them indo-
lently assert, that “they wish it were otherwise,”
when they possess the power to make it otherwise,
by setting an example which they know would be
followed. One is sorry to hear them content them-
selves with declaring, that “they have not the cou-
rage to be singular,” when they must feel, by seeing
the influence of their example in worse things, that
there would be no such great singularity in piety
itself, if once they became sincerely pious. Besides,
this diffidence does not break out on other occasions.
They do not blush to be quoted as the opposers of an
old mode or the inventors of a new one. Nor are
O


290 on A worldly spirit.
they equally backward in being the first to appear in
a strange fashion, such a one as often excites wonder
and sometimes even offends against delicacy. Let
not then diffidence be pleaded as an excuse only on
occasions wherein courage would be virtue. :
Will it be thought too harsh a question if we
venture to ask these gentle characters who are thus
intrenching themselves in the imaginary safety of
surrounding multitudes, and who say “We only do
as others do,” whether they are willing to run the
tremendous risk of consequences, and to fare as others
fare 7 º
But while these plead the authority of Fashion as
a sufficient reason for their conformity to the world,
one who has spoken with a paramount authority has
º said, “Beye not conformed to the world.”
ay, it is urged as the very badge and distinction by
which the character opposite to the Christian is to be
marked, “that the friendship of the world is enmity
with God.” -
Temptation to conform to the world was never
perhaps more irresistible than in the days which
immediately preceded the deluge. And no man
could ever have pleaded the fashion in order to justify
a criminal assimilation with the reigning manners,
with more propriety than the patriarch Noah. He
had the two grand and contending objects of terror
to encounter which we have; the fear of ridicule, and
the fear of destruction; the dread of sin, and the dread
of singularity. Our cause of alarm is at least equally
pressing with his; for it does not appear, even while
he was actually obeying the Divine command in
providing the means of his future safety, that he saw
any actual symptoms of the impending ruin. So that
in one sense he might have truly pleaded as an excuse
for slackness of preparation, “that all things con-



ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT. 291.
tinued as they were from the beginning;” while
many of us, though the storm is actually begun, never
think of providing the refuge: though we have had
a fuller revelation, have seen Scripture illustrated,
prophecy fulfilling, with every awful circumstance
that can either quicken the most sluggish remissness,
or confirm the feeblest faith. .
Besides, the patriarch's plea for following the
fashion was stronger than you can produce. While
you must see that many are going wrong, he saw
that none were going right. “All flesh had cor-
rupted his way before God;” whilst, blessed be God!
you have still instances enough of piety to keep you
in countenance. While you lament that the world
seduces you, (for every one has a little world of his
own), your world perhaps is only a petty neighbour-
hood, a few streets and squares; but the patriarch had
really the contagion of a whole united world to resist;
he had literally the example of the whole face of the
earth to oppose. The “fear of man” also would then
have been a more pardonable fault, when the lives
of the same individuals who were likely to excite
respect or fear was prolonged many ages, than it can
be in the short period now assigned to human life.
How lamentable then that opinion should operate so
powerfully when it is but the breath of a being so frail
and so short lived,
That he doth cease to be,
Ere one can say he is.


You who find it so difficult to withstand the individual
allurement of one modish acquaintance, would, if you
had been in the patriarch's case, have concluded the
struggle to be quite ineffectual, and sunk under the
supposed fruitlessness of resistance. “Myself.”
would you not have said? “ or at most my little

292 ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT.
family of eight persons can never hope to stop this
torrent of corruption; I lament the fruitlessness of
opposition; I deplore the necessity of conformity
with the prevailing system: but it would be a foolish
presumption to hope that one family can effect a
change in the state of the world.” In your own case,
however, it is not certain to how wide an extent the
hearty union of even fewer persons in such a cause
might reach : at least is it nothing to do what the
atriarch did was it nothing to preserve himself
rom the general destruction ? was it nothing to de-
liver his own soul? was it nothing to rescue the souls
of his whole family
A wise man will never differ from the world in
trifles. It is certainly a mark of a sound judgment
to comply with it whenever we safely can ; such
compliance strengthens our influence by reserving to
ourselves the greater weight of authority on those
occasions, when our conscience obliges us to differ.
Those who are prudent will cheerfully conform to all
its innocent usages; but those who are Christians will
be scrupulous in defining which are really innocent
previous to their conformity to them. Not what the
world, but what the Gospel calls innocent will be
found at the grand scrutiny to have been really so.
A discreet Christian will take due pains to be con-
vinced he is right before he will presume to be sin-
gular: but from the instant he is persuaded that the
Gospel is true, and the world of course wrong, he
will no longer risk his safety by following multitudes,
or his soul by staking it on human opinion. All
our most dangerous mistakes arise from our not con-
stantly referring our practice to the standard of Scrip-
ture, instead of the mutable standard of human opi-
nion, by which it is impossible to fix the real value
of characters. For this latter standard in some cases





ON A WORLDLY SPIRIT. 293
determines those to be good who do not run all the
lengths in which the notoriously bad allow them-
selves. The gospel has an universal, the world has
a local standard of goodness: in certain societies
certain vices alone are dishonourable, such as covet-
ousness and cowardice; while those sins of which
our Saviour has said, that they which commit them
“thall not inherit the kingdom of God,” detract
nothing from the respect some persons receive. Nay,
those very characters whom the Almighty has ex-
pressly and awfully declared “He will judge*,” are
received, are admired, are caressed, in that which
calls itself the best company.
But to weigh our actions by one standard now,
when we know they will be judged by another here-
after, would be reckoned the height of absurdity in
any transactions but those which involve the interests
of eternity. “How readest thou?” is a more specific
direction than any comparative view of our own
habits with the habits of others: and at the final bar
it will be of little avail that our actions have risen
above those of bad men, if our views and principles
shall be found to have been in opposition to the
gospel of Christ.
Nor is their practice more commendable, who are
ever on the watch to pick out the worst actions of
good men, by way of justifying their own conduct on
the comparison. The faults of the best men, “for
there is not a just man upon the earth who sinneth
not,” can in no wise justify the errors of the worst:
and it is not invariably the example of even good
men that we must take for our unerring rule of con-
duct: nor is it by a single action that either they or
we shall be judged; for in that case who could be
saved? but it is by the general prevalence of right
* Hebrews, xiii. 4.





294 ON THE DOCTRINES
principles and good habits, and Christian tempers;
by the predominance of holiness, and righteousness,
and temperance in the life, and by the power of
humility, faith, and love in the heart. ;
CHAP. XIX.

On the leading Doctrines of Christianity.—The Cor-
ruption of Human Nature.—The Doctrine of Re-
demption.—The Necessity of a Change of Heart,
and of the Divine Influences to produce that Change.
—With a Sketch of the Christian Character.

THE author having in this little work taken a view of
the false notions often imbibed in early life from a
bad education, and of their pernicious effects; and
having attempted to point out the respective remedies
to these; she would now draw all that has been said
to a point, and declare plainly what she humbly con-
ceives to be the source whence all these false notions
and this wrong conduct really proceed: the prophet
Jeremiah shall answer: “It is because they have
forsaken the fountain of living waters, and have
hewn out to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that
can hold no water.” It is an ignorance past belief
of what true Christianity really is: the remedy,
therefore, and the only remedy that can be applied
with any prospect of success, is RELIGION, and by
religion she would be understood to mean the gospel
of Jesus Christ.
It has been before hinted, that religion should be
taught at an early period of life; that children should
be brought up “in the nurture and admonition of
the Lord.” º manner in which they should be
taught has likewise with great plainness been sug-




OF CHRISTIANITY. 295
gested; that it should be done in so lively and fami-
liar a manner as to make Religion amiable, and her
ways to appear, what they really are, “ways of
pleasantness.” And a slight sketch has been given
of the genius of Christianity, by which her amiable-
mess would more clearly appear. But this being a
subject of such vast importance, compared with
which every other subject sinks into nothing; it
seems not sufficient to speak on the doctrines and
duties of Christianity in detached parts, but it is of
importance to point out, though in a brief manner,
the mutual dependance of one doctrine upon ano-
ther, and the influence which these doctrines have
upon the heart and life, so that the duties of Christi-
anity may be seen to grow out of its doctrines: by
which it will appear that Christian virtue differs
essentially from Pagan: it is of a quite different
kind : the plant itself is different, it comes from a
different root, and grows in a different soil. *
It will be seen how the humbling doctrine of the
corruption of human nature, which has followed from
the corruption of our first parents, makes way for
the bright display of redeeming love: how from the
abasing thought that “we are all as sheep going
astray, every one in his own way:” that none can
return to the shepherd of our souls, “except the
Father draw him :” that “the natural man cannot
receive the things of the spirit, because they are
spiritually discerned :” how from this humiliating
view of the helplessness, as well as the corruption of
human nature, we are to turn to that animating doc-
trine, the offer of divine assistance. So that, though
human nature will appear from this view in a deeply
degraded state, and consequently all have cause for
humility, yet not one has cause for despair: the
disease indeed is dreadful, but a physician is at


206 ON THE DOCTRINE OF
hand, both able and willing to save us: though we
are naturally without strength, our help is laid upon
one that is mighty.” :
We should observe then, that the doctrines of our
Saviour are, if I may so speak, with a beautiful con-
sistency, all woven into one piece. We should get
such a view of their reciprocal dependence as to be
persuaded that without a deep sense of our own cor-
ruptions we can never seriously believe in a Saviour,
because the substantial and acceptable belief in Him
must always arise from the conviction of our want of
Him; that without a firm persuasion that the Holy
Spirit can alone restore our fallen nature, repair the
ruins of sin, and renew the image of God upon the
heart, we never shall be brought to serious, humble
prayer for repentance and restoration; and that,
without this repentance there is no salvation: for
though Christ has died for us, and consequently to
him alone we must look as a Saviour, yet he has
himself declared that he will save none but true
penitents.

on THE DocTRINE of HUMAN corruption.
To come now to a more particular statement of
these doctrines. When an important edifice is about
to be erected, a wise builder will dig deep, and look
well to the foundations, knowing that without this
the fabric will not be likely to stand. The founda-
tion of the Christian religion, out of which the whole
structure may be said to arise, appears to be the
doctrine of the fall of man from his original state of
righteousness; and of the corruption and helpless-
ness of human nature, which are the consequences of
this fall, and which is the natural state of every one
born into the world. To this doctrine it is important
to conciliate the minds, more especially of young

HUMAN CORRUPTION. 297
persons, who are peculiarly disposed to turn away
from it as a morose, unamiable, and gloomy idea:
they are apt to accuse those who are more strict and
serious, of unnecessary severity, and to suspect them
of thinking unjustly ill of mankind. Some of the
reasons which prejudice the inexperienced against
the doctrine in question appear to be the following.
Young persons themselves have seen little of the
world. In pleasurable society the world puts on its
most amiable appearance; and that softness and
urbanity which prevail, particularly amongst persons
of fashion, are liable to be mistaken for more than
they are really worth. The opposition to this doc-
trine in the young, arises partly from ingenuousness
of heart, partly from a habit of indulging themselves
in favourable suppositions respecting the world, rather
than of pursuing truth, which is always the grand
thing to be pursued; and partly from the popularity
of the tenet, that every body is so wonderfully good?
This error in youth has however a still deeper
foundation, which is their not having a right standard
of moral good and evil, in consequence of their
already partaking of the very corruption which is
spoken of; they are therefore apt to have no very
strict sense of duty, or of the necessity of a right and
religious motive to every act.
Moreover, young people usually do not know
themselves. Not having yet been much exposed to
temptation, owing to the prudent restraints in which
they have been kept, they little suspect to what
lengths in vice they themselves are liable to be trans-
ported, nor how far others actually are carried who
are set free from those restraints. §
Having laid down these as some of the causes of
error on this point, I proceed to observe on what
strong grounds the doctrine itself stands. º

O 2
298 HUMAN CORRUPTION.
Profane history abundantly confirms this truth:
the history of the world being in fact little else than
the history of the crimes of the human race. Even
though the annals of remote ages lie so involved in
obscurity, that some degree of uncertainty attaches
itself to many of the events recorded, yet this one
melancholy truth is always clear, that most of the
miseries which have been brought upon mankind,
have proceeded from this general depravity.
The world we now live in furnishes abundant
proof of this truth. In a world formed on the de-
ceitful theory of those who assert the innocence and
dignity of man, almost all the professions, since they
would have been rendered useless by such a state of
innocence, would not have existed. Without sin
we may nearly presume there would have been no
sickness; so that every medical professor is a stand-
ing evidence of this sad truth. Sin not only brought
sickness but death into the world; consequently
every funeral presents a more irrefragable argument
than a thousand sermons. Had man persevered in
his original integrity, there could have been no litiga-
tion, for there would be no contests about property
in a world where none would be inclined to attack
it. Professors of law, therefore, from the attorney
who prosecutes for a trespass, to the pleader who
defends a criminal, or the judge who condemns him,
loudly confirm the doctrine. Every victory by sea
or land should teach us to rejoice with humiliation,
for conquest itself brings a terrible, though splendid
attestation to the truth of the fall of man.
Even those who deny the doctrine, act universally
more or less on the principle. Why do we all secure
our houses with bolts, and bars, and locks 7 Do we
take these steps to defend our lives or property from
any particular fear? from any suspicion of this neigh-

HUMAN CORRUPTION. 209
bour, or that servant, or the other invader? No:—
It is from a practical conviction of the common de-
pravity; from a constant, pervading, but undefined
dread of impending evil arising from the sense of
general corruption. Are not prisons built, and laws
enacted, on the same practical principle !
But not to descend to the more degraded part of
our species. Why in the fairest transaction of busi-
ness is nothing executed without bonds, receipts, and
notes of hand Why does not a perfect confidence
in the dignity of human nature abolish all these
securities; if not between enemies, or people indif-
ferent to each other, yet at least between friends and
kindred, and the most honourable connexions? Why,
but because of that universal suspicion between man
and man, which, by all we see, and hear, and feel,
is become interwoven with our very make 2 Though
we do not entertain any individual suspicion, nay,
though we have the strongest personal confidence,
yet the acknowledged principle of conduct has this
doctrine for its basis. “I will take a receipt, though
it were from my brother,” is the established voice of
mankind; or, as I have heard it more artfully put,
by a fallacy of which the very disguise discovers the
rinciple, “Think every man honest, but deal with
lim as if you knew him to be otherwise.” And as,
in a state of innocence, the beasts, it is presumed,
would not have bled for the sustenance of man, so
their parchments would not have been wanted as
instruments of his security against his fellow man*.
But the grand arguments for this doctrine must be
drawn from the Holy Scriptures: and these, besides
* Bishop Butler distinctly declares this truth to be evident, from
experience as well as Revelation, “that this world exhibits an idea
of a RUIN;” and he will hazard much who ventures to assert that



Butler defended Christianity upon principles unconsonant to rea-
son, philosophy, or sound experience.
300 HUMAN CORRUPTION,
implying it almost continually, expressly assert it;
and that in instances too numerous to be all of them
brought forward here. Of these may I be allowed
to produce a few “God saw that the wickedness of
man was great, and that every imagination of the
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually:”—
“God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was
corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon
the earth. And it repented the Lord that he had
made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his
heart”.” This is a picture of mankind before the
flood; and the doctrine receives additional confirma-
tion in Scripture, when it speaks of the times which
followed after that tremendous judgment had taken
place. The Psalms abound in lamentations on the
depravity of man. “They are all gone aside; there
is none that doeth good, no not one.”—“In thy
sight,” says David, addressing the Most High,
“shall no man living be justified.” Job, in his
usual lofty strain of interrogation, asks, “What is
man that he should be clean, and he that is born of
a woman that he should be righteous ! Behold the
heavens are not clean in His sight, how much more
abominable and filthy is man, who drinketh iniquity
like water?”
Nor do the Scriptures speak of this corruption as
arising only from occasional temptation, or from
mere extrinsic causes. The wise man tells us, that
“foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child:”
the prophet Jeremiah assures us, “the heart is de-
ceitful above all things, and desperately wicked ;”
and David plainly states the doctrine: “Behold, I
was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother
conceive me.” Can language be more explicit?
The New Testament corroborates the Old. Our
* Genesis, vi. - s


H U MAN CORRUPTION . 301
Lord's reproof of Peter seems to take the doctrine
for granted: “Thou savourest not the things that be
of God, but those that be of man;" clearly inti-
mating, that the ways of man are opposite to the
ways of God. And our Saviour, in that affecting
discourse to his disciples, observes to them that, as
they were by his grace made different from others,
therefore they must expect to be hated by those who
were so unlike them. And it should be particularl
observed, as another proof that the world is wicked,
that our Lord considered “the world” as opposed to
him and to his disciples. “If ye were of the world,
the world would love its own; but I have chosen
you out of the world, therefore the world hateth
you.”.” St. John, writing to his Christian church,
states the same truth: “We know that we are of
God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.”
Man in his natural and unbelieving state is like-
wise represented as in a state of guilt, and under the
displeasure of Almighty God. “He that believeth
not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God
abideth on him.”
Here, however, if it be objected, that the heathen
who never heard of the gospel will not assuredly be
judged by it, the Saviour's answer to such curious
inquirers concerning the state of others is, “Strive
to enter in at the strait gate.” It is enough for us to
believe that God will judge all men according to
their opportunities. The heathen, to whom he has
not sent the light of the gospel will probably not be
judged by the gospel. But with whatever mercy
he may judge those who, living in a land of darkness,
are without knowledge of his revealed law, our busi-
ness is not with them, but with ourselves. It is our
business to consider what mercy he will extend to
...sº * John, xv. 19.


302 HUMAN CORRUPTION,
those who, living in a Christian country, abounding
with means and ordinances, where the gospel is
preached in its purity; it is our business to inquire
how he will deal with those who shut their eyes to its
beams, who close their ears to its truths. For an
unbeliever who has passed his life in the meridian
of Scripture light, or for an outward but unfruitful
professor of Christianity, I know not what hope the
gospel holds out.
The natural state of man is again thus described :
“The carnal mind is enmity against God; (awful
thought!) for it is not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the
flesh cannot please God.” What the apostle means
by being in the flesh, is evident by what follows;
for speaking of those whose hearts were changed by
divine grace, he says, “But ye are not in the flesh,
but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell
in you :” that is, you are now in your natural state:
the change that has passed on your minds by the
influence of the Spirit of God is so great, that your
state may properly be called being in the Spirit. It
may be further observed that the same apostle,
writing to the churches of Galatia, tells them, that the
natural corruption of the human heart is continually
opposing the spirit of holiness which influences the
regenerate. “The flesh lusteth against the spirit,
and the spirit against the flesh, and these are con-
trary the one to the other:” which passage by the
way, at the same time that it proves the corruption
of the heart, proves the necessity of divine influences.
And the apostle, with respect to himself, freely con-
fesses and deeply laments the workings of this cor-
rupt principle: “O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death 7"
It has been objected by some who have opposed




HUMAN CORRUPTION. 303
this doctrine, that the same Scriptures which speak
of mankind as being sinners, speak of some as being
righteous; and hence they would argue, that though
this depravity of human nature may be general, yet
it cannot be universal. This objection, when exa-
mined, serves only, like all other objections against
the truth, to establish that which it was intended to
destroy. For what do the Scriptures assert respecting
the righteous? That there are some whose princi-
ples, views, and conduct, are so different from the
rest of the world, and from what theirs themselves
once were, that these persons are honoured with the
peculiar title of the “sons of God.” But nowhere
do the Scriptures assert that even these are sinless;
on the contrary their faults are frequently mentioned;
and persons of this class are moreover represented as
those on whom a great change has passed: as having
been formerly “dead in trespasses and sins;” but as
“being now called out of darkness into light;" as
translated into the kingdom of “God's dear Son;”
as “having passed from death to life.” And Saint
Paul put this matter past all doubt, by expressly
asserting, that “they were all by nature the children
of wrath even as others.”
It might be well to ask certain persons who op-
pose the doctrine in question, and who also seem to
talk as if they thought there were many sinless peo-
ple in the world, how they expect that such sinless
people will be saved? (though indeed to talk of an
innocent person being saved involves palpable con-
tradiction in terms, of which those who use the ex-
pression do not seem to be aware; it is talking of
curing a man already in health). “Undoubtedly,”
such will say, “they will be received into those
abodes of bliss prepared for the righteous.” But be
it remembered, there is but one way to these blissful




304 HUMAN Cor BUPTION.
abodes, and that is, through Jesus Christ : “For
there is none other name given among men whereby
we must be saved.” If we ask whom did Christ
come to save? the Scripture directly answers, “He
came into the world to save sinners:” “His name
was called Jesus, because he came to save his people
from their sins.” When St. John was favoured with a
heavenly vision, he tells us, that he beheld “a great
multitude which no man could number, of all nations,
and kindred, and people, and tongues, standing before
the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white
robes:” that one of the heavenly inhabitants informed
him who they were: “These are they who come out
of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and
made them white in the blood of the Lamb; there-
fore are they before the throne of God, and serve
Him day and night in his Temple; and He that
sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them; they
shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, nei-
ther shall the sun light on them, nor any heat; for
the Lamb which is in the midst of them shall feed
them, and shall lead them to living fountains of
waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their
eyes.” .
We may gather from this description what these
glorious and happy beings once were: they were
sinful creatures: their robes were not spotless:
“They had washed them, and made them white in
the blood of the Lamb.” They are likewise gene-
rally represented as having been once a suffering
people : they came out of great tribulation. They
are described as having overcome the great tempter
of mankind, “by the blood of the Lamb”:” as they
who “follow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth :” as
“redeemed from among ment.” And their employ-
§ * Rev. xii. 14. f Rev. xiv. 4. ~



HUMAN CORRUPTION, 305
ment in the regions of bliss is a farther confirmation
of the doctrine of which we are treating. “The
great multitude,” &c. &c. we are told, “stood and
cried with a loud voice, Salvation to our God, who
sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb!” Here
we see they ascribe their salvation to Christ, and
consequently their present happiness to his atoning
blood. And in another of their celestial anthems,
they say in like manner, “Thou wast slain, and hast
redeemed us to God by Thy blood, out of every kin-
dred, and tongue, and people, and nation*.”
By all this it is evident, that men of any other
description than redeemed sinners must gain admit-
tance to heaven some other way than that which the
Scriptures point out; and also that when they shall
arrive there, so different will be their employment,
that they must have an anthem peculiar to them-
selves. .
Nothing is more adapted to “the casting down of
high imaginations,” and to promote humility, than
this reflection, that heaven is always in Scripture
pointed out not as the reward of the innocent, but as
the hope of the penitent. This, while it is calculated
to “exclude boasting,” the temper the most opposite
to the Gospel, is yet the most suited to afford com-
fort; for were heaven promised as the reward of
innocence, who could attain to it? but being, as it is,
the promised portion of faith and repentance, who is
compelled to miss it?
It is urged that the belief of this doctrine of our
corruption produces many ill effects, and therefore it
should be discouraged. That it does not produce
those ill effects, when not misunderstood or partially
represented, we shall attempt to show: at the same
time let it be observed, if it be really true, we must
* Rev. v. 9. w







306 HUMAN CORRUPTION.
not reject it on account of any of these supposed ill
consequences. Truth may often be attended with
disagreeable effects, but if it be truth it must still be
pursued. If, for instance, treason should exist in a
country, every one knows the disagreeable effects
which will follow such a conviction; but our not
believing such treason to exist, will not prevent such
effect following it: on the contrary, our believing it
may prevent the consequences.
It is objected, that this doctrine debases human
nature, and that finding fault with the building is
only another way of finding fault with the architect.
To the first part of this objection it may be remarked,
that if man be really a corrupt, fallen being, it is
proper to represent him as such: the fault then lies
in the man, and not in the doctrine, which only states
the truth. As to the inference which is supposed to
follow, namely, that it throws the fault upon the
Creator, it proceeds upon the false supposition that
man's present corrupt state is the state in which he
was originally created: and also that God has left
him unavoidably to perish in it, whereas although
“in Adam we die, in Christ we shall be made alive.”
It is likewise objected, that as this doctrine must
give us such a bad opinion of mankind, it must
consequently produce ill-will, hatred, and suspicion.
But it should be remembered, that it gives us no
worse an opinion of other men than it gives us of
ourselves; such views of ourselves have a very salu-
tary effect, inasmuch as they have a tendency to pro-
duce humility; and humility is not likely to produce
ill-will to others, “for only from pride cometh con-
tention:” and as to the views it gives us of mankind,
it represents us as fellow-sufferers; and surely the
consideration that we are companions in misery is
not calculated to produce hatred. The truth is,

HUMAN CORRUPTION. 307
these effects, where they have actually followed,
have followed from a false and partial view of the
subject.
Old persons who have seen much of the world,
and who have little religion, are apt to be strong in
their belief of man's actual corruption ; but not tak-
ing it up on Christian grounds, this belief in them
shows itself in a narrow and malignant temper; in
uncharitable judgment and harsh opinions, in indi-
vidual suspicion, and in too general a disposition to
hatred.
Suspicion and hatred also are the uses to which
Rochefoucauld and the other French philosophers
have converted this doctrine : their acute minds
intuitively found the corruption of man, and they
saw it without its concomitant and correcting doc-
trine: they allowed man to be a depraved creature, .
but disallowed his high original: they found him in
a low state, but did not conceive of him as having
fallen from a better. They represent him rather as
a brute than an apostate; not taking into the account
that his present degraded nature and depraved facul-
ties are not his original state: that he is not such as
he came out of the hands of his Creator, but such as
he has been made by sin. Nor do they know that
he has not even now lost all remains of his primitive
dignity, but is still capable of a restoration more
glorious ºx
Than is dreamt of in their philosophy.
Perhaps, too, they know from what they feel, all the
evil to which man is inclined; but they do not know,
for they have not felt, all the good of which he is
capable by the superinduction of the divine prin-
ciple: thus they asperse human nature instead of


308 HUMAN CORRUPTION.
representing it fairly, and in so doing it is they who
calumniate the great Creator. .
The doctrine of corruption is likewise accused of
being a gloomy, discouraging doctrine, and an enemy
to joy and comfort. Now suppose this objection true
in its fullest extent. Is it any way unreasonable that
a being fallen into a state of sin, under the displea-
sure of Almighty God, should feel seriously alarmed
at being in such a state 2 Is the condemned criminal
blamed because he is not merry And would it be
esteemed a kind action to persuade him that he is not
condemned in order to make him so
But this charge is not true in the sense intended
by those who bring it forward. Those who believe
this doctrine are not the most gloomy people. When,
indeed, any one by the influence of the Holy Spirit
is brought to view his state as it really is, a state of
guilt and danger, it is natural that fear should be
excited in his mind, but it is such a fear as impels
him “to flee from the wrath to come :” it is such a
fear as moved Noah to “prepare an ark to the saving
of his house.” Such a one will likewise feel sorrow;
not however “the sorrow of the world which worketh
death,” but that godly sorrow which worketh repent-
ance: such a one is in a proper state to receive the
glorious doctrine we are next about to contemplate;
namely,
THAT GoD So LovED THE world, THAT HE GAVE HIS
ONLY BEGOTTEN Son, THAT whosoever BELIEved
on HIM, SHOULD NOT PERISH, BUT HAVE EVER-
LASTING LIFE.
Of this doctrine it is of the last importance to form
just views, for as it is the only doctrine which can
keep the humble penitent from despair, so, on the

DOCTRINE OF REDEMPT 10N. 309
other hand, great care must be taken that false views
of it do not lead us to presumption. In order to
understand it rightly, we must not fill our minds
with our own reasonings upon it, which is the way
in which some good people have been misled, but we
must betake ourselves to the Scriptures, wherein we
shall find the doctrine stated so plainly as to show
that the mistakes have not arisen from a want of
clearness in the Scriptures, but from a desire to make
it bend to some favourite notions. While it has been
rejected by some, it has been so mutilated by others
as hardly to retain any resemblance to the Scripture
doctrine of redemption. We are told in the beauti-
ful passage last quoted its source—the love of God
to a lost world;—who the Redeemer was—the Son
of God;—the end for which this plan was formed and
executed—“ that whosoever believed in him should
not perish, but have everlasting life.” There is no-
thing surely in all this to promote gloominess. On
the contrary, if kindness and mercy have a tendency
to win and warm the heart, here is every incentive to
joy and cheerfulness. Christianity looks kindly to-
words all, and with peculiar tenderness on such as,
from humbling views of their own unworthiness, might
be led to fancy themselves excluded:—we are ex-
pressly told, that “Christ died for all:”—that “he
tasted death for every man:”—that “he died for the
sins of the whole world.” Accordingly he has com-
manded that his Gospel should be preached to every
creature:” which is ineffect declaring, that not a single
human being is excluded: for to preach the Gospel is
to offer a Saviour:—and the Saviour in the plainest
language offers himself to all,—declaring to “all the
ends of the earth”—“Look unto me and be saved.”
It is therefore an undeniable truth that no one will
perish for want of a Saviour, but for rejecting him.




310 DOCTRINE OF REDEMPTION.
But to suppose that because Christ has died for the
“sins of the whole world,” the whole world will there-
fore be saved, is a most fatal mistake: in the same
book which tells us that “Christ died for all,” we have
likewise this awful admonition: “Strait is the gate,
and few there be that find it;” which, whether it be
understood of the immediate reception of the Gospel,
or of the final use which was too likely to be made
of it, gives no encouragement to hope that all will be
qualified to partake of its promises. And whilst it
declares that “there is no other name whereby we
may be saved but the name of Jesus,” it likewise
declares º :
THAT “witHouT Holſ N Ess No MAN SHALL SEE THE
. LoRD.”
It is much to be feared that some, in their zeal to
defend the Gospel doctrines of free grace, have mate-
rially injured the Gospel doctrine of holiness: stating,
that Christ has done all in such a sense, as that there
is nothing left for us to do.—But do the Scriptures
hold out this language? “Come, for all things are
ready,” is the Gospel call; in which we may observe,
that at the same time that it tells us that “all things
are ready,” it nevertheless tells us that we must
“come.” Food being provided for us will not
benefit us except we partake of it. It will not avail
us that “Christ our passover is sacrified for us,”
unless “we keep the feast.” We must make use of
“ the fountain which is opened for sin and for un-
cleanness,” if we would be purified. “All, indeed,
who are athirst are invited to take of the waters of
life freely;” but if we feel no “thirst,” if we do not
drink, their saving qualities are of no avail.
It is the more necessary to insist on this in the
present day, as there is a worldly and fashionable,

NECESSITY OF HOLINESS. 311
as well as a low and sectarian Antinomianism: there
lamentably prevails in the world an unwarranted
assurance of salvation, founded on a slight, vague,
and general confidence in what Christ has done and
suffered for us, as if the great object of his doing and
suffering had been to emancipate us from all obliga-
tions to duty and obedience; and as if, because he
died for sinners, we might therefore safely and com-
fortably go on to live in sin, contenting ourselves with
now and then a transient, formal, and unmeaning
avowal of our unworthiness, our obligation, and the
all-sufficiency of his atonement. By the discharge
of this quit-rent, of which all the cost consists in the
acknowledgment, the sensual, the worldly, and the
vain hope to find a refuge in heaven, when driven from
the enjoyments of this world. But this cheap and
indolent Christianity is nowhere taught in the Bible.
The faith inculcated there is not a lazy, professional
faith, but the faith which “produceth obedience,”
that faith which “worketh by love,” that faith of
which the practical language is—“Strive that you
may enter in;”—“So run that you may obtain;”—
“So fight that you may lay hold on eternal life:”—
that faith which directs us “not to be weary in well-
doing ;”—which says, “Work out your own salva-
tion:”—never forgetting at the same time, “that it
is God which worketh in us both to will and to do.”
—Are those rich supplies of grace which the Gospel
offers; are those abundant aids of the Spirit which it.
promises, tendered to the slothful?—No.—God will
have all his gifts improved. Grace must be used, or
it will be withdrawn. The Almighty thinks it not
derogatory to his free grace to declare, that “those
only who do his commandments have right to the
tree of life.” And the Scriptures represent it as not
derogatory to the sacrifice of Christ, to follow his

312 NECESSITY OF HOLINESS,
example in well-doing. The only caution is, that
we must not work in our own strength, nor bring in
our contribution of works as if in aid of the supposed
deficiency of His merits.
For we must not in our over-caution fancy, that
because Christ has “redeemed us from the curse of
the law,” we are therefore without a law. In ac-
knowledging Christ as a deliverer, we must not forget
that he is a lawgiver too, and that we are expressly
commanded “to fulfil the law of Christ:” if then we
wish to know what his laws are, we must “search
the Scriptures,” especially the New Testament; there
we shall find him declaring -
THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITY OF A CHANGE OF HEART
A ND LIFE.
OUR Saviour says, that “except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God:” that it is
not a mere acknowledging His authority, calling him
“Lord, Lord,” that will avail any thing, except we
Do what He commands: that anything short of this
is like a man building his house upon the sands,
which, when the storms come on, will certainly fall.
In like manner the Apostles are continually enforcing
the necessity of this change, which they describe
under the various names of “the new man*;”—
“the new creaturet ;”—“a transformation into the
image of Godf;”—“ a participation of the divine
natureş.” Nor is this change represented as consist-
ing merely in a change of religious opinions, not even
in being delivered over from a worse to a better sys-
tem of doctrines, nor in exchanging gross sins for
those which are more sober and reputable; nor in
renouncing the sins of youth, and assuming those of
* Ephesians, iv. 24. t Galatians, vi. 15.
f 2 Corinthians, xii. § 2 Peter, i.4. -

CHANGE OF HEART. 313
a quieter period of life; nor in leaving off evil prac-
tices because men are grown tired of them, or find
they injure their credit, health, or fortune; nor does
it consist in inoffensiveness and obliging manners,
nor indeed in any merely outward reformation.
But the change consists in “being renewed in
the spirit of our minds;” in being “conformed to the
image of the Son of God;” in being “called out of
darkness into His marvellous light.” And the whole
of this great change, its beginning, progress and final
accomplishment, for it is represented as a gradual
change, is ascribed to
THE INFLUENCES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
We are perpetually reminded of our utter inability
to help ourselves, that we may set the higher value on
those gracious aids which are held out to us. We
are taught that “we are not sufficient to think any
thing as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God.”
And when we are told that “if we live after the flesh,
we shall die,” we are at the same time reminded,
that it is “ through the sº that we must mortify
the deeds of the body.” We are likewise cautioned
that we “grieve not the Holy Spirit of God;” that
we quench not the Spirit. By all which expressions,
and many others of like import, we are taught that,
while we are to ascribe with humble gratitude every
good thought, word, and work, to the influence of
the Holy i. we are not to look on such influences
as superseding our own exertions: and it is too plain
that we may reject the gracious offers of assistance,
since otherwise there would be no occasion to cau-
tion us not to do it. The Scriptures have illustrated
this in terms which are familiar indeed, but which
are therefore only the more condescending and en-
dearing. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
P º





3.14 INFLUENCES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT,
If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will
come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with
me.” Observe, it is not said, if any man will not
listen to me, I will force open the door. But if we
refuse admittance to such a guest, we must abide by
the consequences.
The sublime doctrine of divine assistance is the
more to be prized, not only on account of our own
helplessness, but from the additional consideration of
the powerful adversary with whom the Christian has
to contend : an article of our faith by the way, which
is growing into general disrepute among the politer
classes of society. Nay, there is a kind of ridicule
attached to the very suggestion of the subject, as if it
were exploded on full proof of its being an absolute
absurdity, utterly repugnant to the liberal spirit of
an enlightened age. And it requires no small neat-
mess of expression and periphrastic ingenuity to get
the very mention tolerated. I mean
THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF THE EXISTENCE AND
POWER OF OUR GREAT SPIRITUAL ENE MY.
This is considered by the fashionable sceptic as a
vulgar invention, which ought to be banished with
the belief in dreams, and ghosts, and witchcraft; by
the fashionable Christian, as an ingenious allegory,
but not as a literal truth; and by almost all, as a
doctrine which, when it happens to be introduced at
Church, has at least nothing to do with the pews, but
is by common consent made over to the aisles, if in-
deed it must be retained at all. .
May I, with great humility and respect, presume
to suggest to our divines that they would do well not
to lend their countenance to these modish curtail-
ments of the Christian faith; nor to shun the intro-
duction of this doctrine whenever it consists with

POWER OF OUR SPIRITUAL ENEMY. 315
their subject to bring it forward. A truth which is
seldom brought before the eye, imperceptibly grows
less and less important; and if it be an unpleasing
truth, we grow more and more reconciled to its ab-
sence, till at length its intrusion becomes offensive,
and we learn in the end to renounce what we at first
only neglected. . Because some coarse and ranting
enthusiasts have been fond of using tremendous terms
with a violence and frequency, which might make it
seem to be a gratification to them to denounce judg-
ments and anticipate torments, can their coarseness
or vulgarity make a true doctrine false, or an impor-
tant one trifling If such preachers have given
offence by their uncouth manner of managing an
awful doctrine, that indeed furnishes a caution to
treat the subject more discreetly, but it is no just
reason for avoiding the doctrine. For to keep a
truth out of sight because it has been absurdly
handled or ill defended, might in time be assigned
as a reason for keeping back, one by one, every
doctrine of our holy church: for which of them has
not occasionally had imprudent advocates or weak
champions? …
Be it remembered that the doctrine in question is
not only interwoven by allusion, implication, or
direct assertion throughout the whole Scripture, but
that it stands prominently personified at the opening
of the New as well as the Old Testament. The devil's
temptation of our Lord, in which he is notre resented
figuratively, but visibly and palpably, stands exactly
on the same ground of authority with other events
which are received without repugnance. And it
may not be an unuseful observation to remark, that
the very refusing to believe in an evil spirit, may be
considered as one of his own suggestions: for there

316 ON THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER.
is not a more dangerous illusion than to believe our-
selves out of the reach of illusions, nor a more alarm-
ing temptation than to fancy that we are not liable
to be tempted.
But the dark cloud raised by this doctrine will be
dispelled by the cheering certainty that our blessed
Saviour having himself “been tempted like as we
are, is able to deliver those who are tempted.”
But to return.--From this imperfect sketch we
may see how suitable the religion of Christ is to
fallen man How exactly it meets every want! No
one needs now perish because he is a sinner, pro-
vided he be willing to forsake his sins; for “Jesus
Christ came into the world to save sinners:” and
“He is now exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour, to
give repentance and forgiveness of sin.” Which pas-
sage, be it observed, may be considered as pointing
out to us the order in which he bestows his blessings;
he gives first repentance, and then forgiveness.
We may likewise see how much the character of a
true Christian rises above every other: that there is
a wholeness, an integrity, a completeness in the Chris-
tian character: that a few natural, pleasing qualities,
not cast in the mould of the Gospel, are but as beau-
tiful fragments, or well turned single limbs, which
for want of that beauty which arises from the propor-
tion of parts, for want of that connexion of the
members with the living head, are of little compara-
tive excellence. There may be amiable qualities
which are not Christian graces: and the Apostle,
after enumerating every separate article of attack or
defence with which a Christian warrior is to be ac-
coutred, sums up the matter by directing that we put
on “the whole armour of God.” And this com-
pleteness is insisted on by all the Apostles. One.

ON THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 317
prays that his converts may “stand perfect and
complete in the whole will of God:” another enjoins
that they be “perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”
Now we are not to suppose that they expected any
convert to be without faults; they knew too well the
constitution of the human heart to form so unfounded
an expectation. But Christians must have no fault
in their principle; their views must be direct; their
proposed scheme must be faultless; their intention
must be single; their standard must be lofty; their
object must be right; their “mark must be the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus.” There must be no
allowed evil, no warranted defection, no tolerated
impurity, no habitual irregularity. Though they do
not rise as high as they ought, nor as they wish, in
the scale of perfection, yet the scale itself must be
correct, and the desire of ascending perpetual: they
must count the degrees they have already attained
as nothing. Every grace must be kept in exercise,
conquests once made over an evil propensity must
not only be maintained but extended. And in truth,
Christianity so comprises contrary, and as it may be
thought irreconcilable excellencies, that those which
seem so incompatible as to be incapable by nature
of being inmates of the same breast, are almost neces-
sarily involved in the Christian character.
For instance; Christianity requires that our faith
be at once fervent and sober; that our love be both
ardent and lasting; that our patience be not only
heroic but gentle; she demands dauntless zeal and
genuine humility; active services and complete self-
renunciation; high attainments in goodness, with
deep consciousness of defect; courage in reproving,
and meekness in bearing reproof; a quick perception
of what is sinful, with a willingness to forgive the
offender; active virtue ready to do all, and passive


318 GN THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER.
virtue ready to bear all. We must stretch every
faculty in the service of our Lord, and yet bring
every thought into obedience to Him : while we aim
to live in the exercise of every Christian grace, we
must account ourselves unprofitable servants: we
must strive for the crown, yet receive it as a gift,
and then lay it at our master's feet: while we are
busily trading in the world with our Lord's talents,
we must “commune with our heart, and be still :”
while we strive to practice the purest disinterested-
ness, we must be contented though we meet with
selfishness in return; and while laying out our lives
for the good of mankind, we must submit to reproach
without murmuring, and to ingratitude without
resentment. And to render us equal to all these
services, Christianity bestows not only the precept,
but the power; she does what the great poet of
ethics lamented that reason could not do, “ she
lends us arms as well as rules.” º
For here, if not only the worldly and the timid,
but the humble and the well disposed should demand
with fear and trembling, “Who is sufficient for these
things?” Revelation makes its own reviving answer,
“My grace is sufficient for thee.” .
It will be well here to distinguish that there are
two sorts of Christian professors, one of which affect
to speak of Christianity as if it were a mere system
of doctrines, with little reference to their influence on
life and manners; while the other consider it as
exhibiting a scheme of human duties independent
on its doctrines. For though the latter sort may
admit the doctrines, yet they contemplate them as a
separate and disconnected set of opinions, rather
than as an influential principle of action. In viola-
tion of that beautiful harmony which subsists in
every part of Scripture between practice and belief,

ON THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 319
the religious world furnishes two sorts of people, who
seem to enlist themselves, as if in opposition, under
the banners of Saint Paul and Saint James, as if
those two great champions of the Christian cause
had fought for two masters. Those who affect re-
spectively to be the disciples of each, treat faith and
works as if they were opposite interests, instead of
inseparable points. Nay, they go farther, and set
Saint Paul at variance with himself.
Now, instead of reasoning on the point, let us
refer to the apostle in question, who himself defini-
tively settles the dispute. The apostolical order and
method in this respect deserve notice and imitation;
for it is observable that the earlier parts of most of
the Epistles abound in the doctrines of Christianity,
while those latter chapters, which wind up the sub-
ject, exhibit all the duties which grow out of them,
as the natural and necessary productions of such a
living root. But this alternate mention of doctrine
and practice, which seemed likely to unite, has on
the contrary formed a sort of line of separation
between these two orders of believers, and intro-
duced a broken and mutilated system. Those who
would make Christianity consist of doctrines only,
dwell, for instance, on the first eleven chapters of
the Epistle to the Romans, as containing exclusively
the sum and substance of the ºl. While the
mere moralists, who wish to strip Christianity of her
lofty and appropriate attributes, delight to dwell on
the twelfth chapter, which is a table of duties, as
exclusively as if the preceding chapters made no
part of the sacred canon. . But Paul himself, who
was at least as sound a theologian as any of his
commentators, settles the matter another way, by
making the duties of the twelfth grow out of the
doctrines of the antecedent eleven, just as any other


320 ON THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER.
consequence grows out of its cause. And as if he
suspected that the indivisible union between them
might possibly be overlooked, he links the two dis-
tinct divisions together by a logical “ therefore,”
with which the twelfth begins:—“I beseech you
therefore,” (that is, as the effect of all I have been
inculcating,) “ that you present your bodies a living
sacrifice, acceptable to God,” &c. and then goes on
to enforce on them, as a consequence of what he had
been preaching, the practice of every Christian virtue.
This combined view of the subject seems, on the one
hand, to be the only means of preventing the substi-
tution of Pagan morality for Christian holiness;
and, on the other, of securing the leading doctrine
of justification by faith, from the dreadful danger of
Antinomian licentiousness; every human obligation
being thus grafted on the living stock of a divine
principle.
*w-wºwººººººººwºwº
CHAP. XX.
On the Duty and Efficacy of Prayer.
It is not proposed to enter largely on a topic which
has been exhausted by the ablest pens. But as a
work of this nature seems to require that so impor-
tant a subject should not be overlooked, it is intended
to notice in a slight manner a few of those many
difficulties and popular objections which are brought
forward against the use and efficacy of prayer, even
by those who would be unwilling to be suspected of
impiety and unbelief. -
There is a class of objectors who strangely profess
to withhold homage from the Most High, not out of
contempt, but reverence. They affect to consider the
use of prayer as derogatory to the omniscience of



DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER, 321
God, asserting that it looks as if we thought he stood
in need of being informed of our wants; and as
derogatory to his goodness, as implying that he
needs to be put in mind of them.
But is it not enough for such poor frail beings as
we are to know, that God himself does not consider
prayer as derogatory either to his wisdom or good-
ness? And shall we erect ourselves into judges of
what is consistent with the attributes of HIM before
whom angels fall prostrate with self-abasement?
Will he thank such defenders of his attributes, who,
while they profess to reverence, scruple not to dis-
obey him It ought rather to be viewed as a great
encouragement to prayer, that we are addressing a
Being, who knows our wants better than we can
express them, and whose preventing goodness is
always ready to relieve them.
It is objected by another class, and on the specious
round of humility too, though we do not always
find the objector himself quite as humble as his plea,
that it is arrogant in such insignificant beings as we
are to presume to lay our petty necessities before the
great and glorious God, who cannot be expected to
condescend to the multitude of trifling and even
interfering requests which are brought before him
by his creatures. These and such like objections
arise from mean and unworthy thoughts of the great
Creator. It seems as if those who make them con-
sidered the Most High as “such a one as them-
selves;” a Being, who can perform a certain given
quantity of business, but who would be overpowered
with an additional quantity. Or, at best, is it not
considering the Almighty in the light, not of an
infinite God, but of a great man, of a minister, or a
king, who, while he superintends great and national
concerns, is obliged to neglect small and individual
P 2 º:

322. DUTY AND EFFICAcy of PRAYER.
petitions, because he cannot spare that leisure and
attention which suffice for every thing They do not
consider him as that infinitely glorious Being, who,
while he beholds at once all that is doing in heaven
and in earth, is at the same time as attentive to the
rayer of the poor destitute, as present to the sorrow-
§ sighing of the prisoner, as if these forlorn crea-
tures were individually the objects of his undivided
attention.
These critics, who are for sparing the Supreme
Being the trouble of our prayers, and, if I may so
speak without profaneness, would relieve Omnipo-
tence of part of his burden, by assigning to his care
only such a portion as may be more easily managed,
seem to have no conception of his attributes.
They forget that infinite wisdom puts him as easily
within reach of all knowledge, as infinite power does
of all performance; that he is a Being in whose plans
complexity makes no difficulty, variety no obstruc-
tion, and multiplicity no confusion; that to ubiquity
distance does not exist; that to infinity space is
annihilated; that past, present, and future, are dis-
cerned more accurately at one glance of his eye, to
whom a thousand years are as one day, than a single
moment of time or a single point of space can be by
OurS. . . . . .
To the other part of the objection, founded on the
supposed interference (that is, irreconcilableness) of
one man's petitions with those of another, this answer
seems to suggest itself: first, that we must take care
that when we ask, we do not “ask amiss;” that, for
instance, we ask chiefly, and in an unqualified man-
ner, only for spiritual blessings to ourselves and
others; and in doing this the prayer of one man
cannot interfere with that of another, because no
proportion of sanctity or virtue implored by one

DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER. 323
obstructs the same attainments in another. Next, in
asking for temporal and inferior blessings, we must
qualify our petition, even though it should extend to
deliverance from the severest pains, or to our very
life itself, according to that example of our Saviour:
“Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.
Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done.” By
thus qualifying our prayer, we exercise ourselves in
an act of resignation to God; we profess not to wish
what will interfere with his benevolent plan, and yet
we may hope by prayer to secure the blessing so far
as it is consistent with it. Perhaps the reason why
this objection to prayer is so strongly felt, is the too
great disposition to pray for merely temporal and
worldly blessings, and to desire them in the most
unqualified manner, not submitting to be without
them, even though the granting them should be
inconsistent with the general plan of Providence.
Another class continue to bring forward, as perti-
maciously as if it had never been answered, the ex-
hausted argument, that seeing God is immutable, no
petitions of ours can ever change Him ; that events
themselves being settled in a fixed and unalterable
course, and bound in a fatal necessity, it is folly to
think that we can disturb the established laws of the
universe, or interrupt the course of Providence by
our prayers: and that it is absurd to suppose these
firm decrees can be reversed by any requests of ours.
Without entering into the wide and trackless field
of fate and free will, from which pursuit I am kept
back equally by the most profound ignorance and
the most invincible dislike, I would only observe,
that these objections apply equally to all human
actions as well as to prayer. It may therefore with
the same propriety be urged, that seeing God is
immutable and his decrees unalterable, therefore our


324 DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER.
actions can produce no change in Him or in our own
state. Weak as well as impious reasoning ! It may
be questioned whether even the modern French and
German philosophers might not be prevailed upon
to acknowledge the existence of God, if they might
make such a use of his attributes. The truth is, and it
is a truth discoverable without any depth of learning,
all these objections are the offspring of pride. Poor,
short-sighted man cannot reconcile the omniscience
and decrees of God with the efficacy of prayer; and
because he cannot reconcile them, he modestly con-
cludes they are irreconcilable. How much more
wisdom as well as happiness results from an humble
Christian spirit ! Such a plain practical text as,
“Draw near unto God, and he will draw near unto
you,” carries more consolation, more true knowledge
of his wants and their remedy to the heart of a peni-
tent sinner, than all the “tomes of casuistry” which
have puzzled the world ever since the question was
first set afloat by its original propounders.
And as the plain man only got up and walked, to
prove there was such a thing as motion, in answer to
the philosopher who, in an elaborate theory, denied
it: so the plain Christian, when he is borne down
with the assurance that there is no efficacy in prayer,
requires no better argument to repel the assertion
than the good he finds in prayer itself. -
All the doubts proposed to him respecting God,
do not so much affect him as this one doubt respect-
ing himself: “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the
Lord will not hear me.” For the chief doubt and
difficulty of a real Christian consists, not so much in
a distrust of God’s ability and willingness to answer
the prayer of the upright, as in a distrust of his own
uprightness, as in a doubt whether he himself belongs
to that description of persons to whom the promises


DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER. 325
are made, and of the quality of the prayer which he
offers up.
Let the subjects of a dark fate maintain a sullen,
or the slaves of a blind chance a hopeless silence, but
let the child of a compassionate Almighty Father
supplicate his mercies with an humble confidence,
inspired by the assurance, that “the very hairs of
his head are numbered.” Let him take comfort in
that individual and mimute attention, without which
not a sparrow falls to the ground, as well as in that
heart-cheering promise, that, as “the eyes of the
Lord are over the righteous,” so are “his ears open
to their prayers.” And as a pious bishop has ob-
served, “Our Saviour has as it were hedged in and
enclosed the Lord's prayer with these two great fences
of our faith, God's willingness and his power to help
us:” the preface to it assures us of the one, which,
by calling God by the tender name of “Our Father,”
intimates his readiness to help his children: and the
animating conclusion, “Thine is the power,” rescues
us from every unbelieving doubt of his ability to
help us. -
A Christian knows, because he feels, that prayer
is, though in a way to him inscrutable, the medium
of connexion between God and his rational creatures;
the means appointed by him to draw down his bless-
ings upon us. The Christian knows that prayer is
the appointed means of uniting two ideas, one of the
highest magnificence, the other of the most profound
lowliness, within the compass of imagination; namely,
that it is the link of communication between “the
High and Lofty One who inhabiteth eternity,” and
that heart of the “contrite in which he delights to
dwell.” He knows that this inexplicable union
between beings so unspeakably, so essentially dif-
ferent, can only be maintained by prayer; that this

326 DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER.
is the strong but secret chain which unites time with
eternity, earth with heaven, man with God.
The plain Christian, as was before observed, can-
not explain why it is so; but while he feels the
efficacy, he is contented to let the learned define it;
and he will no more postpone prayer till he can
ºl. a chain of reasoning on the manner in which
e derives benefit from it, than he will postpone eating
till he can give a scientific lecture on the nature of
digestion: he is contented with knowing that his
meat has nourished him; and he leaves to the phi-
losopher, who may choose to defer his meal till he
has elaborated his treatise, to starve in the interim.
The Christian feels better than he is able to explain,
that the functions of his spiritual life can no more be
carried on without habitual prayer, than those of his
natural life without frequent bodily nourishment.
He feels renovation and strength grow out of the
use of the appointed means, as necessarily in the one
case as in the other. He feels that the health of his
soul can no more be sustained, and its powers kept
in continued vigour by the prayers of a distant day,
than his body by the aliment of a distant day.
But there is one motive to the duty in question,
far more constraining to the true believer than all
others that can be named; more imperious than any
argument on its utility, than any convictions of its
efficacy, even than any experience of its consolations.
Prayer is the command of God; the plain, positive,
repeated injunction of the Most High, who declares,
“He will be inquired of.” This is enough to secure
the obedience of the Christian, even though a promise
were not, as it always is, attached to the command.
But in this case, to our unspeakable comfort, the
promise is as clear as the precept; “Ask, and ye
shall receive ;-Seek, and ye shall find;—Knock,



DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER. 327
and it shall be opened unto you.” This is encou-
ragement enough for the plain Christian. As to the
manner in which prayer is made to coincide with the
general scheme of God's plan in the government of
human affairs; how God has left himself at liberty
to reconcile our prayer with his own predetermined
will, the Christian does not very critically examine,
his precise and immediate duty being to pray, and
not to examine; and probably this being among the
“secret things which belong to God,” and not to
us, it will lie hidden among those numberless mys-
teries which we shall not fully understand till faith is
lost in sight.
In the mean time it is enough for the humble be-
liever to be assured, that the Judge of all the earth
is doing right: it is enough for him to be assured in
that word of God “which cannot lie,” of numberless
actual instances of the efficacy of prayer in obtaining
blessings and averting calamities, both national and
individual : it is enough for him to be convinced
experimentally, by that internal evidence which is
erhaps paramount to all other evidence, the comfort
e himself has received from prayer when all other
comforts have failed : and above all, to end with
the same motive with which we began, the only
motive indeed which he requires for the performance
of any duty, it is motive enough for him, that
thus saith the Lord. For when a serious Christian
has once got a plain unequivocal command from his
Maker on any point, he never suspends his obedience
while he is amusing himself with looking about for
subordinate motives of action. Instead of curiously.
analysing the nature of the duty, he considers how
he shall best fulfil it: for on these points at least it
may be said without controversy, that “the ignorant

328 DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER,
(and here who is not ignorant?) have nothing to do
with the law but to obey it.”
Others there are, who, perhaps not controverting
any of these premises, yet neglect to build practical
consequences on the admission of them; who neither
denying the duty nor the efficacy of prayer, yet go
on to live either in the irregular observance or the
total neglect of it, as appetite, or pleasure, or busi-
ness, or humour, may happen to predominate; and
who, by living almost without prayer, may be said
“to live almost without God in the world.” To
such we can only say, that they little know what
they lose. The time is hastening on when they will
look upon those blessings as invaluable, which now
they think not worth asking for; when they will
bitterly regret the absence of those means and oppor-
tunities which now they either neglect or despise.
“O that they were wise ! that they understood this?
that they would consider their latter end ?"
There are again others, who it is to be feared,
having once lived in the habit of prayer, yet not
having been well grounded in those principles of
faith and repentance on which genuine prayer is
built, have by degrees totally discontinued it. “They
do not find,” say they, “that their affairs prosper
the better or the worse; or perhaps they were unsuc-
cessful in their affairs even before they dropt the
practice, and so had no encouragement to go on.”
They do not know that they had no encouragement;
they do not know how much worse their affairs might
have gone on, had they discontinued it sooner, or
how their prayers helped to retard their ruin. Or
they do not know that perhaps “they asked amiss,”
or that, if they had obtained what they asked, they
might have been far more unhappy. For a true

DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER. 329
believer never “restrains prayer,” because he is not
certain he obtains every individual request; for he
is persuaded that God, in compassion to our igno-
rance, sometimes in great mercy withholds what we
desire, and often disappoints his most favoured chil-
dren by giving them, not what they ask, but what
he knows is really good for them. The froward
child, as a pious prelate* observes, cries for the
shining blade, which the tender parent withholds,
knowing it would cut his fingers.
Thus to persevere when we have not the encou-
ragement of visible success, is an evidence of tried
faith. Of this holy perseverance Job was a noble
instance. Defeat ...! disappointment rather stimu-
lated than stopped his prayers. Though in a vehe-
ment strain of passionate eloquence he exclaims, “I
cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud,
but there is no judgment:” yet so persuaded was he
notwithstanding of the duty of continuing this holy
importunity, that he persisted against all human
hope, till he attained to that exalted pitch of un-
shaken faith, by which he was enabled to break out
into that sublime apostrophe, “Though he slay me,
I will trust in him l’’
But may we not say that there is a considerable
class, who not only bring none of the objections
which we have stated against the use of prayer; who
are so far from rejecting, that they are exact and
regular in the performance of it; who yet take it up
on as low ground as is consistent with their ideas of
their own safety; who, while they consider prayer
as an indispensable form, believe nothing of that
change of heart and of those holy tempers which it is
intended to produce? Many who yet adhere scrupu-
lously to the letter, are so far from entering into the
* * Bishop Hall. .

330 DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER.
spirit of this duty, that they are strongly inclined to
suspect those of hypocrisy who adopt the true scrip-
tural views of prayer. Nay, as even the Bible may
be so wrested as to be made to speak almost any
language in support of almost any opinion, these
ersons lay hold on Scripture itself to bear them out
in their own slight views of this duty; and they pro-
fess to borrow from thence the ground of that censure
which they cast on the more serious Christians.
Among the many passages which have been made to
convey a meaning foreign to its original design, none
has been seized upon with more avidity by such per-
sons than the pointed censures of our Saviour on
those “who for a pretence make long prayers;”
as well as on those “who use vain repetitions,
and think they shall be heard for much speaking.”
Now the things here intended to be reproved, were
the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and the ignorance of
the heathen, together with the error of all those who
depended on the success of their prayers, while they
imitated the deceit of the one or the folly of the other.
But our Saviour never meant those severe reprehen-
sions should cool or abridge the devotion of pious
Christians, to which they do not at all apply.
More or fewer words, however, so little constitute
the true value of prayer, that there is no doubt but
one of the most affecting specimens on record is the
short petition of the Publican; full fraught as it is
with that spirit of contrition and self-abasement
which is the very principle and soul of prayer. And
this specimen perhaps is the best model for that sud-
den lifting up of the heart which we call ejaculation.
But I doubt, in general, whether these few hasty
words to which these frugal petitioners would stint
the scanty devotions of others and themselves, will
be always found ample enough to satisfy the humble

DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER. 3.31
penitent, who, being a sinner, has much to con-
fess; who, hoping he is a pardoned sinner, has much
to acknowledge. Such a one perhaps cannot always
pour out the fulness of his soul within the prescribed
abridgments. Even the sincerest Christian, when
he wishes to find his heart warm, has often to lament
its coldness. Though he feel that he has received
much, and has therefore much to be thankful for,
yet he is not able at once to bring his wayward spirit
into such a posture as shall fit it for the solemn busi-
ness; for such a one has not merely his form to
repeat, but he has his tempers to reduce to order,
his affections to excite, and his peace to make. His
thoughts may be realizing the sarcasm of the prophet
on the Idol Baal, “they may be gone a journey,”
and must be recalled; his heart perhaps “sleepeth,
and must be awaked.” A devout supplicant too will
labour to affect and warm his mind with a sense of
the great and gracious attributes of God, in imitation
of the holy men of old. Like Jehoshaphat, he will
sometimes enumerate “the power, and the might,
and the mercies of the Most High,” in order to stir
up the sentiments of awe, and gratitude, and love,
and humility in his own soul”. He has the example
of his Saviour, whose heart dilated with the expres-
sion of the same holy affections. “I thank thee, O
Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” A heart thus
animated, thus inflamed with divine love, cannot
always scrupulously limit itself to the mere business
of prayer, if I may so speak. It cannot content
itself with merely spreading out its own necessities,
but expands in contemplating the perfections of Him
to whom he is addressing them. The humble sup-
plicant, though he be no longer governed by a love
of the world, yet grieves to find that he cannot totally
& * 2 Chron. xx. 5, 6.


332 DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAY ER.
exclude it from his thoughts. Though he has on the
whole a deep sense of his own wants, and of God’s
abundant i. to supply them, yet when he most
wishes to be rejoicing in those strong motives for
love and gratitude, alas! even then he has to mourn
his worldliness, his insensibility, his deadness. He
has to deplore the littleness and vanity of the objects
which are even then drawing away his heart from his
Redeemer. The best Christian is but too liable,
during the temptations of the day, to be ensnared by
“the lust of the eye, and the pride of life,” and is
not always brought without effort to reflect that he is
but dust and ashes. How can even good persons,
who are just come perhaps from listening to the
flattery of their fellow worms, acknowledge before
God, without any preparation of the heart, that they
are miserable sinners? They require a little time,
to impress on their own souls the truth of that solemn
confession of sin they are making to Him, without
which brevity and not length might constitute hypo-
crisy. Even the sincerely pious have in prayer
grievous wanderings to lament, from which others
mistakingly suppose the advanced Christian to be
exempt. Such wanderings that, as an old divine
has observed, it would exceedingly humble a good
man, could he, after he had prayed, be made to see
his prayers written down, with exact interlineations
of all the vain and impertinent thoughts which had
thrust themselves in amongst them. So that such a
one will indeed, from a sense of these distractions,
feel deep occasion with the prophet to ask forgive-
ness for “the iniquity of his holy things:” and would
find cause enough for humiliation every night, had
he to lament the sins of his prayers only.
We know that such a brief petition as “Lord, help
my unbelief,” if the supplicant be in so happy a

z DUTY AND EFFIcacy of PRAYER. 333.
frame, and the prayer be darted with such strong
faith that his very soul mounts with the petition, may
suffice to draw down a blessing which may be with-
held from the more prolix petitioner: yet, if by
prayer we do not mean a mere form of words, whe-
ther they be long or short; if the true definition of
prayer be, that it is the desire of the heart; if it be
that secret communion between God and the soul
which is the very breath and being of religion : then
is the Scripture so far from suggesting that short
measure of which it is accused, that it expressly says,
“Pray without ceasing:”—“Pray evermore:”—“I
will that men pray everywhere:”—“Continue instant
in prayer.” .
If such “repetitions” as these objectors reprobate,
stir up desires as yet unawakened, or protract affec-
tions already excited, for “vain repetitions” are
such as awaken or express no new desire, and serve
no religious purpose, then are “repetitions” not to
be condemned. And if it be true that our Saviour
gave the warning against “long prayers” in the sense
these objectors allege; if he gave the caution against
vain repetitions in the sense these believe; then he
broke his own rule in both instances : for once, we
are told, “he continued all night in prayer to God.”
And again, in the most awful crisis of his life, it is
expressly said, “He prayed the third time, using the
same words*.” .
But as it is the effect of prayer to expand the affec-
tions as well as to sanctify them, the benevolent Chris-
tian is not satisfied to commend himself alone to the
divine favour. The heart which is full of the love of
God will overflow with love to its neighbour. All
that are near to himself he wishes to bring near to
God. He will bring the whole human race as objects
ź. > * Matt. xxvi. 44. . & . . …;

334 DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER,
of the divine compassion, but especially the faithful
followers of Jesus Christ. Religion makes a man so
liberal of soul, that he cannot endure to restrict any
thing, much less divine mercies, to himself: he there-
fore spiritualizes the social affections, by adding inter-
cessory to personal prayer: for he knows, that peti-
tioning for others is one of the best methods of
exercising and enlarging our own love and charity,
even if it were not to draw down those blessings which
are promised to them. It is unnecessary to produce
any of the numberless instances with which Scripture
abounds, on the efficacy of intercession: I shall con-
fine myself to a few observations on the benefits it
brings to him who offers it. When we pray for the
objects of our dearest regard, it purifies passion, and
exalts love into religion: when we pray for those
with whom we have worldly intercourse, it smooths
down the swellings of envy, and bids the tumults
of anger and ambition subside: when we pray for
our country, it sanctifies patriotism : when we pray
for those in authority, it adds a divine motive to
human obedience: when we pray for our enemies,
it softens the savageness of war, and mollifies hatred
into tenderness and sorrow. And we can best learn,
nay, we can only learn, the difficult duty of forgiving
those who have offended us, when we bring ourselves
to pray for them to Him whom we ourselves daily
offend. When those who are the faithful followers
of the same Divine Master pray for each other, the
reciprocal intercession best realizes that beautiful
idea of “the communion of saints.” .
Some are for confining their intercessions only to
the good, as if none but persons of merit were entitled
to our prayers. Merit! who has it? Desert! who
can plead it? in the sight of God, I mean. Who.
shall bring his own piety, or the piety of others, in


DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER. 335
the way of claim, before a Being of such transcendent
holiness, that “the heavens are not clean in his
sight?” And if we wait for perfect holiness as a
preliminary to prayer, when shall such erring crea-
tures pray at all to HIM “who chargeth the Angels
with folly!”
In closing this little work with the subject of inter-
cessory prayer, may the Author be allowed to avail
herself of the feeling it suggests to her own heart?
And while she earnestly implores that Being, who
can make the meanest of his creatures instrumental
to his glory, to bless this humble attempt to those for
whom it was written, may she, without presumption,
entreat that this work of Christian charity may be
reciprocal, and that those who peruse these pages,
may put up a petition for her, that in the great day
to which we are all hastening, she may not be found
to have suggested to others what she herself did not
believe, or to have recommended what she did not
desire to practise In the awful day of everlasting
decision, may both the reader and the writer be
pardoned and accepted, “not for any works of
righteousness which they have done,” but through
the merits of the GREAT INTERcEssoR.
THE END,
CHIS WICK :
PRINTED BY C. WHITTINGHAM.



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