ACCOMPLISHMENTS
IT is superfluous to decorate woman highly for early youth; youth is itself a decoration. We mistakingly adorn most that part of life which least requires it, and neglect to provide for that which will want it most. It is for that sober period, when life has lost its freshness, the passions their intenseness, and the spirits their hilarity, that we should be preparing. Our wisdom would be, to anticipate the wants of middle life, to lay in a store of notions, ideas, principles, and habits, which may preserve, or transfer to the mind, that affection which was at first partly attracted by the person. But to add a vacant mind to a form which has ceased to please, to provide no subsidiary aid to beauty while it lasts, and especially no substitute when it is departed, is to render life comfortless, and marriage dreary.
Let such women as are disposed to be vain of their comparatively petty attainments look up with admiration to those two contemporary shining examples, the venerable Elizabeth Carter and the blooming Elizabeth Smith. I knew them both, and to know was to revere them. In them let our young ladies contemplate profound and various learning, chastised by true Christian humility. In them let them venerate acquirements which would have been distinguished in a university, meekly softened and beautifully shaded by the gentle exertion of every domestic virtue, by the unaffected exercise of every feminine employment.
HUMAN applause is, by a worldly man, reckoned not only among the luxuries of life, but among articles of the first necessity. An undue desire to obtain it has certainly its foundation in vanity, and it is one of our grand errors to reckon vanity a trivial fault. An over-estimation of character, and an anxious wish to conciliate all suffrages, is an infirmity from which even worthy men are not exempt; nay, it is a weakness from which, if they are not governed by a strict religious principle, worthy men are in most danger. Reputation being in itself so very desirable a good, those who actually possess it, and in some sense deserve to possess it, are apt to make it their standard, and to rest in it as their supreme aim and end.
We are as fond of the applauses even of the upper gallery as the dramatic poet. Like him, we affect to despise the mob, considered as individual judges, yet, as a mass, we court their applause. Like him, we feel strengthened by the number of voices in our favor, and are less anxious about the goodness of the work than about the loudness of the acclamation. Success is merit in the eyes of both.
IF we resolve never to read a work of instruction because the author had faults, Lord Bacon’s inexhaustible mine of intellectual wealth might still have been unexplored. Luther, the man to whom the Protestant world owes more than to any other uninspired being, might remain unread, because he is said to have wanted the meekness of Melanchthon. Even the divine instructions in the book of Ecclesiastes would have been written in vain.
Evil in the man would not invalidate the truths he has been teaching. Balaam, though a bad man, prophesied truly. Erasmus, whose piety is almost as doubtful as his wit and learning were unquestionable, yet, by throwing both into the right scale, was a valuable instrument in effecting the great work in which he was concerned. Erasmus powerfully assisted the Reformation, though it is not quite so clear that the Reformation essentially benefited Erasmus.
If, then, the writer advances unanswerable arguments in the cause of truth, if he impressively enforces its practical importance, his character, even if defective, should not invalidate his reasoning. Though we allow that even to the reader it is far more satisfactory when the life illustrates the writing, yet we must never bring the conduct of the man as any infallible test of the truth of his doctrine. Allow this, and the reverse of the proposition will be pleaded against us. Take the opposite case. Do we ever produce certain moral qualities which Hobbes, Bayle, Hume, and other sober skeptics possessed, as arguments for adopting their opinions? Do we infer, as a necessary consequence, that their sentiments are sound, because their lives were not flagitious?
It would be the highest degree of unfairness to prefer a charge of injustice, hypocrisy, or inconsistency against an author, because his life, in some respects, falls short of the strictness of his writings. It is a disparity almost inseparable from this state of frail mortality. He may have fallen into errors, and yet deserve to have no heavier charges brought against him than he has brought against others. Infirmity of temper, inequality of mind, a heart, though fearing to offend God, yet not sufficiently dead to the world,—these are the lingering effects of sin imperfectly subdued, in a heart which yet longs, prays, and labors, for a complete deliverance from all its corruptions.
Of two evils, had not an author better be tedious than superficial? From an overflowing vessel you may gather more, indeed, than you want, but from an empty one you can gather nothing.
THE SACRED volume was composed by a vast variety of writers, men of every different rank and condition, of every diversity of character and turn of mind; the monarch and the plebeian, the illiterate and the learned, the foremost in talent and the moderately gifted in natural advantages, the historian and the legislator, the orator and the poet,—each had his immediate vocation, each his peculiar province: some prophets, some apostles, some evangelists, living in ages remote from each other, under different modes of civil government, under different dispensations of the Divine economy, filling a period of time which reached from the first dawn of heavenly light to its meridian radiance.
The Old Testament and the New, the Law and the Gospel; the prophets predicting events, and the evangelists recording them; the doctrinal yet didactic epistolary writers, and he who closed the sacred canon in the apocalyptic vision;—all these furnished their respective portions, and yet all tally with a dovetailed correspondence: all the different materials are joined with a completeness the most satisfactory, with an agreement the most incontrovertible.
This instance of uniformity without design, of agreement without contrivance; this consistency maintained through a long series of ages, without a possibility of the ordinary methods for conducting such a plan; these unparalleled congruities, these unexampled coincidences—form altogether a species of evidence, of which there is no other instance in the history of all the other books in the world.
Our Divine Teacher does not say Read, but Search the Scriptures. The doctrines of the Bible are of everlasting interest. All the great objects of history lose their value, as through the lapse of time they recede further from us; but those of the book of God are commensurate with the immortality of our nature. All existing circumstances, as they relate to this world merely, lose their importance as they lose their novelty; they even melt in air, as they pass before us.
While we are discussing events, they cease to be; while we are criticizing customs, they become obsolete; while we are adopting fashions, they vanish; while we are condemning or defending parties, they change sides. While we are contemplating feuds, opposing factions, or deploring revolutions, they are extinct. Of created things, mutability is their character at the best, brevity their duration at the longest. But “the word of the Lord endureth forever.”
The Bible never warns us against imaginary evils, nor courts us to imaginary good.
Young persons should read the Scriptures, unaltered, unmutilated, unabridged. If parents do not make a point of this, the peculiarities of sacred language will become really obsolete to the next generation.
FOR those who have much business and little time, it is a great and necessary art to learn to extract the essential spirit of an author from the body of his work; to know how to seize on the vital parts; to discern where his strength lies; and to separate it from those portions of the work which are superfluous, collateral, or merely ornamental.
In avoiding books which excite the passions, it would seem strange to include even some devotional works. Yet such as merely kindle warm feelings are not always the safest. Let us rather prefer those which, while they tend to raise a devotional spirit, awaken the affections without disordering them; which, while they elevate the desires, purify them; which show us our own nature, and lay open its corruptions. Such as show us the malignity of sin, the deceitfulness of our hearts, the feebleness of our best resolutions; such as teach us to pull off the mask from the fairest appearance, and discover every hiding place where some lurking evil would conceal itself; such as show us not what we appear to others, but what we really are; such as, co-operating with our interior feelings, and showing us our natural state, point out our absolute need of a Redeemer, lead us to seek to him for pardon from a conviction that there is no other refuge, no other salvation. Let us be conversant with such writings as teach us that while we long to obtain the remission of our transgressions, we must not desire the remission of our duties. Let us seek for such a Savior as will not only deliver us from the punishment of sin, but from the domination also.
The “Arabian Nights” and other Oriental books of fable, though loose and faulty in many respects, yet have always a reference to the religion of the country. Nothing is introduced against the law of Mahomet; nothing subversive of the opinions of a Mussulman. I do not quarrel with books for having no religion, but for having a false religion. A book which in nothing opposes the principles of the Bible I would be far from calling a bad book, though the Bible was never named in it.
It is not sufficient to avoid reading pernicious books, care should be taken to prevent their circulation. This duty, however, it is to be feared, is too little regarded even by those who are sincere in religious profession.
When the French Revolution had brought to light the fatal consequences of some of Voltaire’s writings, some half-scrupulous persons, no longer willing to afford his fourscore volumes a place in their library, sold them at a low price. This measure, though it “stayed the plague” in their own houses, caused the infection to spread wider. The Ephesian magicians made no such compromise; they burned theirs.
We have too many elementary books. They are read too much and too long. The youthful mind, which was formerly sick from inanition, is now in danger from a plethora. Much, however, will depend on capacity and disposition. A child of slower parts may be indulged till nine years old with books which a lively genius will look down upon at seven. A girl of talents will read. To her, no excitement is wanting. The natural appetite is a sufficient incentive. The less brilliant child requires the allurement of lighter books. She wants encouragement as much as the other requires restraint.
MOST of the calamities of human life originate with ourselves. Even sickness, shame, pain, and death were not originally the infliction of God. But out of many evils, whether sent us by his immediate hand, or brought on us by our own faults, much eventual good is educed by him who, by turning our suffering to our benefit, repairs by grace the evils produced by sin. Without being the author of evil, the bare suggestion of which is blasphemy, he converts it to his own glory, by causing the effects of it to promote our good. If the virtuous suffer from the crimes of the wicked, it is because their imperfect goodness stood in need of chastisement. Even the wicked, who are suffering by their own sins, or the sins of each other, are sometimes brought back to God by mutual injuries, the sense of which awakens them to compunction for their own offenses. God makes use of the faults even of good men to show them their own insufficiency, to abase them in their own eyes, to cure them of vanity and self-dependence. He makes use of their smaller failings to set them on the watch against great ones; of their imperfections, to put them on their guard against sins; of their faults of inadvertence, to increase their dread of such as are willful. This superinduced vigilance teaches them to fear all the resemblances, and to shun all the approaches to sin. It is a salutary fear, which keeps them from using all the liberty they have; it leads them to avoid, not only whatever is decidedly wrong, but to stop short of what is doubtful, to keep clear of what is suspicious; well knowing the thin partitions which separate danger from destruction. It teaches them to watch the buddings and germinations of evil, to anticipate the pernicious fruit in the opening blossom.
As no calamity is too great for the power of Christianity to mitigate, so none is too small to experience its beneficial results.
CHRISTIANITY is not merely a religion of authority; the soundest reason embraces most confidently what the most explicit revelation has taught, and the deepest inquirer is usually the most convinced Christian. The reason of philosophy is a disputing reason, that of Christianity an obeying reason. The glory of the pagan religion consisted in virtuous sentiments; the glory of the Christian in the pardon and the subjugation of sin. The humble Christian may say with one of the ancient fathers, “I will not glory because I am righteous, but because I am redeemed.”
Christianity has no by-laws, no particular exemptions, no individual immunities. That there is no appropriate way of attaining salvation for a prince or a philosopher is probably one reason why greatness and wisdom have so often rejected it. But if rank cannot plead its privileges, genius cannot claim its distinctions. That Christianity did not owe its success to the arts of rhetoric, or the sophistry of the schools, but that God intended by it “to make foolish the wisdom of this world,” actually explains why the “disputers of this world” have always been its enemies.
Christianity was a second creation. It completed the first order of things, and introduced a new one of its own, not subversive, but perfective of the original. It produced an entire revolution in the condition of men, and accomplished a change in the state of the world, which all its confederated power, wit, and philosophy, not only could not effect, but could not even conceive. It threw such a preponderating weight into the scale of morals, by the superinduction of the new principle of faith in a Redeemer, as rendered the hitherto insupportable trials of the afflicted comparatively light. It gave strength to weakness, spirit to action, motive to virtue, certainty to doubt, patience to suffering, light to darkness, life to death.
BUSINESS must have its period as well as devotion. We were sent into this world to act as well as to pray; active duties must be performed as well as devout exercises. Even relaxation must have its interval: only let us be careful that the indulgence of the one does not destroy the effect of the other; that our pleasures do not encroach on the time, or deaden the spirit of our devotions; let us be careful that our cares, occupations, and amusements, may be always such that we may not be afraid to implore the divine blessings on them; this is the criterion of their safety, and of our duty. Let us endeavor that in each, in all, one continually growing sentiment and feeling of loving, serving, and pleasing God maintain its predominant station in the heart.
WE often hear of the necessity of being qualified for the world; and this is the grand object in the education of our children, overlooking the difficult duty of qualifying them for retirement. But if part of the immense pains which are taken to fit them for the company of others were employed in fitting them for their own company, in teaching them the duties of solitude as well as of society, this earth would be a happier place than it is; a training suitable to a world of such brief duration would be a better preparatory study for a world which will have no end.
