Part 8 (2/2)

Let us be assured that our young hbors, and to themselves, and they will then, but not till then, be true Christians In being true Christians they will be dutiful sons, faithful husbands, affectionate fathers, gentlecitizens, true statesood soldiers, and valiant defenders of the country, chaste and sober companions, the joy of God and of society

But, above all, let us be assured that our daughters are educated as women, not as men Women are not needed as men; they are needed as women: to do, not what men can do as well as they, but what men cannot do Woman was created to be a wife and a mother; that is her destiny To that destiny all her instincts point, and for it nature has specially qualified her Her proper sphere is home, and her proper function is the care of the household, to e a family, to take care of children, and attend to their early training For this she is endoith patience, endurance, passive courage, quick sensibilities, a syreat executive and administrative ability She was born to be a queen in her own household, and ht, and happy

There it is that she is really great, noble, alreater part of our Public School-girls are not fit to be good wives, et what they owe to their husbands, are capricious and vain, often light and frivolous, extravagant and foolish, bent on having their oay, though ruinous to the fas, blandishet it They hold obedience in horror, and seek only to govern their husbands and all around thelect, but disdain, the retired and simple domestic virtues, and scorn to be tied down to the ery, they call it--of e to be relieved of household cares, especially of child-bearing, and of the duty of bringing up children They repress their maternal instincts, and the horrible crime of infanticide before birth now becomes so fearfully prevalent, that the American nation is actually threatened with extinction If they condescend to have one or two children, they set them an ill exaets to honor and obey her husband, and alants to have her oith hi their oith her, and usually succeed

As housekeepers they devote their ti their life in luxurious ease, in reading senti the caprices of fashi+on; thus they let the household go to ruin, and the honest earnings of the husband becomes speedily insufficient for the family expenses, and he is sorely tempted to provide for theh it may be carried on for a while without detection, is sure to end in disgrace and ruin at last

There is indeed nothing which ood, or makes them tremble for the future of the country, than the way in which our daughters are educated in the Public Schools When they become wives and mothers, they have none of the habits or character necessary to govern their household and to train their children properly Hence arise that growing neglect or laxity of family discipline; that insubordination, that lawlessness, and precocious depravity of Young America; that almost total lack of filial reverence and obedience with the children of this generation Exceptions there happily are; but the nu or discipline at hoe, and their evil exaht up The country is no better than the town As a rule, children are no longer subjected to a steady and firm, but mild and judicious, discipline, or trained to habits of filial love, respect and obedience These habits are acquired only in a school of obedience, made pleasant and cheerful by a mother's playful se specially to the mother The education of children may be said to comhts and sounds of the world about thehts and sounds the words and example of the

Of all lessons, those learned at the knees of a good mother sink the deepest into the est Many of the noblest and best men that ever lived, and adorned and benefited the world, have declared that, under God, they owed everything that was good and useful in their lives to the love of virtue, and truthfulness, and piety, and the fear of God instilled into their hearts by the lips of a pious mother It is her special function to plant and develop in their young and impressible minds the seeds of virtue, love, reverence, and obedience, and to train her daughters, by precept and exaive them splendid establishments, but to be, in due time, modest and affectionate wives, tender and judicious mothers, and prudent and careful housekeepers This the father cannot do; and his interference, except by wise counsel, and to honor and sustain theThe task devolves specially on the mother; for it demands the sympathy with children which is peculiar to the fe maternal instinct implanted by nature, and directed by a judicious education, that blending of love and authority, sentiment and reason, sweetness and power, so characteristic of the noble and true-hearted woman, and which so admirably fit her to be loved and honored, only less than adored, in her own household But though the duties and responsibilities of mothers in this matter are the heaviest and most important for themselves, and for the society of all others, yet there are none which aretheir domestic duties and the proper farowing lawlessness and crienerated, by the false notions of freedom and equality so widely entertained It is only by home discipline, and the early habits of reverence and obedience to which our children are trained, that the license the government tolerates, and the courts hardly dare attempt to restrain, can be counteracted, and the co community

Why is it that the very bases of society have been sapped, and the conditions of good government despised, or denounced under the name of despotism? Why is it that social and political life is poisoned in its source, and the blood of the nation corrupted? It is because wives and mothers have failed in their domestic duties, and the discipline of their families And they have failed in this, because the State did not, and could not, bring them up to it

The evils we have to cure cannot be reached by the reading of the Bible, by Sunday-school training, nor by any possible political or legislative action Men or woreat extent, must be supplied by woman's action and influence, we not only concede, but claim But it is only as woman, as wife, as mother, that she must do the work: as woman, to soften asperities, and to refine what else were coarse and brutal; as wife, to sustain with her affection the resolutions and just aspirations of her husband, and render hoht and cheerful--”the sweetest place on earth”; as hteous aspirations of her sons--to train and form her children to early habits of piety, filial love and reverence, of obedience to God's law, and respect for authority

There are, in our day, comparatively few mothers who are qualified to do this But what they can and should do is to see that they have a better and h systehters--a system of education that specially adapts them to the destiny of their sex, and prepares them to find their happiness in their hohest aher, nobler, andof the coress of the huistrate or legislator We would not have their generous instincts repressed, their quick sensibilities blunted, or their warraces and accolected; but ould have them all directed and harious culture We would have them, whether rich or poor, trained to find the centre of their affections in their hoht, radiant and happy Whether destined to grace a e of poverty, this should be the ideal aimed at in their education They should be trained to love ho its cares and perfor its duties, however arduous or painful

There are, as I have said, cohters such an education, especially in our own country; for comparatively few have received such an education themselves, or are able fully to appreciate its importance They can find little help in the fashi+onable boarding-schools for finishi+ng young ladies; and, in general, these schools only aggravate the evils to be cured The best and the only respectable schools for daughters that we have in the country are the conventual schools taught by women consecrated to God, and specially devoted to the work of education These schools, indeed, are not always all that ious cannot, certainly, supply the place of theso necessary, and which can be given only by o as far as is possible in reeneration oftheir follies and vain aainst any of them, the conventual schools, even as they are, it hters in the land, and, upon the whole, worthy of the high praise and liberal patronage their devotedness and disinterestedness secure theraduates weak and sickly sentimentalists They develop in their pupils a cheerful and healthy tone, and a high sense of duty; give theious instruction; cultivate successfully their ious affections; refine theirthat life is serious, life is earnest, and resolved always to act under a deep sense of their personal responsibilities; meet whateverand repining

The editor of the _New York Herald_ prefaces an account of a Catholic acade remarks:

”However divided public opinion ious schools--no matter what differences in opinionor discouraging purely sectarian systems of education--there can be but little opposition froiven by many thousand families, that these devoted women--the Sisters of the Catholic Church--are the best teachers of young girls, the safest instructors in this age of loose, worldly, and ralandism Those matters of education which reat object of irl committed to their care a true woman, are imbued with those principles which have made our mothers our pride and boast Those of us who cavil at Catholic pretensions, sneer at their assue that the Sisters are far ahead and above any organization of the sort of which Protestantisle-mindedness, the calm trust in a Power unseen, the humility of manner and rare unselfishness which characterize the Sisters, has no parallel in any organization of the reformed faith The war placed the claims of the Sisters of Charity fairly before the country; but these Sisters of the different branches have, in peace, 'victories no less renowned than in war' Educating the poor children, directing the untutoredthe beacon of intellectual advance before the fe theood and noble work”

We do not disguise the fact that our hopes for the future, in great measure, rest on these conventual schools; if they are raduates increase, and enter upon the serious duties of life, the ideal of feher and broader; a nobler class of wives and ion will become a real power in the Republic; the moral tone of the community, and the standard of private and public radually be acquired the virtues that will enable us, as a people, to escape the dangers that now threaten us, and to save the Republic as well as our own souls

Sectarians, indeed, declaiainst these schools, and denounce thehters ”Romanists”; but Satan probably dislikes ”Romanism” even more than sectarians do, and is much more in earnest to suppress or ruin our conventual schools, in which he is not held in e them At any rate, our countrylory to profess, that they cannot call it by its true na these schools, to establish better schools for daughters of their own TheseSisters and Nuns, who have no new theories and schemes of social reform, and upon whohty contempt, as weak, spiritless, and narrow- infinitely nity, and for the political and social, as well as for the ress of the country, than the Worand conventions, brilliant speeches, stirring lectures and spirited journals By way of parenthesis, we dare tell these woy, philanthropy, and brilliant eloquence in agitating for feibility, which, if conceded, would only make matters worse, that, if they have the real interest of their sex or of the community at heart, they should turn their attention to the education of daughters for their special functions, not as men, but as women, who are one day to be wives and mothers--woman's true destiny

Undoubtedly the special destiny of women is to be wives and mothers; but we are told that there are thousands of women who are not and cannot be wives and mothers In the older and more densely settled States of the Union, there is an excess of feet husbands if they would Yet, we repeat, woman was created to be a wife and a mother, and the woman that is not fails of her special destiny

Under the Christian dispensation honorable provision has been e class of women who, either froinity, which was regarded as a reproach, became an honor under the Christian law Those women who do not wish, or cannot be wives and mothers in the natural order, may be both, in the spiritual order, if they will, and are properly educated for it They can be wedded to the Holy Spirit, and be the ins and devout ho consecrated theious orders, are both, and fulfil in the spiritual order their proper destiny We hold theh honor, because they become mothers to the motherless, to the poor, to the forsaken, to the honorant, nurse the sick, help the helpless, tend the aged, catch the last breath of the dying, pray for the unbelieving and the cold-hearted, and elevate thethe pathway of life They have no need to be idle or useless In a world of so , there is alork enough for them to do; it is on the poor and motherless, the destitute and the downtrodden, the sinful and the sorrowful, the aged and infirlected, that, under proper direction, they can lavish the wealth of their affections, the tenderness of their hearts, and the ardor of their charity, and find true joy and happiness in so doing, ah to acquire lory, that will shi+ne brighter and brighter forever They thus are dear to God, dear to the Church, and dear to Christian society They are to be envied, not pitied It is only because you have lost faith in Christ, faith in the holy Catholic Church, and have becoross in your minds, of ”earth earthy,” that you deplore the lot of the women who cannot, in the natural order, find husbands, and call them, contemptuously, ”old maids”--a miserable relic of heathenis to hold out to old maids But Jesus Christ has provided for them better than you are able to understand

The Father of our country, then, was right when he said, in his farewell address to the Aion and morality are the ”props” of society, and the ”pillars” of the State Let us, then, rest assured that the best way to check the torrent of infidelity and ie of our Republic, is to infuse good morals by the most powerful of all means--_Christian Education_

FOOTNOTES:

[F] Prof Aggassiz

CHAPTER XII

THE DENOMINATIONAL SYSTEM ALONE SATISFIES THE WANTS OF ALL, AND CAN SAVE THE REPUBLIC

We live in a tie, and intense worldliness

”Men run to and fro and knowledge is increased” Would that we could feel that there is an increase also in integrity and virtue, and respect for Religion We all know that it is not so So far as we can forious condition of men at any particular period in the world's history, we may doubt whether the words of the Apostle St Paul, describing what shall come to pass in what he calls ”the last days,” ever touched any people so closely as they do those of our times and country ”Men,” he says, ”shall be lovers of thehty, proud, blaspherateful, wicked, without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors, stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasure, more than lovers of God”

Well erous times” When the moral atmosphere we breathe is so full of what the Scriptures call ”the spirit of this world,” we can only hope to escape its corrupting influences by doing all in our power to diffuse Christian principles aeneration, by eeneral system It is this: ”Let the State aid, but not direct, a systelish education, confined to all those whose circumstances are liious denoe of conducting their own schools, subject only to general uniform inspection and examination on the part of the State, and have their proportion of the school-moneys” The wealthy classes will kno to take care of the education of their own children, as they do of their family affairs in other matters

The advocates of this ”Denominational System” yield to none in their endeavors to secure to _all_ the children within the State a good, solid, and practical education, according to the religious convictions and circumstances of all This, they claim, is not, and cannot be furnished on the present plan They do not, as falsely charged, desire to distract or divide, or introduce sectarianism into the Public Schools; on the contrary, they _wish_ to satisfy conscience by yielding _to all others what they clai the present syste in a form of sectarianism worse than any yet professed: to wit, ”Indifferentism”