Now what is to be done to stop the poisoned source from which the diabolical spirit and the crimes of our country flow? A certain cla.s.s come forward and say, "Let the Bible be read in our Public Schools. The Bible is the grand source of religion and morality. The Bible alone, without note or comment, is the grand source of life and civilization."
Very well, let the Bible be admitted, but with the Bible you must send the key--the interpreter. And then, which of all the Bibles, and whom among the numerous sects, shall be sent?
To read the Bible, without note or comment, to young children, is to abandon them to dangerous speculation, or to leave them dry and barren of all Christian knowledge. In mixed schools there is no other resource, because it is impossible to make any comment upon any doctrinal teaching of Christ and His Apostles, without trenching upon the conscientious opinions of some one or other of the listeners. "The Father and I are One." "The Father is greater than I." Here at once we have the Unitarian and the Trinitarian at a dead-lock! "This is My Body." "It is the spirit which quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing." Here we have the primitive Lutheran, who believed in the real presence (consubstantially), and his Calvinistic coadjutor in reform, squarely at issue! "Unless you be born again of water and the Holy Ghost," etc. Here we have the Baptist and the Quaker very seriously divided in opinion.
Nevertheless, widely as they differ the one from the other, there is a fundamental a.s.similation between all the Protestant sects which may render it possible for them to unite in one educational organization; and yet we find many of the most enlightened and earnest among the Protestant clergy of America now zealously advocating the denominational system, such as we find it in the European countries. They believe that education should be distinctly based upon doctrinal religion, and they are liberal enough to insist that, by natural right as well as by the const.i.tutional guarantees of our free country, no doctrine adverse to the faith of a parent may lawfully be forced or surrept.i.tiously imposed upon his child. It is well known, however, that between the Catholic faith and all Protestant creeds, there is a gulf which cannot be bridged over. It would, therefore, be simply impossible to adopt any religious teaching whatever in mixed schools, without at once interfering with Catholic conscience. No such teaching is attempted, as a general rule, we believe, in the Public Schools of the United States, and hence we have only a vague announcement of moral precepts, the utter futility and barrenness of which must be evident to every one. Catholics, agreeing with very many enlightened and zealous Protestants, believe that secular education, administered without religion, is not only vain, but exceedingly pernicious; that it is fast undermining the Christian faith of this nation; that it is rapidly filling the land with rationalism; that it is destroying the authority of the Holy Scriptures; that it is educating men who prefix "Reverend" and affix "D.D." to their names, the more effectually to preach covert infidelity and immorality to Christian congregations; that, instead of the saving morality of the Gospel of Christ, which rests upon revealed mysteries and supernatural gifts, it is offering us that same old array of the natural virtues or qualities which helped, for a while, like rotten pillars, to prop up the heathen nations of old. It must, then, be evident to every man of common sense that the reading of the Bible alone, though it be the Word of G.o.d, will _not_ counterbalance the results of Pagan education. Indeed the reading of the Bible alone is by no means an adequate remedy to stem the torrent of the evils in our country. What impurities have not been committed under the sanction of those words of the Lord, "Increase and multiply"! A host of sectarians, following in the wake of the Anabaptists of Munster, in Germany, have, on the authority of those words, dared to legitimate polygamy. On such misapplication of a text from the Gospel, Luther, Bucerus, and Melanchthon have permitted Philip, the Landgrave of Hesse, to have two wives.
In the name of the Bible, of the Word of G.o.d, Luther at first incited the German peasantry to revolt against their rulers, and then, frightened at his own work, he persuaded the princes to ma.s.sacre the peasants. John of Leyden found, in his studies of the Bible, that he should marry eleven women at once. Herman felt himself clearly designated, in the Bible, as the Envoy of the Lord. Nicholas learned from it that there was no necessity of anything connected with faith, and that we must live in sin in order that grace may abound. Sympson pretends to find in the Scriptures an ordination that men should walk in the streets stark naked, to teach the rich a lesson that they must divest themselves of everything. Richard Hill justified, with the Bible in hand, adultery and manslaughter as deeds never failing to work out some good purpose, especially when joined to incest, in which case more saints are added to the earth and more blessed to the heavens. Even on the avowal of honest Protestants, no crime or abomination has ever failed to find its pretended justification in some scriptural text.
What, then, must we think of the reading of the Bible, when its reading, without note or comment, leads to such consequences? Indeed what has been said on the evil consequences of the Public School system on society proves sufficiently that the reading of the Bible is no adequate means at all to stem the torrent of crimes in our country. Nowhere has the Bible been read more frequently, during school-hours, than in the Public Schools of the New England States, and yet nowhere have the results of these schools proved more fatal than in these very States.
The reading of the Bible alone, therefore, though it be the Word of G.o.d, will _not_ counterbalance the results of Pagan education.
There are others who maintain "that religious instruction should be left to parents."
Now it is not only idle, but cruel, to say that the place and provision for such Christian instruction and formation is under the roof of the parents" home; that the best school is the family. This is indeed true of the early formation by affection, influence, example, by which fathers and mothers fashion the first outlines of character, and mature them while the education of their children is advancing. None have reminded parents of this more faithfully than the Pastors of the Church.
But to say that fathers and mothers are to educate their children, and that their home is to be the school of Christian instruction, catechetical teaching, formation of conscience, preparation for sacraments, and the like, is either the shallow talk of men who know nothing of Christian education, or care nothing for it, or a heartless mockery of our poor. The rich, the refined, the educated, whose time is their own, do not educate their own children. They systematically send them to schools and colleges, or pay for tutors or governesses under their own roof. They wisely shrink from a work for which, if they have the time, they seldom have the acquirements or the gift, or the method of the perseverance or the patience. And if this be, as it is, universally true of those who are the most competent, and the most provided with all the means and opportunities for the work, now is it not hardness of heart, or want of common sense, to say that the children of the poor are to learn reading, and writing, and summing, indeed, at school, but that their Christian teaching and formation must be provided at home? The workingmen of these countries are at labor from twilight to twilight. Their wives have the burden of the whole family; the poor mother is alone both the head and the servant of the whole house. When is she to teach, and train, and shape, and fashion the characters, hearts, consciences, intellects of the children? Is it to be done in the midst of a day"s work, or in the weariness after the day"s work is done?
And are they competent to do what the mother of the rich cannot do?
Broken with cares, wearied by work, suffering from poverty, often fainting from sickness because worn out with all these burdens, how shall the father or mother of a family, huddled into a single room, do what the rich and the educated, in their s.p.a.cious houses, and with abundant leisure, never dream of attempting?
Moreover, as I have shown in a preceding chapter, it must be admitted that a mother not educated in religious and moral principles cannot inform the mind and heart of the young child; this fully disposes of the argument that domestic teaching alone will supply what is acknowledged to be wanting in the "Public Schools." It is to be hoped that we shall hear no more of this heartless talk.
"Well, then," some will say, "let our children receive, _in Sunday-schools_, that amount of religious culture and instruction which the State says shall not be given in the school, and which is believed to be so essential in the education of the young."
Now it is in vain to open our Sunday-schools and expect to cure, on one day of the week, or rather a few hours of that day (when this even depends, in a great part, on the weather), the work not only of the other six, but the fruits of years of an ill-directed and G.o.dless State education. The Sunday-schools are nothing but so many "_Poor-man"s soothing plasters_" on Christian consciences. The want of religious training for six days in the week, added to the positive knowledge of error on all religious subjects which youths may acquire during that time, will more than counterbalance the best-directed efforts of parents and the clergy to give any definite knowledge on the truths of revelation. The question whether or not religious education is compatible with Public School education, has been tried in all English-speaking countries, and in parts of Germany, with this result: that, a cla.s.s, the Public School children are without any adequate religious knowledge or training. The clergy may have Sunday-schools, as they have, in all their churches; but what can children learn, in a few hours, of a subject which took three years from the Saviour of man to teach even to the apostles? And then the apostles, after three years of instruction from the lips of Christ, did not understand the Christian religion; they were slow to understand, and, after His resurrection, Christ upbraided them with incredulity and hardness of heart. Even the children of the Public Schools, as far as experience goes, lose all taste for the study of religion, which is developed among the children of Christian schools without any effort. Sunday-schools, at best, may train children to be Christians _one day_ in the week, and Pagans six days. School-days over, the usual result will be _Pagans_ all the seven days of the week.
If it is in vain to say, "Let the Bible be read in our Public Schools,"
or "let our children receive religious instruction from their parents, or in Sunday-schools, in order to arrest the fast-spreading crimes of the land," it is still more in vain to say, "Let the Legislature be called upon."
It cannot be denied that the higher culture of America has, from the time of the introduction of the present Public School system, ceased to be Christian. What is the natural harvest of this sowing? It is that we have already a generation of men, thousands of whom are not fit to be the heads and fathers of families. But this is not all; we have also ever so many guides of public opinion, ever so many ministers of public affairs, and ever so many lawgivers of the United States, who are infidels and profligates; who see _only themselves_ in all they do, who desire only to fret out their little hour on the political stage _with a sharp eye to their own interests_, without the smallest desire to secure the Republic against future disasters--who cannot, or _will_ not, see the disastrous storms the ship of the Republic will soon have to encounter. What good, then, could be expected from calling upon the Legislature? It would only show its impotency, or, what is more, its own corruption. The executive is unable, suspected, or often found in the "_ring_," or, to use a common expression, "Justice stinks." The judiciary, by its very nature, always timid, and too often time-serving, can do nothing. Well, then, the press: what shall be said of it? Only this: that it would be unreasonable to expect it to possess the supernatural powers of healing such a mult.i.tude of foul lepers, or to be able at any time to lift itself far above the level of the general average of the age and country.
What, then, must be done to save society from the perils that menace it--to stem the tide that bids fair to sweep away, eventually, even civilization itself? We must proceed on a true principle. When we proceed on a true principle, the more logically and completely we carry it out the better; but when we start with a false principle, the more logical we are, and the farther we push it, the worse. Our consistency increases, instead of diminishing, the evils we would cure. The reformers started wrong. They would reform the Church by placing her under human control. Their successors have in each generation found they did not go far enough, and have, each in its turn, struggled to push it farther and farther, till they find themselves without any church life, without faith, without religion, and beginning to doubt if there be even a G.o.d. So, in the question of education, the upholders of the Public School system have pushed the false principle "that all individual, domestic, social, and political evils are due to ignorance, and can only be prevented by high intellectual culture," till they have nearly taught away all religious belief and morality, have well-nigh abolished the family which is the social unit, and find that the evils they pretended to prevent, and the wrongs they sought to redress, are fast increasing.
We must, then, proceed on a true principle in trying to remedy the profligacy that disgraces so many of our crowded centres, and the demoralization that is fast gangrening even our rural districts.
One thousand eight hundred and forty-odd years ago, you might have observed a poor, meanly-clad wanderer, wending his steps on the Appian way to the Capitol of the world,--the wealthy, magnificent, and unG.o.dly city of Rome. He has pa.s.sed its gates, and threads his way un.o.bserved through its populous streets. On every side he beholds gorgeous palaces raised at the expense of downtrodden nationalities; stately temples dedicated to as many false G.o.ds as nations were congregated in Rome; public baths and amphitheatres devoted to pleasure and to cruelty; statues, monuments, and triumphal arches raised to the memory of blood-thirsty tyrants. He pa.s.ses warriors and senators, beggars and cripples, effeminate and dissolute women, gladiators and slaves, merchants and statesmen, orators and philosophers;--all cla.s.ses, all ranks, all conditions of men of every language and color under the sun.
Everywhere he sees a maddening race for pleasure; everywhere the impress of luxury, everywhere the full growth of crime, side by side with indescribable suffering, diabolical cruelty and barbarity. And this poor, meanly-clad wanderer was St. Peter. Oh! how the n.o.ble heart of the fisherman of Galilee must have bled, when he observed the empire of Satan so supreme--when he witnessed the shocking licentiousness of the temple and the homestead; when he saw the fearful degradation of woman groaning under the load of her own infamy; when he saw the heart-rending inhumanity which slew the innocent babes and threw them into the Tiber; when he saw how prisoners of war, slaves, and soldiers were trained for b.l.o.o.d.y fights, and entered the arena of the amphitheatre, and strove whole days to strangle one another, for the special entertainment of the Roman people. When Peter came to Rome, that city was the condensation of all the idolatry, all the oppression, all the injustice, all the immoralities of the world; for the world was centred in Rome.
Here, then, were evils to be remedied similar to those of our day and country. Pagan philosophers, poets and orators, had tried their best to cure these evils and to elevate mankind, but they had tried in vain.
What they were unable to bring about, St. Peter accomplished by preaching to the Roman people Christianity--the religion of Jesus Christ--which imparts to the mind infallibly the light of truth, and lays down for the will authoritatively the unchangeable principles of supernatural morality, true prosperity, true happiness, and peace on earth and for eternity. Indeed, it is a well-known fact that the Capitoline temple, and with it the many shrines of idolatry, the golden house of Nero, and with it Roman excess and Roman cruelty, the throne of the Caesars, and with it Roman oppression and Roman injustice, gave way and disappeared in proportion as the light of Christianity was infused into that foul ma.s.s, into that rotten society, centred in Rome. It was this Christian religion that changed a sinful people into saints, and so many holy inhabitants of heaven. And what the blessings of the religion of Christ brought about in Rome, they bring about wherever they are diffused. Hence all true lovers of the country tell us that there is but one remedy for the cure of the diabolical spirit and the crimes of our country--it is to teach our children the truth and blessings of the Christian religion. It is the Christian religion that infallibly and authoritatively teaches the duties of civil authorities towards their subjects, of husbands towards their wives, of parents towards their children, of masters towards their servants, of pastors towards their flocks, of the faithful towards their pastors, of servants towards their masters, of wives towards their husbands, of children towards their parents, of subjects towards their lawfully const.i.tuted civil authorities, of all men towards G.o.d, their Supreme Master, and just Rewarder of good and evil. Moreover, it is the Christian religion alone that affords men the means to obtain G.o.d"s grace, which enlightens the mind to see the beauty of virtue, inflames the heart with love for it, and inclines the will to practise it with perseverance. If we then wish to be sure of having a virtuous and virile people, we must Christianize our youth, especially during their school hours; we must bring up our children in a religious atmosphere. I have already remarked that religion may be compared to leaven. As leaven must be diffused throughout the entire ma.s.s in order to produce its effects, so the Christian religion must be thoroughly diffused throughout the child"s entire education, in order to be solid and effective.
Not a moment of the hours of school should be left without religious influence. It is the constant breathing of the air that preserves our bodily life, and it is the constant dwelling in a religious atmosphere that preserves the life of the youthful soul. Religion is not a study, or an exercise that may be restricted to a certain place, or a certain hour. It is a faith and a law which ought to be felt everywhere, and which in this manner alone can exercise all its beneficent influence upon our minds and lives. It will never do to suffer the child to devote six days in the week to worldly science, and to depend on Sunday for a religious training. This would be like reserving the salt which should season our food during the week, and taking it all in a dose on Sunday.
By such a system we may make expert shop-boys, first-rate accountants, shrewd and thriving "earth-worms"; but it would be presumption to think of thus making good citizens, still less virtuous Christians.
Let us be a.s.sured that our young men know their duties to G.o.d, to their neighbors, 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, gentle masters, honest servants, law-loving and law-abiding citizens, true statesmen, good soldiers, and valiant defenders of the country, chaste and sober companions, the joy of G.o.d and of society.
But, above all, let us be a.s.sured 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 manage a family, to take care of children, and attend to their early training. For this she is endowed with patience, endurance, pa.s.sive courage, quick sensibilities, a sympathetic nature, and great executive and administrative ability. She was born to be a queen in her own household, and make home cheerful, bright, and happy.
There it is that she is really great, n.o.ble, almost divine.
Now the general complaint is that the greater part of our Public School-girls are not fit to be good wives, mothers and housekeepers. As wives, they forget what they owe to their husbands, are capricious and vain, often light and frivolous, extravagant and foolish, bent on having their own way, though ruinous to the family, and generally contriving, by coaxings, blandishments, or poutings, to get it. They hold obedience in horror, and seek only to govern their husbands and all around them.
As mothers, they not only neglect, but disdain, the retired and simple domestic virtues, and scorn to be tied down to the modest but essential duties--the drudgery, they call it--of mothers; they manage 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 example; for if children see that their mother, as a wife, forgets to honor and obey her husband, and always wants to have her own way with him, they soon lose all respect for her, and insist on having their own way with her, and usually succeed.
As housekeepers they devote their time to pleasure or amus.e.m.e.nt, wasting their life in luxurious ease, in reading sentimental or sensational novels, or in following the caprices of fashion; 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 them by rash speculation or by fraud, which, though 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 more grieves the wise and good, 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 number of children that grow up without any proper training or discipline at home is fearfully large, and their evil example corrupts not a few of those who are well brought 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 smile and a mother"s love.
The care and management of children during their early years belong specially to the mother. The education of children may be said to commence from the moment they open their eyes and ears to the sights and sounds of the world about them; and of these sights and sounds the words and example of the mother are the most impressive and the most enduring.
Of all lessons, those learned at the knees of a good mother sink the deepest into the mind and heart, and last the longest. Many of the n.o.blest and best men that ever lived, and adorned and benefited the world, have declared that, under G.o.d, they owed everything that was good and useful in their lives to the love of virtue, and truthfulness, and piety, and the fear of G.o.d 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 example, not to catch husbands that will give 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 the mother, will generally be worse than nothing. The task devolves specially on the mother; for it demands the sympathy with children which is peculiar to the female heart, the strong 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 n.o.ble 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 are more neglected.
Now wives and mothers, by neglecting their domestic duties and the proper family discipline, fail to offer the necessary resistance to growing lawlessness and crime, aggravated, if not generated, 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 community made a law-loving and a law-abiding 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 women cannot be legislated into virtue. That the remedy, to a great 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 coa.r.s.e and brutal; as wife, to sustain with her affection the resolutions and just aspirations of her husband, and render home bright and cheerful--"the sweetest place on earth"; as mother, to direct and inspire the n.o.ble and righteous aspirations of her sons--to train and form her children to early habits of piety, filial love and reverence, of obedience to G.o.d"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 more thorough system of education for their sons, but especially for their daughters--a system of education that specially adapts them to the destiny of their s.e.x, and prepares them to find their happiness in their homes, and the satisfaction of their highest ambition in discharging its manifold duties, so much higher, n.o.bler, and more essential to the virtue and well-being of the community, the nation, the society, and to the life and progress of the human race, than any which devolve on king or emperor, magistrate or legislator. We would not have their generous instincts repressed, their quick sensibilities blunted, or their warm, sympathetic nature chilled, nor even the lighter graces and accomplishments neglected; but we would have them all directed and harmonized by solid intellectual instruction, and moral and religious culture. We would have them, whether rich or poor, trained to find the centre of their affections in their home; their chief ambition in making it cheerful, bright, radiant and happy. Whether destined to grace a magnificent palace, or to adorn the humble cottage of poverty, this should be the ideal aimed at in their education. They should be trained to love home, and to find their pleasure in sharing its cares and performing its duties, however arduous or painful.
There are, as I have said, comparatively few mothers qualified to give their daughters 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 fashionable boarding-schools for finishing 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 G.o.d, and specially devoted to the work of education. These schools, indeed, are not always all that might be wished. The religious cannot, certainly, supply the place of the mother in giving their pupils that practical home-training so necessary, and which can be given only by mothers who have themselves been properly educated; but they go as far as is possible in remedying the defects of the present generation of mothers, and in counteracting their follies and vain ambitions. With all the faults that can be alleged against any of them, the conventual schools, even as they are, it must be conceded, are infinitely the best schools for daughters in the land, and, upon the whole, worthy of the high praise and liberal patronage their devotedness and disinterestedness secure them. We have seldom found their graduates weak and sickly sentimentalists. They develop in their pupils a cheerful and healthy tone, and a high sense of duty; give them solid moral, religious instruction; cultivate successfully their moral and religious affections; refine their manners, purify their tastes, and send them out feeling that life is serious, life is earnest, and resolved always to act under a deep sense of their personal responsibilities; meet whatever may be their lot with brave hearts, and without murmuring and repining.
The editor of the _New York Herald_ prefaces an account of a Catholic academy with the following remarks:
"However divided public opinion may be as to secular and religious schools--no matter what differences in opinion may exist in the community as to the policy of aiding or discouraging purely sectarian systems of education--there can be but little opposition from any quarter to the verdict of experience given 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 rampant New Englandism. Those matters of education which make the lady, in their hands, subordinate to the great object of making every girl 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 a.s.sumption, and ridicule their observances, must acknowledge that the Sisters are far ahead and above any organization of the sort of which Protestantism can boast. The self-sacrifice, the devotion, the single-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 untutored mind of the youthful alien savage in our midst, or holding the beacon of intellectual advancement bright and burning before the female youth of the country, and beckoning them to advance, they are ever doing a good and n.o.ble work."
We do not disguise the fact that our hopes for the future, in great measure, rest on these conventual schools; if they are multiplied, and the number of their graduates increase, and enter upon the serious duties of life, the ideal of female education will become higher and broader; a n.o.bler cla.s.s of wives and mothers will exert a healthy and purifying influence; religion will become a real power in the Republic; the moral tone of the community, and the standard of private and public morality, will be elevated; and thus may gradually 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, declaim against these schools, and denounce them as a subtle device of Satan to make their daughters "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 much honor, than he is to sustain and encourage them. At any rate, our countrymen who have such a horror of the religion it is our glory to profess, that they cannot call it by its true name, would do well, before denouncing these schools, to establish better schools for daughters of their own. These modest, retiring Sisters and Nuns, who have no new theories and schemes of social reform, and upon whom a certain cla.s.s of women look down with haughty contempt, as weak, spiritless, and narrow-minded, have chosen the better part, and are doing infinitely more to raise woman to her true dignity, and for the political and social, as well as for the moral and religious, progress of the country, than the Woman"s Rights party, with all their grand conventions, brilliant speeches, stirring lectures and spirited journals. By way of parenthesis, we dare tell these women who are wasting so much time, energy, philanthropy, and brilliant eloquence in agitating for female suffrage and eligibility, which, if conceded, would only make matters worse, that, if they have the real interest of their s.e.x 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 females over males, and all cannot get 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 made for that large cla.s.s of women who, either from preference, or from any other cause, do not marry. Virginity, 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 mothers of minds and hearts. The holy virgins and devout widows who consecrated themselves to G.o.d, in or out of religious orders, are both, and fulfil in the spiritual order their proper destiny. We hold them in high honor, because they become mothers to the motherless, to the poor, to the forsaken, to the homeless. They instruct the ignorant, 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 the moral tone of society, and shed a cheering radiance along the pathway of life. They have no need to be idle or useless. In a world of so much sin and sorrow, sickness and suffering, there is always work enough for them to do; it is on the poor and motherless, the dest.i.tute and the downtrodden, the sinful and the sorrowful, the aged and infirm, the ignorant and the neglected, 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, ample scope for woman"s n.o.blest ambition, and chances enough to acquire merit in the sight of heaven, and true glory, that will shine brighter and brighter forever. They thus are dear to G.o.d, 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 become gross 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 heathenism or Protestantism, neither of which have anything 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 American nation, that religion and morality are the "props" of society, and the "pillars" of the State. Let us, then, rest a.s.sured that the best way to check the torrent of infidelity and immorality, to avert impending evils, to prepare the golden age of our Republic, is to infuse good morals by the most powerful of all means--_Christian Education_.
FOOTNOTES:
[F] Prof. Agga.s.siz.
CHAPTER XII.
THE DENOMINATIONAL SYSTEM ALONE SATISFIES THE WANTS OF ALL, AND CAN SAVE THE REPUBLIC.
We live in a time of great activity and change, 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 form accurate ideas of the social and religious 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 pa.s.s 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 themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemous, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors, stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasure, more than lovers of G.o.d."
Well may the Apostle speak of such times as "dangerous 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 among the rising generation, by means of truly Christian schools.
The arrangements can be made without disturbing the general system. It is this: "Let the State aid, but not direct, a system of plain English education, confined to all those whose circ.u.mstances are limited, or who are left dest.i.tute, or orphans. Let all religious denominations, when they desire it, have the privilege 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 cla.s.ses will know how 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 circ.u.mstances 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 claim for themselves_, and cannot help denouncing the present system as practically resulting in a form of sectarianism worse than any yet professed: to wit, "Indifferentism."