of soul of a noble motherhood. It has often been
remarked that great men have had great mothers.
I think experience and observation will bear out this
statement. Glance over the pages of history,
and eminent examples will rise up before the view.
Whence spring the Samuels and the Davids, whence a
Leonidas and a Markos Bozzaris, whence the Scipios
and the Gracchi, whence the Augustines and the Chrysostoms,
whence the Alfreds and the Gladstones, whence the
Washingtons and the Lincolns, whence the Seaburys and
the Doanes, and many another? Are they not all
hewn from the quarries of a noble motherhood?
Are they not sprung from the fountain of a womanhood
whose living streams are clear as crystal and sweet
and refreshing? The first Chavah, Eve, is rightly
styled the mother of all living; and a generation
or race of men to be living, active, noble in achievement,
distinguished in virtues, must issue from a well-spring
which vitalises and beautifies and magnifies the spirit
and the intellect, as Engannim waters her gardens,
and Engedi nourishes her acacias and lotus-plants,
and Enshemesh reflects the sun’s golden beams
the livelong day. But what, you ask, are the
exact teachings of the sage Confucius, who influences
Chinese society even to this day, with regard to woman?
Hear him: “Moreover, that you have not in
this life been born a male is owing to your amount
of wickedness, heaped up in a previous state of existence,
having been both deep and weighty; you would not then
desire to adorn virtue, to heap up good actions, and
learn to do well! So that you now have been hopelessly
born a female! And if you do not this second
time specially amend your faults, this amount of wickedness
of yours will be getting both deeper and weightier,
so that it is to be feared in the next state of existence,
even if you should wish for a male’s body, yet
it will be very difficult to get it.” Again
another saying of Confucius is: “You must
know that for a woman to be without talent is a virtue
on her part.” With such teaching then ever
before them, do you wonder that Chinese women do not
excel in virtue, and that they are the mothers of a
race of men who are practically like standing water
instead of a flowing fountain to refresh the waste
places of human life? The teachings of Mormonism
and Mohammedanism with regard to woman also degrade
her and rob her of the beautiful crown which her Maker
has put upon her head; and hence it is that such peoples
are not virile and progressive like the nations where
woman is looked upon as man’s helpmeet, where
she stands upon his right hand as a queen. The
Mormons are better in many respects than their faith;
and if the first generation was hardy and aggressive
and brave in subduing the desert and changing Rocky
Mountain wastes into a blooming garden, it was because
they had been trained in the school of Christianity
and had imbibed lessons of wisdom at the fountain
of a pure faith and inherited from Christian fathers
and mothers those qualities which are stamped on the