“Whenever an opportunity occurs, however, it is the duty of a young man to introduce topics of conversation which are decidedly favorable to mental and moral improvement.  Should he happen to be attending to the same study, or reading the same book with a female acquaintance, an excellent opportunity will be afforded for putting this rule in practice.

FEMALE QUALIFICATIONS FOR MARRIAGE.

“The highest as well as the noblest trait in female character, is love to God.  When we consider what are the tendencies of Christianity to elevate woman from the state of degradation to which she had, for ages, been subjected—­when we consider not only what it has done, but what it is destined yet to do for her advancement,—­it is impossible not to shrink from the presence of an impious, and above all an unprincipled atheistical female, as from an ungrateful and unnatural being.

“Man is under eternal obligations to Christianity and its Divine Author, undoubtedly; but woman seems to be more so.

“That charge against females which in the minds of some half-atheistical men is magnified into a stigma on Christianity itself, namely, that they are more apt to become religious than men; and that we find by far the greater part of professing Christians to be females, is in my own view one of the highest praises of the sex.  I rejoice that their hearts are more susceptible than ours, and that they do not war so strongly against that religion which their nature demands.  I have met with but one female, whom I knew to be an avowed atheist.

“Indeed there are very few men to be found, who are skeptical themselves, who do not prefer pious companions of the other sex.  I will not stop to adduce this as an evidence of the truth of our religion itself, and of its adaptation to the wants of the human race, for happily it does not need it.  Christianity is based on the most abundant evidence, of a character wholly unquestionable.  But this I do and will say, that to be consistent, young men of loose principles ought not to rail at females for their piety, and then whenever they seek for a constant friend, one whom they can love,—­for they never really love the abandoned—­always prefer, other things being equal, the society of the pious and the virtuous.

“Next on the list of particular qualifications in a female, for matrimonial life, I place COMMON SENSE.  In the view of some, it ought to precede moral excellence.  A person, it is said, who is deficient in common sense, is, in proportion to the imbecility, unfit for social life, and yet the same person might possess a kind of negative excellency, or perhaps even a species of piety.  This view appears to me, however, much more specious than sound.