Let not this dangerous risk be yours.  While yet young—­young in habits, in energies, in affections, devote all to the service of the best of masters.  “The work of righteousness,” even now, through difficulties, self-denial, and anxieties, will be “peace, and the effect thereof quietness and assurance for ever."[102]

FOOTNOTES: 

[89] 1 Cor. viii. 13.

[90] Matt. xviii. 6, 7.

[91] Milnes.

[92] Keble.

[93] French.

[94] James i. 12.

[95] 1 John v. 19.

[96] Matt. xviii. 6, 7.

[97] Gen. iv. 9.

[98] Rev. xi. 15.

[99] Matt. v. 8.

[100] Col. i. 12.

[101] Jer. ii. 19.

[102] Isa. xxxii. 19.

THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN ON SOCIETY.[103]

“Whatever may be the customs and laws of a country, women always give the tone to morals.  Whether slaves or free, they reign, because their empire is that of the affections.  This influence, however, is more or less salutary, according to the degree of esteem in which they are held:—­they make men what they are.  It seems as though Nature had made man’s intellect depend upon their dignity, as she has made his happiness depend upon their virtue.  This, then, is the law of eternal justice,—­man cannot degrade woman without himself falling into degradation:  he cannot elevate her without at the same time elevating himself.  Let us cast our eyes over the globe!  Let us observe those two great divisions of the human race, the East and the West.  Half the old world remains in a state of inanity, under the oppression of a rude civilization:  the women there are slaves; the other advances in equalization and intelligence:  the women there are free and honoured.

“If we wish, then, to know the political and moral condition of a state, we must ask what rank women hold in it.  Their influence embraces the whole life.  A wife,—­a mother,—­two magical words, comprising the sweetest sources of man’s felicity.  Theirs is the reign of beauty, of love, of reason.  Always a reign!  A man takes counsel with his wife; he obeys his mother; he obeys her long after she has ceased to live, and the ideas which he has received from her become principles stronger even than his passions.

“The reality of the power is not disputed; but it may be objected that it is confined in its operation to the family circle:  as if the aggregate of families did not constitute the nation!  The man carries with him to the forum the notions which the woman has discussed with him by the domestic hearth.  His strength there realizes what her gentle insinuations inspired.  It is sometimes urged as matter of complaint that the business of women is confined to the domestic arrangements of the household:  and it is not recollected that from the household of every citizen issue forth the errors and prejudices which govern the world!