Secondly, I think that they ought to have some such teaching about life and birth as that which I have already recommended for boys, that they may see how through the marital tie and the consequent rise of the parental relation, a world of blind mechanical force gradually developed into a world of life and beauty, and at last crowned itself with a conscious love in an indissoluble union, which makes marriage the very type of the union of the soul with God, of Christ with His Church.

Thirdly, they need to be taught that much in their own physical constitution, which they rebel against as handicapping them in the struggle of life, is Nature’s provision for them that no merely physical function should press upon them as we see it do in the animal creation at certain periods of the year, but that they should be free to serve God, whether in the married or in the unmarried state, in quietness and godly living.

Fourthly, above all they need definite teaching on the true nature, the sanctity, and the beauty of marriage.  It appears that the line of progress is always a spiral, and it would seem as if we were in the backward sweep of the spiral which looks like retrogression, but will doubtless bring us out further up in the end.  The masculine view that marriage is the one aim and end of a woman’s existence, adopted also by some careful mothers, is now exploded.  Young men are no longer led to look upon every girl that they meet as furtively, to use a vulgarism, “setting her cap for him,” and only too ready to fling herself at his feet.  So far so good.  But have we not suffered our girls to drift into the opposite extreme?  In the heyday of their bright young life, with so many new interests and amusements open to them, in the pride of their freedom and independence, they are no longer so inclined to marry, and are even apt to look down upon the married state.  They form so high an ideal of the man to whom they would surrender their independence—­an ideal which they fortunately do not apply to their fathers and brothers, whom they find it quite possible to love on a far lower and more human level—­that because a man does not fulfil this ideal, and is not a fairy prince dowered with every possible gift, they refuse men who, though not angels, would have made them happy as wife and mother.  Would not a little sound, sensible teaching be of great good here?  Could we not point out that, though in so vital and complex a union as the family there must be some seat of ultimate authority, some court of final appeal somewhere, and that the woman herself would not wish it to rest anywhere else than in the man, if she is to respect him; yet there is no subservience on the part of the wife in the obedience she renders, but rather in South’s grand words, “It is that of a queen to her king, who both owns a subjection and remains a majesty”?  Cannot we contend against this falsehood of the age which seems so to underlie our modern life, and which inclines us to