To become unfaithful to their vocation is for women to suffer as many pangs as a limb which, through some accident, has been wrenched out of place. They are continually tormented by evil spirits, who have power over a soul that is out of its proper sphere. They are no longer under the protection of God, since they have withdrawn from His guidance, and voluntarily abandoned His watchful Providence. They fall often into grievous sins, because they are not sustained by the grace which belongs to the state in which God desires them to be. A woman, therefore, can never show her superior intellectual powers better than by cheerfully accepting the calling for which the Creator evidently intended her; that is, for _woman, wife, and mother_. CHAPTER VIII. EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM CONTINUED. Few questions affect so directly the welfare and interests of the people as the question of education; and assuredly, in this country, there is none of more moment as regards the well-being and permanence of our national institutions. These, our institutions, our prosperity and civilization, depend for their permanence and perpetuity, not so much on the culture of the arts, sciences, literature, or philosophy, as on the general diffusion of the salutary and vivifying principles of religion. History tells us in its every page, that the decline and downfall of nations have ever been caused by irreligion and immorality. Indeed, it is not the State that has made men free, nor can it, on its own professed origin, keep _itself_ or _them_ free. It has no mission to reform men or manners; its boasted material civilization is no civilization at all. For steam, railroads, telegraphs, printing, and in fact all the arts and natural sciences, have never civilized or converted one man, not even a naked savage, and never will. They are the results of civilization, and even then the least part. Nor are they adequate to maintain or preserve the State. What is called _material civilization_ is nothing else than _polished barbarism_,--a kind of monster, with the intelligence of a man, and the cruelty and instincts of a beast. It may flatter the vanity of modern nations to think they are superior to the ancients in scientific and industrial developments, but if they rely on this alone, they are greatly mistaken. I admit the superiority of the moderns, but not on this account. In the first place, many arts and products of head and hands have been lost, but even those that remain are the envy and despair of modern competitors. Besides, every age must be judged by comparison with its contemporaries. Yet they have fallen; and antiquarian travellers search in vain for the ruins of the proudest and greatest cities of the past. The nation and people--the most gallant and accomplished of all antiquity--who engraved their names on the imperishable fields of Platæa and Marathon, who conquered at Salamis, or died at Thermopylæ--that carried eloquence,