The True Woman: A Series of Discourses, to Which Is Added Woman vs. BallotFulton, Justin D. (Justin Dewey)
Religion
The True Woman: A Series of Discourses, to Which Is Added Woman vs. Ballot
Fulton, Justin D. (Justin Dewey)
Husband and wife; Women -- Religious aspects -- Christianity; Women -- Suffrage
"Sit side by side full sunned in all their powers
Dispensing harvests;
Self-reverent each and reverencing each
Distinct in individualities;
But like each other even as those who love,
Then comes the statelier Eden back to man.
For it is possible in wedded pair a harmony
More grateful than harmonious sound to the ear."
Said Count Zinzendorf, in regard to his wife, "Twenty-five years'
experience has shown me that just the helpmeet whom I love is the
only one that could suit my vocation. Who else could have so carried
through my family affairs? Who lived so spotlessly before the world?
Who so wisely aided me in my rejection of a dry morality? Who so
clearly set aside Pharisaism, which, as years passed, threatened
to creep in among us? Who so deeply discerned as to the spirits of
delusion which sought to bewilder us? Who would have governed my
whole economy so wisely, richly, and hospitably, when circumstances
commanded? Who have taken indifferently the part of servant or
mistress without, on the one side, affecting an especial spirituality;
on the other, being sullied by any worldly pride? Who, in a community
where all ranks are eager to be on a level, would, from wise and real
causes, have known how to maintain inward and outward distinctions?
Who, without a murmur, has seen her husband encounter such dangers by
land and sea? Who undertaken with him and sustained such astonishing
pilgrimages? Who, amid such difficulties, would have always held _up
her head and supported me_? Who found such vast sums of money and
acquitted them on her own credit? And, finally, who, of all human
beings, could so well understand and interpret to others my inner and
outer being, as this one, of such nobleness in her way of thinking,
such great intellectual capacity, and so free from the theological
perplexities that enveloped me?" Let any one peruse, with all
intentness, the lineaments of this portrait, and he will be impressed
with the fact, that it is possible for woman to fulfil her mission,
and become a true helpmeet. This woman was not a copy. She was not
a cipher. She was an original; and while she loved and honored her
husband, she thought for herself on all subjects, with so much
intelligence, that he could and did look on her as a sister and friend
also.
The third and highest grade of marriage union is the religious,
which may be expressed "as a pilgrimage round a common shrine." This
includes the other,--home sympathies and household wisdom,--for these
pilgrims know how to assist each other along the dusty way.
These facts should be remembered in her education. The beautiful forms
which everywhere exist in nature should be impressed upon the female
mind, and the treasures of elegant literature should be opened to her
in no stinted measure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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