Frederic Rowland Marvin

“ To those who have long lamented the prevailing tendency in Christian churches to deny to women the honors and responsibilities of sacred offices and duties, such a sermon as "Consecrated Womanhood," written by an American clergyman is like a breadth of fresh air in Neapolitan church-buildings that have never known the beauty of sunlight, and the atmospheres of which have grown heavy through the centuries with the oppressive weight of suffocating incense. ”

“ Passion dies, novelty disappears, youth fades, and unless love be founded upon an intelligent and mutual esteem, shall it not also crumble? It has been said, "one cannot be at once lover and friend," but you may be sure one [Pg 35] will not long remain the former who is not as well the latter. We need to cultivate friendship. Passion will come and go like the shadows of clouds over the smooth surface of a lake, and no love is abiding without friendship. He was right who exclaimed, "They who are joined by love without friendship, walk on gunpowder with lighted torches in their hands!" ”

“ If a woman may tend as a nurse, why may she not practice as a physician? If a woman has a calling to medicine, divinity, law, literature, art, mechanics, instruction or trade, what law of God prohibits? But is it wise [Pg 21] to open our colleges and schools of science to women? Why not? Are they not capable of receiving a liberal education? The part woman has played in ancient and modern history, in the arts and sciences, as well as in political life, constitutes not only an answer to the question, but a positive demand for admission to every department of knowledge and industry. ”

“ Men who advocate the subjection of women plant themselves upon the Bible and say to us, "You radicals want to turn things [Pg 19] upside down. You have no respect for the settled order of society. You would destroy the divine harmony Heaven has established. You set aside the teaching of the great Apostle who said, 'I suffer not a woman to usurp authority.'" But the Bible is always on the side of progress. Jesus and his immediate followers were innovators, agitators and leaders of public thought and morals. ”

“ Not fine manners in the ball-room, but a genuine and gracious dignity seasoned with womanly kindness, creates the true lady. Few think of the Bible as a book of social and domestic [Pg 16] etiquette, and yet such it is. Let a man follow its precepts, and he shall become not only a good man, but a gentleman; and whatever woman will conform to the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount shall find her life steadily developing into all that makes a beautiful character and fine address.
And there is the other Deborah, a prophetess and judge in Israel—the woman divinely illuminated. ”

“ Miriam, Huldah, Deborah and Anna were not of Lord Lytton's opinion. They joined in one temperament silk and steel, and added to the sweetness of womanhood the strength of manhood. Keen and flexible as the Damascus blade, they were not wanting in the gentleness and modesty which are a woman's crown [Pg 15] of honor. I open Exodus and read a song from Miriam, the prophetess, that is older than the most ancient pagan lyric, and that will continue when English literature is forgotten. And there is Deborah, the nurse of Rebecca; how tenderly the Bible records her humble but faithful service. ”

“ The young man will not be guilty of an act tainted with meanness or baseness lest the maiden he loves blot his image from the [Pg 36] pure heaven of her heart; let the young husband and wife cherish the same fear and honor, and they shall grow nearer and dearer as the years silver their brows. The happiness of marriage depends upon the very highest and most delicate of reserves, the most noble and careful speech, the best and most honorable perception; upon a kindness greater than that of a mother to her child.
The supreme glory of consecrated womanhood lies in the consecration itself. ”

“ Who shall measure the power and authority of woman in the worlds of art, literature and social life? And yet, great as is her influence in these, it is even greater in spiritual matters. Woman turns through a natural instinct to the field of religious usefulness, and Renan is not mistaken when he tells us that she has a special tendency to "long after the infinite." ”

“ The success of every church depends in large measure upon the consecration of its [Pg 28] women. I never knew a church in which there were not more women than men; they constitute the majority in every religious meeting; and it would seem as if fifty women go to heaven for every man who makes even a moderate effort to get there. It was the service of faithful and active women that saved Israel in the hour of national peril. "When the men of Israel," to employ the language of another, "bowed in helplessness before Pharaoh, two women spurned his edicts and refused his behests. ”

“ Women can better afford to remain out of the pulpit than the pulpit can afford to exclude them. When the Christ shall return and His kingdom be established forever, the nations shall hear once more the old Easter sermon first preached by a woman, "He is risen from the dead!" ”

“ The opinion prevails that Providence intended woman to occupy a place of humble dependence; that she is inferior in the composition of her mind and fragile in physical [Pg 18] constitution; that she is called of God to lead a life of entire self-abnegation; that she was created as an everlasting sacrifice to man's pleasure and ambition; and that it is her peculiar mission to be wife and mother to an extent to which it is not man's mission to be husband and father. ”

“ It is no trivial office to guide and direct the development of a child's life. The nurse is second mother, and her influence is sometimes, perhaps often, deathless as the soul she instructs. The Bible teaches respect and consideration for those who are socially beneath us as servants, nurses, and dependent children of humble toil. The true lady takes her politeness into the kitchen; it is her ability to do so that makes her the lady she is. ”

“ In mixed schools you will find, as a general rule, more girls than boys, and they are found in examination to carry off the greatest proportion of prizes. Wherever co-education has been honestly and competently tried, girls have shown themselves the intellectual peers of their brothers. They have more than held their own. There have been women every [Pg 22] whit as well educated as the most learned men of their day, and much better educated than the majority of men in any age. When Elizabeth was Queen of England the languages were an essential element of a lady's education. ”

“ The Jews quoted the Old Testament against them as Southern preachers quoted the New Testament against us when we demanded the abolition of slavery. We must remember that it is the mission of the Bible to lead men and not to follow them. ”

“ How many wedded lives come to failure through ignorance. Men and women assume the most sacred responsibilities without preparation, and with no knowledge of themselves nor of each other. We say in the marriage service, "What God hath joined together let not man put asunder;" ”

“ That society is most happy which conforms most strictly to the order of nature as indicated in the family relation, where brother and sister mutually elevate and sustain each other.... A school for young men becomes a community in itself, with its own standard of morality and its laws of honor; but in a college for both sexes the student will find a public sentiment not so lenient as that of a community of associates needing the same indulgence. ”

“ The preacher opens his discourse with the statement that "the Bible honored woman when every other book was blind to the true dignity of her character." Scholars differ, and little is certain when we go back far [Pg 8] enough in the ancient writings of our race. But I think there can be no doubt that in all the earliest literatures of which we have knowledge, the thought of the world was more favorable to the development of womanly independence, than in later compositions, especially such as have come from patristic and monastic sources. ”

“ Thy celestial inspiration will dominate the remainder of my life, public as well as private, and preside over my progress towards perfection, purifying my sentiments, ennobling my thoughts, and elevating my conduct. ”

“ It permeates society, circumscribing her influence, dispossessing her of individuality, and preventing her from the full and free exercise of whatever taste, talent or genius God has given her. It is in the church, forbidding her to enter the pulpit, restraining her from the important offices of deacon and trustee, and, in some churches, denying her even a voice in the ordinary government of the society. ”

“ To woman was intrusted the charge of providing for the perils and wants of the wilderness; and in the hour of triumph woman's voice was loudest in the acclaim of joy that ascended to heaven from an emancipated nation." The same womanly courage, patience, love, tact and wisdom must be the hope and strength of modern Israel.
The men who have accomplished most owe [Pg 29] much to woman's influence. ”

“ Subject girls to the same requirements you exact of boys in colleges, but in all justice and fairness set before them the same rewards. The best educators tell us that some of the finest mathematical students are girls. ”

“ On the contrary, the duties of the class-room are often far less fatiguing than those of household labor. [A] I believe in co-education. Boys and girls should be brought up together so far as possible. The influence they exert over each other is in itself a great civilizer. The separation of the sexes in church, state, family and school has always been productive of evil, and of evil only.
[Pg 24]
"The woman's cause is man's ”