Justin D. Fulton

“ This work of charity,—of giving up for others, of denying self for another's advantage, of abandoning comfort to assuage another's grief,—so wonderfully illustrated by a Florence Nightingale, and by women quite as worthy in our own land, whose presence in the hospitals was like a benediction from God, and whose presence in our homes, in our churches, beside the sad and sorrowing everywhere, is proof that woman has a mission which she alone can fill, and a work which she alone can perform. "And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, and the greatest of these is charity." ”

“ The life of a woman who does not care to be a man's toy or ornament, but desires rather to be his helpmeet,—supplying all he needs, as he supplies all she needs,—is but the continuance, the flowing out and flowing on of man's higher life, into the flowers of love, which decorate the home, and make that chosen retreat the very portals of heaven.
As man feels that in woman he finds the complement to himself, and almost his other self, woman finds in man the same complement to herself, and recognizes in him the ruler of her life, her friend, her lover ”

“ The inflow of the divine life,
"'Bright effluence of bright essence increate,'
"blends the man nature and the woman nature into an absolute oneness, which shapes itself ever thereafter into the only perfect symmetry. Thus alone comes humanity in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Thus marriage forever tends to its own annihilation,—not the annihilation of a stream swallowed up in desert sands, but of a river broadening to the boundless sea. ”

“ It is only when a man ceases to be a man, and becomes a beast, that he can consent, even in thought, to despoil woman of her virtue; to trample upon the sacred instincts of her nobler nature. A real woman will delight to make herself worthy of love. In the advancement of her mind, quite as much as in the adornment of her person, she strives to make herself beautiful as well as lovable. If she forgets her duty, and consents to seem to be what she is not, so that her admirer finds that the appearance which charmed him was not real, then the future of that woman is dark indeed. ”

“ Jewels, laces, and silks are not a fit dress for a corpse, and yet a heartless woman is to a man who knows her as soulless as an inanimate body coffined for the tomb. Having thus briefly considered the necessity of linking woman's work and mission together, let us define her work, and consider what is her mission.
Woman has work to do. Though idleness does not destroy her as it does a man, yet it does not become her. Merely to display her charms for the admiration of others cannot be the destiny of one created with a woman's hand and head, and endowed with woman's soul. ”

“ Made to speak, to think, to love, his thought seeks another thought to reveal and quicken itself; his speech is lost sorrowfully in the air, or only awakens an echo which reverberates it, but cannot reply; his love knows not where to fix itself, and falling back on itself, threatens to become a barren egotism; in short, fill his being aspires to another self, but his other self does not exist. At this time, when the desire for communion was stifling him, he slept, and from his side God took a rib and made woman, and brought her to him. Behold Adam. ”

“ The child wants companionship, and old age, shattered and broken, feels the need of this loving support which God provides in the opposite sex quite as much as does the youthful heart. Our perfect humanity is made up of the two, and is not complete without this union.
The most magnificent scenery is tame, unless you can point out its beauties to the one you love. The picture gallery is worthless, unless some other lip can press the goblet of your pleasure, and sip nectar from the flower of beauty which blossoms in your thought or imagination. It is not good for man to be alone, even in Eden. ”

“ It is the quiet utterance in the home which is of marvellous power in the world. It is womanly to adorn rather than to plan.
She fits herself for companionship rather than for leadership. By her tact and by her very nature she is enabled to harmonize antagonistic elements, and promote concord, if she cannot secure union. Like the lily living in the water, she feeds on her native element, love. The lily, though it floats on the wave, opens wider its leaves to the rain and dew. So woman, though living on love, finds pleasure and rapture in fresh manifestations of love day by day. ”

“ Mystery here brings ruin to man as it brought ruin to woman. Young ladies of culture and of refinement are not ashamed to employ the language of the Parisian to lead astray the companion of her life. God curse the language and the forms of speech whose words drop with the very gall of death, which revel in elegant dress as near the edge of indecency as is possible without treading over the boundary! Her wiles of speech are bad, but her wiles of love are the most perilous of all. Man needs love. ”

“ Woman may be a secret power in the home. She may make home attractive to the refined and cultured, and thus prove to be the magnet attracting to herself and to her fireside those gifted sons and daughters, the scintillations of whose genius and the dissemination of whose beautiful thoughts make the home luminous with a light which is inextinguishable. The influence of such a woman over her children and over the young cannot be overestimated. ”

“ Even in the refined and shining ages of Greece and Rome, where the cultivation of letters and the graces of polished style, the charms of poetry and eloquence, the elegances of architecture, sculpture, painting, and embroidery, the glory of conquest and the pride of national distinction, were unsurpassed,—even then and there, woman was but the abject slave of man, the object of his ambition, avarice, lust, and power. ”

“ For woman there is a felt a necessity which should send her forth as a missionary to those like herself in everything but blessings. Think of our large factory towns, where women are congregated by hundreds and thousands. Let it be remembered that there is something unnatural in all this. Woman was made for man, for home, for love. Separate her from them all, herd her with her kind, subtract from her the incentive to endeavor, leave her mind to brood in fancy, to welcome unholy aspirations and degrading thoughts to her soul, and you leave her to prey upon herself. ”

“ It is not to mere civilization, but to the spirit of life in Christ, that woman owes all she has and all she has yet to gain. In Christ, manly and womanly characteristics were united, and were in equipoise. He was not the Son of the Man, but the Son of Man. It was not manhood, but humanity, that was made divine in him. Humanity has its two sides: one side in the strength and intellect of manhood; the other in the tenderness and faith and submission of womanhood; man and woman, the two halves of one thought, make up human nature. ”

“ Many a boy has been checked in a career of shame by a mother's sad look; many have been encouraged by a mother's smile. God help women to know how to use their power for home, for woman-kind, for man-kind, for country, and for God!
"No one has such power over a river as he who stands near its source. No one has such power over the tree as he who plants and tends it while yet it is a pliant sapling. And no earthly power is to be compared with that which, humanly speaking, determines the course and destiny of an immortal soul. ”

“ Woman was made to be man's helpmeet in Eden; that purpose survives the fall. For right or wrong, for good or ill, her influence is felt. She lifts man up or drags him down. Scoff at it, oppose it, cast opprobrium upon this ancient utterance, the fact remains, woman is made for man. Helpmeet she was, helpmeet she must be, or leave her work undone, and suffer the blight that results from the lack of love. God placed man in the garden to keep it, and he placed woman there to fill the bower with love, and his home with joy.
The coming of Eve to Adam is a beautiful story. ”

“ Men share in the blame. A sadder fact is the expressed dissatisfaction with woman's work and with woman's sphere. The home of the olden time is passing out of mind, and in its place is the fashionable boarding-house. The skilled housewife is felt to be unappreciated. Men, they tell us, prefer a pretty face to a noble heart, a delicate to a skilled hand, a girl who can play the piano rather than one who can cook a dinner, a pretty doll instead of a glorious woman capable of keeping the house, and of guiding the man with womanly strength. ”

“ In so far as soul is in her completely developed, all soul is the same; but in so far as it is modified in her as woman, it flows, it breathes, it sings, rather than deposits soil, or furnishes work; and that which is especially feminine, flushes in blossom the face of the earth, and pervades, like air and water, all this seeming solid globe, daily renewing and purifying its life. ”

“ The father's right to give away his child—a right which exerts its influence at the present time, and which every young man who seeks properly the hand of woman is compelled to recognize. In that act of Eden lie the rule and example to be followed by parents and children: the one to dispose of their children, and the other to have the consent of their parents in reaching conclusions upon which hinges the destiny of the individual for time, and perhaps for eternity. Happy the child that trusts a wise parent, and refuses to walk a path over which the shadow of parental disapproval rests! ”

“ It is well for woman to ask herself if she is ready to assume the burdens that come from an equality of compensation, such as giving up the prospect of marriage, or of sharing with man the toil of the field, of the factory, as well as of the house. Would woman be willing to take upon herself the responsibility of planning to economize, of building churches, railroads, of entering into a competition with man?—Woman is dependent, not independent.—For this reason man toils to keep his wife, and is ashamed to have his wife keep him. ”

“ Somehow the stream of love must sing as it goes babbling by, "Home, home, there is no place like home," else woman fails in her life-work.
Her education must fit her for a home and for home work. Let a man learn that he married a toy, a plaything, a lay figure, useful only for the purposes of exhibiting his taste in jewelry and dress, who desires to be petted and fondled, to be caressed and flattered, but who is incapable of doing anything to contribute to his happiness at home or to his influence abroad, and he comes to feel that she is an encumbrance. ”

“ As to how the ballot is to help woman, even its advocates give us no light. Whether it is proposed to lighten by its aid the penalties, and do away with the ruin of the fall, we are left in doubt.
If we give to woman the ballot, shall the equality which woman lost, when she ate of the forbidden fruit, be restored, and shall she be made again the equal of man? Shall the sorrow in child-bearing be removed? Can housework, or the duties of motherhood, and wifehood, and sisterhood, be met and discharged by the use of the ballot? ”

“ It is the part of woman to win; and her winning arts should not be laid aside when she grasps what she has considered a prize. She should seek in every way to win, beyond the possibility of loss, the abiding love, the unwavering confidence, the undoubting respect of her husband. If woman would be man's equal, she must challenge the equality by proving herself mistress of those arts that minister the highest comfort to his physical nature, as well as to his affections, that further his interests as well as his happiness. ”

“ Most holy Virgin, I believe and confess thy most holy and immaculate care of man, pure and without stain. O most pure Virgin, through thy virginal purity, thy immaculate conception, thy glorious quality of Mother of God, obtain for me of thy dear Son, humility, charity, great purity of heart, of body and of mind, holy perseverance in my cherished relations, the gift of prayer, a holy life and a happy death. ”