Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women. G. S. Weaver
the mind be cultivated, the heart subdued, and the life right. Nothing is more important to young women than that they should early learn to distinguish between outward and inward attractions, to place a proper estimate upon each. The true woman-beauty is inward; that which makes the woman attractive, lovely, useful, esteemed, loved, and happy, and is deeper than the color on her cheeks or the form of her person. It is in her mind, and is attainable by her own exertions. Every woman may be beautiful. Every young woman may shine, attract, and be admired and loved. She has only to be lovely in spirit and life, to be good and useful, cheerful and agreeable.
Cheerfulness is a Beauty which every body admires. A cheerful spirit is a continual feast. It smiles its way through life. It wins crowns for its possessor. It makes and gives happiness. All sunshine and flowers is a cheerful heart. It shines in perpetual spring. Its birds are ever singing, and its joys ever new. Every young woman may cultivate a cheerful spirit, and throw its charm around her associates. Agreeable manners is another Beauty of spirit which charms every body. It is the product of a kind heart and a refined taste. We can not describe it, though we all know what it is. It is one of the charming graces of cultivated womanhood. All who will, may possess it. But they can not do it without effort, culture, and constant watchfulness over the impulses and habits. To possess agreeableness of manners they must have a correct taste. This is an inward Beauty of rare loveliness. It grows out of a good judgment and an informed mind. Ignorance and awkwardness are usually found together. Every young woman may inform her mind, enrich her judgment, and thus correct and discipline her taste. She may read; she may think; she may act; she may imitate the good and wise; she may restrain her folly; curb her impulses; subdue her passions; awaken good aspirations, and thus by persevering effort she may acquire a correct taste.
Then she may cultivate kindness of heart. She may seek to do good to all, to feel for their sufferings, pity their weakness, assuage their griefs, assist them in their trials, and breath everywhere the spirit of a kind heart.
Thus she may make herself beautiful in spirit. And she may rest assured that that Beauty will win her laurels of life and joy. It will soon become apparent to all with whom she associates. It will come out and sit like a queen on her person. It will speak in all her words and actions. She will move amid enchantment. No deformity of body can conceal a beautiful spirit. It will shine through an ugly face, a shriveled form, a bad complexion. Nothing made of clay can hide it. No beauty of person can conceal deformity of spirit. A bad temper will look hateful in the prettiest face. A hollow heart will sound its dirge of woe through the most perfectly organized form. Peering through all outward Beauty is seen the hateful demon of a bad heart. Shining through all bodily deformity are always visible the angel faces of the virtues that cluster in a beautiful spirit. All wise young women will rest not till they possess the Beauty of spirit.
Lecture Three.
DRESS.
Religion and Dress—Variety in Nature—Dress should not be Injurious—Present Customs Unhealthy, Slovenly, and Immodest—A Subject of Religious Consideration—Suicide vs. Providence—Foolish Vanity—Taste an Element of Mind—Dress should be Symbolical—Woman should Elevate her Aims—Appropriate Dress Admirable.
Comfort, taste, and religion agree that Dress is one of the proprieties of civilized and Christian life. If religion reaches a part, it does the whole of life. If it should direct us anywhere, it should in the matter of Dress. There are few things upon which people are more liable to err, and about which there is more wrong feeling than this. Many religious sects have seen this, and have attempted to bring the matter of Dress wholly under the ban of ecclesiastical direction. In this they were partly right and partly in error. They were right in believing that religion should extend a fostering and restraining care over the subject of Dress; but wrong in believing that it should Dress all in the same manner. Our Quaker brethren, the Friends, than whom no purer and better people have ever lived—noble followers of the lowly Prince of Peace—the truest friends that humanity has ever found since the days of the Apostles, or that Jesus has ever had in the earth—the world-renowned speakers of the sweet, plain language which hath the charm of divinity within it, and in which love always chooses to express its tender emotions—adopted the idea that religion should extend its sway over the subject of Dress. In this they did well; but, in my humble opinion, erred in putting the shears into the hands of sectarianism to cut every man's Dress by exactly the same pattern, and to choose it all from the same grand web of drab. It is sectarianism, and not religion, which would Dress every man alike. That is making Dress the badge of the order. Any thing put on outwardly to tell the world to what sect you belong is an evidence of sectarianism, and not of religion. The Quaker wears the sign of his sect all over his body. The drunkard wears his on his face. The Catholic wears his in his beads and cross. If God had designed that all men should dress in one color, methinks he would have made them all of one complexion; and not only so, but would have colored nature in that peculiar hue—would have clothed all the forests, fields, flowers, birds, and skies in that color, and have fitted every man's taste to enjoy it.
If He had designed every man to cut his Dress in one form, after one model, I see not why he did not fashion nature after that pattern, and make that peculiar curve, and cast the grand leading ones in all his works, and fit the universal taste to that form. But, on the contrary, nature is robed in every variety of color and form; the human taste is equally diversified, and the forms and complexions of men are not less various.
It is clear to my mind that we may reason from this, that men not only may, but should dress in different forms and colors and after differing styles. What is pleasing to some men's taste is and ever will be displeasing to others. Taste is an inherent quality in our minds. We naturally possess tastes peculiar to ourselves, and no amount of culture can make these differing tastes agreeably harmonious. Some tastes revel in the gay, others in the grave, others in the changing. Some delight in high colors, others in subdued; some in diversity, others in sameness. There is nothing irreligious in this difference in taste. Each one is equally gratified in God's beautiful and diversified works. The grave and golden clouds, the dark and rosy tints of the sunset sky, the gorgeous rainbow and the modest Aurora, the flashing flower and the lowly heather, the towering pine and the creeping vine, the rich green field of summer and the calm gray forest of winter, the thousand million forms of the hill-and-dale landscape, and the equally diversified colors and forms of birds and beasts, confer the richest feasts of pleasure upon every variety of natural taste.
Looking thus upon the panoramic field of God's works, we must conclude that he has taken especial care to gratify the varying tastes of his creatures. And more than this; we must conclude that He himself has an infinite taste, which finds an infinite pleasure in making and viewing this magnificent universe of flashing splendor and somber sweetness, this field on field, system beyond system, far off where human eye can never reach, all shining and moving in an infinite variety of forms, colors and movements. Moreover, we can not but feel that God is a lover of Dress. He has put on robes of beauty and glory upon all his works. Every flower is dressed in richness; every field blushes beneath a mantle of beauty; every star is vailed in brightness; every bird is clothed in the habiliments of the most exquisite taste. The cattle upon the thousand hills are dressed by the Hand Divine. Who, studying God in his works, can doubt that he will smile upon the evidence of correct taste manifested by his children in clothing the forms he has made them? Who can doubt that Dress is a matter properly coming within purview of religion? Religion is what we learn of God. It is human imitation of the Divinity. "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect."
Now what I mean by Dress coming under the direction of religion is, that our manners and style of Dress shall not interfere with the principles of true religion, shall not injure the body, corrupt the heart, debase the mind of the individual; shall not degrade society, nor work any evil influence in it, but, on the contrary, shall do good both to the individual and society. Now let us ask whether our present modes of Dress are thus brought under the direction of religious principles?
First: Do our