Public School Education. Michael Müller
the same evil influence in its still more injurious consequences on the female portion. It is very difficult to treat this part of the subject with the necessary freedom, not only on account of its intrinsic delicacy, but also because of that false (and indeed to themselves injurious) idea that there is nothing wanting to the absolute perfection of our women.
Let it not be said, that in calling public attention to these evil consequences on the female portion of the community, we are overstepping the boundaries of propriety or decency. There is a license for the poet; a license for the stage; a license for the bar; a license for the writer of fiction; a license for the press, and why should there not be a license for a Christian writer? It is high time for true modesty to take the place of that false modesty which has driven virtue, like an exile, out of the land, and peopled it largely with Fourrierites, Owenites, and other socialists and free-lovers.
Now, whatever success a "godless system of education" may have on boys, I think all must admit that it must prove not only a failure, but a positive injury, to girls. It is not that moral and religious education is not equally required by both, in a spiritual sense, but that women, in an especial manner, have certain duties assigned them, in the Order of Providence, of so high and holy a character, that it requires, in some sense, a special education to fit them for the faithful discharge of these duties.
Let us remember that the Public School-girls of to-day will be the mothers of to-morrow. Mothers are called by God to take particular care of the bodily and spiritual life of their children. This care is a heavy, a very heavy burden indeed, and mothers cannot carry this burden without a tender love for their children. Now God has made the love of mothers for their children a necessary love. It is for this reason that there is no command in the Divine Law for parents to love their children, whilst, on the contrary, children are commanded to love their parents. Love towards one's own offspring is a love so deeply planted in the heart by Nature herself, that the wild beasts never fail to love their young. It is said that even tigers, hearing the cry of their whelps when they are taken by the hunters, will plunge into the sea to swim after the vessels where they are confined.
A mother's love is proverbial. Indeed, there is no love so pure and so thoroughly disinterested as the love of a good mother for her child. Her love knows no change; brothers and sisters have forgotten each other; fathers have proved unforgiving to their children; husbands have been false to their wives, and wives to their husbands, and children too often forget their parents; but you rarely hear of a mother forgetting even her ungrateful, disobedient children, whose actions have lacerated her heart, and caused dark shadows to glide before her eyes, and enter her very soul. Still there are moments when her faithful heart yearns towards them; there are moments when the reminiscences of the happy past obliterate the present sorrow, and the poor wounded spirit is cheered for a while, because there is still one of the fibres of the root of hope left in her forlorn breast, and a languid smile will flit over her wan and prematurely faded face. Yes, she forgives, though there is no River Lethe for her to drink from in this life; showing that her love is the most pure in this world, and the nearest approach to the love that God has so graciously bestowed upon her.
Some years ago a vessel sailed from the coast of Ireland. It was filled with passengers who were coming to this country to better their future. The vessel set sail with a favorable wind. The sky was clear, and the sun shone gayly upon the sparkling sea. But suddenly the heavens grew dark. A fierce storm arose. The winds howled madly around the vessel. The ship was hurried on—on, till it was dashed against the rocks. The wild, surging waves dashed over it. The vessel split in twain. Part remained hanging amid the rocks, and the rest sank, with those on board, beneath the waves, far down into the depth of the sea. The storm continued to rage for several days. At last, when the wind had died away, some hardy fishermen, who lived on the coast, took a skiff and rowed out to the wreck. They entered the part of the vessel that remained hanging amid the rocks. They broke open the cabin door. They heard distinctly the feeble wail of a child. They rushed in. They found a little babe lying upon the breast of its dead mother. The child was eagerly sucking the blood which oozed from a large wound in its mother's breast. The mother had died of cold and hunger; but, even amid her fearful sufferings, she did not forget her child. She took a sharp knife, and, with the wonderful love of a mother's heart, she made a deep gash in her breast, in order that her child might preserve its life by drinking her own heart's blood!
And when the darling child of the Christian mother is on the point of death, ah! how tender is not her prayer to the Author of Life that He spare the child.
"Oh, God of mercy," she prays, "spare my child! Heaven is already full of light and gladness. Do not then take to heaven the light and joy of my heart. Thou art ever happy, O my God! do not then deprive me of my only happiness. God of compassion, O leave me the sweet babe whom Thou hast given me! my love, and all my happiness, is centred in him. Since he has come to me, the earth, and sea, and sky, the whole world around has grown doubly beautiful. The air seems filled with light, and song, and sweetness. Ah, do not take my child away, for when his tender body lies beneath the sod, my heart and life shall lie there with it, and this whole world shall grow dark and dreary as one vast gloomy graveyard. O God! remember I am yet so young. I am not used to tears. Deal gently with my poor weak heart! I have never yet known what it is to lose a friend, a relative, or beloved one. O God! shall, then, the first that teaches me the dread meaning of grave and shroud be my own, my first-born child? O Jesus, I conjure Thee, by Thy wounded Heart—wounded for love of me—do not crush my tender heart, for Thou hast made it tender. Thou hast made me a mother; oh, spare my darling child!"
Ah! who can measure the depth of the wonderful love of a mother's heart! But this natural love of a mother for her offspring, in order to be persevering and untiring, must be cultivated—must be ennobled and supernaturalized by religious education; otherwise this love will decrease, and be lost in the end, and with the loss of this love the Christian woman has lost her divine calling. Now as no religious education is imparted to the girls in the Public Schools, can we wonder to see thousands and thousands of them who have lost their divine calling—can we wonder that we hear of a countless number of unnatural crimes, committed under the veil of marriage, that are becoming so common at the present day? Dr. Storer, of Massachusetts, declares that increase of children in Massachusetts is limited almost wholly to the foreign population. Mr. Warren Johnson, State Superintendent of Common Schools in Maine, reports to the Legislature a decrease of 16,683, between the ages of four and twenty-one years, from the census of 1858. Total decrease from maximum of 1860 is nearly 20,000. Mr. Johnson asks: "Are the modern fashionable criminalities of infanticide creeping into our State community?" Dr. H. R. Storer, of Massachusetts, in 1859, declared that forced abortions in America were of frequent occurrence, and that this frequency was increasing so, that from 1 in 1,633 of the population in 1805, it had risen to 1 in 340 in 1849; and Dr. Kyle, of Xenia, Ohio, asserted that abortions occurred most frequently among those who are known as the better class; among church members, and those generally who pretend to be the most polite, virtuous, moral and religious. And, without mincing matters at all, this eminent physician boldly declares that "a venal press, a demoralized clergy, and the prevalence of medical charlatanism, are the principal causes of the fearful increase of this abominable crime." The paucity of children in the families of wealthy and well-to-do Americans has been publicly noticed and commented upon time and again; but the true cause thereof, if known, was carefully concealed. And can we wonder that the crime has descended from the highest to the lowest, and now pervades all classes of society? Statistics have been frequently published to show that in certain States of the Union, and in certain districts of those States, the births did not, and do not, equal the deaths; and were it not for the foreign population among us many of those districts, and not a few of those States, would be depopulated in a few years. Massachusetts and New York lead the van in this criminal record. Dr. T. A. Reamy, of Zanesville, Ohio, in 1867, wrote, that after a careful survey of the field he was ready to say that "to-day no sin approaches with such stealth and dangerous power the altars of the Church as fœticide; and, unless it can be stayed, not only will it work its legitimate moral depravity and social ruin, but (he believed) God will visit dreadful judgment upon us no less severe, perhaps, than He did upon the Cities of the Plain."
In 1865, Dr. Morse Stewart, of Detroit, Michigan, declared that few of either sex entered the marital relation without full information