Young Woman's Guide to Excellence — Moral Progress

After all I have said of the importance of physical, intellectual and social improvement and progress, it is _moral_ progress for which we were, pre-eminently, created.

The great end of Christianity itself--to use the words of a learned and eloquent divine--is, to make men better than they were before: but whether or not this expresses the entire truth, one thing is certain--that wherever Christianity fails to make man better, it fails of accomplishing its whole intention respecting him.

Perhaps the apostle expressed the idea I would inculcate, in the fewest words and in the clearest manner, when he required his converts to "grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

Mere physical improvement--or even physical perfection, were it attainable--would hardly be worth the pains, if it were any thing more than a means to an end.

We might study the subject of health, and practice its excellent rules with the utmost zeal and faithful conscientiousness; and yet it would hardly prove a blessing to us, if it only gave us the more efficiency in the service of the world, the flesh and the devil.

And the same, or nearly the same, may be said of intellectual improvement and progress.

Though the general tendency of both--when conscience is properly trained and the heart set right--is beneficial, yet it is not necessarily so, without a right heart and correct conscience.

Satan is not wanting--so to speak--in intelligence or physical energy.

Physical and intellectual development and progress, therefore, are little more than means to secure an end.

If they prove to be what it was the original intention of the Creator they should be, they are eminently conducive to our highest interests, both as respects this world and the world which is to come.

If otherwise, they do but accelerate, and in the end aggravate, our doom.

They tend but to make our condemnation the more sure, and the more dreadful.

I have urged, elsewhere, the importance of conscientiousness in every thing we do: let me especially recommend you to make continual progress in excellence or holiness, a matter of conscience.

Do not be continually measuring yourself--above all, your spiritual self--by your neighbors.

If you are the true disciple of Christ, and if you are what a Christian should be in this land of Christianity, you will not indulge yourself in comparisons with any but the Saviour himself.

You will be daily and hourly striving to possess more and more of his spirit; in the belief that without the spirit of Christ, you neither are nor can be his.

It is painful to think of the great number of individuals who go through life--often through a long life--and yet accomplish so little for themselves and others.

That they are free from outward immorality or blame--as much so at least as their neighbors--seems to satisfy them.

Some of the best families I know, are trained in this way.

They are excellent people; they are disciples of Christ, if there are any such in the world: we cannot say aught against them, if we would.

They seem to discharge all the external duties of our holy religion with a most scrupulous exactness; and they seem--the whole family--to bear the image of Christ.

Whatever is true or lovely, is theirs; or appears to be so.

And yet, if you examine closely the matter, you will find that much of all this is the result of circumstances.

They possess, by inheritance, a happy temper--or they are in circumstances which make virtue easy to them.

But the spirit and genius of Christianity require a great deal more than mere inoffensiveness--though that is, of itself, certainly, a great deal.

They require continual progress from glory to glory.

But this progress can only be made amid self-denial and cross-taking.

"Whoso taketh not up his cross," daily and hourly, is not a true disciple of the great Teacher.

It is even through "much tribulation" only, that we can enter into the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour.

Now, to what self-denials, what tribulations, what taking up of the cross, do these easy, lovely families of which I am speaking, ever subject themselves?

Trained happily, they are generally healthy--and therefore they have few trials from sickness.

They live in the midst of abundance, and always have done so--abundance of food, clothing, &c. , and of what they regard as of the best quality.

They have more than heart can wish: their eyes, as it were, stand out with fatness.

They know nothing of want: they know nothing even of inconvenience--except for some hapless moment, when a neighbor gets a little ahead of them in the fashion of their dress, their equipage, or their tables.

Then a feeling of envy--peradventure a half expressed feeling of detraction--appears to mar, for a short time, their peace.

I have said that these inoffensive people--these do-no-harm Christians--know nothing of want.

When and where have they cut themselves short of any thing to which they were lawfully entitled, for the sake of doing good to others?

They have, indeed, performed works of charity and mercy, as much as other people of their own property and standing in society.

But they have given, always, of their abundance.

They have never so given as to impoverish the giver--so as to make themselves feel the least privation.

They have visited the sick: but when has the time they have given, seriously incommoded them?

Have they not had time enough left for their own purposes?

Have they not, in this respect, given of their abundance?

Perhaps they have clothed the poor, to some extent; but have they denied themselves to do it?

Have not their closets, and houses, and the neighboring livery stable, been well furnished and supplied, notwithstanding?

Have they not given, in this respect, wholly of their abundance--and not, like the good woman mentioned in the gospel, of their penury?

It is exceedingly painful, I say again, to find professedly good people among us living, as Watts calls it, at such a poor, dying rate; the professed disciples of a Master who became poor for their sakes, by giving up, not only the luxuries of life, but even many of its necessaries--and yet not giving up or denying themselves a single thing all their lives long.

Can such people expect to make advances in holiness--to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ--and yet not act like him, or follow him?

For be it always remembered--the benefits of doing good are to those _who do it, more than to those to whom it is done_.

This is the ordination and arrangement of Providence.

"It is more blessed to give than to receive."

How sad a mistake, then, is made by those who seem--from their conduct--to think there is little happiness in giving;

and that their charities abridge, by so much, their happiness, instead of adding to it.

Young woman, should it be your lot to belong to one of these happy and excellent families--for I do not deny that they are among our best people, after all, though they are very far from having, as yet, come up to the self-denying, self-sacrificing spirit of the Lord that bought them, and become willing to be poor, and to suffer not a little want of time, money, &c. for even their own apparent necessities, temporal or spiritual--I say, if in the providence of God, you have been accustomed to see almost the whole time and labor of a family, with the avails of a handsome, or at least respectable property, used up year after year by that family, in eating, and drinking, and sleeping, and dressing _comfortably_--in mere passive enjoyment, in one word--while the blessedness of active enjoyment, in the doing of good to others, has been hardly known--be it yours to break the chain that binds this circle of selfishness, and go forth to the work of impoverishing yourself, as did your Lord and Master.

Think not to make any considerable moral progress, otherwise!

The soul must have food, as well as the body.

This continual indulgence of the body, while the soul is unfed, or only fed just enough to keep it from starving, will never do for you.

If you yield to the influence of this fashionable kind of excellence, and strive not to rise higher, I will not say that you will live to little purpose; but I will say, that you will have but very little of real, valuable, immortal life, till you pass beyond the bounds of time and space.

Whereas, you ought to begin your heaven here.

For "this is the will of God, even your sanctification;" and it was the prayer of Paul concerning some to whom he wrote--"The God of peace sanctify you wholly."

Will you not, then, O young woman!

in view of these considerations, seek for deliverance from the spell that binds thousands and millions of otherwise good people to a narrow, selfish circle, in which they continually wander--coming round and round again, every night, to the same spot, or nearly the same, but making no considerable progress?

Will you not study, and labor, and pray, for more and more of the spirit of Him, who not only stripped himself of every glory to which he, had been accustomed, but, instead of retaining that which was his divine right, deprived himself of every thing which is calculated to make life comfortable in the common sense of the term, and only sought his happiness in perfecting holiness in the fear of God, by living and dying for his brethren--the whole human family?

Will you not henceforth study to be more and more conformed to the Divine image--and to act less and less in conformity with a world whose predominating motive to action, is selfishness?

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