2. FEMALE CHARACTER.--But the influence of female character on the
virtue of men, is not seen merely in restraining and softening the
violence of human passion. To her is mainly committed the task of
pouring into the opening mind of infancy its first impressions of
duty, and of stamping on its susceptible heart the first image of its
God. Who will not confess the influence of a mother in forming the
heart of a child? What man is there who can not trace the origin of
many of the best maxims of his life to the lips of her who gave him
birth? How wide, how lasting, how sacred is that part of a woman's
influence.

3. VIRTUE OF A COMMUNITY.--There is yet another mode by which woman
may exert a powerful influence on the virtue of a community. It rests
with her in a pre-eminent degree, to give tone and elevation to the
moral character of the age, by deciding the degree of virtue that
shall be necessary to afford a passport to her society. If all the
favor of woman were given only to the good, if it were known that the
charms and attractions of beauty and wisdom, and wit, were reserved
only for the pure; if, in one word, something of a similar rigor were
exerted to exclude the profligate and abandoned of society, as is
shown to those, who have fallen from virtue,--how much would be done
to re-enforce the motives to moral purity among us, and impress on the
minds of all a reverence for the sanctity and obligations of virtue.

4. THE INFLUENCE OF WOMAN ON THE MORAL SENTIMENTS.--The influence of
woman on the moral sentiments of society is intimately connected with
her influence on its religious character; for religion and a pure and
elevated morality must ever stand in the relation to each other of
effect and cause. The heart of a woman is formed for the abode of
sacred truth; and for the reasons alike honorable to her character and