future wife before marriage as well as after? Nay, as I hold by the old
Spanish proverb "An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy," who
like a mother, by her prayers and ever-present example and influence,
can lead him to the Highest, and impress upon him that his life is
given him for no lower end than, in the words of the Westminster
Confession, "to know God and to glorify Him for ever"; and that
therefore he is made on a very high plan--as Browning puts it, "Heaven's
consummate cup," whose end is to slake "the Master's thirst"; and that
the cup from which He drinks must be clean inside as well as out, and
studded within and without with the pearl of purity?

But refuse to give him this higher teaching and training; go on, as so
many mothers have done, blankly ignoring the whole subject, because it
is so difficult to speak to one's boys,--as if everything worth having
in this life were not difficult!--leave him to the teaching of dirty
gossip, of unclean classical allusions in his school-books, of scraps of
newspaper intelligence, possibly of bad companions whom he may pick up
at school or business, and be sure of it, as this side of his nature is
awakened--in his search after gratified curiosity or pleasurable
sensation, in utter ignorance of what he is doing, through your fault,
not through his--he will use his imagination and his will to strengthen
the animal instincts. What ought to have been kept on a higher plane of
being will be used to stimulate functions just coming into existence,
and pre-eminently needing to be let alone on their own plane to mature
quietly and unconsciously. Thus dwelt upon and stimulated, these
functions become in a measure disordered and a source of miserable
temptation and difficulty, even if no actual wrong-doing results. If you
only knew what those struggles are, if you only knew what miserable
chains are forged in utter helpless ignorance, you would not let any
sense of difficulty or shrinking timidity make you refuse to give your