Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845

"Let us not accuse the Jesuits, who carry on their jesuitical trade, nor the priests, who are dangerous, restless, and violent, only because they are unhappy.

"No, we ought rather to accuse ourselves.

"If dead men return in broad daylight, if these Gothic phantoms haunt our streets at noonday, it is because the living have let the spirit of life grow weak within them. How is it that these men reappear among us, after having been buried by history with all funereal rites, and laid by the side of other ancient orders? The very sight of them is a solemn token, and a serious warning.

"Modern strength appears in the powerful liberty with which you go on disengaging the reality from the forms, and the spirit on the dead letter. But why do you not reveal yourself to the companion of your life, in that which is for you your life itself? She passes away days and years by your side, without seeing or knowing the grandeur that is within you. If she saw you walk free, strong, and prosperous in action and in science, she would not remain chained down to material idolatry, and bound to the sterile letter; she would rise to a faith far more free and pure, and you would be as one in faith. She would preserve for you this common treasure of religious life, where you might seek for comfort when your mind is languid; and when your various toils, studies, and business have weakened the vital unity within you, she would bring back your thoughts and life to God, the true, the only unity.

"I shall not attempt to crowd a large volume into a small preface. I shall only add one word, which at once expresses and completes my thought.

"Man ought to nourish woman. He ought to feed spiritually (and materially if he can) her who nourishes him with her love, her milk, and her very life.

"Our adversaries give women bad food; but we give them none at all.

"To the women of the richer class, those who seem to be so gently protected by their family, those brilliant ones whom people suppose so happy, to these we give no spiritual food.

"And to the women of the poorer class, solitary, industrious, and destitute, who try hard to gain their bread, we do not even give our assistance to help them to find their material food.

"These women, who are or will be mothers, are left by us to fast, (either in soul or in body,) and we are punished especially by the generation that issues from them, for our neglecting to give them the staff of life.

"I like to believe that good-will, generally, is not wanting—only time and attention. People live in a hurry, and can hardly be said to live: they follow with a huntsman's eagerness this or that petty object, and neglect what is important.

"You, man of business or study, who are so energetic and indefatigable, you have no time, say you, to associate your wife with your daily progress; you leave her to her ennui, idle conversations, empty sermons, and silly books; so that, falling below herself, less than woman, even less than a child, she will have neither moral action, influence, nor maternal authority, over her own offspring. Well! you will have the time, as old age advances, to try in vain to do all over again what is not done twice, to follow in the steps of a son, who, from college to the schools, and from thence into the world, hardly knows his family; and who, if he travels a little, and meets you on his return, will ask you your name. The mother alone could have made you a son; but to do so you ought to have made her what a woman ought to be, strengthened her with your sentiments and ideas, and nourished her with your life."

True, O most subtle and sapient Frenchman, the remedy lies in the direction you have pointed out; but we have doubts if you have fully discovered its nature, or are prepared to apply it in its necessary extent. The husband must make the wife the companion of his heart and thoughts, of his hopes and exertions. Too long has this sympathy and confidence been unknown in France, where your women have been but the toys and playthings of your lighter or looser hours, and where often to their own husbands they have not even been so much. But, as you partly see, this is not all that is needed to be corrected. In order to be the fitting guide and guardian of the mother of his family, the husband must share in those higher feelings which he seeks to regulate and reclaim. You do not hope or wish to see your wife and children devoid of religion. But if you would not surrender them to the guidance of others in those momentous concerns, you must care for them and conduct their course yourself, and must learn to travel the road along which they are to be led. The husband must become himself the priest and the director: not by inculcating a vague theism or a cold morality, but by establishing in his household the purity and the practice of a Christian faith. If the domestic throne is to be upheld on its rightful foundation, the altar must be reared by its side. The philosopher and historian must stoop to learn from his own children that simplicity of which they are such powerful teachers, and which will amply repay him for all the lessons of a more mature wisdom that his learning and experience can impart. Openly and earnestly sympathizing with their devout impressions, he will strengthen and support by his intellectual energies the soft and more susceptible natures of those placed under his charge, and will thus shield them from the attempts to mislead and inflame, to which they must inevitably be exposed if left to find their only sympathy in extraneous influences. This re-establishment of a patriarchal piety is one of the great boons which the true spirit of Protestantism purchased for its followers, and which alone can protect the weaker members of the household from becoming a prey to priestly interference and false enthusiasm.

The book contains a touching tribute, such as able men have often paid to the maternal affection that formed their minds:—

"Whilst writing all this, I have had in my mind a woman, whose strong and serious mind would not have failed to support me in these contentions; I lost her thirty years ago, (I was a child then;) nevertheless, ever living in my memory, she follows me from age to age.

"She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share in my better fortune. When young, I made her sad, and now I cannot console her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor then to buy earth to bury her!

"And yet I owe her much. I feel deeply that I am the son of woman. Every instant, in my ideas and words (not to mention my features and gestures,) I find again my mother in myself. It is my mother's blood that gives me the sympathy I feel for bygone ages, and the tender remembrance of all those who are now no more.

"What return then could I, who am myself advancing towards old age, make her for the many things I owe her? One, for which she would have thanked me—this protest in favour of women and mothers; and I place it at the head of a book believed by some to be a work of controversy. They are wrong. The longer it lives, if it should live, the plainer will it be seen, that, in spite of polemical emotion, it was a work of history, a work of faith, of truth, and of sincerity;—on what, then, could I have set my heart more?"

In a spirit worthy of these feelings, the author contends strongly for the benefits of maternal education on the character of sons. We shall give the passage in the original, as it contains a good deal that is French, and a great deal that is beautiful:—

"Quand on songe que la vie moyenne est si courte, qu'un si grand nombre d'hommes meurent tout jeunes, on hésite d'abréger cette première, cette meilleure époque de la vie, où l'enfant, libre sous la mère, vit dans la grâce et non dans la loi. Mais s'il est vrai, comme je pense, que ce temps qu'on croit perdu est justement l'époque unique, précieuse, irréparable, où, parmi les jeux puérils, le genius sacré essaye son premier essor, la saison où les ailes poussent, où l'aiglon s'essaye à voler … Ah! de grâce, ne l'abrégez pas. Ne chassez pas avant le temps cet homme nouveau du paradis maternel; encore un jour; demain à la bonne heure, mon Dieu! il sera bien temps; demain, il se courbera au travail, il rampera sur son sillon.... Aujourd'hui laissez-le encore, qu'il prenne largement la force et la vie, qu'il aspire d'un grand cœur l'air vitale de la liberté.

"Une éducation trop exigeante, trop zélée, inquiète, est un danger pour les enfants. On augmente toujours la masse d'étude et de science, les acquisitions extérieures; l'interieur succombe. Celui-ci n'est que latin, tel autre n'est que mathématiques. Où est l'homme, je vous prie? Et c'était l'homme justement qu'aimait et ménageait la mère. C'est lui qu'elle respectait dans les écarts de l'enfant. Elle semblait retirer son action, sa surveillance même, afin qu'il agît, qu'il fût libre et fort. Mais, en même temps, elle l'entourait toujours comme d'un invisible embrassement.

"Il y a un péril, je le sais bien, dans cette éducation de l'amour. Ce que l'amour veut et désire par-dessus tout, c'est de s'immoler, de sacrifier tout—intérêts, convenances, habitudes, la vie, s'il le faut.

"L'objet de cette immolation peut, dans son égoïsme enfantin, recevoir, comme chose due, tous les sacrifices, se laisser traiter en idole, inerte, immobile, et devenir d'autant plus incapable d'action qu'on agira plus pour lui.

"Danger réel, mais balancé par l'ambition ardente du cœur maternel, qui presque toujours place sur l'enfant une espérance infinie, et brûle de la réaliser. Toute mère de quelque valeur a une ferme foi, c'est que son fils doit être un héros—dans l'action ou dans la science, il n'importe. Tout ce qui lui a fait défaut dans sa triste expérience de ce monde, il va, lui, ce petite enfant, le réaliser. Les misères du présent sont rachetées d'avance par ce splendide avenir: tout est misérable aujourd'hui; qu'il grandisse, et tout sera grand. O poésie! O espérance! où sont les limites de la pensée maternelle? Moi, je ne suis qu'une femme; mais voici un homme. J'ai donné un homme au monde. Une seule chose l'embarrasse—l'enfant sera-t-il un Bonaparte, un Voltaire, ou un Newton?

"S'il faut absolument pour cela qu'il la quitte, eh bien! qu'il aille, qu'il s'éloigne, elle y consent; s'il faut qu'elle s'arrache le cœur, elle s'arrachera le cœig;ur. L'amour est capable de tout, et d'immoler l'amour même. Oui, qu'il parte, qu'il suive sa grande destinée, qu'il accomplisse le beau rêve qu'elle fit quand elle le portait dans son sein, ou sur ses genoux. Et alors, chose incroyable, cette femme craintive, qui tout-à-l'heure n'osait le voir marcher seul sans craindre qu'il ne tombât, elle est devenue si brave qu'elle l'envoie dans les carrières; les plus hasardeuses, sur mer, ou bien encore dans cette rude guerre d'Afrique. Elle tremble, elle meurt d'inquiétude, et pourtant elle persiste. Qui peut la soutenir?—sa foi. L'enfant ne peut pas périr puis-qu'il doit être un héros.

"Il revient. Qu'il est changé! Moi! ce fier soldat, c'est mon fils! Parté enfant, il revient homme. Il a hâte de se marier. Voilà un autre sacrifice, et qui n'est pas le moins grand. Il faut qu'il en aime une autre; il faut que la mère, pour qui il est, et sera toujours le premier, n'ait en lui désormais que la seconde place—une place bien petite, hélas! aux moments de passion. Alors elle se cherche et se choisit sa rivale, elle l'aime à cause de lui, elle la pare, elle se met à la suite, et les conduit à l'autel, et tout ce qu'elle y demande, c'est de ne pas être oubliée."

A word now as to the application to our own case of the leading views already suggested. It may be thought that the moral they most clearly inculcate would point to our fellow countrymen in Ireland. But we own we have a different reading of the lesson, and consider that the peculiar perils here described must as yet have been scarcely felt among the priesthood of a peasantry. It is in circles where there is less physical privation and more sentimental excitement, that the evils of spiritual fascination and domestic division are likely to arise.

Michelet has shown that "Direction," in its worst forms, did not terminate with the seventeenth century, but has revived in his own times. We may be allowed to follow out his opinions, and suggest that Jesuits and Directors are not confined to the Romish faith. It behoves even a Protestant people to be on their guard against the recurrence of Popery and its Practices under a new aspect. The same erroneous position may be reached from opposite directions. The same constitutional malady may show itself in different diseases. Cæsar was inaccessible to all flattery, except that which told him he hated flatterers. And many are most in danger of Popish error when it approaches under an ultra-Protestant disguise. We are saved, indeed, from the evils of a celibatary clergy. We are not exposed to that ignorance or that envy of family life which such a institution involves. But ambition and interest will supply the place of most other vices; and we shall be wise to watch whether the same battle is not now being fought among ourselves, and for the same immediate object—the occupancy of the female heart. The pictures that have been sometimes drawn of our own doings may have only a limited resemblance. Methodist preachers, and evangelical vicars, may be exaggerated delineations or mere individual portraits. But still, is it not true that the minds of our women, particularly those that are unmarried or childless, are here, as well as in France, sought to be engrossed, and alienated from their natural attachments, through priestly influences and for priestly purposes? Look at any new sect springing up among us—Look at the last example of the kind, where a peculiar religious body is forcing or feeling its way towards an ascendency. Powerful as it seems to be in numbers and in wealth, in what does its main strength consist? It was frankly avowed by one of its apostles, that the female mind alone seemed properly fitted to appreciate its tenets. A strange confession! We doubt if Luther, Calvin, or Knox, would have boasted of such a fact as characterizing the religious movements to which they gave an impulse. In the purity of female feelings we may have a security that any system that recommends itself to women, must have a fair semblance of goodness as it appears in their eyes: but it does not follow that their approbation is a test of its genuine excellence, or of its actual conformity with the type which it professes to represent. It is no novelty in the history of human nature, that evil makes its first attempts on the weakness of woman. Whatever is calculated strongly to excite the affections will gain the hearts of the more susceptible sex; and, without the aid of stronger intellects, they will run a risk of following after delusive lights, and may be found as often to be the votaries of an amiable and attractive error, as the assertors of a severe and sober truth. We would take leave to affirm, that a religious creed or constitution among whose supporters a vast preponderance of females was to be found, stood in a dubious position, and was open to the suspicion that its principles cannot stand examination by the standards of reason and argument. Certain it is that this severance of the sexes by religious distinctions is an unnatural state of society, and a serious evil. It is accompanied too, and aggravated, by another source of danger. The system of hanging the faith and feelings on the lips of a man, as if he were a special messenger from heaven, is nothing else than Popery, and goes to put a pope in every pulpit. Incessant sermons, itinerant speeches, public meetings, devotional assemblies, form a round of excitement of a dangerous and deceptive kind, and are little else than a species of decent dissipation. The constant intervention of a favorite or fashionable minister in all the exercises of religion, identifies too much the sacred subject itself with the individual who presides over it; while theatrical exhibitions of extemporaneous oratory and flights of fancy, make the ordinary ritual of public worship, or the quiet practice of private devotion, seem tame and trivial. The tendency of the evil is, that the direct access to a communion with above is barred against the deluded and dependent devotee, much in the same manner as the votaries of Romanism are driven for aid to the intermediate intercession of the Virgin and the Saints. If the devotion of women is to be maintained mainly by the presence and personal influences of a spiritual guide and prompter, the selection ought to be made in accordance with other principles. The substitution of the priest or preacher in the place of the husband or guardian, presupposes or foreshows a subversion more or less of the most essential relations of family life. The necessity of resorting to this means of gaining or maintaining power must degrade the clergy who depend on it, by tempting them to arts of flattery and excitement, and by corrupting their style of instruction to suit the tastes merely of the more sensitive section of our species, at the sacrifice of that due proportion of more solid and intellectual grounds of thought and principle, which are needed to influence thoroughly the understandings of men. The remedy here also is to be found in a similar course of conduct to what has been formerly suggested. Let the heads of every house do every thing in their power to call into exercise the good sense and natural feeling of the females who are dependent upon them, at the same time that they give its due place to that all-important subject which is the occasion of the error. By a judicious mixture of sympathy and sober feeling, they may counteract the extraneous influences that are now at work, and restore peace to the family, by uniting its members in the practice of a calm and rational piety, of which, out-of-doors, the best assistance and safeguard are to be found in the time-tried doctrines and discipline of our Protestant Establishments.

REFERENCE: Michelet, (J.) Du Prêtre, de la Femme, de la Famille. 1845. Priests, Women, and Families. By J. Michelet. Translated by G. Cocks. London: Longmans.