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Show 82 thousand homes which have no defence against licentiousness, against violation of the most sacred domestic ties; and through her whole intercouo·se, the fit season should be chosen to give strength to that deep moral conviction which can alone overcome this tremendous evil. I know it will he said, that in thus doing, woman will wander beyond her sphere, and forsake her proper work. What! Do I hear such language in a civilized age, and in a land of Christians. What, let me ask, is woman's work? It is to be a minister of Christian love. It is to sympathize with human misery. It is to breathe sympathy into man's heart. It is to keep alive in society some feeling of human brotherhood. This is her mission on earth. Woman's sphere, I am told, is home. And why is home instituted? Why are domestic relations ordained? These relations are for a day ; they cease at the grave. And what is their great end? To nourish a love which will endure forever, to awaken universal sympathy. Our ties to our parents are to bind us to the Universal Parent. Our fraternal bonds to help us to see in all men our brethren. Home is to be a nursery of Christians; and what is the end of Christianity but to awaken in all souls the principles of universal justice and universal charity. At home we are to learn to love our neighbor, our enemy, the stranger, the poor, the oppressed. If 83 home do not train us to this, then it is wofully per• verted. If home counteract and quench the spirit of Christianity, then we must remember the Divine Teacher, who commands us to forsake father and mother, brother and sister, wife and child, for His sake, and for the sake of his truth. If the walls of home are the bulwarks of a narrow, clannish love, through which the cry of human miseries and wrongs cannot penetrate, then it is mockery to talk of their sacredness. Domestic life is at present too much in hostility to the spirit of Christ. A family should be a community of dear friends, strengthening one another for the service of their fellow creatures. Can we give the name of Christian to most of our families? Can we give it to women, who have no thoughts, or sympathies for multitudes of their own sex, distant only two or three days' journey fl'Om their doors, and exposed to outrages, from which they would pray to have their own daughters snatched, though it were by death. Having spoken of the individual, I proceed to speak of the duties of the Free States, in their political capacity, in regard to slavery; and these may be reduced to two heads, both of them negative. ~~e first is, to abstain as rigidly from the use of poh! lcal power against slavery in the States where it |
