Mrs. Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters

Parents, your children cannot purchase at any price what you can give them; I mean a subdued will. To effect this it is necessary to begin when a child is very young. The earlier the better, if you can make yourself understood. You need not fix upon any particular age when to begin; let this depend on circumstances, and different children will show their rebellion upon different points.

5. Coming short of attaining the object when you make the attempt—leaving discipline half completed.—When a child is corrected, every reasonable object should be attained. No point should be evaded. The parent should not stop until perfect and entire submission is effected on every point of dispute. And first I would invite your attention to instances by no means rare, where the child shows rebellion on some particular point. At such a point he stops; you cannot move him. He will do anything else but just the thing required. He may never have showed a stubborn will before. You have now found a point where you differ; there is a struggle between will and will; the stakes are set, and one or the other must yield. There is no avoiding it; you cannot turn to the right nor to the left; there is but one course for you. You must go forward, or the ruin of your child is sealed. You have come to an important crisis in the history of your child, and if you need motive to influence you to act, you may delineate as upon a map his temporal and eternal destiny—these mainly depend upon the issue of the present struggle. If you succeed, your child is saved; if you fail, he is lost. You may think perhaps your child will die before he will yield. We had almost said he might as well die as not to yield. I have known several parents who found themselves thus situated. Perhaps they possessed a feeble hand, their strength began to fail, but it was no time to parley. They summoned all their energy to another mighty struggle. Victory was theirs—a lost child was saved. Some are contented with anything that looks like obedience in such instances. The occasion passes. It soon, however, recurs with no better nor as good prospects. Thus the struggle is kept up while the child remains under the parental roof.

A father one day gave his little son some books, his knife, and last of all his watch to amuse him. He was right under his eye. At length he told him to bring them all to him. He brought the books and knife to him cheerfully; the watch he wanted to keep—that was his idol. The father told him to bring that; he refused. The father used the rod. He took up the watch and brought it part way, and laid it down. The father told him to put it in his hand, but he would not. He corrected him again. He brought it a little farther and laid it down. Again he whipped him. At length he brought it and held it right over his father's hand, but would not put it in. The father, wearied by the struggle, struck the son's hand with the stick, and the watch fell into his hand. It was not given up. There was no submission. That son has been known to be several times under conviction, but he would never submit to God.

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THE MOTHERS OF THE BIBLE

RIZPAH

In order fully to understand the subject of our present study, we must return upon the track, to the days of Joshua, before Israel had wholly entered upon the possession of the promised land. The tribes were encamped at Gilgal to keep the passover, and from there, by the direction of Jehovah, they made incursions upon the surrounding inhabitants. Jericho and Ai had been taken, and the fear of these formidable Hebrews and their mighty God had fallen upon the hearts of the nations and stricken them almost to hopelessness. Feeling that a last effort to save themselves and their homes must be made, they banded together and resolved to defend their rights, and to put to proof the combined power of their deities. One clan, however, despairing of success by any such means, having heard that the utter extirpation of the Canaanites was determined upon, resorted to stratagem, and thus secured their safety in the midst of the general ruin. "They did work wilily," says the sacred record, "and made as if they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and wine bottles old, and rent, and bound up; and old shoes and clouted upon their feet, and old garments upon them; and all the bread of their provision was dry and mouldy. And they went to Joshua unto the camp at Gilgal, and said unto him, and to the men of Israel, We be come from a far country, now therefore make ye a league with us." At first the Israelites seem to have suspected trickery, but when the supposed ambassadors produced their mouldy bread, and declared that it was taken hot from the oven on the morning of their departure from their own country, and that their wine bottles were new, now so shrunk and torn, and pointed to their shoes and garments quite worn out by the length of the journey; and told their pitiful story, and in their humility stooped to any terms if they might only be permitted to make a covenant, Joshua and his elders were completely deceived, and without stopping to ask counsel of the Lord, "they made peace with them, and made a league with them to let them live."

The Lord abhors treachery, and although his people had greatly erred in this act, and although these Hivites were among the nations whom he had commanded them to destroy, yet since a covenant had been made with them, it must be kept on peril of his stern displeasure and severe judgments. Only three days elapsed before the Israelites discovered that the crafty ambassadors were their near neighbors, and were called upon to come to their defense against the other inhabitants of the land, who having heard of the transaction at Gilgal, had gathered together to smite their principal city, Gibeon, and destroy them because they had made peace with Joshua. Before the walls of that mighty city, and in behalf of these idolaters, because Jehovah would have his people keep faith with those to whom they had vowed, was fought that memorable battle, the like of which was never known before or since, when to aid the cause, the laws of Nature were suspended upon human intercession—when Joshua said, "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon." "So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day."

The tribes gained their inheritance, and their enemies were mostly driven out of the land, but in their midst ever dwelt the Gibeonites, safe from molestation, though the menial services of the tabernacle were performed by them, because of the deceit by which they purchased their lives, and they were contented to be thus reduced to perpetual bondage so they might escape the doom of their neighbors.

Years passed on, and vicissitudes came to the Israelites of one kind and another. Sometimes they were victorious in their battles and peaceful among themselves; and again they fled before enemies or were embroiled in civil dissensions. Ever, above, caring for them, and bringing them safely on through all; instructing, guiding and disciplining, sat on his throne, their mighty invisible King. They demanded an earthly monarch, and in judgment he granted their desire. In judgment, and miserable in many ways were the results of his reign. Among his other evil acts not recorded, but alluded to in the history, was one of cruel treachery to the Gibeonites. "It would seem that Saul viewed their possessions with a covetous eye, as affording him the means of rewarding his adherents, and of enriching his family, and hence, on some pretense or other, or without any pretense, he slew large numbers of them, and doubtless seized their possessions." In this wicked deed we gather that many of the Israelites, and the members of Saul's family in particular, had an active share, and were benefited by the spoils. The Almighty beheld and took cognisance, but no immediate retribution followed. Towards the close of David's reign, however, for some unknown reason, the whole land was visited with a famine. Month after month it stalked abroad, and year after year, until three years of want had afflicted the chosen people. At the end of that time David, having resorted to all possible means of providing food in vain, began to reflect that there was meaning in the visitation, and "sought the face of the Lord," to inquire why he was displeased with his people. The answer was explicit and terrible. "It is for Saul and his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites." Though men forget, the Lord does not. He will plead the cause of the oppressed sooner or later, and though his vengeance sleep long, yet will he reward to those that deal treachery sevenfold sorrow.

Driven by famine and by the expressed will of Jehovah, David sent to ask of the injured people what should be done to satisfy their sense of justice. "And the Gibeonites said unto him, We will have no silver nor gold of Saul nor of his house, neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel.

"The man that consumed us, and that devised against us that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel,

"Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeon of Saul. And the king said, I will give them."

Dreadful days of blood! Fearful fiat! which though needful and just, yet invaded the sanctuary of home so gloomily. Sad world! in which the innocent so often bear the sins of the guilty,—when will thy groans, ever ascending into the ears of Almighty love, be heard and bring release?

The sentence was executed. Two sons of Saul by Rizpah, his inferior wife, and five of Merab his eldest daughter, whom Michal had, for some reason, educated, were delivered up and hung by the Gibeonites.

Who can imagine, much less portray, the mother's anguish when her noble sons were torn from her for such a doom! We do not know whether Merab was living to see that day of horror, but Rizpah felt the full force of the blow which blasted all her hopes. Her husband, the father of her sons, had been suddenly slain in battle; her days of happiness and security had departed with his life, and now, all that remained of comfort, her precious children, must be put to a cruel death to satisfy the vengeance due to crimes not hers nor theirs. Wretched mother! a bitter lot indeed was thine! But the Lord had spoken, and there was no reprieve. To the very town where they had all dwelt under their father's roof, were these hapless ones dragged and their bodies ignominiously exposed upon the wall until they should waste away—a custom utterly abhorrent to all humanity, and especially to the Hebrews, whose strongest desire might be expressed in the words of the aged Barzillai, "Let me die in mine own city, and be buried by the grave of my father and mother."

Behold now that lone and heart-broken mother, on the spot where day and night, week after week, and month after month, she may be found. Neither heat nor cold—distressing days nor fearful nights—the entreaties of friends, nor the weariness of watching, nor the horrifying exhibition of decaying humanity, could drive her from her post. Upon the sackcloth which she had spread for herself upon the rock she remained "from the beginning of the harvest until the rain dropped upon them out of heaven," and suffered neither the birds of the air by day, nor the beasts of the field by night to molest those precious remains. O mother's heart! of what heroism art thou capable! Before a scene like this the bravest exploits of earth's proudest heroes fade into dim insignificance. At this picture we can only gaze. Words wholly fail when we would comment on it. Of the agonies it reveals we cannot speak. There are lessons to be learned from it, and upon them we can ponder.

The value which the Lord our God sets upon truth is here displayed. He will have no swerving from the straight path of perfect fidelity to all engagements and covenants. Severe and awful appears his character as thus presented to us, and yet it is upon this very attribute that all our hopes rely. "He is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent." If he thus defends those who love him not, how safe and happy may his children rest.

The days in which Rizpah lived were dark and gloomy days. The words of Samuel to Agag may stand as their memorial, "As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women." Let us be thankful that we see no such direful scenes, and let us act worthy of our higher lot. Let us remember also that there is a destruction of life more terrible even than that which Rizpah witnessed—the destruction of the soul. If the mother's love within us prompts us to half the care of the spiritual life of our children, which she bestowed on the decaying forms of her loved ones, He who rewards faithfulness will not suffer us to labor in vain.

Each day is a new life; regard it therefore, as an epitome of the world. Frugality is a fair fortune, and industry a good estate. Small faults indulged, are little thieves to let in greater.

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FEMALE EDUCATION—INTELLECTUAL TRAINING

BY REV. S.W. FISHER

Let us now enter upon the second part of the field of education, the training of the intellect. It is obvious that we have in this, a much higher subject to deal with than that on which we have just dwelt. The physical form in a few years develops itself, and soon reaches its utmost limits of growth. It is then an instrument whose powers we seek to maintain but cannot increase. As time advances, indeed, those powers gradually yield to the influence of disease or age, until the senses begin to neglect their office, the brain declines in vigor, while the tongue, the eye, the hand, forget their accustomed work in the imbecility wrought by the approach of death. But no such limitation is manifest to us in the growth and future life of the intellect. Dependent upon the body for a healthful home in this world, and so far limited by the conditions of mortality, it yet seems to have in itself no absolute limitation bounding its prospective and possible attainments, save as the finite never can fully attain to the infinite. Granting it a congenial home, a fitting position, with full opportunity for progress, and there is scarcely a height this side infinity which in the ascent of ages it seems not capable of reaching. All creatures are finite, and as such, limited; but the horizon around the soul is so amazingly expansive, and the capacities of the mind for progress so immense, that to us, in our present state, it is almost as if there were no limitations at all.

The power of the intellect to acquire facts and relations, and from them to ascend to the laws which control; its power to advance in a daily ascending path into the region of intuition, where masses of things, once isolated or chaotic, range themselves into harmony, and move in numbers most musical; its power thus to rise into an enlarging vision of truths now latent, and behold directly laws, relations and facts which once evaded the sight, or were only seen dimly and after great toil, it is utterly beyond our sphere to limit. We know that what to us in childhood was a mystery, is now simple; that some of the grandest laws of the material world which a few years back were reached only after stupendous labor, are now become intuitive truths; and we can see no reason why the human mind is not capacitated for just such advances eternally; at every ascent sweeping its vision over a broader range of truth, and rising ever nearer that Omniscient Intellect to which all things open. The instinct and imperfect reason of the noblest brutes, are here in marked contrast to the mind of man. They reach the limit of knowledge with the ripening of their physical frame; a limit which no training, however protracted and ingenious, can overpass; which never varies, except as a cord drawn round a center may vary, by being enlarged on the one side and contracted on the other; and which prepares them without the acquisition of a particle of superfluous intelligence for their brute life as the servitors of man. While his mind, never wholly stationary for a long period, has capacities for development that seem to spurn a merely sensual life, and lift the spirit to a companionship with angels; which, instead of resting satisfied with the mere demands of the body, seeks to penetrate the deep springs of life, discern the exquisite organism of an insect's wing, measure the stars, and analyze the light that reveals them.

Possessing an intellect of so fine a nature, it is not to be questioned that, according to our opportunities, it is incumbent on us to carry forward its improvement from childhood to hoary age. A power like this, of indefinite expansion, in directions surpassingly noble, among subjects infinitely grand, has been conferred that it might be expanded, and go on expanding in an eternal progression; that it might sweep far beyond its present horizon and firmament, where the stars now shining above us, shall become the jeweled pavement beneath us, while above still roll other spheres of knowledge, destined in like manner to descend below us as the trophies of our victorious progress.

To bury such an intellect as this in the commonplaces of a life of mere sense; to confine it to the narrow circle of a brute instinct and reason; to live in such a world, with the infinite mind of Jehovah looking at us from all natural forms, breathing around us in all tones of music, shining upon us from all the host of heaven, and soliciting us to launch away into an atmosphere of knowledge and ascend to an acquaintance with the great First Cause, even as the bird challenges the fledgling to leave its nest, and be at home on the wing; to live amid such incitements to thought, yet never lift the eyes from the dull round of physical necessities, is treason toward our higher nature, the voluntary defacement of the grandest characteristic of our being. The education of the intellect is not a question to be debated with men who have the slightest appreciation of their noble capacities. The obligation to improve it is commensurate with its susceptibility of advancement and our opportunities. It is not limited to a few years in early life, it presses on us still in manhood and declining age. Such is a general statement of the duty of intellectual improvement.

In the actual education of the mind, our course will necessarily be modified by the ultimate objects at which we aim. Properly these are twofold—the first general, the second specific. The first embraces the general training of our intellectual powers, with direct reference to the high spiritual life here and hereafter. We place before us that state of immortality to which the present stands in the relation of a portico to a vast temple. The intellect is itself destined to survive the body, and as the instrument through which the heart is to be disciplined and fitted for this condition of exalted humanity, is to be informed with all that truth most essential for this purpose. Whatever there be in the heavens or the earth—in books or works of men, to discipline, enlarge and exalt the mind, to that we shall be attracted. A right heart breathes in an atmosphere of truth; it grows and rejoices in communion with all the light that shines upon it from the works or word of God. All truth, indeed, is not of the same importance. There is that which is primary and essential; there is that which adds to the completeness, without going to the foundation of character. The truths that enter a well cultivated mind, animated by right sentiments, will arrange themselves by a natural law in the relative positions they hold as the exponents of the character of God, and the means more or less adapted to promote the purity and elevation of man. All truth is of God; yet it is not all of equal value as an educational influence. There are different circles—some central, some remote. The crystals of the rock, the stratification of the globe, and the facts of a like character, will fill an outer circle, as beautiful, or skillful, or wonderful, in the demonstration of divine powers, but not so in themselves unfolding the highest attributes of God. The architecture of animate nature, the processes of vegetable life, the composition of the atmosphere, the clouds and the water, will range themselves in another circle, within the former, and gradually blending with it, as the manifestations of the wisdom and benificence of God. Then the unfoldings of his moral character in the government of nations, in the facts of history, and in the general revelation of himself in the Scriptures, will constitute another band of truth concentric with the others, yet brighter and nearer the center. While at length in the cross and person of Christ—in the system of redemption, and all the great facts which it embodies, we behold the innermost circle that, sweeping round Jehovah as its center, reflects the light of his being, most luminously upon the universe. Such is obviously the relative order of the truth we seek to know. It is the different manifestations of God, ascending from the lowest attributes of divinity, to those which constitute a character worthy the homage and love of all beings. Now, as it is the great object of life to know God and enjoy him, so in education we are to keep this steadily in view, and follow the order of procedure for the attainment of it which God has himself established. To spend the life or the years of youth on the study of rocks and crystals, to the neglect of the higher moral truths which lie within their circle, is unpardonable folly—a folly not to be redeemed by the fact that such knowledge is a partial unfolding of God to man. It is little better than studying the costume to the neglect of the person—than the examination of the frame to the neglect of the master-piece of a Raphael inclosed within it—than the criticism of a single window to the neglect of the glorious dome of St. Peter's—than viewing the rapids to the neglect of the mighty fall of Niagara. In education, the observance of this natural order of truth will bring us, at length, to that which fills the outer circle, and thus all the kinds of knowledge will receive a just attention. Indeed, the study of the one naturally leads us to the other. We shall pass from the inner to the outer lines of truth, and back again, learning all the while this important lesson, that the study of the more remote class of truths is designed to conduct us to a more perfect appreciation of that which is moral, religious, central and saving; while the study of the higher parts of revelation will show us that the former come in to finish and perfect the latter. We do not despise the frieze—the architrave—the cornice—the spires, and the other ornaments of the temple, because we regard as most essential the foundation, the corner stone, the walls and the roofing; but in due time we seek to impart to our edifice not only strength and security, but the beauty of the noblest and richest adornment. According to our means, and as the necessities of life will permit, we shall seek for knowledge from all its various spheres, and despise nothing that God has thought worthy of his creative power or supporting energy.

Now this large course of education in obedience to its first great object, is not limited by anything in itself or in us, to a particular class of individuals. It is the common path along which all intelligent beings are to pass. The object to which it conducts is before us all, and common to all. It is not divided into departments for separate classes. Woman, as well as man, has an interest in it, and an obligation to seek for it, just as binding as that which rests on him. All souls are equal, and though intellects may vary, yet the pursuit of truth for the exaltation of the soul is common to all. As this obligation to unfold the powers of the intellect, that we may grasp the truth, is primary, taking precedence of other objects—since all duty is based on knowledge, and all love and worship, and right action on the intelligence and apprehension of God—so education, which in this department is but the development of our capacity, preparing us to pursue the truth, and master the difficulties which frown us away from its attainment, rises into a duty the most imperative upon all rational beings. The same path here stretches onward before both sexes, the same motives impel them, the same objects are presented to them, the same obligations rest upon them. Neither youth nor age—neither man nor woman, can here make a limitation that shall confine one sex to a narrow corner—an acre of this broad world of intelligence—and leave the other free to roam at large among all sciences. Whatever it is truly healthful for the heart of man to know, whatever befits his spiritual nature and immortal destiny, that is just as open to the mind of woman, and just as consistent with her nature. To deny this abstract truth, we must either affirm the sentiment falsely ascribed to Mahomet, although harmonizing well enough with his faith in general, that women have no souls; or take the ground that truth in this, its widest extent, is not as essential to their highest welfare as it is to ours; or assert, that possessing inferior intellects, they are incapable of deriving advantage from the general pursuit of knowledge, and therefore must be confined to a few primary truths, of which man is to be the judge. The first supposition we leave with the fanaticism that may have given it birth, and with which it so well harmonizes; the second we surrender to those atheistic fools and swindling politicians who can see no excellence in knowledge, save as it may minister to their sensual natures, or assist them to cajole the people; while the man who maintains the third, we would recommend to a court of Ladies, with Queen Elizabeth as judge, Madame de Stael as prosecuting attorney, and Hannah More, Mrs. Hemans, and other bright spirits of the same sex, as jury.