Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women

G >> George Sumner Weaver >> Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women

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Our friends we must prize and appreciate while we are with them. It is a
shame not to know how much we love our friends, and how good they are
till they die. We must seize with joy all our opportunities; our duties
we must perform with pleasure; our sacrifices we must make cheerfully,
knowing that he who sacrifices most is noblest; we must forgive with an
understanding of the glory of forgiveness, and use the blessings we
have, realizing how great are small blessings when properly accepted. I
have known men sit to a table comfortably spread with wholesome food and
make themselves and all with them miserable because it lacked something
their pampered palate craved. A true man will _enjoy_ a crust of bread,
and if he has nothing more, count it a God-send that may save his life.
I have seen women embroil a comfortable home with constant disquiet
because it was not so grand as their vanity desired; and others never
tire in their complaints against a very good house because it was
destitute of a convenience or two that some other house had. I have seen
young women completely miserable because some article of dress did not
harmonize with the last fashioned plait, or some of their surroundings
were not quite so beautiful or agreeable as those of some wealthier
friend. Forgetting to use what they had to administer to their
Happiness, they tormented their souls because they had not something
else. All these repinings and complaints come from unchaste spirits.
Wisdom dwells not in such souls. The little we have we should enjoy, and
if we need or wish more we should labor cheerfully to obtain it, and
rejoice in our labor and hope. We should seek to draw Happiness from
every little incident in life, from every thing we have, and every thing
by which we are surrounded. This is the secret of much Happiness. I
believe all desire to be happy. It seems to be the one great wish of the
human soul in which all the others center. But desire is not enough. We
must seek the Happiness we wish; seek it in the wisdom which opens
life's mysteries plainly to our view; which reveals our present and
eternal relations, and points out the ways of pleasantness and peace.
Would we know the _truth_, the gemmy walks of knowledge, the flowery
bowers of inward and joyous life, the teachings of nature, revelation,
the Son and the Father? We must seek, else how shall we find them? These
things do not come of themselves. Our minds do not develop truth as the
forest develops leaves or the prairie flowers, without effort. Truth is
without, and must be sought. Would we find the path of _duty_? We must
seek it in earnest effort to find and enjoy. And we must seek it with a
full determination to enjoy it when so found. We may seek gold, honor,
worldly pleasures, and not enjoy them when we find them, because we do
not seek them in the right spirit, with an enlightened view of their
uses and a determination to enjoy them in those uses. So we may seek
Gospel riches, divine light, the instructions of the Word, and find much
for which we seek, and be but little benefited because we have not
resolved to be guided by the light we find and blessed by its divine
spirit. If we would be happy, then, we must _seek_ to be happy, not
without the use of proper and ordained means--not without a thorough
consecration of our souls to the good of what we seek, but with a
resolute will and determination in the use of all proper means to mold
our spirits into the best and happiest moods.

We must seek Happiness in the ways in which it is to be found, in study,
duty, labor, improving pleasure, with a constant inward effort to find
it, to make it out of what we find. We must seek it in domestic and
business life; in the relations we hold to our fellow-men; in the
opportunities for discipline, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, resistance of
temptation; in the changes and vicissitudes of life; in nature,
revelation, ourselves, and God. If we thus seek, we shall find. This is
the promise, and thousands have realized it. It is not a promise for the
future world only, but for this also. We have the promise of this world
as well as that which is to come. We need not wait for the golden gate
to open to be as happy as our capacity will admit. We may be happy here.
Happiness is not hid away beyond our search, nor laid above our reach,
nor reserved for the spirit-world. We may enjoy this life and its holy
relations. Our hearts, our homes, our lives may all glow with Happiness
on earth. The means for it are all in our hands. The opportunities are
daily open to us. In the dear amenities of home and its dulcet loves; in
the elevating pleasures of society; in the instructing pursuits of
science, duty, and daily life; in the cultivation of every personal
virtue and every Gospel grace, we may enjoy in this life a sweet
antepast of heaven. Only put forth the effort in the right way and the
happy result will be ours.

But we must not be too dictatorial as to how we enjoy life. We must not
be too positive as to the manner in which we must find Happiness. We
must not determine that it must come in just the way we wish, or else we
will be miserable in the grief of disappointment. It is not for man
wholly to direct his steps. Sometimes what he thinks for his good, turns
out ill; and what he thinks a great evil, develops a great blessing in
disguise. It is folly, almost madness, to be miserable because things
are not as we would have them, or because we are disappointed in our
plans. Many of our plans must be defeated. A multitude of little hopes
must every day be crushed, and now and then a great one. Besides, the
success of our plans is not always essential to our best interests or
our Happiness. Sometimes success is our misery. Our plans are often our
idols, to worship which is false and wrong. It is not in this, or that,
or the other peculiar mode of life, nor in any particular class of
outward circumstances; nor in any definite kind of labor, or duty, or
pleasure, that we must look positively for Happiness; nor yet in any
chosen place or society, or surroundings, or under any particular class
of influences. If we do, we shall be disappointed; for it is not in our
power to have things just our way, or to control our outward or
associational life just as we would. We live amid a multitude of
influences we can not altogether control. Nor is it best we should. Our
vanity, or ignorance, or selfishness might do us great spiritual injury.
We might soon become like spoiled children, or nerveless drones, or
pampered aristocrats. What we are to control is ourselves, our minds.
We must seek Happiness in the right state of mind, in the legitimate
labors, duties, and pleasures of life, and then we shall find what we
seek; yet we may often find it under very different circumstances from
what we expected. We may look for it in one pursuit and find it in
another; and sometimes where we expect the least we shall find the most;
and where we look for the most we shall find the least. "The first shall
be last and the last first." We are short-sighted, and fail to see the
end of things. There is not a little of the misery of life comes from
this disposition to have things our own way, as though we could not be
happy under any circumstances only just those we have framed to suit our
minds. Circumstances are not half so essential to our Happiness as most
people imagine. A cabin is often the theater of more true Happiness than
a palace. The dunghill as often enthrones the true philosophy of life as
the seats which kings occupy. Women in humble circumstances often
possess richer minds, sweeter hearts, a nobler and profounder peace than
those of magnificent surroundings. The disposition to make the best of
life is what we want to make us happy. Those who are so willful and
seemingly perverse about their outward circumstances, are often
intensely affected by the merest trifles. A little thing shadows their
life for days. The want of some little convenience, some personal
gratification, some outward form or ornament, will blight a day's joy.
They can often bear a great calamity better than a small disappointment,
because they nerve themselves to meet the former, and yield to the
latter without an effort to resist. Mole-hills are magnified into
mountains, and in the shadow of these mountains they sit down and weep.
The very things they ought to have sometimes come unasked, and because
they are not ready for them, they will not enjoy them, but rather make
them the causes of misery. There is a disposition also in such minds to
multiply their troubles as well as magnify them. They make troubles of
many things which should really be regarded as privileges, opportunities
for self-sacrifice, for culture, for improving effort. They make
troubles of the ordinary allotments of life, its duties, charities,
changes, unavoidable accidents, reverses, and experiences. All this can
be considered in no other light than morally wrong, for these common
allotments and experiences were beyond all question ordained by Infinite
Wisdom as a most healthy discipline for both the body and mind of man.
All such complaining is ingratitude, practical impiety.

Nearly all people have their secret repinings, their unexpressed
disquietude, because things are not as they would have them; because
they do not possess some fancied good, or do experience some fancied
misfortune. There is a tendency in all our minds to such inward
murmurings. And this is wrong, and when we indulge in it, it is wicked.
We ought not to make idols of our plans. We ought not to have too great
attachments to our own ideas of what we must have, to be happy. If we
do, we shall be very miserable, while we believe we are very good. The
trouble is, we are too selfish, too unyielding in our arrangements for
life's best good. Because we can not find Happiness in our own way, we
will not accept it in any way, and so make ourselves miserable. I have
known many very excellent people very unhappy from a kind of stubborn
adherence to their settled convictions of just what they must have, how
they must live, and what they must do to be happy. They lose sight of
the fact that God rules above them, and a thousand influences work
around them, partly, at least, beyond their control. They have not
determined to accept life cheerfully in whatever form it may come, and
seek for good--the "soul's calm sunshine and heartfelt joy"--under all
circumstances, believing that all things work together for good to those
who truly seek a divine life.

He who seeks a divine life and its pleasantness and peace in the right
spirit, humble, earnest, loving, and cheerful, full of faith and hope,
will realize that all things work together for his good. He may engage
in life's duties and pleasures in the fullest confidence of this. Even
his trials and disappointments will discipline his mind for noblest joys
in store. They will work out good for his soul, which he will bear with
him in life, and through the gate of death, as his crown and treasure
above.

Thus far in the pursuit of this subject I have not considered Happiness
as possible to a cold, selfish, worldly heart. One's aims must be good,
or he can not expect inward peace. The Bible promises no peace to the
wicked while he remains wicked. I am not authorized to promise any
except to the righteous. Our hopes of Happiness for this world and the
future must be founded in inward righteousness.

Now it really seems to me that nothing is more wanted among young women
than a sound philosophy of life, one that they can live by and be happy
in. Their duties and trials are to be great. Their influences are to
strike into the hearts of the whole world. The generations to come are
to be born of them. It is folly for them to expect to be happy by mere
impulse. They must seek the Happiness of principle. They must make
Happiness an object, and seek it with the use of all right means.

One consideration more is worthy of a moment's notice. It relates to
health, both bodily and spiritual. One essential of health is
cheerfulness of spirits. The weaknesses and diseases among females is
most fearful. Only here and there is a healthy woman. And we attribute
it in part to the great unrest and unspoken melancholy brooding in the
great woman-soul of the world. Few, perhaps, fully realize the fearful
truth of this remark. Many a beautiful woman is pining under a gloom she
seldom expresses, and not more than half understands. Woman's confined
life and nerve-distracting habits predispose her to revery, meditation,
and morbid habits of mind and feeling. These shade her soul with gloom
which slowly but surely sinks the tone of her health and shatters her
constitution. Many a young woman plants the seeds of consumption in
some early sorrow, and many more sink the tone of their health to a low
degree by desponding reveries and half-despairing longings for something
they have but half conceived in their own minds, and put forth no
efforts to obtain. It is a burning shame to our nation and age that our
women are so impotent and sickly. We believe the best medicine for them
would be one that would set them all into a hearty laugh, taken once an
hour through the day. They need more sprightly activity, more
exhilaration of mind and body, more sunshine and bird-song, more
exuberant freshness of life and Happiness. Every gloomy thought is a tax
on health. Every desponding hour extracts a year's vitality from the
system. A melancholy spirit is like a humor in the blood, breeding a
perpetual disease. Doubts and fears are like chills and fevers, which
shake and shatter the vital economy to its center. No unhappy woman can
enjoy perfect health. The most vigorous constitutions will quail and
sink under the weight of a desponding mind. Health! what is all the
world without it? Who would sacrifice it for every earthly good? Then
let young women beware how they tamper with it by giving way to or
cherishing gloomy moods of mind. Seek to be peaceful, cheerful, happy,
if you would be well.

Their despondency of mind is equally destructive of spiritual health. It
unbalances all the mental powers, gives a morbid activity to some, and a
kind of reversed action to others. No gloomy spirit is beautiful or
harmonious. We may pity it, but we can not admire it--scarcely love it.
In God's sight its sadness is an imperfection--in many instances it is
sinfulness. The piety of such a mind is of a questionable character, and
its virtue is liable to be tinctured with selfishness or other evils.
Its judgment is improved. God loves a cheerful spirit, a happy soul. It
is not only a duty we owe to ourselves, but to God, to be happy. Our
efforts to subdue every desponding tendency in our minds should be as
great and as constant as to master our selfish passions or animal
desires. I fully believe we have the power to be happy if we will, or,
at least, the most of us have. Some unfortunate minds are
constitutionally down in the mouth. Poor things! They suffer a great
hereditary evil. They are too hopeless, from a defect in the structure
of their minds; but these are few and far between. The rule is, that we
may be happy if we will. None of the common allotments and evils in life
are absolute barriers in our way. A resolute will and steady purpose,
with a proper time, will overcome all. Then buckle on the armor of life,
oh, young woman, and rouse your spirit to its best efforts to lead a
cheerful and useful life. Let no misfortune weigh you down, but rise
above all, and great will be your reward.

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