es which in past times have
been committed in the name of Christ, nor of the follies which are at this
hour held to be consistent with obedience to Him; but I _will_ speak of
the morbid corruption and waste of vital power in religious sentiment, by
which the pure strength of that which should be the guiding soul of every
nation, the splendor of its youthful manhood, and spotless light of its
maidenhood, is averted or cast away. You may see continually girls who
have never been taught to do a single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot
sew, who cannot cook, who cannot cast an account, nor prepare a medicine,
whose whole life has been passed either in play or in pride; you will find
girls like these, when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their innate
passion of religious spirit, which was meant by God to support them
through the irksomeness of daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation
over the meaning of the great Book, of which no syllable was ever yet to
be understood but through a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of
their womanhood made vain, and the glory of their pure consciences warped
into fruitless agony concerning questions which the laws of common
serviceable life would either have solved for them in an instant, or kept
out of their way. Give such a girl any true work that will make her active
in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow
creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless
sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant
and beneficent peace.

So with our youths. We once taught them to make Latin verses, and called
them educated; now we teach them to leap and to row, to hit a ball with a
bat, and call them educated. Can they plough, can they sow, can they plant
at the right time, or build with a steady hand? Is it the effort of their
lives to be chaste, knightly, faithful, holy in thought, lovely in word
and deed? Indeed it is, with some, nay, with many, and the strength of
England is in them, and the hope; but we have to turn their courage from
the toil of war to the toil of mercy; and their intellect from dispute of
words to discernment of things; and their knighthood from the errantry of
adventure to the state and fidelity of a kingly power. And then, indeed,
shall abide, for them and for us, an incorruptible felicity, and an
infallible religion; shall abide for us Faith, no more to be assailed by
temptation, no