self-sacrifice was the Divine ideal, toward which all must aspire. These
old legends are immortal; for they speak of facts and laws which will
endure as long as there are women upon earth. Through the woman, the
civilizer and the Christianizer must reach the man. Through the wife, he
must reach the husband. Through the mother, he must reach the children.
I say he must. It is easy to complain that the clergy in every age and
country have tried to obtain influence over women. They have been forced
to do so, because otherwise they could obtain no influence at all. And
if a priesthood should arise hereafter, whose calling was to teach not
religion but irreligion, not the good news that there is a good God, and
that we can know Him; but the bad news that there is no God, or, if there
is, we cannot know Him; then would that priesthood find it necessary to
appeal like all other priesthoods, to the women, and to teach them how to
teach their children.

But more. It is not religion only which must be taught through the wives
and mothers, but sound science also, and sound economy. If you intend
(as I trust some here intend) to teach the labouring classes those laws
of health and life, on which depend the comfort, the wholesomeness, often
the decency and the morality of the poor man's home, then you must teach
those laws first to the house-mother, who brings the children into the
world, and brings them up, who puts them to bed at night, and prepares
their food by day. If you wish to teach habits of thrift, and sound
notions of economy to the labouring classes, you must teach them first to
the housewife, who has to make the weekly earnings cover, if possible,
the week's expenses. If you wish to soften and to purify the man, you
must first soften and purify the woman, or at least encourage her not to
lose what womanliness she has left, amid sights, and sounds, and habits
which tend continually to destroy her womanhood. You must encourage her,
I say, to remember always that she is a woman still, and let her teach--