Commencement Season by Christian Union

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Jun 24, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 24.

Commencement Season.

By Christian Union

At this commencement season of the year probably a score of orators have remarked to their audiences, in connection with addresses bearing upon woman's education, that the noblest office a woman can fill is that of wife and mother. This remark continues to be profound, though it has ceased to be original; it is perhaps desirable to repeat it once a year, for liturgical forms have their benefits, and as every year witnesses the graduation of a new class of girls, it may be well enough to reiterate a lesson which is old to pupils who are new. But we respectfully suggest, for the benefit of next year's orators, that it would be quite as profound and considerably more original to remark that the noblest office which a man can fill is that of husband and father.

The boys need education for home life no less truly than the girls; if a woman ought to know how to cook a beefsteak without burning it to a cinder, a man ought to know how to drive a nail without pounding his fingers or splitting the board. Woman ought not, either, to have a monopoly of the domestic virtues, and love and self-denial are manly as well as womanly attributes. The principle is capable of a widely extended application. The father who lets his sons grow up to scoff at their mother and to tease and hector their sisters is fitting them to make a wretched travesty of a home when they are old enough to have one of their own; while he who trains his boys to respect their mother, and to defend chivalrously their sisters from the vexations and annoyances of life, is training them to be founders of homes; and the founders of homes are the true founders of the nation. A good brother or son will make a good husband and father, and that is quite as high an office as that of wife and mother, though one far less honored in public estimation, because far less honored, ordinarily, in the filling of it.—Christian Union.