is _there_. Under the
changed conditions of modern life it is inevitable; therefore it must be
in the providence of God; it cannot be wholly bad, and if we will work
in with it loyally, and not thrust it aside for some old order of our
own, it may be, nay, it will be, wholly for good. Let us remember that
the two most conservative organic forms, the two that have most resisted
progressive evolution, are the donkey and the goose. To ignore the new
order, to cling to the old views and methods, is to court moral
extinction as a living force. As well think to find safety in escaping
from the advance of an express engine by adopting the stately pace of
our grandmothers, which was perfectly adapted for getting out of the way
of a lumbering stage-coach. May not He

"Whose large plan ripens slowly to a whole"

be working out a progressive ideal such as we trace in the great
spiritual records of our race? The Bible, thank God! neither begins nor
ends with sin; but it begins with a sinless garden, it ends with a
strong city of God, with evil known and recognized, but cast out beyond
its walls. May He not be leading us to form a wiser, deeper, stronger
ideal; to aim for our girls not so much at Innocence, with her fading
wreath of flowers--fading, as, alas! they must ever fade in a world like
this--but to aim at Virtue, with her victor's crown of gold, tried in
the fire? May it not be that His divine providence is constraining us to
take as our ideal for our womanhood, not the old sheltered garden, but a
strong city of God, having foundations, whose very gates are made of
pearl, through which nothing that defileth is suffered to enter, and
whose common ways are paved with pure gold, gold of no earthly temper,
but pure and clear as crystal;--a city of refuge for all who are
oppressed with wrong, and from which all foul forms of evil are banned
by the one word "_Without_"? Sure I am that if we will accept this
deeper and larger ideal, and endeavor, however imperfectly, to work it
out on the earth, in the midst of it, as in the old garden ideal, will
be found the tree of life; but then its very leaves will be for the
healing of the nations.

But whether you go with me as far as this or not, I think you will agree
with me that we must not leave our girls to their own crude notions on
the deepest matters of life. Still less must we leave them to get their
teaching on marriage and matters of sex from some modern novels, which I
c