Women: Protectors of the Nation's Morals

NOTE: The following was written Friday evening.

I write this appropriately as a women's group here at Perry Baptist is watching a DVD of Mary Kassian speaking on the biblical role of women at last year's True Woman '08 Conference. While they are in the other room I wish to "steal" a paragraph which my wife was reading to me earlier this evening. It is from Female Piety by John Angell James (1785-1859). If you can manage the language, James underscores the preservationist role of good women in any society. Odd, isn't it, how some women will fight to gain what they already wield in spades, the power to affect the moral fiber of an entire nation!

James writes:

To a certain extent, woman is the conservator of her nation's welfare. Her virtue, if firm and uncorrupted, will stand sentinel over that of the empire. Law, justice, liberty, and the arts all contribute, of course, to the well-being of a nation; beneficial influence flows in from various springs, and innumerable contributors may be at work, each laboring in his vocation for his country's weal [well-being]. But let the general tone of female morals be low, and all will be rendered nugatory [trivial, invalid], while, on the other hand, the universal prevalence of womanly intelligence and virtue will swell the stream of civilization to its highest level, impregnate it with its richest qualities, and spread its fertility over the widest surface. A community is not likely to be overthrown where woman fulfills her mission, for by the power of her noble heart over the hearts of others she will raise it from its ruins and restore it again to prosperity and joy. [emphasis mine] Here, then, beyond the circle of wedded life as well as within it, is no doubt part of woman's mission, and an important one it is. Her field is social life, her object is social happiness, her reward is social gratitude and respect (p. 59).

We affirm with Solomon, "An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. . . . Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised" (Proverbs 31:10, 30).