"To every young man, life is specially hard. As he goes
into it he needs the sympathy of all who love him; he needs the prayers and
the help of all his friends. For lack of the strong support of love, many a
young man goes down in the battle and many who come through victorious, owe
their victories to the holy affection of truly loyal hearts that inspired
them with hope and courage in all their hours of struggle. The value of
strong friendships never can be known in this world.
Next to mother and father, there is no one who can do so
much to help a young man to live nobly, as his own sister. She cannot always
go with him. Her weak arm could not always shield him if she were beside
him. But there is a help which she can give him that will prove mightier
than her presence. It is not the help of good advice and earnest words—these
should have power, too—but the help rather of silent and holy influence,
gained in the home by a life of unselfishness and beauty, and then held as a
potent charm outside and beyond the home walls. There is a power over her
brother possible to every true sister, which would be like the very hand of
God to guide him and restrain him in all the paths of life. All sisters,
however, do not have this power over their brothers, and alas! Sometimes the
power is for evil rather than for good.
May I try to tell you, dear girls, how you can indeed be
your brothers' guardian angels? Show them in your own lives at home—the
perfect grace and beauty of a true, noble and lofty womanhood. Strive after
all that is delicate, all that is pure, all that is tender, all that is holy
and sacred in the divine ideal of womanhood. Show them in yourselves such
perfect loveliness that they will turn away ever after from everything that
is unlovely. Make virtue so attractive to them, as they see it
embodied in you, that they will always be repelled by vice. Let them see in
you such purity of soul, such sweetness of spirit, such divine sanctity,
that wherever they go your influence will hang about them like an armor of
defense, or, like an angle, hover above their heads in perpetual blessing.
Be as nearly a perfect woman, each one of you, through Christ's help, as it
is possible for you to be. Then when temptations come to your brother, there
will rise up before his eyes such visions of purity and love. that he will
turn away from the tempter with loathing.
But oh! If you are not such angels of true womanhood to
your brothers, if you do not fill their souls with visions of purity and
sweetness, what help do you hope to be to them when they stand in the face
of sore temptations? If you are deceitful, if you are selfish, if you are
false, if you violate the holy proprieties of modesty and true refinement;
if you are frivolous and trifling; if you follow pleasure, turning away from
everything serious; if you are careless or heartless—do not deceive
yourselves with the vain hope that you can be in any high sense your
brothers' guardians in the day of danger. You may advise, you may persuade,
you may implore with tears and every token of tender love, when they begin
to yield—but your entreaties will avail nothing because your own life has
failed to stand the test, and to exhibit before them a lofty ideal of
womanhood. But if you will only be true, noble, unselfish, gentle, womanly,
in the highest, purest sense; if you only are thoughtful and considerate and
live for a purpose, making your character decided and strong, you will throw
over your brothers a silent, imperceptible yet mighty influence, which will
be a shield to them in danger, a panoply in temptation, and which will fill
their hearts with the purest, loftiest aspirations and aims."-J.R Miller
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