The Useful Woman by Dr. Madison C. Peters

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 17, 1910

The Useful Woman

By Dr. Madison C. Peters

I WOULD like to captivate you by the force of that common but glorious word, “usefulness.” I want to inspire you with an aim to be useful. Aspire to the honor of doing good. It is not enough to be good. The world is full of good people—goody-good—so goody-good that they are good for nothing.

You dwell in a vale of tears, and the female heart is supposed to be the very dwelling-place of mercy. An unfeeling woman is a libel upon her sex, and is useless. Loathe that spurious sentimentality which weeps over the imaginary woes of a novel, but turns away with a callous heart from those real sufferings which are found on every hand. Your highest interests are in the path of benevolence. You do most for yourselves when you do most for others—you are most useful. Don’t be a mere sponge in society, which merely absorbs.

How blessed is woman on errands of mercy! How sweet are her soothing words to the disconsolate! How consoling her tears of sympathy to the mourning! How fresh her spirit of hope to the sick! The young woman who does these works of practical useful benevolence is educating her moral powers in the school of earnest and glorious life: she is laying the foundations for a noble womanhood.

It is not enough that you pity the sorrows of the poor, that you weep over their sufferings. Your hands must be taught to heed the pleadings of your pitying heart. What you feel, you must do. You must be useful.

Is it not lamentable to see how many women live only as a waste, and wait on fast-flying time? You were made for better companionship than those of whom it is said:—

“Their only labor is to kill time, And labor it is, and weary woe; They sit and loll, turn o’er some idle line, Or saunter forth with tottering step and slow.”

—Dr. Madison C. Peters.