Virtues That Wash
In the days before fast-color dyes had been developed, women made dyes from herbs, berries, and roots. Only a few dyes made in this manner were fast-color, and they were eagerly sought after since the others faded.
When a child was born in a minister’s family in Puritan New England, the father wrote the baby’s name in the old family Bible, and beside it this wish: “May the Lord endue her with virtues that wash.”
In language comparing virtues to fast-color dyes, the minister was expressing the hope that his daughter would possess such stable virtues that they would not fade in the repeated launderings of life, but that they would remain to the end as pure and wholesome as they were at the beginning. Too often our characters are so weak that our much-vaunted virtues and lauded goodnesses grow dimmer and dimmer as they are laundered in the suds of temptation in the washtub of life.
In his progress away from barbarism, man has sometimes unwisely divorced himself from virtue and goodness, when what each of us needs is a generous supply of virtues that wash - convictions that will not be shaken, principles that stand firm.
Possessing virtues that wash, we are ready for the world.
by Leo Bennett: as published in Monta H. Crane and Selma Shepherd Downey, compilers: “Sunshine and Shadows” (1973), ‘Book I - From Dawn to Afterglow, Eventide,’ page 97
In the days before fast-color dyes had been developed, women made dyes from herbs, berries, and roots. Only a few dyes made in this manner were fast-color, and they were eagerly sought after since the others faded.
When a child was born in a minister’s family in Puritan New England, the father wrote the baby’s name in the old family Bible, and beside it this wish: “May the Lord endue her with virtues that wash.”
In language comparing virtues to fast-color dyes, the minister was expressing the hope that his daughter would possess such stable virtues that they would not fade in the repeated launderings of life, but that they would remain to the end as pure and wholesome as they were at the beginning. Too often our characters are so weak that our much-vaunted virtues and lauded goodnesses grow dimmer and dimmer as they are laundered in the suds of temptation in the washtub of life.
In his progress away from barbarism, man has sometimes unwisely divorced himself from virtue and goodness, when what each of us needs is a generous supply of virtues that wash - convictions that will not be shaken, principles that stand firm.
Possessing virtues that wash, we are ready for the world.
by Leo Bennett: as published in Monta H. Crane and Selma Shepherd Downey, compilers: “Sunshine and Shadows” (1973), ‘Book I - From Dawn to Afterglow, Eventide,’ page 97
