ABSTRACT
A number of women writers drew their readers’ attention to the paramount importance of religious instruction. Mrs Elizabeth Hamilton, for example, an influential writer who had some very sound ideas as well as some far-fetched notions, declared emphatically in the early years of the century that ‘to learn to make such use of all the talents which heaven has bestowed as shall lead to the attainment of everlasting glory, is the central point to which all our views and efforts ought to be directed; nor, unless our conceptions upon this subject are very dark and confused, shall we suffer any apprehension of being obliged to make a sacrifice of our happiness here, to the hopes of obtaining happiness hereafter’.1
