s A V s s H
That which is sent thee take in soothfastnesse ;
The wrestling of this life doth ask a fall
chaucer.
ESSAYS J
BY DORA GREENWELL.
ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER
LONDON AND NEY^ YORK
1866
271536
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Our Single Women i
Hardened in Good 69
Prayer . .114
Popular Religious Literature . , o , 149
Christianos ad Leones . , . . . 207
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.i
in the multitude of counsellors there
is safety, how blest must be the
security of single women ! Every
one who has a little spare wisdom at command,
seems just now inclined to lay it out for their
benefit. As far as books go, they have become
t
the objects of class legislation, having a literature
of their own, so abounding in hints, suggestions,
and schemes for their favourable consideration,
that we sometimes wonder if any among the
sisterhood feel at all inclined to echo Tony
Lumpkins' ungracious and unfilial rejoinder, ^ 1
wish you would only leave my good alonel
1 Reprinted from the North British Review for February 1862»
A
2
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
Single women must surely feel a little alarmed
at discovering how much is expected from them
—at finding themselves looked upon as a hitherto
Unclaimed Dividend, which society is at length
bent upon realizing. They have, it is true,
gained much both socially and aesthetically in
passing from the traditionary type—the ^ withered
prude'—made immortal by Hogarth and Cowper
to that which must be familiar to all readers of
modern fiction, the gentle, dovelike Old Maid,
of smooth braided silvery hair, and soft speech
and eye, generally, it may be remarked, dressed
in grey, who is supposed to have some tender
secret buried in her heart, some letter or lock of
hair shut within a secret drawer, but who, ever
serene and cheerful, flits in and out between the
scenes, listening, consoling, cheering, at all times
ready to take up a little of existence at second
hand. Good books can sometimes awaken very
wicked thoughts! It has sometimes'occurred to
us, that such intense application to amiability, such
persevering interest in everything that has to do
with every other person, must be very hard work ;
that single women, on the whole, have done no-
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
3
thing to merit such a destiny ; and that there might
be safety—if of an ignominious kind—in falling
back upon old-fashioned crustiness and angularity !
We have learnt much lately about Woman—
much from her actual deeds and endeavours;
much too from books. Yet it is not from books
about women, useful and suggestive as many of
I
these are, that our deepest lessons have been won.
' Great souls have been among us,
Hands that penned, and lips that uttered wisdom. '
It is surely singular that woman, bound, as she
is, no less by the laws of society than by the
immutable instincts of her nature, to a certain
suppression in all that relates to personal feeling,
should attain, in print, to the fearless, uncom¬
promising sincerity she misses in real life ; so
that in the poem, above all in the novel—that
epic, as it has been truly called, of our modem
day,—a living soul, a ' living voice, should seem
to greet us ; a voice so sad, so tmthful, so ear¬
nest, that we have felt as if some intimate secret
were at once communicated and withheld,—an
Open Secret, free to all who could find its key
—the secret of a woman's heart, with all its
4
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
needs, its struggles, and its aspirations. And we
have thought, sometimes sadly, that to women
who can so feel and write. Life, which we know
is not rich enough to set a Benjamin's portion
before all earth's children, may be a nobler, but
must be a less easy thing, than it was in days
when she had less to win and lose. The con¬
ditions of life grow continually less and less
severe, yet more and more complicated : the
springs of thought, of love, lie deeper. Con¬
science grows mofe exacting, responsibilities
widen. Woman's whole being is. more sensitive.
It may now, perhaps, be harder for her than
it has ever yet been to make her wishes and
her fate agree—''to bring her external existence
into har7nony with her inner lifel
Harder, especially for single women. A single
woman ! Is there not something plaintive in the
two words standing together? the more so, if
they are so viewed in connexion with a certain
verse in Genesis : ^ And the Lord God said. It
is not good for man to be alone ; I will make
him an help meet for him.' Even statistics have
their pathetic side; and without entering into
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
5
them very deeply, it is evident that every suc¬
cessive year adds its visible reinforcement to the
already serried battalions of our single women :
old maids, in growing graceful and useful, bless¬
ing and blest, have grown, at the same time, far
more numerous than they used to be. Of what
f
is this fact significant "2 Is it a forced growth,
the result of a highly artificial civilisation, chiefly
showing us how far we have by this time got
from Eden 1
We hear much, however, of ^single blessedness'
—the phrase, being Shaksperian, is entitled to
pass current,—yet a sweet voice, now silent, has
told us that ^ all the flowers of love blow double
and many have thought that the flowers of happi¬
ness also—at least its choicest ones—follow the
same law. However this may be, we are sure
that, whatever ' fields ' may open before woman,
whatever spheres or missions she may find or have
found for her, there is at least one to which she
will never attain through virtue of any principle of
Natural Selection. Leaving on one side for the
present, the exceptional case of decided Religious
Vocation, we venture to say that no woman ù
6
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
singlefi'om choice. Yet here we shall be met by a
wide disclaimer, for to say this is to touch celibacy
on its sorest, most sensitive point ; and we all re¬
member the anxiety, too vehement to be strictly
logical, with which the three weird sisters, in the
excellent old novel of ' Marriage,' labour to es¬
tablish the important fact that ^ we might have
been married, for Grizzy once had an offer.' Be
patient, fair and gentle, readers, for we are in the
mood for liberal concessions : we are well aware
that you, and you, and you, might, had you chosen
it, have been married—yes, as the phrase goes,
twenty times over. And why are you still single !
We do not know ; nor would you yourself, per¬
haps, find it easy to account for the fact with
historical distinctness. One thing only can you
and we alike predicate negatively, yet surely :
Whatever may have been the causes which in¬
duced or compelled you to remain unmarried, we
can name one which found no place among them.
It was not love for single life in itself; it was no
deliberate preference for an estate alien to the
whole constitution of woman's nature. You did
not intend to be an Old Maid. There is no
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
/
7
woman, from the humblest to the highest, who has
not had her dream of a heart that she might in¬
deed call her own, of a home, and a husband,
each, like the altar and the gift which is upon it,
endearing and sanctifying the other. There is no
woman, we repeat it, who does not feel that, in
missing these, she has, in some sort, missed her
destiny, and fallen short of her own deep capa¬
bilities of happiness and love.
It is true that a female writer (quoted by Mr.
Stuart Mill) has asked, with some scorn, ^ Why
should the existence of one half the species be
merely ancillary to the other? why should each
woman be a mere appendage to a man? why should
men live for their own sake—^women for the sake
of men ? The only reason which can be given is,
that men like it I That women, like it^ would, how¬
ever, we suspect, be found a truer reason. St
Paul has told us, ^ that the man was not made for
the woman, but the woman for the man.' Yet he,
who passes for an austere thinker, has also told
us, ^ that the woman is the glory of the man and
this glory most women with whatever independent
claims to distinction, will continue to esteem their
8
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
crowning one. To be man's help-meet is woman's
true vocation : for this, in the happy gaiden, she
was given to the First Adam ; and to be this, no
longer Man's drudge or his plaything, the coming
of the Second Adam has restored her. When
man, from whose side woman was at first taken,
has taken her back into his bosom, receiving and
imparting strength and solace—when these two, so
often mutually deceiving and deceived, are truly
One,—it is like the healing of some deep original
wound : it is Reconciliation, Union, Completion.
We must not, however, follow up these thoughts,
which would lead us into regions far wide of those
with which our present meditations are concerned.
Our single women !—Are we at all justified in
looking upon them, as we are sometimes inclined
to do, as our modern Levites—possessing no fixed
inheritance in the land, yet far less amply provided
for than they out of its fulness ? Is their social
position, on the whole, an enviable one ? Celi¬
bacy has still, and it is probable will ever continue
to have, its peculiar reproach, less grievous per¬
haps than in the days when the daughter of the
rash judge took up her lamentation on the moun-
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
9
tains, less bitter, it may be, than in times not
so long departed, when Charles Lamb felt the
soul of gentle chivalry within him stirred up to
interpose between ^an old maid,' and the dis¬
paraging levity with which the Votaresses of that
order were unfailingly alluded to,—^yet still exist¬
ing under given ameliorations. There comes a
time when the woman suddenly or gradually
wakens into the consciousness that a certain
bloom and fragrance has passed from her life,
never to return. The days are over, when she
had but to smile or speak to give pleasure. She
sings as well as she did ten years ago, and cer¬
tainly talks a great deal better ; yet no one hangs
upon her strain in raptures, or gathers up her
words as if they were pearls and rubies. Nor does
she expect them to do so ; for she knows, even
without this indirect testimony, that an aureole
has dropped from her brow. She accepts her
position ; for we live in an honest century, one
in which men are not ashamed of owning to being
poor, nor women, past the rubicon of thirty, in¬
capable of alluding to their age as naturally as to
any other fact of simply historic interest. Yet,
lO
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
after all, it is not easy to sink into an Old Maid
with dignity ; more especially when the descent is
made so gradual (we speak cautiously where the
chronological data are at once delicate and
unfixed), as to extend over about ten of the best
years of a woman's life,—a long transitional period,
during the whole of which the single woman,
^poor Aymo. or Elizabeth '—for her name is seldom
heard unaccompanied by this kindly and pitying
prefix—has to contend against a deeply rooted
persuasion, most trying to her spirit and delicacy.
With her family and friends it is a fixed idea (and
(
probably, after all we have said, in some degree a
justifiable one), that of course she would be most
thankful to be married, no matter to whom. If,
like the lady in Locksley Hall, she has ' her feel¬
ings,' she had best at once put them into the pre-
ter-pluperfect tense,—as that of which the action
is entirely over, and in no way to bear upon the
present time. Anything must be better for her
than being an old maid !
The single woman is aware of this, and the
consciousness often affects her manner as regards
the opposite sex with a painful timidity and irre-
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
ÎI
f
solution. Among men of her own age, there may¬
be some with whom she would gladly place herself
on a footing of cordiality ; yet she fears to be mis¬
understood, lest, where she is but following a
kindly social impulse, she should be suspected of
looking out for a husband. There are women, it
is true, blest with strength and originality of char¬
acter enough to surmount these disadvantages,
and to attain to the frank, unhesitating simplicity
of the matron. But these are exceptional in¬
stances ; in general, it would be curious, if it were
not so touching, to watch the woman of ^ no par¬
ticular age ' fading into a neutral tint long before
the setting in of her autumn need have compelled
the change, studiously obliterating herself from
the busy foreground of life, taking up less and less
room in the world, and seeming to apologize to it
for even the little space she occupies.^
For in the world—that great and goodly, yet
1 ' Let the eighteenth motion he that of trepidation, it is the motion,
as it were, of an eternal captivity : when bodies, for instance, not
exactly contented with their position, and not exactly ill, constantly
tremble, and are restless, not contented with their position, and not
daring to advance. This motion necessarily occurs in all bodies which
are situated in a mean state, between conveniences and inconveniences,
so that, being repulsed from their proper position, they strive to escape,
are repulsed, and again continue to make the attempt.'—Novum
Organum.
12
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
not too well-warmed mansion—single women are
on the whole provided for, much as single gentle¬
men are accommodated in country houses, not
in the roomiest or best furnished apartments ; and
for these, too, they are often expected to pay
pretty dearly. No person obtains a deeper ex¬
perience of this life's narrowness and poverty, or
gains a clearer insight into the selfishness of our
fallen nature, than the lonely and sensitive single
woman. Her friends give her their kindness rather
than their affection ; that is fixed elsewhere. They
come to tell her of their troubles, their sorrows,
perhaps even of their wrongs ; and not without a
certain complacency, for these things are their ow7i.
They spread out each item before her for sympathy
and commiseration ; they lay down their burdens
at her feet : she may have her own to bear, per¬
haps a heavier one than they think of ; but this
she knows she is not expected to unlade. She
must be content to carry it on her back like
Christian ; too happy if she can sometimes rest it
at the spot where his fell off his shoulders for ever.
Single life is full of limitations, of restrictions ;
it is in itself free, rich, and happy than that in
OUR SINGLE WOMEN. I3
which the current of a woman's heart and life,
having found a natural channel, expands in some
degree at will, and flows on but the more safely
and swiftly for the limits which restrain its course,
freed ^ from the weight of too much liberty,'
But do not single women also suffer from a
tendency in some respects peculiar to our own
country, and which cannot, in its nature, but press
heavily upon a class more than any other under
the empire of opinion Í We allude to that jealousy,
inherent in the British mind, of allowing a woman's
thoughts and feelings to run in any other channel
—say rather groove—than that which convention
has hollowed out as their appropriate one. We
are, after all, a Conservative nation ; with us
' Time consecrates,
And what is grey with age becomes religion. '
That path across the field looks pleasant, and
seems (to say nothing of the flowers in the hedge¬
rows) a short cut to the place we are bound for ;
hut we had heiter keep in the heaten tracks hot though
it be, and dusty and roundabout. To this char¬
acteristic dread of committing ourselves, to which
society owes so much of its dead-level uniformity,
M
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
we may set down the loss of far nobler things
than the innocent enjoyment of which it has often
robbed us. We hope to see our age, by virtue of
its proper strength, outgrow this bugbear, which
always bends its grisliest frown on woman. We
have looked upon this dragon, and longing like
true knight, to defy him to mortal combat, have
already counted his scales, and, finding more than
one vulnerable spot between them, hope yet to
see his bones bleaching in the sunshine. We
expect yet to see a time when woman will dare
to be that for which God made her, and that
she will at last be allowed to traffic freely, for His
honour and her own profit, with the portion of
goods that has been allotted to her. Woman's
heart and mind have grown, and her world must
expand with them. Her life may be less safe,
less comfortable^ than in times when she could
contentedly drift into the shelter of some little
Cranford, and there remain at anchor for the rest
of life ; it matters not,
' For nature brings not back the Mastodon,
Nor we those days.'
Cranford is itself of the things, rapidly evanish-
OITR SINGLE WOMEN.
15
ing, which the hand of genius has had power to
fix and stay for a moment ; yet another, and thç
demon of a helpless gentility, already cast out
with his bonds and fetters from our busier haunts,
will be exorcised from even these quiet nooks and
corners. Our women—we speak it with pride
and affection—bear upon them the too decided
impress of an age pre-eminently earnest and
practical; they show too plainly the training of
their stern yet kindly mother, the nineteenth cen¬
tury, to lend themselves with fitting grace to pin¬
cushion-making and the manufacture of ' spills.'
They could be happier—we know it—in the thick
of dangers and privations ; better content to plant
potatoes in any yet discovered bush with Mrs.
Mudie, than in a life, however rich in material
comforts, fenced in with a thousand unmeaning
restrictions,—a life as linsanctified by any lofty
aim, as unsweetened by any tender tie.
There is a spirit at work among our women ;
and that its manifestations have not been already
more striking, is chiefly owing to the depth of
practical sobriety with which it is tempered, and to
a certain reserve, which draws an unseen circle
l6 OUR SINGLE WOME^ÍÍ.
round the Christian and cultivated Englishwoman,
never permitting her to ^ overstep the modesty of
nature.' We have touched upon what woman has
lately done in literature ; how a power, a pathos
exclusively feminine, feminine not in weakness
but in strength, has revealed itself among us, so
that a woman's best praise can no longer consist,
as it has done hitherto, in being told that she has
written like a man. And, to turn to less sustained
and exalted efforts, does not woman show, even in
her accomplishments, a continually increasing ap¬
preciation of the solid and fundamental ! She
knows more of what she does. Her attainments
are no longer like the flowers in a child's garden,
stuck in without a root to hold by, but living
blossoms, unfolding from principles ; those ever¬
lasting ^ seeds of things.' If we listen to her
music, we hear no more of that vague and brilliant
skirmishing over the keys—' execution,' we believe,
it used to be called—which not many years ago
was held in general esteem. If we inspect her
drawings, even her finer needlework, we shall per¬
ceive a recognition of law, an obedience to Art's
unchangeable canons, also a disdain of trick, and
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
17
of its cheap results, costing little, but worth even
less than they cost, which found no place in the
days of Poonah painting, and other kindred in¬
ventions, ingenious in their own day, but in ours
traditionary. We wish there were any museum—
it would be interesting to the friends of progress
—for the storing up of specimens of these forgot¬
ten arts. Among them we might place many
gentle affectations now obsolete in our drawing-
rooms, which are now, we may observe in passing,
less distant from our kitchens than they used to be
in days when it was almost a point of honour to
be ignorant of the exact position of that locality.
These indications may be but slight in themselves,
bubbles on the surface ; but they are significant
of pearls that lie below, in the depths of woman's
moral being, of which it has been justly said, her
taste is ever a true criterion ; what she likes being
ever significant of what she is. It is evident that
woman's mind, whether v/ith or without direction,
has now got upon a more noble track. She has
discarded many littlenesses, many frivolities ; she
aspires greatly, but does not yet perhaps see
clearly; through very eagerness, she^may some-
B
i8
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
times perhaps miss her way; yet, if we were a
sculptor, we would carve her as we now behold
her—the Genius of Goodwill and Help—standing
with outstretched hands, ready to help herself or
others, ready also to he helped. The woman,
whether single or married, can never be ^ without
the man.' ^ Women' (it is from a woman's letter
we now quote) ' must pay men the compliment
of saying that they originate and organize better
than we do. They are also freer agents than we
are ; and how many of our best schemes, without
the help of their judgment and practical ability,
seem as yet only to possess a soul that wants a
body to work through ! How many women are
now waiting, with empty hands and longing
hearts ! Will not good men lend us their aid to
bring us and our work together 1 '
A married woman moves in a circle of her own ;
one which zeal for self-culture and enlightened
benevolence are gently yet continually extending,
while each star remains no less a fixed one, the
centre of her little orbit,
' True to the kindred points of heaven and home.'
Yet our single women, who, with more abundant
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
19
leisure, have fewer defined duties, seem now to
need, not so much a new sphere of action, as more
perfect freedom and expansioii in that which is al¬
ready their own. We are persuaded that there
are many ways in which a woman of character and
energy, without becoming either a lawyer or a
physician, might add at once to her own happiness
and usefulness, increase (as the case might be) the
resources of her family and her own often very
slender income, and keep out that chill which is
so apt to steal into a life of which the objects are
confessedly below the capabilities. Yet, before
she can take any decided step in such a direction,
she will meet with difficulties against which it is
hard for a YOi^an to contend single-handed. The
traditions of social life are against her; pre¬
cedent is not her friend. A contest ensues^ in
which she perhaps grows obstinate, and in some
degree unsexed. A certain eccentricity, or at
least the appearance of such, attends upon her
solitary efforts ; and society is slow to recognise a
principle of combination in which she might find
both encouragement and protection.
Before, however, we enter upon the subject of
20
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
combined Christian exertion, and that which natur¬
ally connects itself with it, the labour which pro¬
ceeds from love, another question demands a few
words.
Woman, as she has been lately told by one of
her truest and wisest friends,^ is a Being naturally
fond of work, uneasy of inaction, and loving em¬
ployment for its own sake. A woman is seldom
willingly unoccupied ; and as life advances into
that middle region where there is so much com¬
parative outward freedom and inward calm, she
will find a broad working space around her, in the
cultivation of which it is surely well that she should
herself have some vested interest. After a certain
time, mere general self-cultivation grows wearisome
and objectless, and all women have not a vocation
for active self-devoted charity. Yet the question
of remunerative employment for women is one as
full of difficulty as of interest. As far, however,
as concerns the competent and capable class of
educated women, we believe it will be self-
answered by a gradual widening of the field for
which woman's peculiar endowments best fit her.
^ M. Jules Simon.
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
21
In all that involves moral superintendence and
personal administration—^ house-keeping/ as Mrs.
Jameson calls it, 'on a larger scale'—in charitable,
penal, and reformatory institutions, the need of
women of intelligence and refinement will be every
year more recognised. Prejudices are breaking
up, depressing restrictions ceasing to make them¬
selves felt; even now we believe that a womam
who is thoroughly competent to any work, be it
even the teaching of Naval Mathematics, will not
find herself shut out from success because she is
a woman. There is something truly valuable
in the movement^ which is now making in
1 While we are doing our best to help those who are more or less able
to help themselves, we must not forget the claims of those who, from
no fault of their own, have dropped altogether out of the great onward
march of humanity—our destitute and incapable ladies, of whom it may
emphatically be said, that they cannot dig. and would be ashamed to
beg. We know no sadder reading for a kind-hearted person than the
yearly report of the British Beneficent Society, instituted for the pur¬
pose of allowing annuities to such ladies Every line in the list of
candidates is a little tragedy, speaking as it does of a lapse from com¬
fort, affluence, sometimes even from distinction, of extreme old agè,
nervousness, blindness, of hope deferred from year to year, by the
great discrepancy between the number of annuities and of applicants,
until the pleasure of helping a successful candidate to win is cruelly
damped by the refiection of the numbers still waiting, like the sick at
the pool of Bethesda. The poorest man^ as Shakspeare says,—
\
' Is in the poorest thing superfluous :
Allows for nature more than nature needs ; '
but not so the poor of the other sex. The reduced lady truly wants
but little here below : it is not hard for her to make her income and
22
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
favour of the higher class of female workers by
the Society for Promoting the Employment of
Women, in opening out for them less thronged
and footworn tracks than those of tuition and
needlework, by directing their efforts towards
her 'out-goes' meet; little suffices to make her contented and inde¬
pendent How hard that she should want that little ! Surely it is
strange that an age like our own, so tender to the wants, even the
frailties and sins of woman, should be so unmindful of this most help¬
less, most blameless class, as to allow this excellent Society to lan¬
guish.
We are glad, however, to find that the National Benevolent
Society, established in 1812, with a kindred object, still exists and
flourishes, while their sister institution, the admirable Governesses'
Benevolent Society, is able, in addition to its elective annuities,
to extend its aid in various directions, all important and beneficial.
It has given, during the last year, temporary assistance to the
struggling, the invalid, and the aged governess, to the amount of
16,882. It has established a Provident Fund, enabling ladies,
through their own earnings and savings, to purchase annuities. This
fund now possesses a capital of 169,041 ; and in i860, 427 ladies
became entitled to annuities It has a home for governesses out of
employment, or needing rest and relaxation, and an asylum for the
aged or hopelessly invalid ladies. When we consider the amount of
good which a society like this can diffuse, the numbers of earth's ex¬
cellent and over-tasked daughters it raises to comfort and snatches
from despair, we cannot but desire that we had more such foundations
among us ; giving to some a breathing, to others a resting place : true
homes for those on whom life has borne heavily ! ' People,' says the
noble-hearted Frederika Bremer, ' may say what they will, and do the
best they can in the great community ; but there will always exist the
need of places where the shipwrecked in life, the wearied in life, the
solitary and feeble, may escape to as to a refuge—places where their
goodwill, and such powers of labour as they possess, may, under wise
and affectionate management, be turned to account for their own
happiness and the common benefit '
Of the Indigent Gentlewomen's Society of Scotland we may say the
same as of the British Beneficent Society. The number of cases of
destitution among ladies once in comfort or in affluence that it has at
once revealed and relieved, would almost surpass belief.
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
23
printing and the semi-mechanical arts ; above all,
in facilitating emigration to our colonies, where
educated women are wanted in so many capa¬
cities, by supplying agents to receive and protect
them on their arrival, and to be to them what
Mrs. Chisholm has been to the humbler female
emigrant. The more interest, however, that we
take in these openings, so lo7tg as they are pro¬
visional and exceptional—designed to meet some
J
of that pressure which the stress of life brings, to
give a career to the woman of exalted abilities, an
income to the woman of slender means—the more
does our heart turn from them as permanent or
general arrangements \ for their obvious tendency
is to change the true character of ' woman's work,'
to turn it into anything but that which the good
old saying makes it—that which is ' never done,'
and, we may add, never paid for, by the hour
or day. Any one who is at all familiar with our
manufacturing districts knows, that though, to
meet the inexorable laws which guide wages and
production, the poor man's wife, and oftentimes
1
his children, must work at the loom or in the
factory, there is no such blight to the physical
24
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
and moral wellbeing of a neighbourhood as that
caused by female labour.^ It has the effect, when
general, of at once lowering the wages of the man,
and destroying the comfort of his home, wounding
his own self-respect as ^ masterman' and bread¬
winner, while it robs him of his wife, and his
children of their mother. We have been told by
intelligent poor women, that they went to the mill
because they had been brought up to it from girl¬
hood ; and also for another reason, rnore or less
openly acknowledged, that girls so brought up,
when they become wives and mothers, are such
inefficient housewives that they are of little use at
home, and naturally like going to the factory better ;
but that they did not believe they gained much by
it—such heavy deductions must be made in the
way of paying for the care of children, and the
doing of household work by others when the
woman is all day absent from home. We will
1 See UOuvrière (Hachette and Co.) It is impossible to speak in
too high praise of this exquisite book, like some of the fabrics it de¬
scribes, an Arachne's web of patience and industry, upon which flowers
bloom, and the hues of heaven flash and mingle. M, Simon has looked
at his subject as it is ; he has spared no fact or detail connected with
it ; nothing has wearied, nothing has revolted him ; but beneath all,
the fire of a patriot's, a poet's heart has kindled, and the result is the
Idyll of Labour, terrible in its pathos, yet sweet as was ever sung by
Sicilian shepherd.
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
25
not enter upon the amount of moral loss, for it
is confessedly incalculable; it is enough to state
that we believe the problem, as yet untried in the
higher classes of women, would be worked out
there to the same result. The female writer pre¬
viously referred to,^ complains that, ^ even in the
exercise of industry, almost all eniployments which
task the faculties in an important field, which lead
to distinction, riches, or even pecuniary indepen¬
dence, are fenced round as the exclusive domain
of the predominant section,—scarcely any doors
being left open to the dependent class, except
such as all who can enter elsewhere disdainfully
pass by.' ' Many persons,' the same writer adds,
^ think they have sufficiently justified the restric¬
tions on women's field of action, when they have
said that the pursuits from which women are ex¬
cluded are unfeminine^ and that the proper sphere
of women is not politics or publicity, but private
and domestic life. We deny the right of any
portion of the species to decide for another por¬
tion, or any individual for another individual,
what is, and what is not, their " proper sphere.'
1 Enfranchisement of Women. See J. S. Mill's Works.
20
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
The proper sphere of all human beings is the
largest and highest which they are able to attain
to. What this is, cannot be ascertained without
complete choice.'
There may be truth in this as regards indi¬
viduals; but we are sure, in so wide a ques¬
tion as that of sex, the 'sphere' is already self-
drawn, self-determined, and by the same unerring
hand that gave Giotto power to draw his O.
Writers who take this tone have surely failed to
perceive how strong is the print that nature has
set upon woman. Of her we may most truly say,
that she is a law unto herself ; her peculiar gifts
point out her peculiar office ; the very limitations
of her nature are connected with excellencies which
could scarcely exist without them. It is idle to
dispute as to the fact of her mental equality with
man ; were this proved, the point at issue would
remain where it now stands,—in the fact of an
essential radical, organic difference, which makes
her fail where he excels, and excel where he would
fail most greatly. It is not given to woman to
see, to grasp, things in their wholeness, to behold
i
them in affinity, in relation. Not one of the keys
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
27
which has unlocked the mighty synthesis of crea¬
tion has been turned by her hand. In imaginative
strength she has been proved deficient ; she un¬
folds no new heaven, she breaks into no new
world. She discovers, invents, creates nothing.
In her whole nature we trace a passivity, a ten¬
dency to work upon that which she receives, to
quicken, to foster, to develop. We could almost
say that her influence in the world is an elemental
one, so subtle is it, so continuous, so unperceived.
Her work, perhaps, makes little show; for she,
as Fénélon says, is the soul of the house, and
not its architect. K true woman's eye, and hand,
and heart, are everywhere, waiting upon every
moment's call ; ^ ready, aye ready,' is her
chosen motto. Does not reason show us that,
if a woman takes up any way of life which en¬
grosses her time, or absorbs her thoughts—if the
poor woman is all day at her loom, the educated
one in her profession—that her life as a woman
is gone ?
And, further—we would draw attention to an
attribute of womanhood which appears to have
escaped the notice of those who have written on
28
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
the subject, but which seems more than any other
to draw a sharp line of separation between her
career and that of Man. We allude to that law of
her nature which compels her, as it were, to bring
the whole of her being to whatever at the moment
engages her. By an effort of will a man can make
his heart and intellect run on in separate tracks :
he can be in love, in grief, and yet attend to what
is before him—can parcel himself out to business,
even to study. Not so a woman : ^ She moves all
together, if she moves at all and it is probably
owing to this oneness of nature that a woman,
when once depraved, becomes so complete a
wreck, so incapable of self-restitution, so incom¬
petent, with whatever help, to rise from her own
ruins. She has not kept, as men good and bad
do, something in reserve. Women of the highest
intellectual gifts betray the same affecting sincerity
of nature,^ through the ardour, amounting to fana¬
ticism, with which they fasten, even fling them¬
selves, upon art or knowledge. They can only
possess a thing, it seems, through being possessed
by it. In reading Margaret Fuller's Life^ we re¬
member being struck with the hold which her
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
29
girlish studies laid upon her ; how she lived and
dreamt in Virgil, her morbidly excited imagination
bringing up the scenes in the ^neid before her
in almost fearful vividness. To an equally clever
boy all this would probably have been a lesson
entered into with a certain zest, and laid by with
no less^ alacrity, for the attractions of the cricket-
ground and boat-race. Intellect as well as feeling
exerts a sort of tyranny over woman. She cannot
pass from the region of emotion to lhat of exer¬
tion, or even from one field of exertion to another,
as rapidly, as easily, as a man does ; and it is
. evident that she must lose pauch in what we must
still consider her proper sphere, before she can
rise greatly in any other. If she is a physician, a
lawyer, an artist, a factory weaver, she will be
that, and not much besides; and the world will
be the poorer for the loss of a woman.
We have, however, women among us who take
little account of gain, nor yet of loss, even though
it be that of their own lives ; we have among us
women who would wholly lose that they may gain
wholly—women who want little more from the
world than that which Archimedes asked for—a
50 OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
Stand-point from which they may move it. They
do not look to it for hire or for reward :
' Another bliss before their eyes they place,
Another happiness, another end.'
How many such are now waiting, far more
weary of inaction than they will ever be of labour,
—waiting for the work which is waiting for theiii !
For are there not fields around us white unto
the harvest, asking for these very labourers who
now stand hired, and full of a holy impatience
to begin ?
It is time surely for the Church of Christ to
awake to that prophetic exhortation,—
' Enlarge the place of thy tent ; spare not,
Lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes. '
Every year extends man's dominion over nature ;
every year adds visibly to the extent of that em¬
pire in which Lord Bacon more than two centuries
ago foretold that the true conquests of our race
would be achieved. Nature has become man's
tributary ; his splendid vassal, ever bringing in
fresh wealth, learning from him her own secrets,
unfolding to him treasures of whose very existence
she would have remained unconscious but for him.
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
31
It is time, then, that God's other kingdom— that
one which shall never he removed—should also
extend its borders, should ascertain its wealth,
should apply and multiply all its resources. Has
the Christian Church in our country yet done
this 1 Are we not justified in calling upon her to
imitate the divine economy of her great Master ;
to see that, among so many holy and heaven-sent
impulses, ' nothing be lost ' in mortifying failure
or misdirected effort'? Is it not time for her to
show herself generous, or rather just, towards her
daughters—to give them a recognisedplace^ a defined
work in the ministry %
The Church of England has been accused by
one of the most eloquent of her sons, of a certain
^ unthriftiness ' in the management of her resources,
of a slowness in attracting to herself those floating
seeds of ardour and enthusiasm which may so
easily wither on the rock, or be trodden under
foot by the hasty passer, but which, fastening
themselves in a good ground, with shelter and
timely care, will not fail to bring forth fruit, ^ some
thirtyand some an hundred fold.' The Church
of England does, and gives much ; is it possible to
"?2
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
give and to do too much, so as to leave no room
for the working of a principle inherent in human
nature, and amply recognised by other communi¬
ties ? It is as sweet to help as to be helped,
sweetest of all, as one Chief Singer has told us, ^ to
be helped by those whom we have helped.' Even
children like the idea of being useful to a kind
mother ; gladly would they aid her, if they might.
Our National Church has need to knit itself more
closely around the hearts of its poorer members
than it has yet done; at present it rather com¬
mands their deference than wins their confidence
and love; a certain element of sympathy, of
brotherhood in Christ is wanting ; niight not this be
in a great degree supplied by the freer working of
the principle of religious association? Time, which
moves in cycles, has brought back a state of things
/
in many respects parallel to that of Europe during
the middle ages. Our immense increase of popu¬
lation has not been, as regards the working classes,
accompanied by a corresponding advance in en¬
lightenment. We have still, as in the ages referred
to, a seething mass of barbarism around us, an
estate of heathendom in the very core of our
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
33
Christianityj into which the leaven must be ' thrust
in a goodly lump, or its chance of permeating the
whole will be but slender. Beneath our hotbed
civilisation, and not very far beneath it, lies a
stratum of ignorance and grossness needing a
broader wedge to penetrate it than our clergy
are able to apply, without the aid of some such
^missionary agency' as associated female labour
might supply. The poor man's life is the great
social problem of our day. How much, in the
words of Chalmers, it yet needs ^ raising to a more
kindly and companionable level,' none know but
those who have had opportunities of observing
it closely; and it will never be raised but by a
certain mingling of classes upon the one ground
where all can find a common footing, and where
alone ^ thè rich and the poor can meet together '
with safety and comfort on either side. Let the
poor man learn the true dignity of his estate by
the frequent sight of persons who have taken it
upon themselves of free choice—who have hecome
what he is^ from motives the springs of which he
may now understand better than he has done in
hearing them explained from the pulpit : for truth
c
34
itself never speaks so plainly, so persuasively, as
when it lives, and breathes, and moves in action ;
motives may fail to be appreciated, actions are
always plain. To society, unrenewed in the mass,
the hidden life of a Christian remains a mystery,
requiring to be translated into the intelligible
language of a life of holy love, so that those who
run may read. When it is thus ^ writ large,' they
who have not even mastered the alphabet of
Christian faith may be won to its study by behold¬
ing the beauty of its fair and even characters.
There is a beautiful charity in the remark of an
ancient writer : ' We must bring the torch so near
the eyes of the blind, that, if they cannot behold
its light, may at least feel its warmthl
^ How many are there among us,' says Pastor
Haerter,^ ^ to whom preaching has become a
dead letter ; souls so sunk in sense, so buried in
the temporal occupations of life (buried but not
dead 1) that when a wedding or a funeral leads
them to attend a church service, or some chance
occasion brings them in the way of hearing an
evangelic sermon, the expressions used by the
' Rapport annuel de l'établissement des Diaconesses de Strasbourg.
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
35
preacher, the inward experiences pre-supposed to
the hearer, the very ideas upon which the whole dis¬
course is fra7ned and based, are so entirely foreign to
their whole habitual mode of life and feeling, that
their minds can grasp and assimilate but the most
slender portion of what is thus introduced to them.
' Before such souls as these, the Christian faith
needs at first to be presented, not as a doctrine,
but as a life ; it must be set before them as some¬
thing which they can look upon, realize, even
taste and see that it is very good. Though they
have become, through outward position or inward
hindrance, inaccessible to the action of preaching,
though little likely to receive " the faith that
cometh by hearing," they have yet a side upon
which truth may win entrance; they are to be
reached through the royal road of the activities of
Christian love. A true conversion is at all times
slow and difficult, but the sight and experience of
rooted and grounded charity gives the struggling
soul at least a link to hold by. I have heard,' he
adds, ' a pastor of my acquaintance speak of the
peculiar difficulty and dissatisfaction he had always
experienced in conducting a weekly religious ser-
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
vice at a Hospital of Aged Pensioners. He used
to feel as if he was preaching into the air (// avaiî
le sentime7ît de prêcher dans le vidê)^ his words
seemed thrown back upon him, stranded against
the indifference, peevishness, and sottish apathy
of the poor old men. Since one of our sisters
commenced her ministrations in this Hospital, he
has observed at first, not without surprise, the
awakening of his little audience to intelligent
interest ; they ha^re hegim to pay attention to what
he tells them; their looks, their very attitudes, show
the respect with which they listen to the Word of
God ; and he himself now finds joy and comfort in
a work which used to be fruitful only in weariness
and constraint.'
And surely it is not our poor only who would
be the richer for the sight of some living epistles
of love and self-renunciation, to be read and known
of all men. We live in a day when thé softer
graces of Christianity are developed almost to the
exclusion of its severer virtues. Our age, luxuri¬
ous in all its tendencies, seems disposed to travel
towards heaven as comfortably as it takes all other
journeys; and most modern pilgrims, like those
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
37
who sought the celestial city by Hawthorne's rail¬
road, show so amiable a conformity to the customs
of the world around, them, that we might all be the
gainers for having a few among us who, by their
very appearance, should ^ declare plainly that they
seek a country.' Our age is not a materialistic
one, not even utilitarian ; or, if so, only in the
truer, nobler sense which that word may justly
claim : it has owed too much to enthusiasm to be
altogether unconscious of its obligations. Yet are
we not too prone, even in temporal things, to re¬
strict our idea of excellence to a standard that
leaves little scope for the more generous and
exalted aspirations of our nature'? We admire
self-devotion, as placing human nature in a fine
light; we approve it, even cordially, when it is
condensed, as in Watt and Stephenson, in a strong
practical form, when we see that without it we
could not have had the steam-engine. But do we
really love and reverence it? Do we recognise
in it God's everlasting witness to His self-spoken
truth, that man liveth not by bread alone ? Do
we not, on the whole, dread it as a disturbing in¬
fluence; as something that would make us less
38
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
comfortable ; that would interfere with that self-
complacent idolatry of the safe and mediocre, in
the fulness of which we once heard a lady thank
Heaven that her daughters were not geniuses'?
True apotheosis of the commonplace ! Yet the
world could as ill spare its geniuses as the Church
could dispense with her saints : to each a dispen¬
sation has been committed, far more kindred than
may at first sight appear. The attraction of
gravity is strong in the inner as in the outer
world ; men's souls, as in the days of the Psalmist,
cleave unto the dust, yet are not drawn to it so
surely as is the falling apple, because a silent an¬
tagonism is at work. God, who (as John Wesley
has said) ^ can employ all methods, but chiefly
loves to work upon man by man,' has gifted some
minds with a truer and subtler instinct, has endued
others with a finer spirituality, has given to some
a loftier mental and moral stature ; has made them,
like the son of Kish, taller than their brethren by
the head and shoulders, that they may lift others
to a sunny if transient glimpse of the world of
beauty and glory which has been, and will be
again, man's home.
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
39
We are surely far from confessing the true value
of the Heroic, far from feeling how much we need
that fresh stimulating breath, as of the air that
blows from mountain summits, which not only
braces the soul for its more arduous exigencies,
but lightens and sweetens the atmosphere of com¬
mon life, by giving what is best within us more
breathing-room, and making exalted goodness a
more possible thing. And that we do fail to re¬
cognise this, is sufficiently proved by the prevailing
disposition to rank the social and domestic type of
Christianity as its highest, if not as its sole develop¬
ment. We need be little concerned as to proving
which is highest, little solicitous to exalt one ideal
upon the ruins of,the other; let us be content to
leave them where the gospel ^ leaves them, each re¬
cognised, each blessed. ^ There are many admini¬
strations, but one Lord and the same Lord who
consecrated family life, turning its water into wine,
was Himself a man without ties, wdthout posses-
1 The Divine Master did not say to all whom He relieved, ' Come
and follow Me ; ' for one He sent home to his family, to bear witness
among old friends and associates to the mighty power of God ; one
He gave over to his mother ; another He restored to weeping par¬
ents,—thus recognising the strong claims of family life.—Letter of a
Friend.
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
sions, without aims or objects of a personal kind.
It was He who, immediately after He had taken up
little children in His arms and blessed them, could
address to the young ruler that counsel of absolute
self-surrender, ^ Sell all that thou hast, and follow
Me.' All men cannot receive these sayings, nor
are they addressed to all; yet we cannot driiik
deep into the spirit of Christianity without becom¬
ing aware of something in it, which, claiming the
whole heart and life, tends to a principle of separa¬
tion ; something, too, in its higher activities, which
needs, after thé manner öf some of the great
mechanical forces, to place some distance between
itself and its object, before its full force can be
brought to bear. Had not even the elder Church
its Anna, departing not from the temple night
and day; its ' Nazarites, purer than snow, whiter
/
than milk its house of Levi, with whom was
God's secret—the Urim and the Thummim ; ^ who
said unto his father and to his mother, I have not
seen him ; neither did he acknowledge his bre¬
thren, nor knew his own children ; they shall put
incense before Thee, and whole burnt-sacrifice
Thine altar.'
41
We must confess that the atmosphere of modern
family life is alien to the expansion of the higher,
the sacrificial energies of the Christian heart :
there is something in it which tends to repress,
to chill such manifestations ; something which re¬
minds us of these words in Amos, ^ I raised up of
your sons for prophets, and of your young men
for Nazarites; but ye gave the Nazarites wine to
drink, and commanded the prophets, Prophesy
not' Yet we venture to predict, that, as the
home becomes more pure and loving, as Christ is
more and more lifted up within it, as the family
*
claim is felt to be more strong and tender, so will
the number of those increase who will seek out
wider affinities,—relationships yet unrecognised.
The day is coming, and even now is, when
mothers will no longer grudge their sons and
daughters, will no longer hold them back from
works of Christian labour and love, but will cheer
them onwards—will say to them, ^ I myself will
go also.' Happy is he who, bent upon some holy
experiment, finds, like Wichern and Fliedner, his
^ first believer ' in his mother or his wife ! Surely
we fail to recognise that which gives life, all life,
42
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
its sanctity, when we begin to set one manner of
godly life in opposition to another, to consider
either way as being in itself more excellent ! Re¬
ligious association in Protestant communions like
our own, which recognises no inherent virtue in
celibacy, poverty, or obedience to an outward
rule, is nothing but the form which self-devotion,
at certain times and for certain objects, will natu¬
rally take. The common-sense ^ view of this sub¬
ject might be urged strongly ; for how many are
the objects now presenting themselves to Christian
energy which cannot be accomplished, cannot even
be attempted, without the aid of organization %
But we must look deeper for the true secret of
1 See on this head, 'A Protestant Chapter,' in My Life and what
to Do with It, in which the rationale of associated Christian labour
is set forth with uncommon clearness and ability. A friend writing
to me on this subject during the Crimean War says, ' People will have
it that Miss Nightingale is a peculiar character ; they say that her work
is her own ; one in which she cannot be followed. But I believe it will
be proved that a person of genius like hers has only been needed to
open out this (to Englishwomen) qtiite netv path, and to overcome the
prejudices which beset it. Originality and power are required to give
birth to many things, which do not require these qualities in the same
degree to keep them alive. How many persons, finding a path open to
them, an organization and system ready to their hands, will succeed
Miss Nightingale, and work well in the line which they would never
have been able to mark out and originate ! One of the greatest of gifts
of a person of genius is that of being able to turn the powers of smaller
people to account—to set them on the right path, and to bring out
everything that is best within them. '
OUR SINGLE WOMEN. 43
this principle; we must recognise a necessity of
the Christian heart, which leads it, when separated
from worldly aims and ties, to seek for closer
union and fellowship with those whose experiences
and affections are kindred with its own. Such
hearts have need of each other—need, too, of
that sustaining, strengthening Presence which is
felt in an especial manner ^ where two or three are
gathered together.' United work has, like united
prayer, its peculiar blessing. How many holy
yet hazardous QXittT^xhQ^—forlorn hopes^ as it were,
of charity—would scarcely have been conceived,
would never have been carried out, but through a
glow of love difficult to keep up amid the timid
counsels and cold comfortings of ordinary society !
Hearts need to be strengthened as well as hands.
And it is in all that constitutes what we may call
the aggressive action of the Church of Christ, that
associated action is now peculiarly needed. The
world has often seen—for evil, alas, as well as for
good—what wonders can be effected when a body
of men are bound together by one pervading spirit.
Such a community, great, almost boundless as
may be its resources, lives in the singleness, and
44
moves with the freedom of individual life ; it
adapts itself to the varying hour, it extends
itself to meet the fresh need. What centres of
light and consolation such communities may yet
prove to the many-peopled desolations of our
mining districts, and manufacturing and seaport
towns !
While we have been engaged in writing this, we
have received very interesting details of a work
now going on in the North of England, which
may serve to illustrate our meaning. As yet
comparatively little known, this work seems to
have made very rapid progress ; though its term
of existence has been short, its plan had been
long maturing in the heart of its generous and
self-denying founder, a clergyman of the Church
of England, who might, perhaps, if asked how long
he had been about it, answer in the words of Sir
Joshua Reynolds, when asked how long it had
taken him to paint some one picture—my tnhole
life. Middlesborough, a town in the north of
Yorkshire, first rose into existence as a shipping
place for the coals of the Stockton and Darlington
Railway (so memorable as Stephenson's first and
\ ^
OURs SINGLE WOMEN.
45
crowning experiment), and has since sprung into
s
sudden prosperity through the discovery and work¬
ing of iron in the Cleveland Hills. Its present
Mayor, in a speech, alluding to its rapid advance¬
ment, mentions that, thirty-five years ago, he had,
as a sailor boy, crossed the fields where Middles-
borough now stands, to fetch milk for the captain's
wife, from a solitary farmhouse, the only dwelling-
place in the township, which now contains be¬
tween 19,000 and 20,000 inhabitants,—a mixed
multitude, there being many Germans, Danes,
Swedes, Welsh, and Irish among them. ^ As a
class ' (we quote from the letter of a friend resid¬
ing there), ' our poor are unthrifty, intemperate,
and uncleanly. Infant life is fearfully sacrificed,
and the need of holy influence very pressing.
This is a place in which gross wickedness
abounds ; even very little children use, as one
passes, language such as one blushes to be supposed
to understand. I remember one child (I think a
girl too), who was in the hospital for severe burns
used language so bad, that even the men were
shocked.'
In the spring of 1859, a Cottage Hospital was
46 OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
begun there by a lady, who, though unconnected
>vith Middlesborough, desired to spend her time
and income in ministering to the sick poor ; for
which office she had prepared herself by a year's
training at Kaiserswerth. She took a house, and,
assisted by a voluntary worker (formerly a domes¬
tic servant), began to visit and nurse the sick in
their own homes ; in time, two or three more cot¬
tages were added, and turned into an hospital
with twelve beds. Here, during the first year,
with the help of three unpaid nurses, she received
fifty-five in-door patients, besides giving assistance
to 490 out-door ones. This hospital has, for the
sake of better air, been lately removed to the out¬
skirts of Middlesborough, and so extended as to
admit twenty patients ; while its place in the town
has been taken by a Branch Hospital, where,
under the superintendence of the lady with whom
the work first began, out-door cases are still
attended to, and patients looked after in their
own homes, both as regards nursing and general
comfort. Here, any one known to be in need
can be supplied with food and wine, as the case
may require, as well as with personal attendance.
47
In the Whitsun week of last year, the Con¬
valescent Home was opened at Coatham,—a vil¬
lage within easy access of Middlesborough, where
patients requiring change of air and sea-bathing
can have these advantages, with the addition of
medical attendance and every personal comfort,
free of charge. These three houses are entirely
attended to by unpaid female workers, now
amounting to twenty-two in number, drawn from
various classes of society, bound only for one year,
and that for the sake of insuring steadiness in
work. A Penitentiary is to be built next spring ;
and an Orphanage, and also a school for the
daughters of the poorer clergy, taught by ladies
unpaid, are also in contemplation. Religious in¬
struction of a direct kind, and much prayer, ac¬
company these works of mercy. At the Cottage
Hospital there is both a resident chaplain and a
lady whose office is confined to teaching ; and be¬
sides the instruction given to patients as far as
they desire, and are able to bear it, there is a
night-school held in the district for men and boys,
Bible-classes for young women, and visiting from
house to house. ^ Without any doubt ' (we quote
48 OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
again from our friend, who is wholly unconnected
with the work she describes), ' many hospital
patients are now church-goers, who never were
so before. It is no uncommon sight to see two
or three men with wooden legs coming in to join
our services. And surely, when we are speaking
of indirect blessings, we may number among them
the gentle and humanizing influences that have
been, carried into many poor homes. Intercourse
with old patients has always been kept up, as far
as possible. I have been at two Christmas festi¬
vals, where all of them that could be gathered
together were present with their wives ; and
nothing could be more pleasing than the manners
of these rough men, both towards each other and
the ladies who waited on them. Not long ago, a
V
few Staffordshire men, in the employment of a
flrm that has always supported the hospital, asked
leave to give a public entertainment of their own
getting up for its benefit. It was entitled " Joseph
and his Brethren and the performers, who were
among the steadiest men at the works, must have
taken immense pains in learning their parts. One
was reminded of the Mysterie Plays of early times,
OUR SINGLE
WOMEN.
49
some of the situations being slightly ludicrous;
yet not so, we may be sure, to the performers, nor
to the spectators in general, who were, I dare say,
inclined to say with the St. Giles' poor people to
whom Mr. Whitwell exhibited his dissolving views
from Scripture, "We never knew that the Bible
was such a grand picture-book before." The pro¬
ceeds were handed to Miss J—. Recovered
patients not only keep up a kindly connexion
with the hospital, but are in the habit of lending it
valuable aid : indeed, I believô it has never been
necessary to hire additional help, when needed for
sitting up at nights, the charge being always un¬
dertaken of free will. A man who lives near the
hospital has been so pleased to see the care be¬
stowed on his sick neighbours, that, when he is
employed on what is termed the " night shift," he
takes two hours from his day's rest, in which he
digs the hospital garden.'
Before we pass from the subject of associated
work, it seems well to advert to one of its most
valuable features,—the conservative element which
belongs to a community. Any one who has
worked for a number of years in any field of
D
50
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
labour connected with the good of his fellow-men,
will be astonished, as time wears on, to find in
how different a light his work now lies before
him ; will find that, while he still keeps the same
end before him, he attains it now through very-
different means from those he first employed,—a
facility, as of the practised eye and hand, has
grown upon him. Even his failures have become
fruitful; he feels, though he could not perhaps
embody all he has acquired in a treatise, that he
could easily put another person in the way of
doing such and such things with less effort, and to
a far surer result, than his own first attempts cost
him. Now, in single-handed work there is a
constant beginning of all oyer again. A devoted
Christian woman, for instance, lives, labours, and
dies in some town or village ; she has accumulated
a store of that practical wisdom which experience,
and experience only, can give. All this dies with
her. She may, it is true, have been able to imbue
\
some younger friend or relative with her spirit ;
' le Men ne meurt jamaisl Some one may still
walk in her steps and quote her sayings ; hut the
tradition ofjier life^ which, in a community, would
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
51
have passed silently into the common life, and
enriched it for ever, is lost. All that is truly great
and enduring in social progress requires time, and
growth, and a succession of workers, bringing it
slowly to perfection,—requires something like the
conditions so favourable to the development of
manual industry—those which admit of the various
members so working in and through each other—
that one person is allowed to remain at the work,
or even the part of a ivork., for which he has most
natural fitness or acquired skill. Such conditions
cannot be realized except through association ;
and we are persuaded that there can be no greater
blessing for our country, and for its many workers,
who do want training and system, and who want
that only, than the establishment of institutions to
which organization is so essential, that a sort of
unwritten code of order seems to pervade their
very atmosphere. It has been remarked that,
in the Crimea, while our hired nurses disgraced
themselves through incompetency and disobe¬
dience, and many of our own volunteer ladies
were obliged to return home ill or worn out, the
Sisters of Mercy and of Charity ' held on with un-
52
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
flagging spirit and energy—never surprised, never
put out ; ready in resource, meeting all difficulties
with a cheerful spirit,—a superiority owing to their
previous training and experience.' We find Miss
Parkes, too, saying, in the report of her valuable
experience among her own sex : ^ I have seen
many highly educated and refined women in want
of employment during the last year, but among
them not half-a-dozen competent (even on their
own conviction) to take the responsibility of man¬
agement on a large scale,—such as would be
involved in the matronship of female emigrant
ships, the control of a wild troop of reformatory
I
girls, or the overseership of the female wards of a
workhouse. And why h Because they have had no
traming. Sisters of Charity abroad do all these
things. Our notion of them in England is chiefly
connected with the field of battle, and the nursing
of the poor at their own homes. But these are
out a small part of their duties. They get through
m separate divisions nearly all the duties performed
[ov unperformed) in our workhouses. They take
charge of orphan and destitute children, and bring
up the girls for service,—they undertake the care
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
of the aged ánd crippled,—-distribute medicines,—
manage, in foreign cities, most of the casual relief
funds,—undertake the training of criminal and
vagrant children. All these duties require some-
«
thing more for their wise fulfilment than love and
patience ; they require energy, foresight, economy,
the hahit of workmg in concert and subordination.
Accordingly, we find the women who are to fulfil
them subjected to a severe and methodical train¬
ing. And we must do the same, if we would have
women successfully employed in works of bene¬
volence and social economy. Here and there we
may find one specially fitted, to whom order and
economy come by right divine ; but if we take the
few women who aré even now filling marked posi¬
tions of public importance, we shall generally find
they have received regular training in some way.
In every department of our benevolent exertion
there is a want of efficient machmery for imparting
a knowledge, which books alone, or even books
combined with oral instruction, will not give. Not
only must the mind be furnished with necessary
knowledge, but the habits must be trained in
activity, prudence, and control. Such workers
54
OUR vSINGLE WOMEN.
can only be trained in the works they are even¬
tually to perform, just as the swimmer can only
be taught in water.'
Mrs. Jameson, in her inestimable lectures,
dwells greatly upon the benefits which hospitals,
penitentiaries, even prisons, have already reaped
by the exchange of paid for voluntary labour, or,
where this exchange is unattained or unattainable,
by the infusion, along with the official, of 'the
feminine and religious element.' She does well
to place them together, for the two have much
in common ; the work of each is silent, indirect,
pervasive, not pursued by dry and mechanical
routine, but far more certain in its result ; being
' Like the elements,
Which come and go unseen, yet do ejfect
Rare issues by their opera^ice. '
She places in strong contrast^—a contrást with
1 Alas ! that in our Christian land there should yet be so much to
bring out this contrast in a still more cruel light. Mrs. Jameson speaks
of the melancholy dulness, mingled with a strange license and levity,
characteristic of the wards for the old and sick in our parish work¬
houses,—the absence of all that tends to earthly solace or heavenl}'-
consolation. The admirable papers in the yottrnal of the Workhouse
Visiting Society (published by Longman) bring to light particulars
which deepen the general impression of sadness her words convey.
' Our workhouses,' we axe there told, 'contain more than 8000 sick,
infirm, and aged persons ; and for these what imperfect provision for
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
55
which many must be familiar—the mere inñrmary,
where all is formal, cold, clean, and silent, and
the cheerfulness which is so apparent wherever
the presence of ^that which worketh by love' is
felt. Work and amusement are going on ; there
is cleanliness still, but with it movement, airiness,
and comfort. Our letter from Middlesborough
gives a pleasing picture ^of men who, from the
severe nature of their injuries, have been long in
nursing has been made ! Hospital nurses have been found deficient as
a class, but workhouse nurses are invariably many grades lower still,
because no remuneration is permitted them (being, we suppose, them¬
selves paupers) ; and, therefore, no woman with a possibility of pro-
curiïig a return for her labour, will be found willing to undertake a post
of such hardship. In general, they are both physically and morally
incompetent ; while their work, if attended to, would entail an amount
of labour, both night and day, which none in hospitals would undertake
to perform. To sleep, live, and eat in a ward filled with sick people, is
enough to unfit any woman for her work : the wish for food 'is lost,
then comes the inevitable desire for drink. . . . Invalids will seldom
reap the good of the comfcprts kind-hearted visitors supply. Pillows,
cushions, or bed-rests, whatever requires a little trouble to arrange,
they will continually neglect, or use once or twice in a way which will
make it appear quite unserviceable. Chairs they constantly mono¬
polize, so that the patients, for whom they were intended, dare not use
them. When poor creatures reach such stages of weakness as to be
unable to help themselves in particular ways, it is a sad fact that the
nurses grudge them a refreshing drink, to save themselves the trouble
which would ensue. I have seen a case of this kind, so shocking that
I can hardly describe it. A poor woman, disturbed in mind by excess
of pain, making piteous signs for something to drink, and the nurse, for
this reason, refusing to give it. On my insisting, and giving her a mug
of wretched cold workhouse tea, the poor creature drank it like a man
dying in the desert, with an eagerness peri^ectly appalling.'
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
the hospital, taught to employ their fingers use¬
fully and pleasantly in knitting comforters and
Afghan- blankets, who have said, when so em¬
ployed, " It helps to keep the pain off, ma'am
of a poor boy laid up there for several months,
who learnt to make wreaths of tissue paper, with
which many Christmas-trees were adorned ; of
rough hands, which had never worked at any¬
thing but bricks or iron, learning to be skilful in
delicate work.'
But why multiply details on a point so self-
evident^ It is that which comes from the heart,
we all know, which alone can reach it surely.
Our subject is already growing beyond our limits ;
yet we wish to call attention to one province in
which the work of those who ask souls for their
hire, and seek no other wages, peculiarly lies.
We allude to the reclamation of fallen women.
This work is one for other hearts, other hands,
than those of paid agents, however trustworthy;
it must be committed, it must be left, to the
charge of those to whom the coin, long lost and
trodden under foot, is still precious, for the sake
of Him whose image and superscription it bears.
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
57
It is vain to attempt this work of training and
restoration, as has been attempted in many peni¬
tentiaries, through drill and system.
' A deadly hurt must have strong cure,
Or it hath none at all. '
The world cannot regenerate what it has de¬
stroyed; respectability makes no converts from
such ranks as these ; yet they may be recruited
into a higher service. There is a kind, our Lord
Himself tells us, that goeth not out save by prayer
and fasting. Close communion with God, emi¬
nent self-abnegation, and a freedom from life's
more engrossing ties, are incumbent upon those
who, in the strength of their Master's name, would
aspire to cast out these darker spirits from the
tenements they have shattered. We have com¬
pared our single women to Levites,--who shall
say that we have not many among us such as
was He of the better covenant,—true daughters
of consolation, with senses exercised to discern
between good and evil ; world-wise, if it may be,
but, above all, heart-wise,—taught by God Him¬
self out of His two great books, and skilled to
apply the medicines of the Word to the hurts of
5S
the spun Let such put on their ^gentle armour
love, like zeal, ^clothes as with a cloak;' and
they are so safe that they can afford to be biave,
knowing that charity takes its own atmosphere
about with it—one disinfectant of moral evil.
Such a woman will find her way to another's
heart through the exercise of a tact that is more
to her than wisdom, and will feel it where sight
fails. Woman's hand is peculiarly fitted for the
finer and more delicate workings of charity.
^ Ipsa acie noiidum falcis tentanda \ sed uncis
Carpendse manibus frondes, interqiie legendae.'
In her nature there is little that tends towards
the abstract—she seeks a personal interest in all
things ; and this disposition, so often her hindrance,
becomes here her highest gain. In such a task,
the complicated play of sympathies ever at work
within her—the dramatic faculty by means of which
she so readily makes the feelings of others her own
—find full expansion. To her, sympathy is pwwer^
because to her it is knowledge ; and it is this
ability to feel with others, as well as for them,
that takes all hardness or ostentation from in¬
struction and counsel—all implied superiority from
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
59
pity and consolation. The woman, or man, of
true feeling does not come down upon the sinner
or sufferer, from another region, but is always, for
the time being, on a level with those that are ad¬
dressed—even able to see things as they see them ;
and of this they are well aware. No class of per¬
sons seem so alive to exalted goodness, so able to
discriminate between it and all that is merely ex¬
ternal and • official/ as the outcast and degraded.
They cling to it with an affection, a reverence
almost superstitious, as if it were a link between
their souls and heaven. Nay, it is not too much
to say, that they even feel "at home with it—
strangely familiar and confidential. Between them
and mere worldly respectability there is a great
gulf set, which they know that they can never
overpass ; not so between them and Christ.
It is evident that we have among us many
valuable women, ardently desiring to spend and to
be spent in Christ's service, whose habits of mind
disincline them for the routine which is insepar¬
ably connected with organized work ; who would
not be either so happy or so useful when banded
with others, as in following out some equally de-
6o
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
fined work of a detached kind. Does not this
point to our need of a recognised order of women
in the Church—deaconesses, who might go forth
to their work singly, or, better still, two and two,
as our Lord sent His disciples h Let them work
under the direction of the parochial clergy, and
let them receive, as Scripture-readers do, some
salary—one that, while it maintains the labourer,
could not tempt her to the wbrk. Such women
might gradually supersede paid officials in the
care of hospitals, penitentiaries, and workhouses,
or might, as Mrs. Jameson suggests, take the
control of such, with that moral advantage which
always arises from the presence of a woman
^ officially authorized, yet not hired.' We are
aware how much a higher element is needed in
such places ; and we know, too, that it cannot
be infused by the mere visiting lady, however
kind and judicious. Inspection, exhortation, ac¬
complish little : it is influence that is here needed ;
and this influence must be permanent, and also
authorized^ so as to remove it from the imputation
of interference, and to make it part of the natural
order of things. Or, in the field of general useful-
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
6i
ness, what a blessing might one or two such
w^omen become, by settling quietly in some village
in the manufacturing or mining districts, where
the people have high wages, but not one soften¬
ing, humanizing taste, or even the possibility of
acquiring such ! A kind lady, skilled in the civi¬
lizing arts of sewing and housewifery, and helped,
perhaps, by a faithful and religious servant, would
gradually become the friend of the poor, ignorant,
over-tasked women, would get into their thoughts
and ways, learn their real difficulties, and show
them how to make home a better, happier place
than it has ever yet been. We learn much from
the various openings of our present day, of the
power which a woman of education and refine¬
ment exerts unconsciously over those of her own
sex of a humbler class. At the mothers' meeting,
and all such social gatherings of an improving
character, it is the lady who infuses the genial
and companionable element. She it is whose
conversation interests, and in a happy sense,
amuses the poor women, and it will be found that
no such gathering will hold long together on a
dead level of equality. It is the pleasure of being
62 OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
taught by ladies that gives a Sunday-school its
charm in the eyes of poor girls. Without the
attraction of their presence and teaching, attend¬
ance will generally fall off by degrees. And does
not this obviously powerful attraction lead us to
consider that there is a ground, comparatively
fallow, where the rich and the poor may meet to¬
gether more closely and kindly than they have
yet done, and meet to their mutual profit? We
know that the poor are our fellow-heirs in Christ,
but we must learn more and more to look upon
them as being also our fellow-workers in His Gospel
and Kingdom, and learn, too, to draw forth more
and more of the blessedness of this fellowship.
If the poor woman naturally loves and admires a
lady, who, on the other hand, is so dear to the
Christian and cultivated lady as is the good poor
woman ? Christian women of the liumbler class
have gifts and excellences of a character peculiarly
their own ; their quiet, unconscious lives, rooted
to the spot where they grow, have something in
them of the charm of the wild-flower as compared
with that of the exotic, something that comes more
near the hearty and approaches more closely than
OUE SINGLE WOMEN.
63
does kindred excellence in a higher walk of life
to thé Christian ideal of Womanhood, the deep
foundations of which must be ever laid in the
passive graces of patience, humility, and self-denial.
These come, so to speak, more natural to the
poor woman, than they do to more tenderly nur¬
tured and highly organized people, by whom they
have to be acquired, and often ^with a great sum.'
She is compelled to them by her daily life, they
are the habits of her soul, and when the love of
Christ comes and lifts her and them into a higher
region, she finds them ready, as a path prepared
for her to walk in. The bodily strength, too, and
consequent power of endurance of women in
humble life is much greater than that of ladies,
their practical abilities, also, under direction are
very great. Who has not seen how a good servant
can come out in the presence of death, or of pro¬
tracted sickness, or under any circumstances of
family distress h How many of us have had
reason at such seasons to bless their unobtrusive,
untiring sympathy, their cheerful, ever-willing zeal
—finding, at times when help was most needed,
and perhaps where it was least looked for, a sister
64
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
or a brother—and one born for adversity 1 And
we would say yet further, that the great miracle of
spiritual Transfiguration is never so clearly seen
as in the lives of the religious Poor. Christ, who
is made wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and
redemption to all His people, becomes to His
humble and unlettered Disciples an education,
one that lifts their life above its surrounding nar¬
rowness and coarseness, that raises even their
intellects above the harsh restrictions of their out¬
ward lot. ' When the word of the Lord goeth
forth, it giveth light and understanding to the
simple.' Those who love the poor, who â/iûw
them, will understand what we are now saying.
A great change seems lately to have come across
the spirit of Christian exertion, connected with a
change in those upon whom it has to work.
While the dark places of our land—places ' with¬
out order, where the light itself is as darkness
are many; while, even in our apparently more
favoured agricultural districts, the standard of
morality is deplorably low, and a sort of old-
fashioned respectability seems to have died, as
regards the humbler classes, out of the land—
OUR SINGLE WOMEN. 65
such as existed in old people, whom we can all
remember, upright and God-fearing, somewhat
^ dark in views,' yet of a general tone of character
that made association with them a pleasure—
signs of hope are not wanting. Work is at once
a more difficult and a more interesting, more en¬
couraging thing than it used to be. It seems to
us as if it has more and more to lose the character
of bounty and to take that of help. The days of
dole and almsgiving are numbered ; Lady Bounti¬
ful and those she ministered to have alike passed
away ; the exigencies of our present time demand
more costly sacrifices. Some of these—like that
of the Brethren of St. John at Hamburg, who, on
what they call an inner mission, go and live in
the jails, dressing as the convicts do, and asso¬
ciating with them—may at present appear hard to
us,—even impossible ; but when the time for such
efforts comes the strength will be given also.
^ He maketh my feet like hinds' feet ; a bow of
steel is broken by mine arms.' The Heroic Age
of Christianity is yet to come—^its Harvest yet to
be gathered in, in the day when ^ the ploughman
shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes
E
66 OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
him that soweth seed.' Have we not already
among iis the Nursing Sisters of St. Margaret's at
East Grinstead, whose rule especially binds them
to the care of such disorders as, whether from
their contagious or peculiarly repulsive character,
are likely to be neglected, and even shunned by
others, and who, at the call of the sick poor, are
ready to go to any part of England or Scotland at
a moment's notice? These daughters of Christ,
though ini many cases women of the highest culture
and refinement, do not shrink from nm^sing the
poor in their ow7i homes^ faring as they fare, and
remaining with them for weeks, or even months,
until their patients are either restored to health,
or released by death from their troubles. Our
age has many saddening and fearful features ; but,
amongst all of these—the absence of self-restraint,
the impatience of outward rule—who, that goes
much among the Poor, can have failed to perceive
among them a real desire for spiritual improve¬
ment j above all, a quickened, a rational interest
I
in divine things, which makes us believe that the
character of our Christian intercourse with them
will change—will no longer, be concerned with
O.UR SINGLE WOMEN.
67
^ giving ' only ? How affecting are the relations
that have been established between the authoress
»
of ^ Ragged Homes,' and her poor, loving, con¬
fiding women—between Miss Marsh, and her
^ Navvies '—between the authoress of ' Ploughing
and Sowing,' and her rude, neglected Yorkshire
farming boys 1 Do not these things prove—if
proof were needed—how susceptible the humbler
classes are, not only to Christian culture, but to all
the kindlier affections of our nature,—more espe¬
cially to the exquisite moral charm of refinement,
that holy, that communicable gift 1
We have in some degree left our subject ; in¬
deed, we have not striven to keep to it too closely,
feeling that to consider ^ Our Single Women' as a
class apart, would be to think of them in too nar¬
row a spirit. Woman, whether single or married,
is linked with society at every turn, directly or
obliquely; her action upon it is increasing, and
her power over it is one which extends far beyond
its apparent limits—which lasts far beyond the
few short years in which youth and beauty make
her a visible Queen. As mother, as maiden, as
wife, as friend, she is linked with man through
68
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
inner and intimate bonds, of which the outward
are but a symbol. If her fall has been indeed
his ^ diminishing'—if the frivolity and narrowness
of woman's spirit, her inability to rise above the
actual and personal, has too often limited man's
horizon, what will her ^ fulness' be ? If he has
suffered from her poverty, how will he rejoice in
her ^ wealth'—in her more tender and chastened
feelings, her more unselfish and expanded aims 1
Woman has already done much for herself
herself. Let him, then, become in all things the
helper of his help-meet ; let her not want his
generous co-operation in aiding her to reach the
goal of her so-evident and worthy ambition,—
' At last to set herself to Him,
Like Derfect music unto noble words.'
HARDENED IN GOOD.
HERE is nothing, Montalembert says,
so picturesque as charity, if only you
do not come too near it ! The ama¬
teur occasional philanthropist who takes up a
striking case of destitution now and then, gets,
possibly, to the exact point of view at which rags
fly about gracefully and dirt looks like the true
Spanish brown ; vice, want, and squalor have, in
certain lights, a poetry of their own, da.rk Rem¬
brandt-like shadows, comic gleams and sparkles,
veins of tenderness that are not discoverable in
the ordinary track of respectable life. Come a
little nearer, however, and this confessed attrac-
70 HARDENED IN GOOD.
tion is apt to disappear, and its place to be taken
by all that is most repulsive, disheartening, and
wearying. By shiftiness a7id shifilessfiess^ trick,
deception, improvidence, and reckless folly, and
behind all these lies a far darker background,
looming in hints and traces of the treachery and
cruelty that have their habitation in the dark
places of the earth, in a region which may be
truly described as ' a land of darkness—as dark¬
ness itself, and of the shadow of death, imthout
any or der^ and where the light is as darkness.'
A steadfast Christian worker may go on for a
while pretty smoothly, then the current of his
work will seem to bring him, as it were naturally,
into the thick of some network of misery and evil
so intricate and wide-spreading that he is inclined,
I
with the prophet of old, to sit down ^astonied.'
He feels powerless, helpless, hopeless. A chill
recoil from his work, made up of disgust and
weariness, steals across him ; and for such recoils
there is but one remedy—to come yet nearer.
Then we get beyond the tinsel sentiment, and
With it beyond the repulsion to natural feeling;
then we come to life's real romance, in learning
what true love is, and what true pity. We no
HARDENED IN GOOD.
71
longer believe, as we did when we first started,
i
that all unfortunate people are good, and all
vicious people interesting ; but we learn to pity, to
i
bear with, and even in a certain sense to love
them as they are.
There is as much pathos in the life of a really
benevolent person ^as there is in all true love-
stories. He sets forth full of hope, and, like a
Paladin of old, burning to redress grievances;
he believes in love and in its conquering might,
and expects through it to overcome all things ;
gradually strange experiences break in upon
him; he learns that however strong love may
be, it does not always win the battle ; he finds
himself misunderstood, contradicted, defeated by
those he is trying to raise and rescue. He begins
to enter into the terrible truth of the Chinese
saying. Do no good, and thou shalt get no evil ;
and at last, like Assheton Smith, that mighty
hunter, he learns deliberately and habitually^ to
ride for a fall. ,
1 Mr, Assheton Smith was wont to say that with a fall yon might get
over anything, and that every man who professed to ride ought to
know how to fall. He himself knew how to fall, and in all his falls,
which numbered over seventy, never but twice broke a bone. People
were not astonished at seeing him go straight at the most tremendous
places, but they were a little surprised to see that he did not even look
72
His dreams, perhaps, had been much like those
of the tender-souled Reformer who thought that
it was given to him to convert the world, but was
not long in discovering that ' old Adam was too
strong for young Melanchthon.' He finds many
illusions die away, but their place is taken by a
steadfast guiding light, less bright perhaps than
sober, but clear enough to live and work by.
Many theories, too, have to be given up, but an
experience worth them all compensates for their
i
dismissal. Every year that is added to the term
of his patient continuance in well-doing makes
him expect less, and hope more. I must explain
this apparent paradox by saying that he has grown
more and more deeply persuaded of the value of
the great principles he works by, but more pre¬
pared to meet with check and hindrance in their
practical carrying out. While he is more certain
of ultimate-results, he is less confideñt of present
success. What gain is too great not to be hoped
for by one who commands the mightiest agencies !
What check too pitiful not to be endured by one
who works with the slenderest, most easily dis-
round at the leap when he was over. ' Fling your heart over,' he would
say, 'and your horse will follow.'
HARDENED IN GOOD.
ordered, machinery ! Plus noble des professions^
plus triste des metiers^ is the motto alike of the
Physician and the Philanthropist.
All things in human nature and in human
society show us that there is something evil in
both against which good everlastingly struggles,
and as yet with a very incomplete measure of
success. In education, and in all governments,
whether, political, parochial, or domestic, we find a
revelation of ' our deep original wound,'—a wound
which philanthropy, by its very nature and office,
probes to its very core.
For, active goodness, we must ever remember,
brings to light much evil that would otherwise
have been unheard of. There is a strange
srnoothness on the surface of society which makes
it sometimes hard to believe in the corruption
and cruelty that too often underlie it. Yet any
one who consistently gives his life and heart to
redress wrong and to relieve suffering, soon gets
below this surface, and without necessarily adopt¬
ing harsh and gloomy theories of human affairs,
keeps below it in so far as to be for ever unable to
return to the easy-going humanitarian view of life
which so delights in the discovery ^ of a soul of
74 HARDENED IN GOOD.
goodness in things evil' One single carefully
tracked case of crime or suffering will sometimes
introduce him to fearful systems of evil, out-
branching complications of depravity,—will set
him down, as it were, in the midst of things that
it is impossible to set right. He will find him¬
self confronted with naked selfishness, greed, and
cruelty; and over and under and through all
beside, he will track the serpent-windings of that
which is the waster of natural life, the loosener
of family bonds, the death of nobler thought and
sweeter instinct,—denounced by an apostle as
^ the corruption that is in the world.' Illustra¬
tions of what I now refer to would be of too dark
a character to meet the general eye. What I
mean is sufficiently intelligible to all who have
striven in any persevering way to befriend and
raise their fellow-men. All such persons have
found that the knowledge of evil has been forced
upon them, and with that knowledge they have
been compelled, like our first parents, to ex-
I
change the culture of Eden for that of earth
with its work among self-sown thorns and briers.
And without even entering on life's darker aspects.
HARDENED IN GOOD.
a short experience in working for others is enough
to show us how much of sadness and weariness
inevitably enters into the account of warm prac¬
tical benevolence. If we worked for the ideal
poor man, brave, industrious, patient, grateful,
philanthropy would indeed be an Arcadian pas¬
ture ; but the ideal complete man, as Schiller
truly observes, seldom wants to be. helped at all,
and is able generally to do pretty well for him¬
self. We work for the actual man, with his actual
incapabilities and imperfections, whom we must
take, and, alas, must too often leave, as he is !
The great army of the beaten in life, among
whom the chief work of benevolence lies, falls
naturally into two grand divisions,—the unfortunate
and the undeserving ; nor can these battalions be
marshalled so strictly but that we shall find a mixed
multitude for ever hovering between them, seem¬
ing to belong now to one, and now to the other
line,—individuals and families, the warp and woof
of whose career is so crossed by mingling lines of
misfortune and ill-desert, that, as in the hues of a
shot-silk, we sometimes think one, and sometim^es
another, the predominating colour. For we must
HARDENED IN GOOD.
remember that the unfortunate, speaking generally,
are not so through the mere force and malice of
outward circumstances, be these never ¡so un¬
friendly, but through the existence of some great
inward deficiency,- which sinks them below life's
ordinary level, and prevents their taking advantage
of the favourable chances and changes which it
puts in the way of all. Outward trials may for a
time depress, and even overwhelm a really ener¬
getic mind, but only for a time ; the strong spirit
will regain its equipoise, re-adjust its scanty re¬
sources, and be ready, under whatever disadvan¬
tages, to re-assert its right to a place and a share
in existence. But there are hundreds of our fel¬
low-creatures who have no such reserve forces to
draw upon ; hundreds of people in every rank of
I
life whose measure of physical, intellectual, and
moral strength falls far below the average stand¬
ard ; people without inward spring, or nerve, or
fibre, who, so long as the surroundings of existence
are in their favour, so long as they are blest with
the props and buttresses of competence, friends,
and health, may get through life pretty fairly, but
who, if they once sink below its surface, can be
HARDENED IN GOOD. 77
raised again by no amount of leverage. Cha¬
racters of this kind, weak, irresolute, incapable,
are the standing crux and problem-of the benevo¬
lent, incompetent to stand alone, and less happy
than the Irish gig-horse of undying memory, who,
though he could not stand, could go^ they are
always needing help, and though they seem little
better for all that is done for them, to abandon
them altogether would be too heartless, and indeed
not very easy. Once taken on hand, they become
a permanent life-entail upon one's expenditure, a
loose fringe about one's life, not adorning the
garment it clings to, yet not readily detached
from it. Not to dwell upon the circle of humble
clients of both sexes who are apt to grow up
round every kind-hearted person, perhaps morally
interesting, but manually unskilful, who never do
their work quite so well as it would have been done
by more flourishing members of the same profes¬
sion, who does not know what it is to become
implicated in the fortunes of some friendless and
destitute boy or girl, let us say an orphan, de¬
ficient in early training, unskilled, unsteadfast, yet
to let go whose hands, once placed within our
yS HARDENED IN GOOD.
own, would be to consign to irretrievable ruin ;
who is always being placed out, seldom giving
satisfaction, sometimes running away, often getting
into trouble, and drawing friends and patrons into
the same 1 Then there are the distressed families,
always in emergencies, who seem to have a mag¬
netic attraction for calamity, who have more acci¬
dents and fevers in any given time than all their
neighbours put together, and who are sure to
come in for a double portion of whatever evil
anybody else meets with.
' I sometimes wonder,' I once heard a very
kind-hearted man say, in speaking of an indigent
and improvident family of this "sort, ' what would
have become of them if they had not happened to
meet with me; or whether, after all, they would
have been any worse oif ! I suppose they would
have got along somehow, and that is about all
they do now !'
In a saying of Solomon—^ The poor is oppressed
because he is poor'—rlies the key to much that
perplexes our dealings with the unfortunate. They
provoke us by their improvidence and want of
management ; but does not the very nature of good
HARDENED IN GOOD. 79
management imply more of choice, forethought,
and resource, than lies within the possibilities of
extreme poverty ? To take one instance : the poor
necessarily buy at a dearer rate than the rich do.
They get a worse article, and less of it, for their
money, than those who can choose their own
time and pkce for buying ; and the same exigency
runs more or less through their whole economy of
life. It is certain, as a general rule, that the
better you are off the better you are able to
manage. Some lives seem baffled from their veiy
outsét, and when to the harsh limitations of po¬
verty, sickness and the want of hope are added,
a nameless depression and a readiness to depend
on others becomes an ineradicable'mental habit.
We must all admit, that the idea of help is never
so blessed as when it links itself with the idea of
placing its object beyond the need of help in cir¬
cumstances friendly to the development of his
own powers, yet there are many whom we must
be content to help without ever hoping to lift
or raise. A kind-hearted young lady, making a
weekly raid and foray in her district, is surprised
to find she does so little good, is disheartened
8o
because the children are still dirty, and the houses
forlorn, even after she has given them much good
advice, and perhaps a little money. But could
she look within the secrets of the houses she visits
for a few minutes, and of the hearts that are not
opened to her even for that short time, she would
be too thankful to be able to do afiy good, to
reckon up whether it was much or little. Life¬
long habits will not give way to a few words of
kindly counsel, be they spoken never so fitly ; nor
is it in the power of gifts, however judiciously and
constantly bestowed, to restore the long-continued
household desolation, which has often its origin in
the misconduct of some one person in a family
reacting on its more deserving members. But
who shall say that it is not much to bring a ray
of hope within a hopeless heart ; to kindle a
cheerless hearth into even transitory comfort ; ^ to
lighten the eyes of the disconsolate, and maJze hwt
perceive that there is such a thing in the tvorld^ omcI
in the order of things^ as comfort and joy?'^ And
who, to look yet deeper, shall say into what
i Jeremy Taylor.
HARDENED IN GOOD.
8l
wasted neglected heart, the word spoken in faith
and love may find entrance, and spring up, even
after long years of silence and darkness, into a
seed of imperishable life ?
I remember once, in a manufacturing district in
Lancashire, in which I was almost a stranger,
going into a cottage, which stood a little distance
oif the road, either to ask my way, or some such
casual question. The scene which offered itself
was one not easily dismissed from the imagination.
The room contained next to no furniture, and, I
think, no fire, for the time w^as summer. In the
midst of it, lying on a settle, was a young man of
about twenty, poorly dressed, and evidently dying
of some fearful scrofulous disorder. He was liter¬
ally like Lazarus—full of sores. In a corner of
the room a very old ill-looking woman, palsied,,,
and a complete bundle of rags, crouched and
shook, and muttered to herself. She appeared
insane, but was really idiotic through long-con¬
tinued habits of drinking. A miserable-looking
little girl of about thirteen, stunted in figure, and
deeply marked with small-pox, seemed the only
person able to do anything. The young man was
F
82
HARDENED IN GOOD.
uncouth and ignorant, and gave surly answers to
my sympathizing inquiries. Nothing could exceed
the forlorn look of this house, or its utter barren¬
ness of hope and cheer. Upon after inquiry, I
found its middle term was a father, a man not
only entirely given up to drinking, but of harsh
and brutal character, wholly indifferent to his
home and children. Now it is evident, that to
turn a house like this into the abode of 'bomfort,
and order, and love, to make it, in fact, a home^
would have required a miracle, say rather a series
of miracles, far more wonderful than those recorded
in Scripture. It. would have been a greater work
than the turning of water into wine, inasmuch as a
moral transformation exceeds a material one, yet,
like that, a change possible only to Him to whom
all things are possible. * No power can regenerate
hut that which made^ nor renew but that which
createdi> Amelioration, however, to those who
are content with its small and sure. results, is
always to be numbered among things hoped for ;
and even in this desolate home, Wordsworth's
1 Robert Bai'claj''.
HARDENED IN GOOD.
S3
deep saying, that ' all things are less dreadful
than they seem/ was realized. The young man
was not so inaccessible as he appeared to be, and
had even then a friend and comforter in a kind
neighbour in his own class, who read and prayed
with him through his sad illness, and was with
him when he died, cheering him with words of
heavenly hope. The little girl proved remarkably
desirous to improve, and afterwards came under
the direction and training of some distant rela¬
tions, people of uncommon and valuable character,
who had at alhtimes shown deep compassion for
this unhappy family, and who were too happy to
meet and further any plans that were suggested
for her benefit. I remember at the time being
surprised to find that such a wretched family had
any really good people connected with them, and
I remember, also, how many difficulties in the way
of helping them were removed by this connexion.
I have since found it is a fact of life, that even
under the most untoward and apparently hopeless
circumstances, the attempt to do good will reveal
good, and be met in quarters where aid seems
least of all to be looked for. There is a large
84
HARDENED IN GOOD.
amount of latent good ever existing in the world,
an auxiliary force of kindness, not strong enough
to do the whole work itself, not ready enough
perhaps to begin or organize, but happy to aid
ind further, and on this contingent a steadfast
worker may always reckon surely. Kind-hearted
people, working together from different points of
the social compass, may accomplish wonders of
ministry and comfort,—moral support and a little
money being supplied by the lady, active service
by the kind, poor neighbours ; only, in many cases
like that of the family I have described, the very
circumstances oblige us to be content with very
limited results.
And we must be satisfied with results still more
limited when we attempt the other great branch
of merciful endeavour, that of restoring the mo¬
rally fallen. It is scarcely possible to estimate
the amount of patience required for this work,
because it is scarcely possible for any but an
experienced person to appreciate its difficulty.
Gardening is no playwork when we have, like the
indefatigable Hollanders, at once to create the
soil we hope to raise our flowers from, and to lift
HARDENED IN GOOD.
85
and keep our little plot above the reach of waters,
ever threatening to sap or to overwhelm. In ordi¬
nary benevolent work we shall find, as I have
said, many auxiliaries, but in working among the
morally degraded all things seem to band them¬
selves together against good ; early association, life¬
long-habit, instinct, passion, even the affection of
which such hearts remain capable, all are on the
side of vice ; all things are against the patient
worker ; all things, except the love of Christ,
which passeth knowledge, and the unsearchable
human heart, which testifies out of the very depths
of its want and need of Him. Si descendero in
inferno^ ades.
In dealing with the more lawless classes, we
cannot say that it is the first step which costs the
most; their minds are not difiicult to stir and
waken,— indeed, their susceptibilities to good
impressions are often quicker than those of more
happily situated people, just because goodness is
to them a beautiful and new thing; they have
never come across it in their daily experience ;
and it is to them, in the truest sense, poetry^ which
they will admire, and, as it were, caress, in their
86
HARDENED IN GOOD.
hearts with a sort of delighted wonder. A poor
girl in jail once said to me : ^ O ma'am, I'd such
a beautiful dream last night—a dream all about
heaven.' As prisoners in general are about as
much given to ^ tell you their dreams' as was Dr.
Watts' sluggard, I prepared myself to listen with
patience. I do not now remember the particu¬
lars of the dream, having heard so many like it,
about angels, and flowers, and harpers with golden
harps, but I have not forgotten the simplicity with
which she ended : b\nd I wish, ma'am, I could often
have such dreams as that ; I am sure they would
help to make me a better girl I People of this class
are also, as I have elsewhere stated, wonderfully
alive to goodness of an exalted character. Com¬
fortable and respectable people often find much
to cavil at in the few who devote their lives and
energies to the sins and sorrows of humanity.
They are apt to consider them enthusiastic, weak,
inconsistent ; but not thus do they appear to the
miserable hearts into whose wounds they alone
pour the balm and oil of human sympathy, the
wine of heavenly consolation and hope. To
them they are even as the angels, beings of a
HARDENED IN GOOD.
87
different 'order, whose virtues are to them unap¬
proachable, but even in contact with whom they
feel a superstitious safety, as if their bodily pre¬
sence were a charm and amulet against evil. A
lady who had been for some time engaged with a
class of female prisoners, had become à good deal
interested in a young woman, imprisoned for a
long term, whose remarks ánd questions evidenced
an unusual degree of intelligence, and who took a
lively interest in the instructions that were given,
though this interest seemed to be more that of a
lively and intelligent curiosity than that of an
awakened heart and conscience. She had been
what is technically called ^ a travelling thief,' and
the companion of men living by bold and care¬
fully-planned schemes of robbery, and she liked
to tell, though not without evident compunctious
visitings, of the large sums of money, even amount¬
ing to a hundred pounds at a time, that these men
had been used to intrust her with. As the time
for her leaving jail drew near, she became still
more attentive, quiet, and serious, and expressed
great dissatisfaction at the prospect of returning
to her reckless and miserable way of life. The
88
HARDENED IN GOOD.
lady urged her strongly to enter the penitentiary,
acquire good ways, and make a fresh start in life,
telling her that she might yet be a good and a
happy woman. But to this step she resolutely
objected, saying that she knew that she could
never bear the necessary confinement and restraint,
so that her friend bade her farewell kindly and
with regret. On her next visit, however, to the
prison, she heard that Ann had gone straight
to the penitentiary, and had left a message hoping
that Miss would not be long in going to see
her there. The lady went, and found her in the
probationary cell, looking most cheerful and con¬
tented, and asked her, after a very cordial greeting
had been exchanged, what had made her all at
once decide to come there, when her mind had
seemed so set against the idea. ^ Well, ma'am,'
the girl replied with great ndivefe^ it was all along
of those things you gave me.' (The lady had been
in the habit of giving her class little presents and
rewards, such as pincushions and needlebooks, or
small religious pictures—all things of the most
trifling value. ) ' When I was putting up my bundle
to leave jail I spread them out upon the bed, and
89
I said to myself, Now, thou's been a good lass
for a good bit of time, and thou's got all these
nice things, and a good friend beside ; and if
thou's a good lass a little longer, thou '11 perhaps
get more nice things and more friends ; and then,
ma'am, the more I looked at them the more I
liked them, and I couldn't find in my heart to
throw them away, and so I just thought I'd come
here at once.' ^ Well, Ann,' returned her friend,
^ I am very glad you came anyhow ; but why
should you have thought of throwing the little
things away because you were leaving jail? you
know they were your own.' The lady has said
she can never forget the quick and sudden feeling
with which the girl returned—^ And do you think,
ma'am, I would take anything you had given me
to the sort of places /go to? I would rive them
to pieces sooner.'
Ann remained at the penitentiary, and for
«
some time behaved remarkably well; then she
became unsettled and restless, and after a few
months made a forcible escape from the restraint
she could no longer endure, by climbing over the
wall, in company (as far avS T now remember) with
90
HARDENED IN GOOD.
a girl who had fallen under her influence. She
returned to a course of evil, and this little inci¬
dent concerning her only tends to show that it is
not in feeling, sensibility, and quick and sincere
impulse to good, that the class she belongs to are
invariably deficient. What they do want, what
they always want, is principle, self-restraint, and
whatever in a well-balanced life tends to turn good
impressions into permanent and habitual motives
of action. Their minds are sometimes stirred to
frenzy by trifles, at all times apt to be agitated by
the most contradictory motives. Like shifting
sands you never know whereabouts the ' next
moment may have carried them ; and he who
works among them must be ever ready to begin
all over again. Who is there that comes to such
a task prepared for half its difficulties ? An unfor¬
tunate woman, an outcast !—there is something
touching in these very expressions, something that
brings before us the woman who washed our
Saviour's feet with her tears, and at the same time
reminds us of the characters so often met with in
modern poems and novels,—the wrecked yet nobly '
freighted lives, the women lost, in a social point of
HARDENED IN GOOD.
91
view, yet still full of womanly instincts, ready to turn
{
at a word or look of love. To persons accustomed
to sentimentalize upon social sores, but who .have
never really touched them with the tips of their
fingers, there must be something a little startling
in the contrast offered to their conceptions by a
few pages like the following ones, taken, v/ithout
selection or alteration, from a record of work
among them, kept at the time, of such cases as
seemed more hopeful or interesting than others
Jail Diary.—^ In the early part of April I was
greatly interested in a nice-looking girl called
Jane M'Ewan [alias Brown), her countenance
remarkably intelligent, and het bringing-up better
than is usual among girls of her class. The
wardswomen greatly interested in her. She talked
to me very feelingly of her utter weariness of her
wretched way of life ; and when I spoke to her
about its inevitable end, she said, "O ma'am, I
can see all that clearly; I don't want sense, and
I doiit want grace either^ for that matter, but what
I do want is the power to keep steady." She
spoke much to me of a strong, almost sensible,
struggle with evil, of bad thoughts assaulting her
92
HARDENED IN GOOD.
night and day, and driving away the better ones
she strove to encourage. What Miss M— (the
schoolmistress) told me about her throws a curious
light upon the waywardness and impulsiveness of
this class of women. A few days before the con¬
versation I allude to she had been speaking of a
man with whom she had been living—a low
wretch, who lived upon her miserable gains, and
beat and ill-used her so that she often feared for
her life. She said, If he does not come to meet
me when I go out of jail, I will go home,
blazing drunk, and smash everything in the house to
pieces I'' Only two hours after making this speech,
which it is difficult to connect with her sensible
civilized countenance and manner, she went to
Mrs. D—, and announced her intention of trying
to get into the penitentiary.' This girl was placed
in a respectable lodging, and had work found for
her. She did well for some little time, then
formed an acquaintance with a man of bad char¬
acter, became unsettled, and decamped.
^April 2 2.—A young woman of the name of Mary
Loft stayed behind the rest of the class to speak to
me. She leaves jail in a fortnight, and sees at
HARDENED IN GOOD.
93
present no opening towards a better life, after
which she earnestly, but almost hopelessly, aspires.
She is a girl of the lowest class, her countenance
broad and flat, disfigured by the small-pox, and
her features swollen, possibly with drink ; but her
aspect is redeemed, in so far as this is possible, by
the most touching expression of humility and self-
abjection, which breathes in every word she
speaks, to an extent I have never yet met with
in any woman except Mrs. H—, so that, in a
short conversation with her, I learnt more of the
true feelings of the wretched class she belongs to
than I have ever yet done : all she said was so
simply spoken, without cant or varnish of any
kind. She has been often in jail, brought back,
sometimes, after an absence of a day or two.
"The police," she said, ^^dogme.'^ She told me that
she drank and made disturbances. " All women
like me," she said, " drink ; there is not one of us
that does not drink ; we could not live our lives
without it ; it would be impossible." She told me
that when sober, she knew what modesty, or at
least shame was ; she could not bear any one to
accost her ; but when drunk, she said, " I will go
94
after any one." She said she did not care for drink
for its own sake ; and when leading an industrious
and quiet life, as when in jail, never wished for it
at all. S/ie connected her diñnking eittwely with her
life. Two years ago, I found she had tried to
commit suicide by throwing herself from an upper
window from utter misery and self-despair. I told
her, in the course of conversation, that I had
lately seen some women brought to jail walking
arm in arm, looking unconcerned, and laughing
boldly. She said, " They may seem as if they did
not care what people think of them, and put on
that brazened look ; but it is put on; in their hearts
they feel what they are j they cannot help it."
Some of her observations showed a deep moral
susceptibility, strangely at variance with her low,
almost degraded, aspect. This was betrayed in
the way in which she received some remarks I
made, as to the wickedness of women of her class
in robbing good poor women of happiness in
their husbands, and of the money spent over
them being taken from what ^ought to support
wives and children.
* This girl has been two years in Newcastle Peni-
HARDENED IN GOOD. 95
tentiary, has relapsed again into vice ; but has evi¬
dently the7x received a seed of good. The diffi¬
culties in the way of her improvement are very
great ; but her desires after good seem very strong.
This girl was placed in a Reformatory, or rather
Refuge, conducted on principles which allowed an
unusual degree of freedom, almost independence,
to its inmates; they were permitted, so long as
they behaved well and conformed to a few known
rules, to go to certain houses in the town to work
by the day, returning to the Home at a fixed
hour.
^ On June 22d, I saw Mary Loft, under the care
of Mrs. R at the Brandling Home ; her behaviour
/
at present gives entire satisfaction ; she is cheerful,
steady, and very industrious ; the improvement in
her looks is something extraordinary. She told me
that she is ;perfectly happy^ having got among kind
people, a;hd out of the way of the temptations she
feared so much. She has some near relations in
Newcastle, whom she has, for fear of falling among
her old set, never seen, or felt any desire to go to
see, neither, she tells me, has she ever felt any
wish for drink. It appears that she has been.
96
HARDENED IN GOOD.
though so young, twenty-three times in Durham
Gaol. I find that on her being last sent there, she
had been much impressed by the policeman who
brought her, talking kindly and like "a father," and
asking her if she was not tired of this " dog's life."
' This poor girl, however, even under circum¬
stances eminently favourable to the development of
good, did not fulfil her promise of true amend¬
ment. She failed under no stronger temptation
than that of the strange restlessness, which seems
the curse of those whose lives have been lawless
and unrestrained, coming across their spirits from
time to time like a fierce and withering wind, driving
them from every happier anchorage. She became
discontented, moody, and finally absconded from
the Refuge, going back into " the abyss " out of
which so few feet return to take hold upon the
paths of life.'
These illustrations seem, so far as they have
already gone, more calculated to restrain expec¬
tation than to animate hope ; it would be easy,
however, to interleave them with brighter pages, ^
^ I had written as far as these very words (Dec. i6, 1865) when
something called me from my writing, and its subject passed from my
HARDENED IN GOOD.
97
easy to tell ,of transformations as startling, of co¬
incidences as unlocked for, as any that could be
invented by imagination, easy, too, to fill pages
with mere commonplace, yet very cheering narra¬
tives like the following ones, communicated to me
by a friend who has never through his whole life
been known to turn away his face from a poor
man, or from a poor hoy :—
■ Some years ago a boy, naturally thoughtless
mind. In the afternoon, I was told that a young woman had called to
see me, and a remarkably nice-looking young person, in really handsome
and comfortable winter garb, presented herself. The name she had
sent in was strange to me, and so at first sight seemed her face, until
she smiled, when a gradual light broke in upon me, and I recognised
features that had once been as familiar to me as those which beset and
haunt one in a perplexing dream. About ten years since, a little girl,
named Jane , had been an inmate in a small reformatory in which
I was at that time interested. She came from one of the large pit-
villages in Durham, and was placed with us by one of the county magis¬
trates, under whose notice her sad case had fallen, that she might be
rescued from the ill-treatment of her mother, a woman of the most
abandoned habits, who would sometimes turn the poor child into the
street, and leave her, unless some neighbour took compassion on her, to
pass the night there. When she came to us, and for long afterwards, it
was but too evident that she had been both beaten and starved, her
poor little face and figure were thin and elfish in the extreme, her arms
dwindled to skin and bone, her whole physical and moral being were
undevëloped through neglect, and dwarfed by ill-usage. Her quick,
ever-restless eyes, and hurried, nervous movements, betrayed the pre¬
sence of continual fear and apprehension, and it was evident that
though she seemed to feel the kindness she met with, and was coaxing
and endearing in her own ways, that she was not able to believe in it
fully, so many and so needless were her little artifices and fiatteries, so in¬
genious the webs of deception she was for ever weaving about us. Some
of these were of a vry transparent texture, and once, in the very midst
G
98
HARDENED IN GOOD.
and lazy, belonging to a family of average respec¬
tability in Yorkshire, got unsettled, and came to
Hartlepool on tramp, committed some petty theft,
and was sent to jail ; his case was there looked
into, and after some correspondence with his
family, his brother came and took him home.
After a short time, however, he appeared again for
another theft, and when his term of commitment
was at an end, the chaplain, wishing to give him a
of her fibs and schemes, I can remember her weeping, this time real, sin¬
cere tears, because she had not a doll like one which had been given to
the matron's baby. Though she was long in the Refuge, and, I think,
in a certain way, rather liked by everybody, what between her deceit
and her childishness, we never seemed to make any real way with her,
and even after we got her placed out in a humble situation, where
she might have done well, she still seemed ' condemned our souls to
cross.' One day the matron received a hasty summons—^Jane had
fallen down a flight of steps and broken her leg ; investigation showed,
however, that Jane had not fallen, but thrown herself down the steps,
contriving to twist and hurt herself just enough to get a holiday from
work and a return to the Refuge !
At last she drifted from us altogether. Many years after this, when
I was vi.siting the penitentiary, a young woman came up to me with
the most ardent demonstrations of attachment, nor could I truly say,
even upon meeting-ground so little to be desired, that the reciprocity
was all on one side, the improvement in her whole aspect was so marked
and unmistakable. Her conduct during the whole time she stayed
there was excellent in all ways, and on going out she found and kept
respectable places.
Î had lost sight of her for some few years, and this was Jane, well
married in a neighbouring town, and come over to Durham to see all
her old friends. While we were talking of past times, it occurred to me
to say,—' And how; old are you now, Jane? ' ' Jtist twenty-071e;,
A commentary, I thought, upon the strange discrepancies of human life !
A life of struggle and evil lived through, before the age at which
happier lives are beginning to unfold !
99
chance of breaking through bad ways and con¬
nexions, took him to a neighbouring seaport, and
got him placed in a ship. Soon, however, he re¬
appeared in jail, his offence this time that of having
run away. This time the chaplain took no notice
of him at all, seeing no apparent wish to improve.
He left jail, and after a short interval, returned for
the fourth time, when he was again taken in hand,
and this time not only by the chaplain, but by one
I
of the prison officers, who had become kindly in¬
terested in him. Their joint persuasions induced
him to enlist ; he is 'now abroad with his regiment,
and has gone on respectably for many years ; his
father has offered to buy him off, but he declines
this, feeling that it is best to continue in his present
way of life. In this case, the strict restraint of
military life has probably helped to confirm the
real desire to do better, which would never have
been able to fix and harden itself into permanence
without falling under some such strong outward
pressure. This boy writes to his friend from time
to time, and seldom does so without expressing
warm gratitude to the kind perseverance to which
he attributes all his subsequent improvement.'
lœ
HARDENED IN GOOD.
The next extract is interesting, as showing the
extraordinary difficulties that make it so hard for
one who has once got off the right track to return to
it at all. The world is not the friend of such, nor
the world's law. This was ' a lad of about nine¬
teen, a born and trained thief, who had spent the
better half of hisjife in jail ; of originally delicate
constitution, and broken in health by his way of
life. As he gave promises of amendment on
going out of jail, we gave him a letter of recom¬
mendation to a shipping-agent at Sunderland ; he
found a vessel and went out to sea, but suffered
so severely from sea-sickness, that the captain soon
returned him on hands. He was then sent to a
lodging, maintained there for a while, and told to
seek out work for himself. After some days had
passed by, my door-bell rang rather late one even¬
ing, and I was told that William wanted to
see me. I had him in, and learned that he had
met with work at an iron-foundry at somp dis¬
tance. Wages, etc., looked satisfactory, and it
was hard to say whether he or I was the best
pleased with this new opening. We sat together
for some little time, chatting in high spirits. As
HARDENED IN GOOD.'
ICI
I found he was not to receive his wages until the
fortnight's end, I lent him ten shillings to be going
on with until then, and for this I remember he
wished to give me security upon his only available
property, or at least that which he seemed to con¬
sider as being such,—the writing of agreement with
his master. He looked very nice and smart, in a
gay necktie and respectable coat; he said these had
been lent him by a friend. He bade me good¬
bye, saying he would start that night for the
foundry, as it was six miles off, so as to be ready
for his work in the morning. After he had gone,
and my servant had shut up the house and retired
to bed, came another ring. I opened the door ;
this time it was a policeman. " Have you had W.
here 1 " (my heart sunk at once within me.) " I
want him for a theft committed this afternoon."
Two lads coming down street made off ,)vith some
clothes hanging for sale at a shop door, and in
doing so, were seen by two of the prison officers,
who gave chase after them. One boy threw down
the clothes, and succeeded in getting away ; the
other boy took to the river, swam across, made
for Framwellgate (the very street where William
I02
HARDENED IN GOOD.
was lodging), and dodged there till they lost him
too. These two officers swore that this boy was
William , with whose face they were perfectly
familiar, as he had left the jail so lately. I
thought the case looked awkward ; the testimony
of the two officers was a strong point against W.,
so also was the fact of his not being m his ordi¬
nary clothes when he called on me, looking as if he
might have changed them, and against these I had
nothing to oppose in his favour except an inward
intuition, which made it hard for me to believe
him guilty. I told the policeman that he had
gone to the Ironworks, and in the morning
set off to make inquiries at his late lodgings.
" Where," I said, " is William 'I " The landlady
answered, " Gone to work at ." " Did he go
last night"No," she replied. "Why not?"
" Why, sir, you kept him rather late, and it was a
very dark night, and he went off this morning, in
time to be there by six o'clock." A man sitting
by the fire said, " I sef (or went with him) " a good
part of the way." Just at this minute another man
popped in his head from an inner room, with
"How d'ye do, sir?" (This was a noted thief,
HARDENED IN GOOD.
103
who had been often in prison.) " I am trying to
make an honest livelihood." After a little chat, I
said, I suppose you have heard of the robbery
yesterday afternoon, and of the boy taking to the
river'?" They said they had heard all about it.
^^Was that boy William '?" " No, certainly
not." I then explained why I had come, and told
them about William's visit to nie, and asked about
his having changed his clothes. " These clothes,
sir," said the thief, " were mine. I lent them to
make ' him look a little decent when he came to
you, and I can let you see them now," which
he did. The first-mentioned man volunteered to^
go with me to the police-station. The policeman
listened to what we had to say, but laughed at the
statement, and told me his comrade had already
gone to the ironworks for William. When he
arrived, however, his case was disposed of in an
altogether unexpected way, by the shopkeeper at
once swearing that he was not the boy by whom
he had been robbed. William was of course
acquitted. I have often thought of what he said
to me when we v/ere talking the matter over : " I
have been taken up by the police, as you know,
104
HARDENED IN GOOD.
sir, over and over again. I thought nothing of it :
it seemed just what I was expecting ; but this
time, when I had made up my mind to do well,
the very first day that I was trying to make an
honest living for myself, to have the police after me,
and me innocent, I felt just as if my heart would
have broken." And even as it was, this strange
mistake had an adverse influence upon poor Wil¬
liam's fortunes, as the owner of the iron-foundry,
annoyed at the policeman's coming, and perhaps
not satisfied with the light thus thrown on William's
antecedent history, refused to employ him any
longer. He had fresh work to seek, under fresh
difficulties ; and during his life, which was a very
short one, did not again meet with so good an
opening. Yet he never returned to any evil ways.'^
1 One great difficulty in the way of real improvement is the despair
into which a person of this class, really trying to do better, is apt to
he thrown by any untoward accident. It makes them feel apparently
as if they were the mock and sport of some malign destiny, and is some¬
times enough to scatter good and hopeful resolutions to the winds. I
shall never forget seeing a girl of the lowest class in an absolute frenzy
of grief and rage at the loss of a shilling, which had been given her by
a lady, that she might find a night's food and lodging respectably,
while further arrangements were being made for her. On her way she
had met some of her old companions, and, showing this shilling, one of
them snatched it from her in joke ; it fell, rolled into some chink, and
was lost ! At the time, her destiny seemed to turn upon this shilling.
HARDENED IN GOOD. IO5
In the same records I find a story of a little
boy, who had wandered from London along
with two others in search of work. As he was a
remarkably bright, civil, and interesting boy, and
did not seem equal to regular work, employment
was found for him as a street shoe-black, while he
received instruction in reading and writing in the
evenings. After a while, as no better opening for
him seemed to offer, his fare was paid back to
his friends in London, and for a while no more
was heard of him. One night, however, there was
a summons to the door, and there stood the little
man, this time smart and smiling, and in full
sailor costume. ' What, you here again 1 ' exclaimed
his friend. 'Yes, sir,' he said, 'but this time, for
once, I've not come to trouble you, just to see
you and my other friends, and enjoy myself for a
day or two,' and went on to explain that a
gentleman in London had interested himself in
his welfare, and had bound him to a ship, which
had brought him to Sunderland, on this his first
voyage. He was both proud and happy, and
stayed and enjoyed himself to his heart's content.
This was in October 1861. In a week or two from
îo6 HARDENED IN GOOD.
this time, the whole North-Eastern coast was
strewed with wrecks, and among them was the
ship the little boy was in, which went down
near Hartlepool. He was the only one on board
who perished, and this, as far as could be learnt,
through his timidity and irresolution, which made
him slow in leaving the sinking vessel, and unable
to take advantage of the help the more experienced
sailors would have given him.
Here I read also of many other wandering
boys thrown out of work, sometimes by illness,
sometimes by the failure of employers ; of youths
of various ages, friendless, penniless, sinking with
fatigue or fever ; some of whom, by a little timely
aid, were restored to health, others sent back to
their homes, and others, for whom nothing more
could be done, who were helped to die in at least
comparative comfort. Vagrants, as a class, are
more difficult to deal with even than criminals.
Thieving being in so far a profession, demands
the exercise of skill, patience, and ingenuity, quali¬
ties capable of being trained to better objects :
1
confirmed begging brings nothing into play except
lying and laziness, and from its habit of parading
107
or counterfeiting misery, and calling out pity, kind¬
ness, and all the best feelings of humanity, only to
deceive and mock them, seems to induce a form
of character more utterly mean and worthless than
any other. Still in criminal life, in vagrant life, in
any society however lawless and degraded, that has
not altogether lapsed from the features of humanity,
there will be probably found some person or per¬
sons able to be helped to good, and these fall into vari¬
ous classes. First of all come those who, with
tolerable bringing up, and many good instincts, have
yet, in a moment of moral weakness, or through
some extraordinary pressure of circumstances—
say utter friendlessness or extreme poverty—been
driven to an evil way of life, but who have never
really embraced it in heart and will. Such per¬
sons can probably never be restored without some
exterior aid, their way is so hedged about and
shut in with difficulties ; but when a hand is once
held out to them it is all they need; when a path
is once opened up to them, they will follow it
with even affecting perseverance, and go on to
steadfast goodness. Then again, there are natures,
the whole bent and sit of which is so powerfully
I08 HARDENED IN GOOD.
attracted to good, that they will maintain their
hold upon it, even if they can only do it with
cramping-irons, like the dwarf pine of the Alps,
which wraps its storm-twisted arms about the
rocks, and grows along them horizontally, just as
the winds will let it. With such rare natures,
the moral claims of life, especially such as are
connected with family relationship, have the
strength and tenacity of instincts, and like an
instinct too is their desire for self-culture and
improvement, even under circumstances the least
friendly to their development. Such people
will learn better ways, if they have but once the
chance of seeing them, will acquire useful arts, will
help themselves, will help others, will draw about
them comfort, order, and happiness, and as far
as their influence can extend, will make a moral
wilderness blossom like the rose. I know at this
moment a woman, reared in the very depths of
poverty and moral abasement, who has had almost
from her own girlhood the care and charge of
eight brothers. Her father abandoned his family
early in life, and when the mother, a woman of
but indifferent character, died, Ann contrived, by
HARDENED IN GOOD.
109
her own energy and untiring resource, to hold a
home, though of the very poorest kind, together, so
that her younger brothers might not have to go to
the workhouse. In spite of all her efforts, they
have not thriven any better in life than very poor
families generally do. Some of fhe eight are in
the army, some in the collieries, some on the tramp ;
one, who was a poacher, dead ; one in and out of
jail as it happens ; not one of them, so far as I
know, in prosperous circumstances. Ann is now
married, but no less than before the devoted, in¬
defatigable friend and slave of her brothers ; for
them she plans, saves, schemes ; she can on suit¬
able occasions scold and cuff them ; in fact, there
is nothing that she cannot, has not done, except
cease to love and labour for them. I have
scarcely ever seen her, however poor at the
time, however ragged, that she was not patiently
working out some long-cherished object, whether
it might be the purchase of a second-hand ^ suit '
for one of her elder brothers, or the sending of
one of the younger ones to a night-school. Even
in her poorest days she could find stray halfpence,
pocket-money, or the shadow of such, ^ to encour-
no HARDENED IN GOOD.
age them to be good.' The journeys she has
undertaken for these brothers, the accidents and
illnesses she has nursed them through, the self-
denials she has endured on their behalf, would fill
a book. Ann has never been able to rise above
/
early disadvantages, or to emancipate herself from
low and disreputable connexions. The family she
has married into, like her own, can scarcely be
numbered among the respectable ; she herself is
not always clean, and never strictly tidy ; yet in her
I see one of family-life's obscurer heroines, and am
never in her company without thinking of Eliza¬
beth of Siberia.
■
And there is yet another class able to be helped
to good,—one as interesting to the psychologist
as it is to the Christian, a class the possibility of
whose existence one would be inclined to reject
on à priori grounds, but who are known experi¬
mentally to all who are familiar with the strange
and mingled deposits which the great ocean of
life casts from time to time on its surf-beaten,
wreck-bestrewn shore. I mean such natures as,
being born and trained in evil, live and move in it
as their natural element and condition, without its
HARDENED IN GOOD.
Ill
gaining admittance to that which is deepest within
them, as if the citadel of their soul were guarded
by some strange and secret spell.^ When these
people once see what is good, they seem to recog¬
nise it as something which has originally belonged
to them, love it, and rise to it at once.
To all of these classes, moral support and help
is much, I may indeed say that it is everything.
It gives that quickening impulse, without which,
speaking after a human manner, the latent seed of
1 Such characters, I think, owe their immunity less to strength of
character than to simplicity and a childlike passiveness, through
which, even while they are personally implicated and involved in evil,
they seem to escape that consciotis depravity, which is its true sting.
Evil has them in its embrace, but it is that of a parasitical plant, whose
root of life is in no way intertwined with their own, so that, when the
bond is once broken, the soul has done with it for ever. Among the
worst classes of society, in the worst ages of the world, such characters
have been more common than a superficial observer could believe.
The affecting, true story of ' Jeanie Cameron,' by a prison matron,
exemplifies my statement ; but I know no such touching illustration of
it as is the story of the beautiful Mdlle. Aisse (told by St. Beuve), a
Circassian slave, brought to Paris as a little girl by a French noble¬
man in the time of the Regency, and for many years the darling of the
most corrupt court and society in the world. Once, when on some
pleasure journey, she fell for a short time under the influence of a
woman of exalted goodness. The effect of this intercourse was sudden,
but lasting. At once and for ever, she broke every former tie, even
such as were most tenderly cherished, and dedicated her whole life to
repentance. She says in one of her letters, ' I had never seen virtue,
how should I know what it was like ? Had I known it sooner, I should
have always loved it.'
See also on this subject some highly interesting remarks on the
character of Lucrezia Borgia, in Mr. T. A. Trollope's Decade of Italiaft
iVomen.
112
HARDENED IN GOOD.
good would never have power to detach itself from
surrounding obstructions. Who shall estimate
under such circumstances what is the worth of a
friend to the life, a helper to the soul, making a
link between it and its God '?
But why need instances be multiplied to con¬
firm what all experience proves, that every gene¬
rous and exalted dife blesses—who shall say how
greatly ^—not only through direct effort, but simply
by being what it is. Just as a selfish and con¬
tracted nature makes all shrink and narrow up with
which it comes in contact, so does a free and boun¬
tiful spirit expand and quicken all it meets with ;
it touches more points than it is itself aware of,
and is for ever widening its circle of benediction,
and drawing within it some fresh and warm in¬
terest. And it is a very narrow conception of
such a life that would limit its influence to those
who stand openly and confessedly in need of help.
In every class of life there are burdened and
breaking hearts, straitened and sorrowful lives,
people to whom a cheerful hour, a visit to a plea¬
sant house, a well-timed gift, a kindly letter, is as
valuable as are food and raiment to those who
HARDENED IN GOOD
113
have neither. Who shall tell where the warmth
and radiance a generous heart casts round it
stops ? we may as weir try to measure a sunbeam,
or to niark the place it falls on. The best bless¬
ing lies
' Not in that which ivegive, httt that which we share ;
For the gift without the giver is bare.
The difficulties which attend doing good are un¬
doubtedly many and great, and we shall find just
the same difficulties, whether we take them in their
number or in their strength, m being good, God's
work in His servants, as well as their work for
Him, having many a check and hindrance. Yet
not to believe in good and in its final and com¬
plete victory, is simply not to believe in God
Himself. In the keeping of His commandments
there is great reward ; >in a life of love, which keeps
them all at once, the greatest and richest of any.
Therefore, Gn the morning sow thy seed, and in
the evening withhold not thy hand ; for thou
knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or
that, or whether they both shall be alike good.'
1 J;^mcs Russell Lowell.
H
PRAYER
considered in its relation to the will of
man, and in its dependence on the sacrifice
of Christ's death.
' Man gropes in twilight dim,
Encompassed all his hours
By fearfullest powers
Inflexible to him ;
That so he may discern
His feebleness,
And even for earth's success
To Him in wisdom turn,
Who holds for us the keys of either home,
Earth and the world to come.'
VERY subject worthy of true and deep
consideration must be considered in
itself; its parts, if reviewed separately,
must yet be viewed in their relation to the laws,
conditions, and ultimate design of the great Whole
they belong to. Christianity is a living whole ; it
is a system transcending the world system, with
which it is now connected; it is a supernatural
PRAYER.
115
system based upon a series of supernatural trans¬
actions. It is a solemn wprld-appealing, world-
accusing fact^—a fact existing along with many
other facts, with which it seems in apparent dis¬
agreement ; it is a kingdom, as was emphatically
declared by its Great Founder, ' not of this world.'
It is simply idle, therefore, in considering any of
the great laws of this kingdom, to speak of the
doctrines^ of expiation, sacrifice, and the like, ^as
mystical enthusiasm, a dithyrambic mode of ex¬
pression,'—as idle as it would be in a person wholly
ignorant of the great laws of the natural kingdom
in discussing the question of light or heat to set
down electricity as ^a mystical theory.' Let us at
least learn something about this great kingdom ; let
us make ourselves familiar with its genius, its laws,
its administration, and then to talk nonsense about
it will at least be a conscious and responsible act.
' Muto non e, come altri crede, il cielo
Sordi siam noi, a cui I'orecchio serra
Lo strepito insolente délia terra. '
An unbeliever, whether his denial of superna¬
tural influence and aid assume an explicit form or
1 The SaUirday Review^ Sept. g, 1865, on ' De Maistre.'
Il6 PRAYER.
not, is, in a simple and literal sense, a man of this
world. He is a man who lives and is guided by
the natural order, and is not solicitous as to in¬
fluences that may lie outside of it. He lives by
what he sees, as well as for what he sees. The
believer, or Christian, moves also among facts,
but among facts of a supernatural order ; he also
lives by what he sees, but faith has enlarged his
range of vision, and brought within its ken a
world of spiritual realities ; has opened up a life
I
to be even now lived among them, with laws by
which his actual life is explained and guided.
This life is one life^ interdependent, connected by
the strictest organic unity. It lives, it moves, it
works through its own appointed laws ; it breathes
its own breath, its slenderest thread is linked with
its ^ mightiest power. ^ He who receiveth me,'
saith our Lord, ^ receiveth him that sent me.' The
works of this kingdom are works of faith, and its
faith is counted to it for righteousness. ' He who
believeth on the Son is not condemned ; but he
that believeth not is condemned already, because
he hath not believed in the name of the only
begotten Son of God.'
PRAYER.
In this great system there is nothing really
arbitrary, though much that appears so. All is
unseen order, invisible yet sure connexion. In
the kingdom of grace, as in that of nature, are
' lasting links
From highest Heaven let down.
* The flowers still faithful to their stem
Their fellowship renew,
The stems are faithful to the root
That worketh out of view,
And to the rock the root adheres
In every fibre true.
* Close clings to earth the living rock,
Though threatening still to fall.
The earth is constant to her sphere.
And God upholds them all.
All things in Christianity hold by its great
central truth. Redemption ; each doctrine, each
rite of the Christian Church, each instinct (if I
may so express myself) of the Christian heart,
leads, if tracked home, to that meritorioiis Sacri¬
fice which burst the gates of Death for oiir ran¬
somed race, and made a highway of peace and
reconciliation between the redeemed spirit and its
1 Wordsworth.
Ïl8 PRAYER.
God. We know not the nature and degree of
intercourse that Adam originally enjoyed with his
Maker. It was probably close and intimate to a
degree which we cannot now realize even in
thought. It might be natural to him to talk to
God simply, confidingly, as a child talks to its
parent; but since the entrance of sin into humanity
there has been a wall of separation between man
and God. They have stood farther off each other,
and it seems evident that since the Fall there has
been no true approach to God, no loving com¬
munion with Him, in fact, no prayer without sacri¬
fice. The history of the elder Church surrounds
us as regards this point with a cloud of witnesses.
We find a proof of it in the story of Cain and
Abel, with its test of acceptance and of rejection.
Noah, Abraham, and Job, the priestly fathers of
the primaeval dispensation, all offered sacrifice.
Then came the Law, the schoolmaster bringing
us to Christ, under whose teaching prayer and
sacrifice are never disunited. ^ Under the old
Covenant,' says Kurtz, ^ sacrifice is not the symbol
of prayer, the mere outward sign of an inward
dedication—it is the ohjectwe assurance of the ex-
PRAYER.
119
piation ivhich ma7i reqim^'es in drawing near to GodH
Sacrifice makes prayer possible : it opens the way
to God.
Even the altar of incense, that great type of the
prayers of the Christian Church, on which no
bleeding sacrifice was oifered, but only the blood¬
less one of incense, representing the prayers of the
congregation already reconciled, sanctified, and re¬
stored to fellowship with Cod, was itself sprinkled
by the priest with the blood of atonement.
Then came Christianity, a better covenant,
established on better promises, and, as the apostle
emphatically tells us, on better^ sacrifices, dedi¬
cated like the first one, 'not without blood.' The
way into its holiest places, its deepest spiritual
communions, opened not as before ' through the
blood of others,' but its entrance into heaven ^
itself, obtained through the might of that one
perfect, all-sufficient Sacrifice, through which it
still lives, and moves, and breathes, and prays.
Even the most false religions, so long as they re¬
tain the idea of sacrifice, always retain along with
1 Hebrews ix. 23.
2 Hebrews ix. 2,5.
120
that idea the instinct of prayer; and in this respect
Paganism is a deeper thing than so-called^ Natural
Religion, and contains within it seeds of which pure
Deism knows nothing ; a sense of need and sin, a
value for expiation which has doubtless, even in the
most darkened nations, been derived from prim-
öeval knowledge of the true God. Mahometanism
\
is, on the other hand, a creed without sacrifice,
without mystery, and (so far as I am informed on
this point) without j>rajyer/ its deep-rooted fatalism
leaves no room for the pleading human voice of
supplication ; its only language is that of acquies¬
cence in that inexorable will which it calls God.'^
Deism also adores and acquiesces, it does not
/rajy. ^ I accustom my mind,' ^ says Rousseau,
^ to sublime contemplations. I meditate upon the
order of the universe, not for the sake of reducing
it to vain systems, but to admire it unceasingly, to
adore the wise Creator who makes Himself felt
within it. I converse with the Author of the
universe ; I imbue all my faculties with His Divine
1 ' The term revealed religion/" says Coleridge, 'is a pleonasm.
There is 710 other.''
2 Falgrave's Arahia. ^ Eviile.
PRAYER.
121
essence. My heart melts over His benefits. I
bless Him for all His gifts, but I do not pray to
Him. What have I to ask Him for
We might say, reasoning à priori., What is there
so simple as prayer % What so natural as to seek
the help and favour of One who is confessed to be
the cause and ruler of all things. Yet it may be
doubted whether the natural man ever prays ; it
may be doubted whether any heart, save that
which is renewed by the Holy Spirit ever lifts
up to God that fervent, invorought prayer which
availeth much ; and this because the sense of
fixity and order is so deep sunk within the human
spirit that a secret distrust of prayer seems native
to it, and it appears idle to expect that God,
whose goings are from everlasting, will break His
appointed order at a request from mortal lips.
So strong is the sense of this fixity, that there
seems but one other thing strong enough to break
$
it,—the voice of a risen Saviour, which, when the
spiritually dead hear, they live and pray. The
realm of nature, however fair and fruitful, is but
the land of Egypt, the house of bo7idage; and until
man's spirit hears the voice that calls him out of
122
PRAYER.
it, baptizing him in the cloud and in the sea, he
is unable to break through the network of the
subtle spells and sorceries she weaves around him.
He is a captive to the strength of her continual
\
miracle, her processio,n ' of days and, nights, of
summer and winter, of youth and age ; the exhi-
bition of God's power lays such hold upon him,
that the sense of the Divine as Power only grows
upon the mind (as it does in every form of Pagan¬
ism), till it leaves no room for any actioit of the
hmnaii will^ until it is met by the other great,
ever-enduring miracle of God's love, as it is mani¬
fested in Him who lived and died and rose again
for man ; in Him who for man and as man ever
liveth, the everlasting Witness, He who bears re¬
cord in heaven, as He bare it on earth, to God's
sympathy • with His creature. Nature is God's
going forth, terrible in splendour and majesty ;
grace is His coming forth in pity and in love ;
the Father coming forth to meet His erring
son.
^ He who hath the Son hath the Father also^ and
I
he who hath not the Son hath not seen, neither
known the Father. Nature shows us no Father.
PRAYER.
123
' Nature/ says one ^ who acknowledges no other
God, ^ acts with fearful uniformity. Stern as fate,
absolute as tyranny, merciless as death ; too vast
to praise, too inexorable to propitiate, has no
ear for prayer^ no heart for syinpathy^ no a^'m to^
save^ ' He,' saith Christ, ^ who hath seen me,
hath seen the Father also.' He who has seen
Christ has seen a greater sight than that of
' Suns on suns that rise and set
From creation to decay.'
He has seen God sympathizmg with and aiding
ma7i. He has come to a pause in nature's over¬
whelming chorus, a break in her adamantine chain.
He has passed from a world of fixity into a world
of life. ' If ye believe in the Son, the Son shall
make you free.' The sight of the cross, God's
mighty interference for man, is the death-blow to
Fatalism,2 which but for it, under one or another
1 Holyoake.
2 Yet is the cross itself a decreed thing, a part of God's everlasting
purpose. The Lamb was 'slain from the foundation of the world.'
But Predestination and Fatalism, though they seem to have many
points in common, hold by such different roots that they cannot co¬
exist in the same mind. Fatalism is Atheistic, and rests upon the idea
of a blind and unintelligent, therefore unrelenting force, rigid, though
ever working. Foreknowledge and counsel presuppose the presence
and action of an intelligent power, and with that, involve the possibility
of changing and influencing its determination. We cannot, for example.
PRAYER.
form, reigns over all the sons of Adam. And I
venture to repeat once more, that no one truly
prays who does not pray in the freedom of Christ's
life, and work, and death. I venture also to state
•that the measure of faith in His merits and sacri¬
fice will be found to be the measure of prayer in
the case of any individual or of any Church. The
two great branches of our Lord's family differ so
widely as to all which constitutes the government
and administration of Divine grace, that any com¬
munion between them, except that of charity, is
little short of an intellectual impossibility. But
the Catholic and the Protestant are at one as re¬
gards redemption. Each agrees as to the facts of
man's fall, and sin, and need. Each for his resto¬
ration relies upon the supernatural help which
/ /
Christ's work for man obtained ; therefore, though
these two ipay misunderstand and misrepresent
the other, they are none the less brethren.
' See,
Their speech is one, their witnesses agree.'
hope to stop the action of a machine, unless we either know and can
direct the laws it works by, or are strong enough to break it altogether ;
but we may always hope to prevail with a Being capable of thought
and feeling, howsoever stern and terrible.
PRAYER. 125
Each believes, each loves, each prays, and that
from the very depth and ground of the heart.
And as regards any individual member of either
communion, we shall find that it is the sight of
the cross, and of all the tremendous associations
that are bound up with it—the sense of guilt, of
condemnation, of deliverance, of infinite loss, and
everlasting gain,—that brings, that binds the soul
to prayer. It is this sight that makes of every
awakened soul a priest, an intercessor, no longer
bringing, as does the mere nominal believer, his
^ fruit of the lips,' as tithes and offerings were
brought under the law, at stated times, and in
connexion with stated ceremonies, but offering up
to God sacrifice through sacrifice; no longer trusting
in its own repentance, its own faith, its own prayer,
but joining its every petition to the might of that
prevailing blood, which is ^ itself the most power¬
ful of all intercessions.'^
To talk to nominal believers on the subject of
prayer, is generally to find that they have little
confidence in prayer as a power. Do they believe
1 F. W Faber.
126
that prayer eífects, alters anything^ No, for
nominal Christianity is but a refined naturalism ;
it wears the cross, seeing that it cannot be got out
of either the Bible or the Church, as an ornament,
but it never presses it to its heart, it never roots
}
its life beneath its shadow; it is to it a thing
extrinsic, adventitious, out of harmony with all
that it really believes and grows to. Nominalism
contains within it no deep-seated sense of sin, of
need, or of dependence ; how then can it lay its
grasp upon the great co-related truths of sacrifice,
expiation, mediation h But far otherwise is it with
him who has learnt to look upon himself as a
mortal and corruptible being with immortal and
perfect ends ; far otherwise with him who feels him¬
self urged tow^ards communion with the Divine
through the instinct and necessity of the renewed
nature, yet unable from a felt deficiency in that
nature to attain to such communion without help
from the Divine itself! Such a spirit is prepared
to look beyond itself for deliverance and for aid !
' How,' asks Chateaubriand, ^ is man in his state
, of actual imperfection to attain to that ideal to
which he continually tends? Some will say,
PRAYER.
127
through the exertion of his own energy. But there
is a mmiifest disproportion between the given a7nount
of force^ and the weight it has to remove i Hence
the demand for auxiliary aids to human weakness ;
hence the need of Christ, of faith, of prayer^ ^ the
dynamic agency of heaven.' ^
The Christian's prayer is a supernatural inter¬
course founded upon a supernatural work ; it is
built upon Christ's express command, and linked
for ever wdth His explicit promise, 'Ask m niy
name and ye shall receive ; ' it is based upon faith
in His meritorious work ; it is never so strong as
when it seeks to join to His great sacrifice the
chief oblation of the Christian covenant, the
offering up of the human will, the freedoin of which
is a costly present made by God to inan^ that the
son of His adoption might have somewhat of his
own to offer. And it is in vain to come before
God without this chosen offering, this sacrifice of
a free heart, prized by Him long after He has
ceased to delight in burnt-offerings and material
sacrifices for sin. Many prayers, doubtless, fail or
1 De Maistre.
128 PRAYER.
are hindered because they are not submitted
prayers. He offers up a true, prevailing prayer,
who, while he prays, keeps his eye ever fixed upon
the one great Sacrifice, while he offers up that of
his own will, submitted, slain^ or if not slain, at
least bound and captive,—a will which, through
submission, has become one with the will of God.
Yes,' I would say also, that there are eminent
sacrifices which God is too merciful to demand
of all His children, but to which He invites His
chosen servants, sacrifices which, but for the
strength which God gives, would be impossible,
but which, when offered up through His eternal
Spirit, even with strong crying and tears, He never
fails to bless, to make them fruitful, and to mul¬
tiply them exceedingly through accepted and
answered prayers.^-
1 So close and evident is the union between accepted prayer and
the sacrifice of the human will, that it has led me to meditate upon the
meaning- of those lives on which God has laid so heavy a burden of
pain and repression, that they can only be lived at all by ' leaving out
the whole natural man ; ' lives so filled up by endurance, that there is
little room left in them for self-denial or sacrifice. A life filled with
pain, is perhaps meant by God to be a life filled with prayer. How¬
ever blank and unintelligible it may be to men, its Godward aspect
may be full of meaning. Stript of leaf and blossom, it may stand bare
like a cross, appealing and interceding. Pain, in its origin, and its uses,
is as deep a mystery as sin, and like that cognate mystery, it is one
PRAYER.
129
> Prayer is the voice of one who was created
free, although he was born in chains ; it is at once
self-assertion and self-surrender ; it claims a will
even m surrendering it, when it -says, 'Not my
will, but thine, be done.' It is, perhaps, the great-
which grows but the more obscure and perplexing for being closely
tracked. The medicinal, disciplinary property of pain is one that lies
upon the surface, so easily seen that it cannot be missed ; it is a bitter
herb which has been in every age and clime gathered freely by the
whole Christian Church, and eaten at Her great continual Passover,—
' The Master sayeth " 'where t "
The heart makes ready answer ; on its Chief
Long- waiting, little hath it to prepare -
To keep the Feast of Grief.'
Yet, when \^e have'allowed that pain is remedial and purifying, we
feel that we have not exhausted its meaning, perhaps have not ap¬
proached to that which is its highest value. The Church of Rome, in
its profound appreciation of that saying of St. PauPs, ' I fill up that
which is behind of the afflictions of Christ,' discovers in pain, even in
that which is simply physical and inarticulate, a power which in the
extent of its working can be but dimly guessed at,—a mighty power of
expiation, ever joining itself to the one atonement, inseparable from
that work, which has given a value to all suffering, so that not even
the moth
' Shrivels in an ineffectual fire.*
Lacordaire, in words that do not at once disclose their awful depth of
meaning, speaks of earth's mute and many sufferers as being ' the
obscure victims of the cross which has saved the7ne Pascal's prayers
are like swords of fire, swift and prevailing, moulded and sharpened in
the furnace, victorious through pain.
■ I have seen a curious letter from Chateaubriand to Guizot in answer
to a criticism in which Guizot appears to have objected to his ascribing
a redeeming power to the death of a martyr. ' I admit that the word
redeemed escaped me inadvertently, and in truth contrary to my inten¬
tion, and I shall efface it from the next edition. The question is not of
a redemption, but of expiation^ which is entirely consistent with faith.
The blood of the 7nartyr dravjs down blessings from heaven th7'ough
the 7nerits of the blood of the Saviour.'
PRAYER.
est of all witnesses to the spiritual nature of man,
as nothing so dignifies human nature, or so en¬
hances the sense of its fixed relation with the
Divine as does prayer, the true conception of
which involves the idea of a certain power pos¬
sessed by humanity over God. Neither is there
any such other witness to man's spiritual freedom
as is wrapped up in prayer, man's permitted^ though
submitted wish and will and choice. When God
gave man reason, says Milton, He gave him
freedom to choose, for freedom is but choosing.
Prayer is God's acknowledgment. His indorse¬
ment of His own gift of freedom to man ; it is
His royal invitation (an invitation which has in it
the nature and force of a command) to man to
exert this privilege, to use this power. It is God
the Almighty who says, and who says to man,
' Ask me concerning my sons, and concerning the
work of my hands com^nand ye me.'
Prayer is spirit acting upon spirit ; it is the will
of man brought to bear upon the will of God. An
idea of its all-powerful and determining influence
with God may be gathered from our Saviour's
deeply significant words, ' Believing ye shall
PRAYER.
receive.' Prayer must be believing to be effectual.
Now, in any natural action, say that of sowing a
seed, the mental attitude of the sower signi¬
fies nothing : the seed will come up whether he
expects it to do so or not; but in any act be¬
tween two conscious intelligent beings, the mental
attitude being obviously everything, the measure
of faith is the measure of prayer. Faith makes
the soul God's creditor (believer), in a literal
sense it gives the soul a claim and hold upon
Him.
When we look a little further into the nature of
the human will, we shall find in it, as regards
Divine things, a passivity, an inability to move of
its own accord towards God, which corresponds
with the saying of Scripture, ^ A man can receive
nothing unless it be given him from heaven.'.
Yet in this very subjection there is a principle of
freedom, and the work and teaching of Christ,
even in proclaiming man's absolute dependence
upon God, frees the soul, by placing it in af¬
finity with Him, the source of spiritual free¬
dom. ' Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty,'
132
PRAYER.
The soul's passivity is intelligent and respon¬
sive/ and in the work of regeneration the Spirit of
God does not move upon chained unconscious
matter, hut up07i spirit^ the conifjiunicated hxaih of
GocTs own freedo^n. The first Adam was made a
living soul, the second Adam was made a quick¬
ening spirit ; and it is in the action of this spirit
upon this soul, in life acting upon life^ that renewal
unto God consists. The Spirit' of God, in acting
upon the human spirit, acts upon that which can
attract, which can invite, which can resist it. It
acts upon a living agent, which having once re¬
ceived an impulse, needs not, as do things without
life, to be dragged or propelled onV\^ards. It can
1 And to the presence of this responsivity within the human soul is
owing that peculiar favour of its Maker, which has caused Him to find
His delight in the sons of men. For this cause hath God set His love
upon them, that they only of all His works have been made able to
know His name. While nature is held to obedience by a perpetual
decree, bound by a law which cannot be broken, to man has been im¬
parted the capacity of uncompelled obedience, of rational reciprocating
love. So greatly does God respect the freedom of the soul's choice,
that He asks man for his heart as for a free gift, ' My son, give me
thine heart'
Poets are fond of contrasting the magnificent harmony of outward
creation with the social disorganization that is everywhere so apparent.
This is sometimes done with a view to the disparagement of human
nature, but if we look deeper, we see in these very wanderings, these
evil choices of the will, the patent of its true nobility. While in crea¬
tion all things continue in a fixed mechanical routine, ' the Man has
become as one of us, to know good and evil.'
\
PRAYER.
133
say, ''Draw me, and I will rim after thee.' There¬
fore is the voice^ of the Spirit a call, wakening up
the soul to its own life^ and giving it credit for an
ability to hearken, to answer, and to obey. ^ Work,'
says the apostle, and why %—because God is
working in you to will and to do ; Pray,' says the
believer, because the Holy Spirit itself is praying
in your prayer.
The voice of prayer, it may be again repeated,
is free, because it is depending. The more firmly
the soul believes in God's providential ordering of
human affairs, the more clearly does it recognise
1 Nowhere does this voice find a clearer utterance than in the Psalms,
those responsive songs in which the soul, lowly, submissive, and depend¬
ing, seeks guidance, encouragement, and protection from a Divine
hejper. It confesses its incapacity for unaided goodness, yet conscious
of the favour it has already received, it meekly allows for the presence
of something within itself, which can both attract and respond to the
blessing it craves for.
' Make me to go in the way of thy commandments, for thereht is my
desire. '
' I will run in the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt en¬
large my heart. '
' The distinguishing characteristic of the Hebrew poetry is that it is
a covenant poetry, fozmded on a sense of friendship and of established
relation with God.' Do not these words of Herder's give the key to
that human element within the Psalms, free and yet depending, which,
as is ever the case with love which cannot exist but in reciprocity,
claims much, and yet continually brings something of its own ? Plow
different is Browning's (so-called) Hebrew thought of Ood in his poem
of ' Ben-Ezra,' the mere yielding up of humanity to destiny to be shaped
out of the passive clay at will !
134
PRAYER.
that alongside of this order there is a space left for the
action 'of the will of man. What can appear more
fastbound than material nature does ! ' A law of
nature ' has become a proverbial expression for
whatever is fixed and irrevocable, yet even in this
region, ' the hiding-place of God's power,' it is
clear that man can and . does work along with his
great Father ; it is evident, as Mansel remarks, that
human will and human action are continually
working changes and modifications in outward
nature which would never have taken place had
nature been left to herself, and this without
deranging the fixed stability of nature as a whole.
And have we not the strongest grounds for extend¬
ing this elasticity to the unseen kingdom of God's
grace, where it is certain that God has left room
\
for prayer—where it is evident that He even waits
*
for it ? Is Will less powerful in this region than in
the natural one, where, as De Maistre observes,
its irresistible energy has passed into a proverb.
Can Will cleave and pave its way through heaven
as upon earth % Probably far more surely ; or
where had been Faith's far-extended conquests,
I
where the promises obtained, the kingdoms sub-
PRAYER.
135
dued, the righteousness wrought, the dead raised
to life again through prayer 1
We know that God's nature is unchangeable ;
are we sure that His will is equally so ? Is the
wish, the submitted wish of a human heart able
to alter the counsel of the Almighty? Can the
humble request of believing lips restrain, accele¬
rate, change the settled order of events? Can
prayer make things that are not to be as though
they were ? Are events, in short, brought about
through prayer that would not otherwise take
place ? Yes, a thousand times yes ! To believe
anything short of this is to take the soul out of
every text that refers to prayer, is to do away the
force of every scriptural illustration that bears
upon it—to believe anything short of this is to
believe that Cod has placed a mighty engine in
' the hands of His creature, but one that will not
work^ useful only as a scientific toy might be,
that helps to bring out a child's faculties, valuable
only as a means of training the soul to commune
with Cod. Yet what so easy for the unbeliever as
to cavil at prayer ; what so easy even for the Chris¬
tian as to fail and falter in this region, and to stop
136
short of the fulness of this, God's own Land of
Promise, through unbelief? The commonplace
objection to prayer, founded upon the supposed
immutability of the laws .by which God governs
the world, is easily met and answered by the fact,
that prayer is itself one of these laws^ upon whose
working God has determined that a certain result
shall follow—
' An element
That comes and goes unseen, yet doth effect
Rare issues by its operance. '
But not so easily answered are other and deeper
objections, to which this great question lies open.
If prayer is indeed so efficacious, it may be asked,
why not so universally,—why not so immediately "?
How long, will sincere experience testify, have we
prayed in faith for certain objects, how long and
how vainly ! To a thousand such thoughts and
surmises we may be unable to give a single satis¬
factory answer,- only we shall do well to remember
that there is not one of them which does not
«
equally tell against any other part of the system
included in the work of Christ for man. All that
we as yet see of the Christian dispensation would
lead a thoughtful person to expect in prayer, as in
PRAYER.
137
\
all else that belongs to it, an apparent check and
inadequacy. For all that we see as yet of
Christ's work pre-supposes a deficiency, all con¬
nected with His office is remedial 2C£Apartial in
its efficacy, as the remedial must ever be. Why,
it may be asked, has Christ's great sacrifice of
Himself for the world. His abiding gift of the
Holy Spirit to His Church, told so partially on the
mass of mankind,—so feebly even in the hearts
that have received them % Why, to go back a step
further, was man created a being needing to be re¬
deemed^ To all such questions, not only any one
part, but the whole plan of salvation lies open, and
if we could answer any one of them, sin, pain,
death, redemption^ earth's darkest shadows, heaven's
most dazzling light, would probably be no longer
mysterious to us, and the veil would be lifted from
all hearts and from all nations.
i}
Meanwhile, all that we see around and within
us testifies to the presence of a mighty opposing
agency, and bears witness, also, to a reserve or
economy of grace, a hiding of God's power, in
which we can, even in this hiding, as through a
glass darkly, even now discern a merciful purpose.
138
PRAYER.
All that we now see of Christ's kingdom bears upon
it the marks of cost and labour, of infinite gain se¬
cured by finite loss ; the song of the Church carries
on from age to age the burden of the old Greek
chorus—
' Sing sorrow, strife and sorrow, but let Victory remain.'
The work of our salvation, it is evident, is a work.
Nature brings forth with ease and rejoicing ; the
earth its grass, its herb, its fruit-bearing tree, the
waters bring forth 'abundantly;' but every birth
of the redeemed is single, and bears upon it the
marks of the Lord Jesus, the birth-mark of a
mighty soul that has travailed for it betwixt life
and death. Why should we expect that the work
of prayer would be easy, swift, and triumphant,
while the work of grace in general is so slow and
difficult, while the march of the Church is so
uneven and hesitating, the miracle of conversion
so tardy 1 and interrupted '?
All that we see in Christ's kingdom bears witness
to powerful outward resistance on the part of an
enemy, and also testifies to a secret restraint on
the part of a friend ; we find in it reserve, economy,
1 ' Conversion, ce tardif miraclei—Massillon.
PRAYER.
139
something kept in store, not yet wholly given.
This reserve enters largely into prayer. It is not
every faithful Christian who can say unto his Lord
' Thou hast given me my heart's desire, thou hast
not denied me the request of my lips neither can
all of God's children join in that fervent ascription
of the Psalmist's, ^ I love the Lord because he has
heard the voice of my petitions.' We hear another,
a deeper voice exclaim, ' O my God, 1 cry in the
day-time and thou hearest not, and in the night
season also I take no rest'
' But thou continuest holy, O thou Worship of
Israel.' God, the Eternal, liveth, and while He
lives, no prayer that has been truly lifted up to
Him can die. The Christian rejoices in an an¬
swered prayer ; he waits for the accomplishment
of a yet unfulfilled one ; he is inured to delay, re
signed to denial ; through Christ which strength¬
en eth him, he can do all things except cease to
pray. A Christian's daily common life is full of
f
unseen, unrecognised miracles,, and among the
greatest of all miracles worked by prayer is faith in
prayer itself. The Christian believes in Christ,
though he sees not yet all things put under Him ;
140
PRAYER.
he believes in prayer, though he sees not yet floods
descend in answer to- it. Prayer is the instinct of
the redeemed soul. It is usual to speak of praise as
of something in its nature higher and more com¬
plete than prayer. It may possibly be so in so far
as it is more suited to the glorifled, the angelic
state, the life which has all and abounds, and has
nothing to desire or to ask for. But in our pre¬
sent order, there is no voice so sweet, so powerful,
so essentially human, as that of prayer, none other
so natural to a being like man, at once rational,
fallen, and redeefned. It is possible, without any
great strain upon imagination, to conceive of
inanimate creation as filled with praise. It is
easy to think of the winds and waves in their
restless movement, the birds in their song, the
stars in their silence, the very grass and flowers, as
worshipping God in their beauty and their gladness.
V.
Often the air around us seems full of thanksgiving,
breathless with adoration ; but who, even in poetry,
ever dreamt that nature prayed 1 Prayer is the
voice of one who errs and loves ; of one who sins,
and suffers, and aspires ; it is the voice of a child
to its father, the voice of man to his God.
PRAYER.
141
And in entering even a very little way into the
perplexed question of denials and delays in prayer,
it seems well to touch upon a point too little taken
into account in the general Christian mind, that
question of the times and seasons which the Father
1
hath left in His own hand, and which we cannot
take into ours. ^All things,' said the heathen,
^ are not possible to all men at all times and for
want of duly acknowledging this statute of limita¬
tion, many devotional books, and a great deal of reli¬
gious teaching, tend only to bring strain and anguish
upon the sincere mind, which feels that it cannot
rise to the prescribed level until it is lifted there
by God Himselb There come alike to individuals
and to churches days of refreshing from the Lord,
times of visitation which the strongest urgency of
the human spirit cannot antedate, but which it is
(
its highest wisdom to meet^ so as to be found will¬
ing in the day of God's power. If the whole year
were one long harvest, where were then the sowing,
the patient expectation, the ploughing in the cold %
A vintage comes once in a year, a triumph perhaps
once in a lifetime. So has the Christian life its
seasons, its epochs, its days of benediction. There
142
PRAYER.
are times, probably, in the life of every faithful be¬
liever, when things long desired and sought after,
y *
are dropt like golden gifts within his bosom.
There are few tried Christians who have not
known times when God, suddenly or gradually,
has lifted a weight from out their lives, has brought
a power within their souls, has so mitigated some
afflictive dispensation, as to make that endurable
which was previously intolerable, has rendered
some long desired and apparently unattainable
temporal or spiritual aim possible, practicable,
easy. How many blessings at such a season will
God, by one sweep of His mighty arm, bring
within the soul's grasp ! He will at once enlarge
the soul's border, and visibly defend the land he
has made so broad and fruitful, giving it rest from
all its enemies round about. Often in times of
great tribulation ^ the prophecy of such a season
1 In prayer there are many voices, none of them, probably, however
faint and formal, altogether without signification ; but there is among
these the prayer of instance {instantid)^ the prayer which the soul even
in offering it feels that God m-ust answer. We know not why it is that
in prayer man's direst necessity should be God's chosen opportunity,
that the fierce onset of temptation, the pang of sharp tribulation, the
pressure of some irresistible weight impending over the whole being,
and threatening to crush out life itself, should enable the soul to lift
itself up straight to God as it cannot do under ordinary circumstances,
PRAYER.
143
will be borne like a breath from heaven across the
wasted and desolate spirit—
' A little hint to solace woe,
A hint, a murmur breathing low,
I may not speak of what I know. '
There are times in the life of every Christian when
some great truth is clearly revealed to him, some
long-locked door of promise left with the key
hanging in the wards, only waiting to he turned by
a prayer. At these times God is waiting to be
gracious, and what He appears in many cases to
wait for is the full consent and submission of the
human will. Often, at such times, the Holy Spirit,
instructed in the mind and will of God, will allure
the soul into the direction where God intends to
meet and bless it. The life will be drawn towards
the attainment of some specific object, the heart
will be enticed to covet earnestly some peculiar
should give it power to plead with God and to prevail, to take hold of
His great strength against His great strength, to contend with Him in
His own might—the might of love. Why it should be so it seems im¬
possible to explain ; but it seems certain that times of danger, distress,
and keen anguish are often times of chosen access to God. When the
heart is driven into its deepest recess, it finds itself nearest to its God ;
let but its distress stop short of despair, which makes prayer imposs¬
ible,—despair, the last, worst device of the enemy which would rob the
soul of its God. ,
144
grace ; God will appear to invite the soul to pray
for the especial gift He intends to bestowd ^ Yet
for this thing¡ He says, speaking of some boon
which He kept in store for His "ancient Church,
^ will I be inquired of by thei^il God sometimes
seems in His dealings with the world to wait till He
has secured the co-operation of. man's wish and
will. ' Pray,' says our Lord Himself, ^ to the Lord
of the harvest, that He may send forth labourers
into His harvest' The harvest is God's, and it is
He who must send the labourers \ still man must
pray. His great Father worketh not alone ; He
has need of man's voice, man's heart, man's energy,
prayer.
And great as is the admitted mystery of prayer,
there can be little doubt that much of its secret
lies wrapped in the co-operation of the Divine and
human will. In prayer man is ^a labourer together
with' his God. We have had enough in our day
of the shallow evangel of labour, man's gospel
preached to man ; we have been told till we are
weary of hearing it, ^ that he who works prays ; '
1 Ezekiel xxxvi. 36, 37.
PRAYER.
HS
but let us lift up our hearts high enough to meet a
fuller, deeper, richer truth ; let us learn that ' he
who prays works,' works even with his God, is
humble enough, is bold enough to help Him who
upholds all things with the word of His power.
Let us look through the history of the whole
Church, beginning with that elder one, whose story
js but the initial of our own writ large and plain.
What is the Old Testament but the record of the
universal Christian heart and life rudely drama¬
tized, flung forth as a deep spiritual truth might be
shadowed and outlined in some mediaeval mystery
play, and left in that picture-writing for ever"?
And what do we find in its every record but this,
God instructing, pardoning, blessing man through
man 1 ^ He maketh his angels spirits, and his
ministers a flaming fire.' . They are, as their
names import, God's messengers, His flaming pur¬
suivants, His heralds of peace and goodwill. But
who, through the whole spiritual history of our
fallen yet mighty race, have been chosen by God
as teachers, as enlighteners, as intercessors for
man but men—^ Prophets from among our breth¬
ren"? When it is an angel who is the medium of
K
146
PRAYER.
communication between God and man, the work
is an outward one, it is something to be done or
told. When man bears the Lord's message and
burden, the work is intimate, searching, spiritual j
the word sent, be it of reproof or of consolation,
is a true gospel, bringing man nearer to his God,
placing him in a new and spiritual relation with his
Creator, showing him plainly of the Father. It is
not angels, but men, who are the princes of both
the new and elder covenant—^ having power with
God.' ' Surely the Lord will do nothing but he
revealeth it to his servants the prophets.'^ The
time would fail me to tell of Abraham, of Jacob
(the type of so many feeble yet faithful believers),
of Moses, of Hezekiah, of Job, of Elijah, of Daniel,
men whose attitude with God is that of priests,
whose outstretched hands at once deprecate wrath
and draw down blessing. The New Testament is
but one long"acknowledgment to man's power with
God, in form less striking, perhaps, than in the Old,
because less concentrated, but in fact more won-
drous, because it is referred to as such a simple
1 Amos iii. 7.
147
acknowledged thing. St. Paul, throughout his
whole Epistles, not only confidently intends and
expects to bless his converts through his prayers
for them ; but continually claims their prayers for
him as something which he absolutely needs. It is
through their prayers that he must be enlarged,
^ helped,' ^ furthered.' But what need to multiply
examples 2 Why seek further illustrations of the
truth that God, through Him whom He hath chosen,
hath made of man ^ a priest for ever When God
would bless man, he chooses ofttimes to bless
him through man. Yea, when God would save
man, it was His will (to borrow the sublime ex¬
pression of Jeremy Taylor) to save him by way of
a Man.
Therefore let men pray alway. Our present day
seems full of question, of urgency on all points
connected with prayer. It seems disposed to put
it to the proof, to ask what it can effect or alter ;
it appears inclined, as regards this great subject, to
ask for a sign from heaven ; but what sign can be
given it but the sign of the Son of Man in heaven*?
The warfare of prayer and its accomplishment is
the warfare, the accomplishment of the Cross, a
148
PRAYER.
conquest through apparent defeat. Its work is
one with that great eifectual Work in which its
strength lies wrapped and hidden. It is, like it, a
real work and an eifectual work, though one of
which the believer, with his Lord, must sometimes
be content to say, —^ I have laboured in vain, I have
spent my strength in vain, yet surely my judgment
is with the Lord, and 7ny work with my God J
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.i
LL human things are still, in a certain
sense, if not quite in the Pythagorean,
' resolvable by numbers.' If we would
understand - the great motive powers of any age, if
we would know how our fellow-men at any given
period of time have been used to live, and feel,
and act, we must have recourse to statistics,—the
^ old lamp,' rusty and unattractive-looking, which,
when brighter guides would fail us, can lead us
through many an intricate passage of thought, and
admit us into many a richly stored chamber of
feeling. If to know the number of marriages
Reprinted from the North British Review for June 1865.
i5o' popular religious literature.
taking place within a certain year leads us to an
estimate of the existing amount of national pro¬
sperity, so from the niimber and character of books
sold within any given period, may we predicate
that period's leading tendencies. For to few
books, as to few men, is it given to command the
age they appear in. Of the myriads which have
their ^ run,' and are read by those who run along
with them, it may be safely affirmed that they are
carried onwards less by strength of inward impetus,
than by force of outward stress and pressure.
^The wind hath bound them up within its wings ;'
and, by fixing our -eyes upon their flight, we may
learn what way the wind is now setting. Viewing
things in this light, we may find sermons and
stories in advertisements, and discover a deep sig-
nificance in the announcements now greeting us
from the cover of every periodical :—
Heaven our Home, 89,000 copies.
Meet for Heaven, by the Author of ' Heaven
our Home,' 23,000 copies.
Life in Heaven. Do., 15,000.
Thus, even in our work-day world, wherein it is
often hard enough to find the meat which perishes,
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. I51
in our modern scientific world, which furnishes so
many popular treatises on Astronomy, it seems
that there is a great number of persons who do
not so entirely live by bread alone, but that a book
about Heaven will interest them !
Let us make every reasonable deduction from
the enormous sale of books of a decidedly reli¬
gious character ; let us allow for the certainty of
Sunday coming once in every week, and bringing
with it a length of leisure which passes over more
comfortably with a book in the hand than without
one ; let us concede that many of these books are
read upon the opus operatum principle by simple-
minded persons to whom one 'good book ' is, in a
true and literaLsense, 'as good as another, if not
better let us even grant that in many cases these
books are probably not read at all, but that the
prettily-bound gilt-edged volume, given as a part¬
ing memento, or sent as a far-pff remembrancer, is
kept thenceforth by its owner as a sort of literary
and spiritual amulet, to be looked at rather than
looked into j let us allow for all this, and we shall
still find, in the hold v/hich religious literature has
upon the less educated portion of the community,
Î52 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
the revelation of a deep and true devotional in¬
stinct. Man loves his home, and loves to hear
about the way to it, the path which the vulture's
eye hath not known. The steps to Heaven,
though marked out by God Himself, have been
ever like those which the Pilgrim missed in the
first outstart of his immortal journey, hard to find,
apt to be obscured. Man upon such a path is
thankful for small helps, glad of the glowworm's
ray, of the rushlight in some distant cottage. And
in the very titles of the books now before us, we
may discern the voice of our common humanity,
which says :—^ Who will show us any good "? '—of
humanity, which can recognise, even in an age of
material prosperity like our present one, that this
desired good, this coveted gladness, is not to be
sought for in the increase of corn and wine and
oil, were these never so abundant, but to be found
in the deepened sense of God's goodness, in the
clearer reyelation of His Spiritual Presence :
' Lord, lift THOU up the light of thy countenance
upon us.'
Literature of this class, it is evident, must not
be measured by the canons of ordinary criticism.
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. 153
Schiller has told us that a direct object in writing
is fatal to a work of high imagination; but of
\
books like these the aim is the very life, and soul,
and strength ; but for it they would not have been
written at all, so that the question of their claims
and merits is chiefly one of fitness and accepta¬
bility. These are books written to a certain end :
do they meet it h They are addressed to a given
area of intelligence ; do they tell within that
area? Do they, in short, hit their mark or miss it ?
And while we keep these distinctions in view, we
must none the less bear in mind that the poem
or story addressed to the uneducated or partially
educated mind, with a directly religious purpose,
has its own peculiar standard of excellence, even
of perfection, and that this standard has been
reached, not only by masters of popular writ¬
ing like Bunyan and De Foe, but in days more
near our own, and by voices whose slenderer
compass has been so truly pitched within their
own limits, as ^ to have awakened deep vibra¬
tions.
It would be easy, for instance, within the range
of lyric narrative, to find a poem which, considered
154
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
as a poem, surpasses Mrs. Sewell's popular ballad,
^Mother's last Words hard to,find one so com¬
pletely answering the end for which it was written,
so fraught with the secret of true pathos,—that
which grows out of the very nature of the things it
deals with, the pathos" that is entangled and in¬
volved in life, the sadness of the streets, that comes
across us in the cracked tones of the ballad-singer,
in the bare feet of the forsaken child. We have
seen a class of adult criminals so sunk in the strange
apathy habitual to those in whom the moral
sense has lain even from infancy as an unquick-
ened germ ; so stolid and indifferent, that the voice
of instruction and warning seemed to pass through
them to the blank wall beyond ; we have seen
such a class roused, interested,,awakened to life,
to intelligence, to affection, through the mere read¬
ing aloud of this simple story. We have known
them follow its course with eager, attentive eyes,
with broken exclamations, with sobs, with floods
of tears, as if there lay within it some spell, with
power to restore them, were it but for a moment,
^ See, as of kindred merit, a colliery tale in verse, Perils in the
Mine, by Francis Wilbraham,
155
to their share in all that is most holy and tender in
our common nature.
Popular religious literature has then its true pro¬
vince, its lowly, its enduring triumphs. It is some¬
thing surely to win entrance into hearts at which
Shakspeare would knock in vain, something to be
the treasure of the poor man's little shelf, the solace
of his heavily burdened heart; to be, as is the
case with more than one of these that we could
mention, the only book, except the One Book, for
which the dying care. It is something to be
printed out in large text-hand, as we have seen the
hymn, ' I lay my sins on Jesus,' and firmly pinned
upon the pillow of a dying factory woman, ^so that
she might be sure it was always there,'—even as a
hand holding out a leaf from the Tree of Life, as
a light held out by Christ Himself above the dark,
thickly closing waters.
So that, if in the generality of the works now
before us we are struck by a prevailing flatness,
monotony, and want of feature, it is not because
the literature they belong to lacks its undying
classics, and these of various modes of excellence.
First, and never without its charm for minds of a
156 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
certain order, comes the direct religious allegory,
of which the Filgrim's Progress is the immortal re¬
presentative ; then, closely allied with the allegory,
and awakening the same sort of interest, though
by a less sustained and artificial method, comes
an order of writing in which we know no such
master as a writer, who, under the signature of Old
Humphrey, furnished the Religious Tract Society
with a number of beautiful little volumes, stored
with ' hints, observations, thoughts for the thought¬
ful,' etc. The secret of this mode of writing is a
very simple one, enabling it's possessor to turn
every passing incident to some moral and spiritual
capital ; it lays all the events of life under contri¬
bution,—a paper of flower-seeds, a passing regi¬
ment of soldiers, some chance observation over¬
heard in the streets, such as, ^ So he died poor
after all,' the far-off sound of the woodman's stroke,
—everything furnishes its contingent. Here the
subject is taken up as if it were a little child set
upon the knee, caressed and played with till its
very heart is coaxed, perhaps teased out of it ; it
is a mode of viewing things which may easily de¬
generate into a sort of elaborate trifling, yet in
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
157
skilful hands it is capable of humour, tenderness,
and allegoric point, and is evidently rich in the
same power- of detecting the close yet obscure
affinities between natural and moral life which
makes the strength of our most famous essayists,
which gives the charm to our most sweetly moral¬
izing old English songs.
But with a yet stronger hold on the popular
heart than these, and filling a far wider space in it,
comes the religious story of familiar life, of which
the narrative is, as it were, the woof and web, out
of which, with more or less of skill, the moral is
thrown like the pattern in damask or brocade.
It is perhaps scarcely possible to over-estimate the
attraction of such stories for the partially educated
mind, to overstate the charm of finding the atten¬
tion powerfully engaged, the hidden springs of
feeling touched, dormant sensibilities awakened,
the heart, the memory, the imagination taken cap¬
tive in turn, and not let go till each has been
blessed. In the last generation, Mrs. Hannah
More and Mrs. Trimmer were unrivalled in a
homely and persuasive mode of story, or some¬
times mere dialogue-writing, which struck home
158 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
some religious truth, or some point of cottage
economy, as straight as the arrow labelled ^ for
Philip's right eye.' Of the same date, and of
kindred excellence, were some tracts, also by a
lady, which enforced an important branch of social
science, connecting the duties of Saturday with
the privileges of Sunday, in two admirable stories,
now perhaps forgotten, called The Last mid the
First Day of the Week, Then, as belonging to a
more spiritual and also more poetic region, came
Legh Richmond's still unforgotten Annals of the
Poor,, a work, in its own line, of genius, where
clear expositions of evangelical truth are set into '
sweet and simple narratives, which in their turn are
framed in descriptions of the beautiful scenery of
the Isle of Wight,^ exquisitely harmonized in tone
and colouring with the human interest of the
stories. We know few passages more pathetic
than the visit of the good clergyman to the young
cottager, where he finds the dying little girl asleep,
with her hand lying on the open Bible, her finger
pointing to the words, ^ Lord, remember me when
1 This scenery is also associated with Adams's beautiful and touching
allegory, The Old Man's Hotne ' '
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. 159
thou comest into thy kingdom of few scenes
more touching than her last affectionate parting
with this, her soul's beloved friend and teacher]
her sudden, sweet reply when asked by him in the
course of a religious conversation,—
^ What is the meaning of the word gospel?
' Good news.
^ Good news for whom 1
' For wicked sinners, sir.
/
^ Who sends this good news for wicked sinners %
^ The Lord Almighty.
^ And who brings this good news h
' Sir, you brought it to mel
These books are, however, of the past, as far as
such books can belong to it ; in the present day,
first, or we should rather say, as far as our own
experience goes, alone in this walk comes the
venerable C. B. Tayler. To turn from the ordi¬
nary range of religious tracts to one of his, is like
- meeting with a living flower in a hoi^tus siccus^ or
seeing the handwriting of a beloved friend greet
us from among a bundle of circulars. In these
stories, the deep and intricate spiritual processes
of awakening, repentance, and the turning of the
l6o POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
whole heart to God, are so connected with our
present life, and ͣS familiar aspects of good and
evil, that as the narrative goes on they seem to be
disengaged from it, touch after touch, as naturally
as the flower unfolds from its sheath. Mr. Taylei
is at home with the poor man's heart and hearth¬
stone; great in interior' pictures; he can not
only by a few strokes bring before us the farm¬
house, with ^ all things in order stored,' the com¬
fortable cottage, the public-house, and the gin-
palace, but admit us to what is passing within the
minds of their inmates and frequenters ; he can
show us those deep things of man's heart and spirit,
which it is given to few to look into, to still fewer
to portray. Three of the most perfect of his
stories, ^ The Bar of Iron,' ^ The Vessel of Gold,'
and ^ The Password,' are represented as being true
in their leading facts ; but even were it not so,
they have a wider, even a universal, truth to boast
of,—they are true to nature. The excellence of
these tracts, as of all that in literature is really ad¬
mirable, is of a nature too inwrought and intimate
to admit of an easy sepai"ation from the whole to
which it belongs.
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. l6l
No extracts, indeed, can give any adequate idea
/
of the charm and simplicity of Mr. Tayler's writing ;
of the firm and tender hand with which he searches
the deep original wound of our humanity—
»
' With gentle force soliciting the dart.'
Stories like his are, as we have heard the word
pronounced by some of their readers, ^ tracks,' lead¬
ing surely into many a humble heart.
We have yet to consider what may be called
the tract proper, the page or few pages of warning,
exhortation, or direct exposition of some passage
of Scripture;^ too often, we may say, its transposi¬
tion out of the words of the Bible into language as
far removed from that used in ordinary life as it is
from that ' large utterance ' upon which our great
English writers have set their enduring impress of
power and beauty. And as we glance over this
wide, yet barren region, we cannot help asking,
whether the well-intentioned persons, through
In this department we know nothing equal in usefulness to the
tracts and small religious books of the Rev. Ashton Oxendon. They
are clear, simple, and evangelic, holding out the great truths of salva¬
tion with a firm grasp, drawing the reader's heart towards them, as
with a loving voice and hand. Mr. Oxendon has also the great merit of
writing in short sentences, short, like the Lacedaemonian swords, yet
reaching to the heart.
L
102
whose agency the press and post-office are now
flooded with tracts, intended to awaken the igno¬
rant and hardened—the people who thrust these
missives underneath doors, or deal them about
like cards in second and third class railway car¬
riages—do not altogether overrate the effect of
reading of any kind upon the class in question.
People who read seldom, and with difficulty, take
in so little of what they read, that all experienced
teachers of the poor are accustomed to read aloud
to them whatever they wish to enforce and to ex¬
plain. We have known a tolerably intelligent adult
class read verse by verse some part of the Sermon
on the Mount, or one of the simpler Parables, with
fixed and even painful attention, who, when exa¬
mined upon what they had been reading, were
unable to give any rational account of it, or even
to answer the simplest question connected with it;
they had, in fact, been construing the lesson, so
»
engaged with the but partially familiar types before
them, that they had never bestowed a thought
upon the thing they signified, or entered into the
idea of what it all meant. It is idle, there¬
fore, to attribute, as many of these tracts do,
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. 163
amazing results to the casual reading of a tract by
I
some lost and abandoned sinner. It is by ' living
epistles ' only, speaking through the eye and voice
and soul, that such hearts are ever reached. Judg¬
ing from all we have known and observed, w^e
should say that there is nothing for which such
people ,(or indeed people in general) care so little
as for a tract. The offer of it, like that of good
advice, involves something of the impertinence
connected with the assumption of a certain moral
superiority, while its very appearance creates an
unfavourable prepossession, as being neither plea¬
sant to the eye, nor, except in a few rare cases,
good for food, nor to be desired to make one wise.
It costs nothing to the giver, and bestows no plea¬
sure on the receiver, because it shows nothing of
love, or care, or individual selection. We have
seen very hardened women overjoyed and tearful
\
on receiving some pretty trifle as a parting remem¬
brance from a lady who had been instructing them.
We have known such things as a pin-cushion,
needle-book, or small religious picture, treasured
for years by such people, kept perhaps only as a
charm, but still kept through many long and evil
1Ó4 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
wanderings, when a tract would probably have been
torn up before they left the cell of their prison.
This is a digression, yet one which, it may be
hoped, will be pardoned for the sake of its inti¬
mate connexion with the subject in hand. It is
not, however, the ignorant and hardened, but a
[
more cultivated and spiritually advanced class of
readers, that are addressed in the books we now
turn to. If our ears, in the region of the tract
proper, have been unsoothed by
' Aught of oaten stop or pastoral charm
if we have thought that, under a literary aspect,
all was barren, we shall see, in the books now be¬
fore us, Heavefi oiir Home^ Life in Heaven^ and
Meet for Heaven^ the desert blossom into a strange
luxuriance of words, as astounding, looked upon
merely as a feat, as is any that legerdemain can
boast of, and the mere contemplation of which
leaves the reader very much in the state of the
honest citizen in the Spectator, supping at Vaux-
hall, saw the waiter cover his plate with slices of
ham, without increasing the weight of it by half an
ounce ! There is something positively magical in
the way in which, in these books, words are piled
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. 165
upon words and sentences, after the manner of
a nest of Japanese boxes, involved within each
other without being in any way connected. Here
the most everyday ideas are clothed in such grand¬
iloquent language, that we think that they must
be often, like Fuller's^ yeoman on a gala-day,
^ blushing at their own bravery and the most
familiar truths are made to pass through a series
of transformations under which they must some¬
times forget their own origin and lineage.- We
are all, for instance, acquainted with a certain
sublime passage, which tells us that upon a day
known only unto the Lord, ' the heavens shall pass
away with a great noise, and the elements shall
melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the
works that are therein shall be burned up but
let us listen to an improvement upon St. Peter
^The heavens are to be dissolved, the visible
heavens, the sun, the planets, the stars ; these are
one day, like the gas-lamps throughout'the streets
of a city when the morning sun looks out upon its
awakening inhabitants, to be blown out by the
breath of Him whose omnific (!) word gave them
existence. They will one day be 'missed, when
the inhabitants of heaven look forth and see them
l6Ó POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE
no longer rollijiig in their several orbits in which
they have revolved. The angels of God, and the
saints who will then be in glory, will look forth
and see the orbit dark and deserted along which
the bright sun once travelled, while the poor sun
himself is lying m the grave of the original nothing¬
ness out of which he arose, when at God's call he
made his appearance on the stage of existence,
and took his assigned place among the works of
God's hands. The- maiden moon, in her quiet,
pale serenity, which for nearly six thousand years
has been reflecting the sun's light,, and has been
gliding along in her orbit through the sky amidst
the music of the spheres,—that moon, which has
so long, to the imaginations of the poets of earth,
appeared to be one of the brightest gems that
gleam and sparkle upon the crown that encircles
the brow of old Night, will one day be looked for
and anxiously inquired after by the countless
assemblies who stand before the throne of God ;
but, she will have disappeared for ever. The stars
are one day to fall from the firmament^ a7ici strew the
plains of afinihilation. This earth, upon the surface
of which so many of the human family are living,
and in the bosom of which so many of the dead
are now sleeping, is one day to melt, dissolve, and
disappear, like snow from one of its mountain
summits when a sudden thaw descends upon it.
Say not, sceptic, that this cannot be.'—(Life in
Heaven^ p. lo.)
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. 167
Let no one wonder, after this specimen of
amplification, that we should have three Looks
upon the same subject. Why not three hundred?
What can be woven by the ell and yard, may be
easily made to extend over the mile and acre.
Easy writing, however, it is well known, may
prove uncommonly hard reading, ' What a
tedious sermon Mr. has preached,' was an
observation once made on a Sunday's homeward
walk, ^ and what a long one ; I thought he never
was coming to an end ! ' ^ On the contrary,' was
the more critical rejoinder, ^the end surprised me
greatly ; there seemed no reason why he should
not have gone on for ever.' Every true composi¬
tion, it is evident, contains within itself the hint
and prophecy of completion ; its end is foreseen
in its beginning. But in such writing as we are
now concerned with, there is no centre, no se¬
quence, no principle of natural cohesion ; its archi¬
tecture is like that of a feverish dream, a compli¬
cation of never-ending stairs and galleries that lead
to nothing. And the subject of the books in question
is, for such a style, a very happily chosen one, for
the possibilities of heaven are at once unbounded
l68 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
and undefined, leaving room for the hazarding of
wide conjectures. First, as to its geographical
position, or, to speak more euphuistically, Hhe exact
locality which heaven occupies in the great pavilion
of space,' we are told that ^ the Scriptures do not
attempt to define to us the exact region where it
is situated ; indeed,' the author adds, with becom¬
ing diffidence, ^ I am not sure that they could have
done so,' on account of the difficulties, familiar to
the childish mind, introduced by the Copernican
system, which would make it, like Australia, at one
time above our heads, at another beneath our
feet.—{Heaven our Home^ p. ii.) A little further
on he tells us that those who are in heaven possess
a knowledge of it independently of the descrip¬
tions of the Bible ! ! a fortunate circumstance for
these blessed spirits, as in another place it is
stated, as an absolute certainty, 'that the redeemed
from earth have left their Bibles behind them.'
We have all seen old-fashioned maps, in which
the large blank spaces left in the interior of Africa
and other unexplored regions are relieved by a
drawing of a lion, an ele|3hant, or ' a salvage man.'
This hint has not been lost sight of in the present
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. 169
volumes, where the vacuum left by the absence of
specific data with regard to a country from which
no traveller has yet returned, is filled, from time
to time, by long imaginary conversations, first,
between Jacob and Rachel, 'two seemingly much
attached saints ; ' between David and Jonathan ;
between Paul and Onesimus ; broken sometimes
by a rather diffuse monologue from some less
I
sociable spirit, or passing, through the addition of
a third, into what would have been called in the
last century, 'a conversation picture.' We are
thus introduced to Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, to
Abrp^ham, Job, and Lazarus (of the parable). And
a little further on we find Newton, Locke, and
Bacon 'seated in calm serenity and interesting
discourse,' and next, as a concluding triad, Milton,
Cowper, and Pollok. Selection is indeed difficult
amid 'the barbaric gold, and gems' with which
these discourses are strewn. Cowper, speaking
of his former melancholy, says, ' The horror of
deep darkness descended upon me, which ap¬
peared like the plumed hearse of a lost eternity,
followed by all the stars of heaven in black, and
moving slowly and solemnly towards me.' Here
170 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
Abraham, seated with his friends under over¬
arching trees, their eyes again and again directed
towards the great abyss that is stretching before
them and beneath, remarks :—
' Is it not^the arrangement of a particular provi¬
dence that has led God to place yonder awful hell
full in the view of this glorious heaven %—for the
sight of what the lost are e?iduring makes the praises
of heaven louder and sweeter. This sight also is
one of the subordinate means by which the in¬
habitants of heaven are established in their eternal
righteousness and obedience. It is in the Lord
Jesus, our new covenant Head, that we are to be
supremely established here in the covenant of our
God for ever. I see the rich man weltering in a
sea of liquid flame ; the roaring and unquench¬
able flames of damnation are blazing around him.
He deliberately, and as a free agent, chose his
eternal portion. I hear his cry for help. Oh ! it
is a terrible thought that even a God of mercy,
whose love is so great, and whose compassions
are infinite, who has all power in His own hand,
and can do as He will, cannot listen to his cries,
cannot send him help, and cannot save him now.'
It is but justice, however, to say that this some¬
what austere passage stands alone in the three
books in question ; their tone, as regards feeling,
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. I'Jl
is kindly, Christian, and expansive ; they contain
nothing to wound the moral instinct, or to make
the heart rise up in sudden wrath ; in this respect
strongly and favourably contrasting with the general
tone and feature of the class of literature they
belong to. In most books which are at once
^ popular ' and ^ religious,' the crudity of theologi¬
cal speculation is so utterly shorn of that harmo¬
nizing medium through which spirits more com¬
prehensive and hearts more tender have been used
to contemplate the things that the angels desire to
look into, that to take up a tract is to be at once
removed to some point, perhaps the very one for
which Archimedes sighed, equidistant from heaven
and earth—how far from either it would be indeed
hard to say !—-where earth, with all its warm and
loving interests, seems to have dwindled to a
remote speck, without our feeling ourselves one
degree nearer heaven. To say that these writings
show no sense of the beauty and glory of God's
' visible creation, of the excellence of human reason,
of the worth and sweetness of human affection, of
the mystery, sadness, and complexity of this our
mortal life upon earth, is to say little. Their want
172 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
of sympathy with man, even as regards the out¬
ward and manifest trials of our common lot, their
inability to enter into life's deeper perplexities, its
more searching temptations, its obscurer suffer¬
ings ; their imbecile ignorance of all that in our
complex nature goes to make up the springs of
human motive and action, are so palpable, as to
X
have made us, in some • cases, almost doubt as to
whether they have been written by men at all ;
they bear not Caesar's image, nor his superscrip¬
tion, rather that of a steel pen, self-guided,—so
grating is all, so metallic, harsh, as if coming through
I
' scrannel pipes,' within which the still, sad music
of humanity has never penetrated.
The Rev. Mr. Killen, in Our Companions in
Glory (page 184), informs us upon what, to less
learned persons, appear rather slender critical data,
that the children whom Jesus took up in His
arms and blessed, were the children of believing
parents :—
^ Christ does not say Suffer little children,"
but Suffer the little children," that is, such little
children, to come to me and forbid them not"
The little children of His believing people, then.
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. I73
are those of whom He speaks, and of them alone.
In Matt, xviii. 14, our Lord is pleased to assure
us that " It is 7iot the will of your Father which is
in heaven that one of these little ones should
perishi What may be His pleasure with regard
to the children of others He tells us not ; but of
the children of His people He most emphatically
declares that " of such is the kingdoiu of Godl'^
The Word of God contains some severe and
awful denunciations against such persons as shall
at any time alter or pervert its everlasting simpli¬
city. We know not how these may be more
surely incurred than by such a wicked and un-
scriptural limitation of the blessing, pronounced
not upon this or that child, but'upon Childhood
itself, by Him who, ^ beholding its innocency,' was
pleased to make that innocency a type of the re¬
generation which is man's regained Paradise, and
to say, ^ Except ye become as little children ye
shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven.'
^ Some excellent persons,' the same author re¬
marks further, 'maintain that all children are
saved, and deduce from the general benevolence
' The italics and small capitals so in the original.
174 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
of the Deity an argument to the effect that the pun¬
ishment of little children is quite repugnant to the
nature of Him whose very name is Love. What,
however, is truly worthy of a Deity who is most
holy and just as well as good, must be determined,
not so much by our fancies on the subject, as by
solemn and indisputable facts. Now, is it not an
awful fact that God has often punished little chil¬
dren Í Were not multitudes of infants drowned
in the flood? Were not little children burned
with their parents in fire and brimstone v/hen God
overthrew the cities of the plain? Did not a
righteous and holy God order the infants^ as well
as the adults, of the Canaanitish nations, to be
slaughtered by the Israelites ? In the days of
Ezekiel, when God determined to punish Jerusa¬
lem for her sins, was not His command, " Slay
utterly old men and young, both maids and little
children and women " ? (Ezek. ix. 6.) If we see
God thus punishing parent and child indiscrimi¬
nately in this world, who dare blame Him—seeing
both are depraved and fallen—-should He, carry¬
ing out the same principle, think proper to punish
them in the world to come ? All are children of
wrath, and all, therefore, might righteously be
made amenable to punishment. We state these
things, however, not for the purpose of saying what
God actually does with the children of the wicked
in eternity—whether He punishes, saves, or anni¬
hilates them—but merely to show what He might
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. I75
justly do, and to point out the danger of dogma¬
tizing on so dark and difficult a theme.'
In spite, however, of this acknowledged diffi¬
culty, the reverend gentleman continues to labour
his point with strong instance and perseverance.
It troubles him, (p. 199) to find—
' That some should argue that God spared
Nineveh solely on account of the hundred and
twenty thousand children it contained, when Jonah
makes mention also of much cattle " as a reason
for that lenity ; and the mention of the cattle is of
itself sufficient to show the absurdity of drawing
any conclusion from such a declaration with regard
to the futurity of the creatures there spoken of.
Some,'-he adds, ^ have brought forward the case of
the child whom Uriah's wife bore to David as a
proof of the salvation of all infants. Such must
surely have forgotten that, notwithstanding the
melancholy circumstances (! !) connected with its
birth, yet that this child was the child of a true be¬
liever, and is therefore an illustration of the truth,
not that all children are saved, but that the
deceased infants of believers are saved, in virtue
of the. gracious covenant God has established with
their parents, and notwithstanding the occasionally
aggravated (!) sins of their parents themselves.'
The writer, however, who can speak of adultery
176 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
and murder in terms of such careful mitigation,
reserves his severity for an offence committed by
less conscious and responsible agents. It is the
being born into the world, and not what we may
do when once in it, which, according to this theo¬
logian's view of the Divine system of morality, con¬
stitutes the chief, original transgression, the ' great
offence ' for which all infants, saving the elected
few, are to be ^punished.'
^ Let us not, then, be deluded for a moment by
the error that infants are poor little innocent crea¬
tures. So far from this being the case, we are
assured that " they go astray as soo?i as they are
born^ speaking liesr ' [We have seen, alas, in a day
too fertile of them, many ^ Infant Phenomenons,'
but not one of this exact species, able to walk and
talk so very sopn !] ^ Their mere infancy is no
evidence of their purity, or security for their
safety, for embryo wickedness is there ; they may
not have had time to commit any sinful acts, but
they are partakers of a sinful nature. Nor need it
be argued that it would be unjust in God to de¬
stroy these infant sinners. It would be no such
thing. As the offspring of a rebel subject, and as
creatures who are themselves depraved by nature
and rebellious at heart, Jehovah might righteously
consign them to hopeless misery ; for as surely as
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE I77
the ferocity of the tiger exists in embryo in its
newly-born offspring, so does deep depravity lie
embedded in the nature of every babe, and time
alone is required for its manifestation in actual
transgression. As an order to root out and de¬
stroy all the poisonous and pernicious members of
the forest might be rightfully carried into effect
on the youngest as well as the oldest individuals
of the vegetable world, so the condemnation of
Heaven against our race might justly have been
executed upon the entire of our species, so as to
have embraced in its fell swoop the youngest sprigs
and buds, as well as the most fully developed
branches of the tree of our fallen humanity.'
Enough, however, of these atrocities. A paper
like the present affords little opening for the con¬
sideration of the deep mysteries which underlie all
such questions as that of universal infant salvation ;
little space for the inquiry as to how completely
in the case of those who die before they commit
actual transgression, the hereditary taint of our
nature may be considered to be taken away, so
that when looked for it shall be found no more by
Him who in that nature once offered Himself as
a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, satisfaction,
I
and oblation for the sins of the whole world. Nor
M
lyS POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
need we bestow much comment upon the per¬
verted logic which would found upon the fact that
the innocent suffer with the guilty in this world
an argument for their being punished (for being
innocent) in the after one, when the admitted
fact that in a broken and disorganized system
they do so suffer, has furnished men like Butler
and Paley with a strong inferential evidence in
favour of a future all-compensating existence in a
world ^ wherein dwelleth righteousness.'
Neither can we here enter upon another sub¬
ject, or try to strike that chord, too mighty to be
spanned by a human grasp, the very awfulness of
whose vibration seems in these writings to mvite
the touch of hands as unskilful as they are un-
tender—that foreknowledge of the Almighty, the
chain running from everlasting to everlasting,
which connects itself with the whole of the soul's
relations with Him. All Christian experience
testifies to what the gospel so explicitly declares ;
it witnesses to God's preventing, directing, re¬
straining grace ; it confesses that man must be
drawn to Him. The Christian has looked but a
little way either into the depths of his own nature
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
179
or into the revealed Word, who has not been met
in each day by a stay,^the everlasting counsel
and purpose of God. Not only in the Word, but
in the world, do we see that while Christ remains
the true light which lighteth every man that cometh
into the world, certain persons have been in all
ages more irresistibly attracted towards this light,
more fully enlightened by it than others \ but the
elect of God are not, as these miserable books
would have us believe, His favourites^ who cannot
do wrong, but indeed His ^ chosen' men, anointed
above their fellows to heavier temporal tasks, to
weightier spiritual responsibilities—men unto whom
a dispensation has been committed, and for whom
there is ^ woe' if it be not fulfilled. When we
consider that the sin of resisting grace is the great
transgression of the professing Church—when we
remember that man is answerable but for so much
as he can and does receive of it, who can refuse
to see in predestination, as in all other deep things
connected with the present hiding of God's power,
a secret of unfathomable mercy ?
We are, however, as we have said, considering
these writings less under a theological than under
l8o POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
a literary and human aspect ; and, looking at the
foregoing extracts in this view, we would especially
dwell upon their prevailing want of humanity, and
their utter deadness of sensibility to whatever is
tender and pitiful. We would draw attention to
this, and also to a tone and manner of writing
unspeakably coarse and flippant, we would even
say jeering, peculiar to this description of religious
tract, because they are class features, marking
more or less strongly our cheap devotional litera¬
ture as a whole. Looking at such books as litera¬
ture, we should simply say with Dante—
' Non ragionam di lor^ ma guarda e passad
Their authors, considered as writers, have little, it
is evident, to be answerable for ; not to them has
been committed any ray or fraction of the vision
and the faculty divine. Of insight, tenderness, of
the charm that can allure attention, of the power
that can enchain it, they are alike guiltless ; they
are not in a literary sense accountable for even
the keeping of the one talent; it is as teachers
only that their true responsibilities begin ; and it
is as teachers, as the self-constituted guides of the
pious and unlettered poor, that we have to lay to
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. l8l
their charge more weighty oiFences than any which
can be committed against taste or sensibility. It
is in this province that we hold them self-con¬
demned, in the first place, of setting before their
readers a false and distorted view of the Divine
character; and, in the second, of lowering the
standard of Christian morality through the pre-
sentâtion of an utterly meagre and inadequate
conception of Christianity itself.
Now, the first of these charges, if we are able to
prove it to be a substantial one, involves surely no
light offence. Not long ago we read an affecting
account of how a poor youth, blind and deaf-and-
dumb from his birth, aided by the infinite perse¬
verance of a kind teacher, had passed through a
slow acquaintanceship with outward objects into
the gradual conception of a great cause of causes.
This teacher was one night alarmed by an unusual
noise, and, hastening to his pupil's room, heard,
from his dark bed-side, the strange heart-moving
sound of a loud, uncouth voice, expressing over
and over again, ^ I am thinking of God ; I am
thinking of God.' We are not set down as was
this poor boy in the midst of a blank unintelligible
i82 popular religious literature.
world, ^ without form and void,' to feel after God,
if haply we may find Him. Yet what ^ we think
about God,' what idea each one of us, in the deep
and ground of his heart, forms to himself of the
great Power who has called him out of nothing
into conscious life and responsible action, must
be to every rational being the most important of
all ideas, a thought which influences every other
thought. ^ The worth and excellency of a soul,'
says Scougall, ' is to be judged of by the object
of its love,' and the character of worship and of
worshipper alike will be ever found to depend upon
the supposed attributes of the Being worshipped.
It is the altar which sanctifies the gold; it is
the Object and not the sentiment of belief which
has power to purify and elevate the soul of the
believer, and even the frankincense of faith and
adoration, the costliest incense which can ascend
from the spirit and the soul of man, possesses no
inherent virtue to save it from turning to its own
decay. If we turn to olden times, the average
Greek seems to have been more religious than
the average Christian, his whole public and private
life being so interpenetrated by a sense of relation
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. 183
to the gods, that few transactions or events in
either were unconsecrated by prayer. Every father
of a family exercised the office of a priest in his
own house ; yet Plato tells us that men who had
private altars and sanctuaries grew more hardened
in iniquity and all kinds of vice, by reason of the
prayers and sacrifices through which they there
believed themselves able to appease and propitiate
the gods. And to come to days more near our
own, the Breton wrecker, who asks for ^ a good
shipwreck,' the superstitious peasant, who hangs
up his votive offering in the chapel of our Lady
of Hatred, pray, it is probable, as sincerely as
they pray erringly ; even the poor African, the
most materialistic of all idolaters, believes in his
fetish, his thing of brass or wood or iron ; and of
each one of these we may say, that ^ even as he
thinketh in his heart so is he.' The heart grows
up, the heart declines towards its Ideal, and the
level of the worshipper's moral stature may always
be taken from the standard at which his adoration
is fixed. No greater injury can then be inflicted
on humanity than that of darkening or lowering
its conception of that which is Divine and fore-
184 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
most among the blessings which we owe to Reve¬
lation, must we place that of having raised and
fixed the idea of God, of having shown us plainly
of the Father, a Father coming out to meet us.
The gospel in the person of Christ Jesus, and in
the deep utterances of the Holy Spirit, has made
known to us the mind and nature of God ; it has set
fellowship with this nature before us as the highest
attainment of which our own nature is capable;
it has made eternal life to consist in the know¬
ledge of God ; it has placed spiritual blessedness
even here in a " partaking of the Divine nature
it has given to faith its "needed object, to love its
ever-during stay in communion with a Being in¬
finite not only in power, but in goodness. And
what is there in the tracts now before us to answer
to the idea of that which the heart claims, which
the gospel responds to, the idea of one who ' is a
just God, and yet a Saviour?'
The following extract is from a tract taken up
accidentally, ft is marked, ^ The Weekly Tract,
No. 393/ and headed—
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. 185
' GOD WAITING.
' Therefore will the Lord wait that he may be gracious
unto you."—Isa. xxx. 18.
^ What a marvel of patience—what a miracle of
kindness—what a mystery of love do these words
indicate ! Jehovah waiteth, my reader, that He
may be gracious to you. Why should He thus
wait ?
^ Not because He ca7t7iot do without your reconcilia-
tio7i\ to Him.—He is the ever-blessed—the ever-
happy God. He was so through a past eternity
when you had no existence, and it cannot, there¬
fore, be imagined that the joys of His being are
suspended on the movements of one whose " foun¬
dation is in the dust," and who is " crushed before
.the moth." He could destroy our world. He
could destroy all the systems that people the
universe. He could dispense with the existence
of the myriads of angels that with songs encircle
His throne. He could , wheel all creation into
the gulf of absolute nothingness, and the infinite
resources of His own blessedness be unimpaired.
He can, therefore, do without you. To suppose
that your frown is so awful, that your smile is so
desirable, that the one must be removed and the
other kindled ere the omnipotent—the independ¬
ent, can proceed in the execution of His purposes,
is absurd. " If thou be righteous, what givest
thou Him 1 or what receiveth He of thine hand ?"
l86 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
(Job XXXV. 7.) Yet, " He waiteth to be gracious."
Why 2
' Not because He is under aiiy obligation to wait.
—No such obligation exists. The law makes no
provision for the thunderbolts of Divine vengeance
being averted from the man who violates it, and
truth cannot utter a single consideration that ought
to impede the descent of the curse now hanging
over you, ready to explode. On the contrary, the
law saith, " The soul that sinneth it shall die."
Justice said, ",Cut him down, why cumbereth he
the ground T You cannot affirm that the law is
aught but good, or that justice demands what it
has no right to require. You cannot put your
finger on a single promise that you should be
mercifully dealt with by God in your unbelief—
yet, " He waiteth to be gracious." Why
^ Not because He is unable to execute the Nnish-
nient you dese^we.—See Proverbs xi. 21, 31 ; Job
xxxiv. 22 • Ezekiel xxii. 14. These passages
abundantly prove that " power belongeth unto
God," power to repay vengeance to His enemies.
You surely do not doubt this. Think of the
angels " reserved in chains under darkness to the
judgment of the great day." Listen to the wail of
woe as it rises from human lips quivering in the
agonies of eternity, " I am tormented in this
flame !" and then confess that though you have
been spareä till now, it is not because He whom
you have offended has been at a loss for means
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
187
to render you as miserable as you have made
yourself sinful—oh no ! "At His rebuke the earth
trembleth." As smoke is driven away, as wax
melteth before the fire, so He could cause you to
perish in His presence, yet He waiteth to be gra¬
cious,—why? because, my reader^ you cannot be
happy without His favom-P
True it is that God, who knoweth all things,
knows that we must love Him before even He
can make us happy. He cannot, so to speak,
bless us except in Himself. Therefore He says,
' Give me thine heart.' True it is that God seeks
our love for our sake, but no less true is it that
He seeks it for His own. He has in that which
He seeks a delight, a satisfaction, inseparable
from His very nature. And what is there in all
that has been revealed to us of that nature to war¬
rant the writer of the above passage in his insolent
and unfeeling certainty that God has no need of
man to make Him happy ; or to induce the belief
that He is indifferent to the loving allegiance of
the weakest among the souls he gave His only
beloved Son to sa-ve % Why should we imagine
that the infinite blessedness of the Creator is not
positively enhanced by the happiness of the crea-
l88 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
ture, or suppose that when the angels rejoice over
the returning sinner the Great Father of spirits
and of men is unmoved '? ^ He that loveth not
knoweth not God.' The absence of love in these
writings is something wonderful.^ The word,
used in some strange and altogether non-natural
sense, may be often met with in these writings ;
but of the thing itself, of love in its outward
manifestations of pity, tenderness, and goodwill ;
of love in its inner essence as the bond of mutual
fitness and reciprocal delight, we find in them
no trace whatever. Their language, in speaking
of the Almighty, is not the language of affection,
rather that of servility, ormitalism; the very feel¬
ings, it is true, which a Being such as they
portray is calculated to inspire, for their whole
teaching tends to* connect God with the idea of
power only; their delight is to represent Him
as irresponsible ; a Being who is accountable to
1 Wonderful, when we consider that their authors have read the
Bible, or at least some parts of it ; for it has often struck us as a sin¬
gular circumstance, that nearly all the quotations in these harsh and
gloomy tracts are from the Epistles. The Epistles ! which, taken in
their wholeness, are a sort of gospel within the gospel, most tender and
catholic of all, containing less of denunciation and severity than any
other part of the Sacred Book.
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. iSç
none, who may do what He will with His own
creature. But what should we think of, an
earthly king, or of a human parent, who placed
the allegiance due to him upon this ground, so
daringly attributed to Him who indeed delights
in mercy, but whose primal attribute is justice'?
' A sceptre of righteousness, O God, is the sceptre
of Thy kingdom.' God is not only the most
morally responsible, but we will even dare to say
the most morally limited of beings, limited by
the infinity of His own perfection ; bound within
its self-drawn circle. He cannot will that which
is evil or unjust. 'With God,' says St. Anselm,
' there is no freedom except to do that which is
expedient and fitting.' He is a debtor both to
/
Himself and to His world, responsible to man
for that idea of absolute justice, goodness, and
truth, which He has himself laid so deep with¬
in the human soul, and to which the idea of
His creature so inalienably cleaves, that could
the soul by force or fraud be driven off this
strong anchorage, God, it may be truly said,^
I
1 In Dr. John Brown's memoir of his father, he tells us of a poor
woman of great worth and excellent understanding, in whose conversa-
190 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
would lose even more than man. But all that
I
gives man, as a being born into a state involving
tremendous disabilities, a claim upon the Being
who called him into it, a Being who knows
whereof we are made, all that constitutes the
wide, universal fatherhood of God, these writers
do not so much ignore as disclaim. ^No man,'
says the Rev. J. C. Ryle,^ 'has a natural right to
God as his father ; it is a vile heresy to say that
he has,'—a heresy in which we must include the
prophet Malachi, who, making a Divine Father¬
hood co-extensive with creation itself, says, ' Have
we not all one Father? Hath not one God
created us?' and also another inspired penman
who, tracing the earthly genealogy of our blessed
Saviour, stops not till he leads it back to ' Adam,
which was the SoN of GoD.'^ And cvcn Mr.
Ryle, it seems, is haunted by some recollection
of St. Paul and of the certain poet quoted by
tion he took pleasure as her minister. When on her deathbed, Mr.
Brown, wishing to try her faith, said to her, 'Janet, what would you
say if, after all He has done for you, God should let you drop into
hell?' 'Even as He likes; if He does. He'll lose mair than i'll do.'
There is something (says Dr. John Brown) not less than sublime in
this reply.
1 Tract, Plahi. Speakhig, No. 50. ^ Luke i. 38.
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. I9I
him with approval, who, speaking of his own
heathen nation, had said, ^We also are his off¬
spring,' for he adds, ^ That God, in a certain sense,
is the universal Father of, all mankind, I do not
pretend to deny. He is the great First Cause
of all things ; the son ship which we have by
creation is one which belongs to stones, beasts,
or even to the devils, as much as to us.'
In the same tract Mr. Ryle informs us that
Scripture tells us that God out of Christ is a con-
/
suming fire, and this, while we ask what there is
in the text or context of the passage in Hebrews
to authorize the interpolation of the three words
in italics, leads us to consider the strange anta¬
gonism in which these writings place the first and
second Persons of the blessed Trinity, by their
continual habit of representing Jesus Christ as
more favourably disposed towards mankind, more
placable, more Qasily entreated than God himself.
And yet Scripture, in more than one passage of
terrific import, speaks of ^ the wrath of the Lamb,'
and bids us ^ kiss the Son lest he ' be angry.'
What error can be more shocking than that of
separating the natures of God and Christ ; and
192
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
why, we may justly ask, was Jesus so different
from other men—so wise, so tolerant, so loving—
except through being God ? It was because He was
God that He was all for which eve7i as man we adore
HÍ77i^ and Protestants who thus write and speak
of Him in whom God revealed and commended
His own love to man, should be careful how they
blaihe the Romanist who places the Virgin Mary
in the précise position they give the Saviour.
God is one^ and good is one. Truth, justice,
and love may vary in their manifestations, but their
essence is unchangeable ; and it is because writers
of the school we are now dealing with have never
learnt to connect the idea of God with that of
immutable moral beauty and perfection, that sal¬
vation, in their mode of presenting it, becomes a
bargain^ and the atonement of Christ sinks in their
/
hands into a co7itrivance^ which they call upon you
to admire as you might do some nicely adjusted
piece of mechanism. Faith in Christ is with them,
according to the figures most frequently used in
these tracts, the rope of a life-boat, a railway
ticket, the soldier's shilling ; something which you
are to get, to have, and be safe. And it is curious
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. I93
i
to observe how close their notion of salvation
comes to that of the Romanist, with ^ devices,
artifices,' ^ any way to get a soul saved and into
heaven, if it be by a four de force. The Protestant
who writes in this way trades, it is true, in nobler
things than does the Romanist, but he still trades ;
he does not set forth man's inventions, but God's
truth in his manner of stating it becomes false,
/
and salvation in the hands of either falls far short
of the point at which Scripture places it, in the
moral regeneration of man, by union with God,
through the reconciling death of Christ.
And it is certain, though it may seem a bold
word for a Christian to utter, that even the per¬
son and merits of Christ may be made objects of
idolatry, unless we learn to look to a point of real
contact between our souls and Him, and aspire,
however humbly, to union with Him, in the par¬
taking of an essential goodness, unto which,
except through such union, man can never attain.
Of such an aspiration, the highest of which
human nature is capable, these writings show
1 See the Science of Purgatory, in Father Faber's AIIfor Jesus, p. 113.
N
194 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
little trace ; nor do they betray, it appears to us,
any deep appreciation of moral evil, or of that
inherent opposition to God, which needed to be
^ taken away,' at so great a cost. Their con¬
ception of sin is shallow, as of something in its
nature indifferent to God ; it is treated merely
as a debt to be cancelled, a removable quantity.
Neither as regards Christian morals do these
writings show any perception of that awful truth,
' To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his
servants ye are whom ye obey; whether of sin
unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness.'^
Of faith, without explaining what it is, they
speak much ; of repentance little ; of the power
of habit, of the influence of the affections, those
strong auxiliary forces of the soul, upon y^hose
direction the issue of its great conflict so often
depends, they seem to know absolutely nothing.
In many of these tracts, effort is not merely dis¬
couraged, but condemned ; so long as you are
^ striving,' 2 endeavouring after such light as you
possess to please God, you must be wrong,—a
1 Romans vi i6.
2 See a tract, Should I not Strive ? or., The Poor Man's Dinner.
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. I95
person not so much to be jhtied, as put down by
those who are more enlightened. In all of them
there is an entire silence as to the scripturally de¬
clared fact, that while we are saved by the work of
Christ, we are judged by the things done in the
body.. There is not in one of them any recognition
of the great abiding, principles of natural duty. All
persons who have not attained to saving faith in
Christ, all who are not able to say, what no man
except through the powèr of the Holy Ghost can
say effectually, that J esus is his Lord, his hope, his
all, are treated as being on the same level. The
thousands of poor men who, falling short of this,
are yet sober, honest, industrious, and God-fearing,
tenderly cherishing their wives and affectionately
loving their children, are represented as being as
far out of God's favour as are the thousands of
0
poor men who in this professedly Christian country
beat their wives, starve their children, spend their
earnings over women as vile as themselves, and de¬
light in blasphemy and drunkenness. Nay, it even
seems to us that the preference in point of eligi¬
bility as candidates for the kingdom of heaven is
always given inferentially to these latter worthies.
196 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
John Bunyan, in a tract ^ which it is surely un¬
wise in^the Dublin Tract Society to publish, as
they have done, without guard or comment, tells
us, with certainly far less than his usual scriptural
accuracy, that ^ Jesus Christ in his lifetime left the
best and turned to the worst'! ! _ Physicians get
no name for picking out thistles, or laying plasters
on scratches,—they must cure some desperate
cases. It is the dry wood which burns best ;
^ grace takes occasion by the vileness of the man
to shine more.' And we are' assured by Mr.
Ryle that ' where open sin slays its thousands,
J
self-righteousness slays its tens of thousands.'
Yet the truth remains, that in the class to which
these writings are addressed, righteousness of any
kind has little indeed to answer for. The moral
standard of the humbler orders of men is in gene¬
ral lamentably low and defective, and the majority
of professing believers are too deeply sunk in sen¬
suality, ungodliness, and spiritual apathy, to be in
much danger from any error of a speculative kind.
It is only those who are iamiliar with the poor.
i Banyan's Glad Tidings for Sbmers.
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. ^ I97
and able to enter into their modes of thinking and
feeling, who are able to estimate the fearful evil
wrought by omitting to draw a clear line between
sin as inherent in man's nature, natural to both
saint and sinner, and vice,^ the habitual, conscious
yielding to its promptings. ; We are all sinners by
nature, and as such beloved and redeemed by
Christ ; but we are not all vicious, neither, as
such, continuing and delighting in sin, can we be
accepted by the Father in Him. The minds of
the uneducated are slow and undiscriminating.
There is something in their structure which natu¬
rally tends to confusion j but under a teaching like
this, without any moral shading, it becomes ' worse
confounde^d.' Not long ago, a working man, of
apparently respectable character, died suddenly
under circumstances which brought conduct of the
worst kind to light. Some little time after his
death, his widow, calling upon a lady who had been
intimately interested in the family, closed some
remarks upon her husband's short illness, with the
usual pious formulary, ^But at any rate, ma'am,
1 See on this subject an admirable sermon by Adolphe Monod.
198
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
he's happy now.' ' I'm glad, Mrs. said
the lady gravely, ^ to hear you say so ; it makes
me hope there has been no truth in certain re¬
ports that it has made me sorry to hear.' 'Truth,
ma'am ! ' she returned quickly, ' every word true,
and many a sore heart it has given me.' ' Then,'
returned her friend, 'as William was never sen¬
sible after his first becoming ill, or able to seek
God's pardon for his great sin, how can you
feel so sure that he is happy now"?' The poor
woman had her answer ready, yet there was
something affecting in the bewildered look with
which she said, 'Well, ma'am, of course, William
was a great sinner, but then we're all sinners ; and
aren't we told Jesus Christ died to save sinners V
But are we told, that Jesus Christ died to save
impenitent, unreturning sinners?—sinners, who
not only come to Him for peace,^ just as they
are, but intend to remain with Him just as they'
are, forgetting that there is no peace to the
wicked ? To see the highest result of a teaching
which 'preaches Christ" as an antidote to the
1 Sec Christian Spectator, February i860.
2 Ibiii.
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. I99
conscience/ and sets forth faith in Christ without
enforcing its grand scriptural correlative, ^ repent¬
ance toward God,' we need only be familiar with
the interior of a jail, and .trace its workings upon
a class, upon ^ whose originally feeble moral in¬
stincts a long series of spiritual manipulations will
sometimes produce an outgrowth too hideous to
be mere hypocrisy. Among such persons we shall
meet with a simulated mode of talking about
s
Christ, which bears the same relation to real faith
in Him, that hysteria does to a real malady ; it
counterfeits, mocks it, has no root within the
system, and yet it is real, because it is of the
nature of possession, a devil that no human
agency seems able to cast forth. Of such as
these are the fourfold murderers who die in the
apparent fulness of every evangelic grace, except
repentance ; who depart ' forgiving everybody
who has ever injured them!' who step cheer-
fully off the plank, expressing their entire confi¬
dence irf 'Jesus,' and their longing to be with Him.
For they within whom this spirit has once en¬
tered will die as they have lived, 'treacherous,
lewd, malignant,' ready to proclaim themselves the
200 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
chief of sinners, yet jealous and resentful of any
specific charge of criminality ; eager to proclaim
that they have sinned against their Saviour, and
brought Him to a painful death, but not^ by
word or tear expressing regret for their many
offences against their brethren.; callous as to
the evil which they have wrought on the bodies
and the souls of others ; unrepentant for sins,
of the least of which the Saviour, whose name
and work they profane, said, Ht were good for
such as commit them that they had never been
born.'
Before drawing this paper to a close, we have
1 Doyle, lately executed at Chester for a frightful attempt to murder
a woman he lived with (he being a married man), walked to the plat¬
form with these words (his last), 'Jesus Christ was led like a lamb to
the slaughter ; /, like Him^ offer no resistance ; I know that my sins
are forgiven.'
He had eaten and drunk heartily to the last, conversed of his past
life, sung hymns, listened to prayers and reading, and expressed regret,^
but certainly no depth of repentance for his crime.
Catharine Wilson was as foul in life as she was bloody of hand. Her
existence was a series of murder, treachery, robbery, and personal
vice. Seven murders were traced to her, in some of which she deli¬
berately watched the excruciating pain and agony of the victim, into
whose confidence she had first insinuated herself, with devilish malignity.
She died protesting her innocence^ without prayer, without repentance,
without even remorse. Yod she could write thus: 'Jesus is a present
help in time of trouble, on Him I cast my burden. It matters little
how the body dies. May I be found right before the judgment-seat of
God, I care not what man thinks of me.'
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. 20I
yet another region to glance into, one which fills
a large place in popular devotional literature, we
mean the department of Christian biography. So
much real good has been done by the publication
of books like the Life of Hedley Vicars, such a
pulse of Christian activity stirred throughout Eng¬
land by the perusal of works like the Missing
Link and Ragged ILomes, that for the sake of a
^ great good one feels inclined to pardon a little
ill,' and to shut one's eyes to the manifest wound
done to the simplicity and sincerity which be¬
longs to fine spiritual consciousness by the pre¬
sent tendency to make a sort of capital out of
every holy effort and eveiy exalted life. There
is such a quick vibration through our present
social life, that the world seems to have become
a gigantic whispering-gallery, catching up and
re-echoing every sound, even those which are
most intimate and sacred, so that the word
spoken in the deepest secrecy between a man
and his friend, between the spirit and its Re¬
deemer, is literally proclaimed on the house-top.
Yet this, surely, is a tendency which, in all things
connected with the kingdom which cometh not
202 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
with observation, we shall do well to resist rather
than to yield to, or it will be the harder for
Christian men and women to attain to the
breadth and stature of simpler ages, when the
spiritual building of a holy life was able to grow
up like the olden Temple, without that noise
of axes and hammers that is now so bewildering.
' Christ's humble man loveth not praise.'^ How
quiet, yet austerely heroic, were the lives of our
Saxon and Celtic apostles !—of men like Boni¬
face, Cuthbert, and Columba, at once the evan-
gelizers and civilizers of the rude heathen world,
within whose darkness they were as lights burn¬
ing, and shining bnly because they burned ] And
even now, for those who seek it, there is a life
of true simplicity waiting in the thick of our
crowded civilisation. Our manufacturing towns
and mining villages still afford populous solitudes
where men and women may labour for Christ,
either singly or in groups, as secretly as the
coral insect works beneath the wave. The world
wonders at self-devotion, admires it, and forgets
^ Jeremy Taylor.
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. 203
it ; only do not let the Press come in ! Above
all, let it keep silence even from good words
where the humbler members of Christ's family
are concerned ; they most of all suffer from praise
and the publicity it brings. Is it not, to say the
very least, injudicious, in The Book and its Mis¬
sions going on month after month with a history
of the work of the Bible-women in London—^men-
tioning each of them by name, recounting what
each is doing, often in their own words'? In
one of these papers a poor woman is represented
as saying to her husband, in spiritual trouble,
*Do hear Mrs. W. j she speaks so plain. You
did not understand the missionary, but she speaks
as simple as a child, and you will be sure to
understand.' The good woman goes; the poor
man is deeply, and, it is believed, permanently
affected. The wife exclaims, in simple triumph,
'Didn't I tell you that God would mak,e Mrs.
W. a blessing to you'?' The Bible-woman, it is
true, repeats this with an apology, and refers the
change in the husband's feelings rather to the
work of the Spirit, in answer to the faithful
prayers of the wife, than to her own influence.
204 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
Still she does repeat it ; it is written and pub¬
lished ; at what loss to all parties concerned,
should they ever read it, it would be hard to
state. And what, we may ask, is more offensive
to a just spiritual discrimination than the set
disclaimers continually inscribed in these records,
such as, do humbly thank God for conde¬
scending to use me as an instrument, however
unworthy ; the work, however, is His ; not by
might nor by power'? etc; What need of these
ostentatious statements ? Who that is acquainted
with the A B C of Christianity does not know
that all work is and must be of God? What
need to compliment the Almighty with all praise
and all glory, and yet to keep back a certain
perquisite, the more surely retained for these
very disclaimers ?
There is a tone and colouring about most of
the statements of Christian benevolent work, that
seems very far removed from that of the sober
daylight of actual experience in dealing with hu¬
man nature, that great and stubborn fact ; a fervid
glow that must often, we think, make the heart of
many righteous labourers in the Lord's vineyard
205
sadj under the certainty of having no such brilliant
statistics to offer. We do not say that the state¬
ments set forth in the reports continually given to
the world are not true in themselves, but we are
sure that they are often calculated to give a false
impression of what Christian work really is. Their
fault is the same one which pervades modern reli¬
gious biography ; a want of simplicity, a tendency
to strain and pressure, which misses, through that
very effort, the true greatness of a Christian life.
In taking up any such book, we seem to see not
the picture of a Christian, but a Christian sitting
for his picture, with a great deal, as is usual in
portraiture, put in for the occasion, and a great
deal obviously left out.
In such records, the simplicity, the sweetness
of a holy life, a life hid with Christ in God, is
%
gone. Letters, diaries, are given to the public ;
all is laid bare, obtruded. Yet human nature has
disappeared ; we look in vain for
* This friend of ours, who lives in God,
The human-hearted man we loved. '
After all, as we said at first, literature of a devo¬
tional class must not be judged of by the ordinary
2o6 popular religious literature.
standard. It is the glory of Christianity to con¬
descend to a limited intellectual stature, to humble
itself to that which is in man. We must be pre¬
pared to see its grand ideal outlines concealed
beneath much that is ordinary and mediocre.
Christian commonplace will endure while the
world lasts, but there are limits even to Christian
commonplace, and we consider that charity, which
in this region has endured all things, is now en¬
titled to hope all things in the way of improve¬
ment.
There are certain rare and beautiful features in
the present age of the world, which secular litera¬
ture has not been slow to catch up and reflect.
There are few poems or stories now written which
do not betray some sympathy with the generous
aspirations with which so many hearts are now
familiar, the exalted aims to which so many lives
are now directed. In originality, genius, and
power, the literature of our present day probably
falls short of that of some great intellectual eras ;
in tenderness, humanity, respect for man's moral
nature, admiration for it under its more exalted
conditions of self-devotion and heroism, reverence
POPULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
207
for goodness under its humbler aspects, sympathy
with the family affections, delight in God's visible
creation, it rises far above that of any former age.
And when we turn from literature to the social
life it is connected with, when we see all that is
passing around us,—the ameliorating influences
that are continually yet silently at work, the
mighty enterprises that grow out of them,—while
there is so much among us that is confessedly
Christian, we feel deeply persuaded that the lite¬
rature which is so professedly, has need to march
with the marching order; and that its present
status as regards theology, intellect, and Reeling,
is unworthy of our present aims, unworthy even
of our attainments, whether as Christians or as
men.
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
HERE are certain characters and types
of character, with whom, as ideal abs¬
tractions, I have been familiar ever
»
since I can remember anything. They exist in
our literature, and are frequently referred to in
conversation. It is long, however, since it struck
me as being singular that I had never met any
one of them in actual life, and I have at last
learnt to class them among pure mental figments,
' Jacks of straw,' like the Giant-killer, him of thè
0
Bean-Stalk, and the Builder of the immortal House.
With one of these worthies, the representative
of a large class of kindred shadows, I became
intimate at a very early age, ' il Burhejv benéfico^
20S
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
209
of Goldoni's comedy, the kind and crusty old
gentleman who knocks you down with his fist
one day, and ^ on another overwhelms you with
his benefits ; who makes everybody about him
wretched during four acts of the play, and in the
fifth crowns them individually and collectively
with felicity, which he has all the while been
secretly manufacturing. No one can pass through
life without coming in contact with rude and
churlish natures, without having to do with many
persons who contrive, through sheer irrational
sourness and contradiction, to rub off much of
the bloom of life, and take the heart out of many
an hour of innocent gladness. That such people
may occasionally surprise themselves and other
people by doing very kind and generous things, I
would be the last person in the world to deny,
but my experience on the whole has tended to
convince me that, as a rule, ' men do not gather
grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles ; ' nor have
the specimens I have hitherto met with of the
^ rough diamond' been so rich in innate worth
and lustre as to lead me to wish to sell all I have
in order to possess one. For what, after all, does
o
2IO CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
the kindness of such people amount to when you
do get it '? Is its measure fuller, its quality supe¬
rior to that which, from more bounteous natures,
is to be met with everywhere, at all times, and
under all contingencies ; or is its supposed value
enhanced by the arbitrary and intermittent nature
of its manifestation, or the uncertainty of the
tenure it is held by ? There is something wonder¬
ful, no doubt, in seeing a scanty stream issuing from
a hard-smitten rock, soon to close again, but the
full river, the running brook, and the clear, ever-
springing well, have been all the while giving us
water enough and to spare, only that we took as
a matter of course, and this is a miracle !
As an allied member of this much-bepraised
family, I may class the grand cast-iron man, wrapt
up in reserve and impenetrability, the especial
favourite of modern fiction, who sweeps all rivals
of milder mood to the right and left before him,
and never fails to win the heroine's heart, or rather
to take it, very often without asking for, as by a
species of divine right. Yet what is there really
great or beautiful in sternness of demeanour,—the
mark, to those who look a little below the surface.
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES. 211
\ \
of a limited self-centred nature, too hard and thin
to be easily impressed or attracted Í what is there
so wonderfully admirable about strength of will,
so i long as that strength is unguided by wisdom
or love, and chiefly exerted in keeping other
people down 1 Are these sons of Thor supposed
to hide even beneath modern broad-cloth deep
and pure reserved forces of tenderness, worth, if
one could but get at them, whole miles and acres
of more diffused benevolence Í Or is all that they
subtract from the pleasantness of ordinary inter¬
course supposed to be concentred upon chosen
objects, revealed in supreme moments ? A smile,
however, is no sweeter for being rare,. nor is a
kind word any more precious for being waited for
until you are upon your deathbed ! The fact is,
that people whose kindness is really worth any¬
thing do not usually reserve it for emergencies,
nor is true greatness of character a thing that
requires to be delved and dug for. Like all of
life's most really valuable things, it lies far nearer
the surface than we at first imagine, blessing us,
like the air and sunshine, unaware.
Then I must glance at another ^ counterfeit
212 CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
presentment/ chiefly, and, as far as I know, only
to be met with in tracts and sermons, in bdth of
which he is very popular, and where his image is
touched and retouched in such brilliant colours
that it looks almost as splendid as a bird of Para¬
dise in an old-fashioned album, and quite as unlike
anything in actual life. This is the man who is
brave, kind, generous, scrupulously honest, fault¬
lessly moral, perfect in every relation of life as
father, friend, neighbour, who is everything—^but
a Christian ! That natural character exhibits many
admirable and exalted tendencies, or that, under
circumstances friendly to its development, it may
attain to rare individual excellence, no one who
has observed life closely will deny. What seems
more open to question, is the power of unaided
f
human nature to reach this perfect balance and
proportion, or to sustain it when once reached.
Is natural goodness strong enough to resist and
overcome all that life brings to bear upon it?
Can the human spirit, aspiring, yet earth-bound,
be proved
' Competent to keep
Heights that it hath been competent to win ; '
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES. 213
and, unaided by fellowship with the Divine, to
attain to enduring nobleness and worth ? Did it
indeed possess this inherent power, and had hu¬
man nature any one perfect life and character to
glory of, we may reasonably infer that it would
not have needed to have been redeemed at an
infinite cost, or to be regenerated by an abiding
miracle.
Then we come to the good, disagreeable person,
or say rather the good, disagreeable people, for
they are so numerous as to constitute a supposi¬
titious gens or family. ^ What a pity,' we often hear
it said familiarly, ' that good people should be so
disagreeable or we hear them referred to play¬
fully, as ^ the good, disagreeable ones, you know,
that one does not wish to see again till one meets
them in heaven.' But where, after all, are the
good, disagreeable people ? With the ten lost
tribes of IsraeH Are we sure that any accurate
census pf their numbers has been taken h Are
*
they a real people, or is their very existence an
assumed one, reasoned out, as in transcendental
anatomy, of some slight bone or fragment? I
know many people who are very agreeable with-
214
out being particularly good, and some who are
truly good without being particularly agreeable ;
for charm and pleasantness are in a great degree
inherent gifts, and depend far less upon moral
qualifications than on sweetness and facility of
temperament ; but a human being who was dis¬
agreeable because he was good, I have yet to see,
nor can I, on any à priori ground, account for his
existence, as there seems nothing in the nature of
goodness as such that does not tend to pleasant¬
ness and goodwill.
In this respect, however, I am aware that the
writers of modern fiction have me at a great dis¬
advantage ; my experience beside theirs has been
so strangely limited, even one-sided. I have known
a great many religious people—religious people
of limited capacity and mediocre station—the
whole boundaries of whose lives have been en¬
larged through religion, and their current of thought
and feeling lifted to a higher level through its
«
influence. I have known religious people, too,
of finer sensibilities and more advanced culture,
whose natures have been, through religion, ^ en¬
riched unto bountifulness,' and their lives made
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
as full, as generous, and as complete, as it is pos¬
sible to conceive of under the limitations of our
mortal existence. But I have yet to meet the
terrible old lady, whose daily portion of Scripture
is the maledictory passages of the PsahriwS, read
out aloud with an especial marginal reference to
her own personal enemies (orfriends !) Neither
have I come across the scarcely less redoubtable
middle-aged one, with her mouth filled with argu¬
ments and her pockets stuffed with tracts, each
tobe administered ^at discretion.' Nay, I have
not yet, except in a fourth-rate novel, met with
the nurse who first shakes her patient instead of
his pillow, and then doses him with texts and
hymns, nor even with the religious maiden aunt,
who presents her sbhoolboy nephew with a cloth-
bound copy of The Dairyman!s Daughter^ and puts
her little niece on first meeting through her Cafe-
chismal paces. Now the truth is that maiden
aunts, however persoñally virtuous, are not so lost
to all sense of natural fitness, so oblivious of all
traditions of ' cakes and ale,' as such a course of
action would imply. As a class they will generally
be found to be as much given to nepotism as
2i6
christianos ad leones.
were ever mediaeval Popes, and are far more
likely to admire, spoil, and flatter their little
nephews and nieces, than to take their good into
such unduly serious consideration ! We fear,
from the cruel testimony of certain workhouse
reports, that we have among us many nurses who
\
do neglect and even shake their patients, but we
doubt their doing so to a running accompaniment
of texts and hymns. Drunken old women, and
dissolute young ones, are such, at least in England,
without the garniture of hypocrisy;—for I believe,
if the subject were looked into without prejudice,
there is no country in Christendom in which there
is so little false devotion as in England, the
national character being too hard and realistic to
lend itself easily to ecstatic fervours, and too prac¬
tical to take much interest in abstract intellectual
speculation on religious subjects. Religion when
it does exist in England is a reality, not a ' view,'
nor yet a mere feeling. And in saying this, I
intend not to magnify my own nation, but simply
to draw attention to a fact, which was first
brought under my notice by persons rather obser¬
vant of national peculiarities than greatly interested
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES. 217
in religious questions. Even in the darkest ages,
England seems never to have produced a charac¬
ter of the Gilles de Retz species, who divided his
time between watching the agonies of tortured
children, and the singing of litanies before a
crucifix. Our highwaymen, while the race was
yet existing, do not ever seem to have been
^ devout,' which appears to be the rule rather than
the exception in the case of the most noted Italian
brigands. Even in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales,
the infusion of the Celtic element, and the warm
devotional instinct which belongs to it, seems to
make religion at once more natural to the mind,
and also more likely to pass into a certain un¬
reality, than can ever be the case here, where, if it
takes root at all, it will not be as the parasitical
outgrowth of fancy, feeling, or intellect, but as a
plant ^ whose seed is in itself,'in the deep and
hard-won ground of the heart and will and affec¬
tions. And so far from the religious mind of our
age and country being in any degree liable to the
charge of wrapping itself up in egotistic and senti¬
mental pietism, its leading expression is far more,
if I may so venture to express myself, ^manward
2i8
than Godward ; it has only been by degrees that
some of the most ardently religious spirits among
us have awakened to the idea of worship as such,
so infallibly have all stirrings of the higher life
among us been wont to pass into the sphere of
duty and of action, widening and warming that
«
region. Ich Dien is and ever will be the chosen
motto of the English nation in the things of God
as in the things of time, and her spiritual men are
still in an eminent degree her practical men, only
practical on a higher level than that of ordinary
routine and convention ; and without in any way
undervaluing the generous efforts of philanthropy,
or disparaging what England has owed to the
friends of science and of progress, I am not afraid
to say, that there is scarcely one of the great
movements which in the memory of persons yet
living have gone through its very length and
breadth, almost transfiguring its moral and social
aspect, which may not be in the first instance
traced to a directly religious impulse. The strong
waves of progress, of enlightenment, of zeal to
communicate knowledge, to ameliorate suffering,
which have now^ become ^ a river that cannot be
219
passed over, waters to swim in,' were not so long
ago * waters that reached but to the ankles,' ^ a
slender stream, yet one that issued from the Holy
House. It would be easy to track the social
movements to which England now stands most
indebted to the great evangelical awakening which
at the close of the last century shook our national
life and thought out of the kindred spells of heavy
sensuality and Deistic indifference ; easy, too, to
show that, in innumerable instances, this once-
awakened* spirit has been fostered, developed, and
trained by the present High Church movement ;
easy to prove that the Bible Societ)^,, and the asso¬
ciations for Freedom of Worship and the Union of
Christendom, are not after all such very distant
neighbours. Such questions, however, may be
safely left to statistics, which will show us, where-
ever we turn our eye, a land intersected and
thridden by channels of benevolence,—a land lite¬
rally ' watered,' as Israel was, ^by the foot,'—a land
wherein the poor, the sick, the aged, the desolate,
the criminal, are cared for and ministered unto
1 Ezekiel xlvii.
220
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
as their needs require by a thousand beneficent
agencies, as minute as they are complete and un¬
ceasing ; a living machinery in almost every case,
first put in action by the energy of the religious
spirit, and in many still kept going through no
mechanical routine, but through the same ^ spirit
of the living creature amid the wheels'^ which
gave it its primal impulse. I will venture to say,
that where in England there is one person to be
found devoted to social amelioration from purely
philanthropical and moral considerations, you may
find a thousand devoted to it from religious mo¬
tives ; and that there is not a town, however cor¬
rupt, a village, however obscure, that does not
hold within it persons, not able perhaps to rea¬
son out their own principles so accurately as the
^ sage ' of the last century, but living in the mere
simplicity of Christian faith, lives as expansive, as
self-forgetting, as sublime, as ever philosopher has
aimed at.
Yet religious people, if we may believe what our
best modern writers tell us of them, are very poor
1 Ezekiel i.
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
221
creatures indeed. If JVIr. Anthony Trollope draws
two sisters, the religious one is sure to be sour, un¬
accommodating, and meddlesome ; the other, who
does not trouble her head or heart much with the
things beyond time and sense, is equally certain
to be pretty, obliging, and amiable.^ It is she
who, while the other is domineering over a Dorcas
meeting, or lecturing some unhappy parish chil¬
dren, is ever at hand to smile upon her mother,
and run for cream for that otherwise neglected
old lady's tea, it being the known tendency of a
religious person to think every old woman inter-
1 An amusing reaction from this unfair mode of painting may be
traced in professedly religious fictions, in which the author seems to
labour under an uneasy consciousness of never being able to make the
counter charm strong enough, and to go on till all perfections culminate
upon the head of a hero that he may safely be forgiven for being a
Christian. Witness Dr. Macleod's ' Young Lieutenant.' Endowed with
spirit, strength, agility, and with good looks, and good humour enough
to stock a whole ship's company, refusing to fight upon principle, yet
able, if he but chose, to knock everybody to pieces, and very soon, in
an everyday quiet sort of way saving some comrade's life from fire or
fiood at the risk of his own ; or Lady Georgina Fullerton's impossible
Count D'Arenberg, learned, pious, brave, impeccable at every point.
Bayard and Xavier in one, a Pelion on Ossa of piled-up and multiplied
perfections ! If all Christians were like these, no doubt even the Satur¬
day Review wovlXú. admire them ; the Apollo Belvidere, even if he were
as Christian as he is Pagan, would still be what he is, and might stand
as firm upon his pedestal of unrivalled grace and beauty as before. But
as times go, and so long as it takes all sorts of people to make a world,
there will be also found many existing varieties of Christians in it, and
among them a large majority of people not perhaps any prettier, \viser,
or pleasanter than their neighbours, yet certainly not any less so !
222
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
esting except her mother. Nor is it only in ex¬
terior graces or in moral attributes that ' serious
people ' are found to fall short of even a very
limited standard. Want of sense and common
discretion in the daily affairs of life seems an es¬
sential part of the character. The author of the
much-admired Chronicles of Carlingford (we believe
a lady) has given the world a series of sketches,
drawn from the leading phases of modern religious
thought, and has contrived with beautiful impar¬
tiality to show us in each one of these, the Dissent¬
ing minister, the evangelical old maid, the young
Anglican clergyman and his Romanizing brother,
mental weakness in every varying shade, as
changeful in its play of doubt, hesitation, and
irresolution, as are the colours on a dove's breast,
or as is the light shut within the glancing opaV
1 The singular feature of these stories, the Chro7îicles of Carlingford,
is this, that while their interest is made to turn and hinge upon the reli¬
gious life and its fluctuations, there is not to be found among them
even the outline of a truly religious person. Each has some idea
or notion of a higher system, a highly comfortable one to the worthy
butterman, a highly perplexing one to most of the other charac¬
ters. But of religion as an animating principle of conduct, a fixed
belief in that which endures though we change, not one among them
seems to have a notion. The young minister's confidence in Dissent,
as indeed in all other sj^'stems in heaven and earth, seems to rise or
wane, just as he meets or misses the smiles of the beautiful Lady
Western. His old mother, intended for a good, pious sort of woman, i.>
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
223
yet always weakness. However they may differ in
dogmatic opinions they are alike in this, that they
are all foolish, contemptible, unworthy of an ideal
so lofty that it can never be fully realized, yet so
lowly, that it seldom fails in its condescension to
men of low estate to raise them at least a little
nearer to its own enduring greatness.
ready to say or swear anything that occurs most readily to save her
son's imperilled character. When the energetic, devoted young Angli¬
can finds that his evangelical aunt (who holds a rich rectory in her gift)
is likely to attend his church, and knows that her terrible glance will
gleam fierce upon the lilies of his Easter-altar decorations, the thought
flashes suddenly across his mind, ' whether after all a wreath of spring
flowers or a chorister's surplice was worth suffering martyrdom for.
This horrible 'suggestion, true essence of an unheroic age which will
not suffer a man to be absohitely certam of a7tything, disturbs his
prayer on kneeling down to ask God's blessing.' The brother who
joins the Church of Rome is made of sterner stuff, and is shown as
capable of making a great sacrifice to principle, but ' even upon him,
when all is done, a momentary spasm of doubt came—might he not after
all be making the sacrifice of his life for a 7nistake?^
Christianity so represented is no longer the light and life of this
world, rather a riddle and snare flung down upon earth to perplex and
mislead, and best avoided. What is it else, if there is nothing essen¬
tial, nothing supporting in its teaching and its consolations, if one of its
chiefest rites is to be spoken of thus half patronizingly—' the priest and
the maiden stood together, she holding up the "last little applicant for
saving grace, while all the other little heathens were being signed with
the sacred cross. ' Neither of them perhaps was of a very e7ilighte7ted
character ofsotd. They believed that they were doing a great work
for Tom Burrowes' six children, calling God to His promise on
their behalf, and setting the little feet straight for the gates of the
eternal city, a7id hi their you7ig hearts faith and love arose.' But is
this love and faith meant to be founded upon a simple fact. ' the pro¬
mises of God made to us in this sacrament,' or is the whole thing, as the
wording of the sentence would imply, love, faith, and the sacrament
itself, to be classed among those illusions of love and faith which, ac¬
cording to M. Renan, are so beautiful and praiseworthy ?
224
CHRJSTIANOS AD LEONES.
Writers who take this tone ought to be made
aware that they place themselves, logically, within
the horns of a very grave dilemma.
If all persons more than commonly zealous for
the doctrines of Christianity, or more than usually
devoted to carrying out its practical requirements,
are proved inferior in mental gifts and moral con¬
sistency to those who are content to aim at a less
exalted standard of life, we cannot escape one of
these conclusions : either that Christianity is only
attractive to weak intellects and wavering charac¬
ters, or that it has some inherent tendency to
make people absurd, inconsistent, and insincere.
And this alternative is a very serious one ;
serious at least to all who look upon Christianity
as a divinely constituted system, and w^ho have
not forgotten that its Founder has declared that
there is one sin alone amid the multitude of
transgressions, ^ which shall never be forgiven,'—
the sin of denying, of ignoring, of disparaging the
work of that thrice Holy Spirit to whom the dis¬
pensation of His own work has been committed,
and to whose agency our fallen nature owes all
that it can receive of present and future blessed-
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
225
ness, even to a partaking in the Divine nature it¬
self.
And if we are not better, but worse for being
Christians, what then is Christianity h If the fruits
of the tree, zeal, piety, and activity in good, are
rotten, fit neither for the basket nor the garner,
only proper to engage the attention 'of rabid
theorists, preachers^ professional lecturers, sala¬
ried philanthropists, and weak-minded women,'
what can be the tree which produces them ! ' By
their fruits,' our great Master has Himself said,
' ye shall know them and if it can be proved that
those who are zealous for the faith are invariably
zealous without knowledge and without love, ar¬
dent after remote objects, careless of nearer duties,
cold to the paramount claims of family duty and
affection, Christianity must give up the battle.
And yet it has sometimes seemed to me, that those
who assail every higher aspiration are not so
firmly planted even upon their own ground, as
they imagine themselves to be. Let us suppose
that there is nothing in the world except common
sense, and this of the hardest quality. Let us
take it on both sides as our ultimate authority,
p
22Ó
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
and ask in its name^ what there is in the nature of
things to make the office of a missionary con¬
temptible, or the character of a philanthropist
absurd 1 A dispassionate person may be reason¬
ably at a loss to see what is the established affinity
between mental imbecility, and an interest, more or
'less actively shown, in forlorn and afflicted people
1 And while we are inquiring into the supposed affinities upon which,
in these writings, the edge and point of sarcasm is often made to rest,
we may fairly inquire why they should attach a certain ridicule to
everything connected with Dissent, and why, in modern fiction, ' a
Dissenter' should invariably appear under some contemptible aspect.
It is difficult, if we look through the history of religious Dissent in Eng¬
land, to see at what point it lies peculiarly open to opprobrium. Leaving
the Society of Friends, now a comparatively small body, on one side,
English Dissenters may be broadly divided into Independents and
Methodists. The first of these are the direct descendants of the Puri¬
tans, whose moral integrity and absolute sincerity of belief, under every
admitted drawback and qualification, have left an undying print upon
our national life and manners, to which England owes much that even
at the present moment distinguishes her favourably from Continental
countries. The Independents are also the lineal representatives of the
Nonconformists, who paid, through some of the least honourable periods
of our history, so many penalties for liberty of conscience and opinion,
and who were, indeed, through many reigns, our national confessors for
civil and religious freedom. Even in times more near our own, when
they had been as a body more or less invaded by the secularity and
spiritual deadness of the age, they kept alive the tradition of learning
and piety in innumerable individual instances, and raised up among
them men from whose writings all who were young during the earlier
part of the present century have probably drawn their first and strongest
religious impressions. It was not Hooker, nor Taylor, nor even George
Herbert, which were then our household books. Children repeated
Watts' hymns and read Bunyan's ' Pilgrim.' Mature life was strength¬
ened by Doddridge's ' Rise and Progress,' and age consoled by Baxter's
' Saints' Everlasting Rest,'
Of Methodism, it is more difficult to .speak in a calm historic spirit.
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
227
at home, and oppressed and ignorant races at a
farther distance from us. All people cannot, like
Mr. Carlyle, endow the strong and powerful with
the full monopoly of their affections ; they will con¬
tinue to take interest in ragged boys, in idiots and
incurables, and it is hard, as Benedict said of
Its work is more recent ; its lamp, more lately kindled, is even now
casting back a warm glow into the bosom of its parent Church ; is even
now carrying light into a thousand waste places of our land, that but
for it would have been still moral desolations, ' places without order,'
whose dolefulness is but feebly typified by that of modern Babylon and
Tyre, The spiritual songs of John Wesley still breathe and burn in
thousands of hearts, that but for their heaven-sent fire would have been
dark of earthly comfort and of heavenly hope. Methodism is among
us a living, actual power. It would be no light task to sum up the
good it has wrought among the humbler orders of men in England ; a
hard, though deeply interesting one, to try to separate the good it has
effected from the evil it has not always missed ; but more difficult than
all, it seems to me, to think of it with scorn and hostility, even although,
its work being chiefly among the low and ignorant, it may not number
among its many achievements that of having taught *buttermen' and
colliers to express themselves with grammatical precision; and those
who are familiar with its congregations may often be exposed to the
shock of hearing ' very sublime sentiments expressed in very imperfect
English. '
The contempt with which Dissent is so frequently handled does not
certainly arise from familiarity with its tenets. Nothing is more com¬
mon than to hear even well-educated people confound Independents
with Methodists, in apparent ignorance of the widely-opposed poles of
religious thought they occupy. But the want of accuracy and the want
of charity are two negatives that always coalesce very easily,
A young lady was expressing^ warm admiration for the tea-drinking
scene in ' Salem Chapel,'—' so exactly like,' she said, * what goes on
among these people.' A gentleman present Observed very quietly,
' You have been then a good deal among Dissenters?' ' //' was the
alarmed rejoinder; * what could make you imagine such a thing?
Salem Chapel ! / was néver in such a place in my life. '
228
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
his love for Beatrice, even if this be not taken for
' any singular proof of their wisdom,' to see in it
^ any especial argument for their folly.' Others,
while they may fully admit the physical and
mental inferiority of the negro, will yet think it
probable that the great Father of creation may
have assigned him some place and portion of his
own in existence, and may be unable to make
themselves sure that this place and portion falls
exactly under ^the beneficent whip.' Nay, there
will remain minds so perversely constituted as to
miss the beautiful logic of arguments drawn from
the King of Dahomey's conduct,^ people who will
not admit that because a heathen and barbarian
monarch chooses to massacre his subjects, a
Christian and civilized nation has a right to en¬
slave them. But these minds are obviously stub¬
born and unpliant, and it might be no less hard to
convince them that a professedly honest person at
home would be justified in robbing any given in¬
dividual, if it could be but satisfactorily proved
1 See Blackwood's Magazine for May 1866, ' The Negro and the
Negrophilists.'
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
229
that some confessed villain had intended to mur¬
der him !
Then, as regards missionaries, it would augur
surely a very slender knowledge of what human
nature really is, to expect that every one among
so large a body should be equal in zeal and self-
devotion to Xavier or Brainerd,—as rational, in
fact, as to take Sir Philip Sidney or the Chevalier
Bayard as the type and measure of the great mass
of our gentlemen of England who live at home at
ease,—yet surely to set down missionaries in gene¬
ral, unclassed and unexamined, as fools or hypo¬
crites, may be to look at things from a standpoint
quite as far removed from the true angle of vision.
And to turn to a class quite as hardly dealt
with—their friends and supporters at home,—-what
is there irrational in a warm interest in missions,—
ask, rather, who is so irrational, so inconsistent, as
the Christian who does not acknowledge their pre¬
eminent claims 1 Christianity is itself a mission¬
ary institution ; it is a propaganda extending itself
as far as it can find minds to instruct, consciences
to enlighten, hearts to subdue. Its genius is ag¬
gressive, its ardour for conquest the thirst for a
230 CHRISTÍANOS AD LEONES.
I
universal dominion. Like Mohammedanism it
lives only, only maintains itself through sword and
fire, ^ the sword of the Spirit, the word of God
the fire, the sacred fire of love and zeal which its
Lord came down from heaven to kindle. If we
have no faith in the doctrines we profess, and see
no difference between Christ and Belial, then in¬
deed one ' custom ' is as good as another, those of
Dahomey inclusive ; but to him to whom Christ is
the truth and the power of Cod, every effort made
to subdue the great outlying kingdoms that do
not acknowledge His sway ; every attempt to bring
out of the darkness and heathendom of our actual
world, the world ^not yet realized,' of promised
light and order, must be a work ta which his whole
heart responds. And this interest is one which
will not easily yield to the false statistics which
would persuade us that the missionary work of our
present day effects nothing in the way of perma-
nent impression on the heathen mind,i neither is it
lit requires a good deal of patience to form an estimate of what has
been really effected by modern missionary enterprise ; the area it
covers is so vast, and the severed fields of labour lie so far apart, that it
is impossible to meet with the required information in any compact
shape, and there is no resource but to gather, even glean it from many
varying sources. Those, however, who have done this with any degree
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
231
likely to be much aíFected by the cavil which
would insinuate that all exertion spent in this
region is subtracted from quarters nearer home.^
He who knows anything of mercy knows indeed
that its quality is not so ' strained/ its nature is dif¬
fusive, penetrating ; like the Genius in the Arabian
of persistency, know well that what has been efifected of late years by
missionary work, not only among the heathen, but in gathering together
the ' scattered abroad ' in our vast colonies, may well challenge com¬
parison with what was attained in any former period of the Church,
however famed ; and the amount of positive gain will seem all the
more remarkable when we take into account how short, comparatively
speaking, the day of work has been. We must remember, to confine
our attention to British India only, that not very long ago our Govern¬
ment was openly connected with the worship of Juggernaut, receiving
a tax from that idol's annual festival ; and that the East India Company
were, in times not very far removed from our own, so inimical to any
work of evangelization, as actually, in 1797, to prevent the settlement of
the two noble-minded Haldanes, who then contemplated devoting their
lives and fortunes to a mission in Hindostán. Yet much has been done
since then in India, not only in the way of actual conversions to Chris¬
tianity, but in the way of forcibly putting down many cruel and frightful
superstitions (witness that of human sacrifices among the Khond people),
and also in what Mr. Kaye calls the gradual undermining of the native
worship, and the loosening of its once firmly-welded hold upon the
popular mind. Also, in considering missions, we must not forget that,
as a Church and nation, we have as yet sown but sparingly, even as
regards our gold and silver ; neither have we given of our best. How
few English families, either of the higher or middle ranks, can number
among them a missionary son ; how few among us appear willing to
forsake wealth, comfort, learning, for the sake of becoming the pioneers
of the cross of Christ ! Yet our Celtic and Saxon apostles. Columba,
Ninian, and Wilfrid, were the sons of Kings and Earls.
1 There is something very amusing in the hypocrisy of ultra-bene¬
volent people, in the anxiety with which they will sometimes undertake
to prove that they are never imposed upon, the lofty indignation with
which they will occasionally declaim in good set terms against the idle
and .fraudulent ! In the town I live in I am so happy as to know two
,232
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
tale, it can at will compress itself within the nar¬
rowest limits, or at will stretch itself even unto the
heavens.
And, indeed, reasoning simply a priori^ it would
be difficult to see what there is in philanthropy
women, equally devoted to the poor and miserable, equally indefatig¬
able and liberal. Mrs. T— has a small independent income, chiefly
derived from house-rents in the poorer quarters of the town. Miss
keeps a small shop in a humble district ; she is the guide, philosopher,
and friend of an extensive clientèle^ and might make a large fortune if
her customers were as wealthy as they are numerous and constant in
their patronage, Mrs. T— is a Methodist, Miss a member of the
Established Church ; both are fervent Christians, energetic supporters
of missions, deeply interested in all that tends to extend Christ's king¬
dom on earth. I have sometimes wished that our modern satirists,
who know everything about 'religious people,'could take a look at
Mrs. T—'s rent-roll, or inspect Miss 's list of bad debts. Mrs. T—
calling upon me not long ago, to tell me of the death of an old
soldier to whom Miss had for years acted a kind and daughterly
part, added 'And I think it was too bad, considering he had 5.S. 6d. a
week pension, and a great deal of help from other quarters, that he
.should die two pounds in debt to Miss ; she allows people to
rob her.'
I, who happened to know a needy, but by no means deserving family
who owed her between six and seven pounds, re-enforced this senti¬
ment very strongly, and Mrs. T— proceeded with austerity—
' She lets her feelings run away with her ; it is quite blamable, and
I often tell her so'
A short silence, and Mrs. T—, evidently softening, adds, 'You see,
as Miss says, it's very hard to know what to do in these cases ;
there are those texts in the Bible warning one not to shut up one's com¬
passion against one's poor brother; in fact' (musingly), 'there are so
many texts.'
I thought this a good time to say, ' And how are your tenants going
on, Mrs. T—?' an inquiry which brought to light, beside many lesser
defalcations, one individual deficiency, amounting to twenty-five
pounds !
' Blessed are the viercifnl^ for they shall obtain mercy '
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
233
for even the most fault-finding to quarrel with.
There are very few things, it is true, off which you
may not contrive, if you scour them very hard, or
breathe on them very lightly, to take a good deal
of the gloss and lustre." Ardent devotion to God
may be fanaticism, or ^ other-worldliness.' Patriot¬
ism under its more exalted developments was
really, as shown in the history of ancient Greece,
but the instinct of self-preservation, hard-driven in
a hand-to-hand struggle for existence ; and much
as we admire the heroisms it prompted, it is easy
to see that here self-sacrifice was only sacrifice for
self. To risk all for one's country was to risk all
for one's farm, one's home, one's life, for personal
blessings and goods not to be otherwise secured.
But it is for others that the philanthropist lives and
labours, and if the reward of his labour returns at
last into his own bosom, it comes back to him by
a circuit so wide that it can never be foreseen or
calculated on. To do good, to distribute, to forget
self, to care for those who have none to care for
them, to be hopeful where others despair, to be
patient with ignorance, apathy, and vice, is no easy
vocation, yet surely no contemptible one. A
234
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
life ordered upon such principles would seem
likely of itself to command reverence, even from
those who feel least capable of imitating its gene¬
rous exaltation. A heart ' baptized into the sense
of all conditions'^ might seem too beautiful and
wonderful a thing for even daws to peck at lightly.
But no ! when nothing else can be proved against
philanthropists, one charge remains always valid :
they like it. And if there are people who do like
doing good and all the trouble it entails upon
them, happy is it for them and for the world !
Happy for our fallen nature and the selfish ten¬
dencies of our struggling life, that we have among
us hearts capable of what a French writer calls
the divine sorrow of Gethsemane, hearts that are
touched with a feeling of our universal nature, and
are able to make its griefs and wrongs their own.
People who laugh at philanthropists seem some¬
times to do so under a certain uneasy self-reference ;
to fear that things may be pushed so far, that we
may all be expected to bestir ourselves and take
1 ' I prayed to God/ says George Fox in his journals, ' that He would
baptize my heart into the sense of all conditions, so that I might be
able to enter into the needs and sorrows of all.'
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
235
interest in other people. But let them be for ever
reassured. ~ Even without any such distinct dis¬
claimer, they may rest satisfied that not much in
the way of kindly and generous effort is looked
for, from them, either in England or in Africa.
Quashee and Sambo do not expect to benefit by
their interference, neither, perhaps, would it count
for much in the troubles of Jack and Tom at
home ! It is not given to all men to be the
friends and helpers of their race ; to most of us,
perhaps, the question lying chiefly open in a life
full of unquickened seeds of both good and evil is
this, whether we are to nurse and foster what is
true and good, or to stifle it by selfishness, and
wither it through scorn 1 whether, in short, we
are to be-gatherers or scatterers abroad in the great
harvest of merciful endeavour. Many persons,
even when their own personal interests are con¬
cerned, can be stirred to very little ardour or
energy, and our Lord Himself intimates that
among His high and: exalted counsels, there are
some that all men are not able to receive, and
opens, as it were, a door of hope to the humble
lovers of goodness in His memorable saying.
236
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
^ Whosoever shall receive a prophet in the name
of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward.'
Whoever loves goodness for goodness' sake, truth
for truth's sake, whoever favours it, forwards it
even in the least matter, shall be rewarded, not
according to his work, but according to his heart
/
He has not known the prophet's fire, nor borne
the prophet's burden, but he shall receive one
reward with him.
And to this reward, we shall not certainly be
brought nearer by teachings which reflect and
exaggerate the least admirable feature of the
national mind, that 'overweening rationality,' so
long ago denounced by Schiller as hostile to all
the richer, deeper energies of life and feeling. It
is manifested among us both in life and literature
by z, preference for the mediocre and commonplace,
an apparent incapacity to admire the morally
beautiful and heroic, a disposition, if possible, to
cry it down, and to substitute the ^ penny saved
penny gained ' maxims of worldly practical expe¬
rience for the counsels of the everlasting Gospel
of truth and love. It shows itself in a hard real¬
ism, clear through very shallowness, incompetent
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
237
to give us one glimpse into the depths of the
human nature it professes to be so conversant
with, yet thinking it has done something very won¬
derful when it has let us look, at the pebbles, sand,
and shingles over which its own current flows. Its
mode of viewing life must necessarily be hostile
to Christianity, just as it is hostile to trust, to
purity, to affection^ to all that in natural life is
most fair and lovely. Its war with Christianity is
but a phase of its war with the ideal, but another
of its many Voltairean attempts
' To flout the fair form of Humanity,'
of all of whose cherished ideals Christianity is at
once the most noble and the most universally at¬
tainable ; a goodly tree, upbearing and sustaining
life's many-clustered vine, which without its sure
support would soon trail in that dust 'which is
the serpent's food,'—a food not meant for man,
but one to which the teachers who would per¬
suade him that he can live by bread alone would
quickly bring him. If the standard of life is to be
but the standard of sense, if there is nothing in
life but what we can get out of it for ourselves.
238
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
what then remains m an age so rich in material
acquisitions as our present one, but devotion to
gain or to pleasure, absorption in the getting or
the spending of money 1
And for the spirits that cannot stoop to this
spell, stronger allurements remain, more perilous,
deadly fascinations ; nor is it hard to see in what
direction these lie, or to trace, even in our litera¬
ture, how far a daring self-abandonment to im¬
pulse, and a confessed impatience of all moral
restraint may lead when they are joined to the
almost Pagan adoration of physical beauty. When
the heart and the intellect are deadened and de¬
frauded, the senses will soon usurp the place that
has been left vacant, and make the whole life
their own.
Cynicism, Pessimism, these are the arrows flying
in our noon-day', they aim at man's soul through
his heart and his affections, because through these
things also men live, ^ and in them is the life of the
Spirit' When the Roman soldiers mocked and
insulted our Redeemer, there was a deep signifi¬
cance in the words they uttered, 'Behold the man!'
Behold the man, yea, rather, behold the God, who
CHRISTIANOS AD LEONES.
239
lived and loved and suffered, that man might be
restored to true manhood. Behold the man and
behold the God ! these two are derided or are
/
reverenced together, and humanity never receives
so sure a death-wound as when it is stabbed
through the heart of Christ.
EDINBURGH I T. CONSTABLE,
PRINTER TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY.
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