Men, Women, and God Part 6

May I say a plain word or two about the shyness and self-consciousness in society which so torment young girls? The first thing I would say is that they will almost certainly pa.s.s away before long, and that therefore they need not be bothered about. Lots of the most effective and socially successful men and women in the world went through a painful period of shyness in early youth, and now only smile at the memory of those days.

In so far as that self-consciousness is produced by society of any sort, it is based upon the delusion that other people look at us and think about us a great deal more than they do. It is also due to a habit of minding what other people think and say a great deal more than the facts warrant. We are not so important as to attract much general notice, and other people are not so important that on account of their prejudices and conventions we should distress ourselves.

But in so far as discomfort in society is due to the presence there of members of the opposite s.e.x, there is something different to be said.

The whole contention of this book is that the attraction which exists between the s.e.xes is a right and wholesome thing, and that the way of wisdom is to accept the fact of it quite simply. When that is done it is found possible to let that mutual attraction issue in friendship and camaraderie of a kind that enriches and dignifies life.

Of course all this is much easier for girls who have been brought up with boys. They learn to be at home with the other s.e.x, not to be fussy and foolish, and not to trade upon their s.e.x. But that sort of relationship to men is also quite possible even for those who were not brought up with boys, and in the attaining to it girls find their real peace of mind.

I would also like to put down here some thoughts about beautiful girls.

A beautiful girl always makes me want to do two things. One is to thank G.o.d for making so lovely a thing, and the other is to say a prayer that she may have special help given her for her specially difficult lot.

For beauty is both a very great gift and a very hard thing to handle.

Some of you must know that you are beautiful, and you are sure to find the fact exciting, delightful, and yet embarra.s.sing. You have great powers--powers over other women and over children in part--and very great powers over men. You can, if you will, use that power to induce men to make fools of themselves. You can let yourselves slip into the habit of living on admiration and feeding on the pleasure it gives you. You can exploit your beauty to win through it things you do not really deserve. People will forgive much to a beautiful woman, and you can trade on that fact. You can get a great deal of your own way if you master the art of being charming as well as beautiful; and you can in that way use your beauty to your own undoing, and make it partly a curse to others. In fact you are certain to have to face many temptations which the majority of women escape. That is the hard part of your lot. All who understand know quite well that life cannot but be more complicated for you than for most, and you have a very great claim on their sympathy. But the way to avoid your dangers is not to pretend to yourself that you are not beautiful. Pretence never helps us. The way is to face the fact of your beauty, realize that you did not create it, and therefore need not be vain about it, and then go on to decide what use you are going to make of the power it gives you. It can be used for G.o.d--otherwise He would not have given it. It can be turned into influence of a very wonderful kind. If you can induce men to make fools of themselves, you can also draw out all that is best in them, and inspire them for fine living. In plain English, when a beautiful woman is also a good woman she is one of the greatest boons to mankind.

She can give great pleasure to others--but she can do more, she can stir the latent idealism in men and women in wonderful ways. She can move through the world as a source of gracious, kindly, and bracing influence. Of course, once again, the essential secret is to think of giving and not of getting, to get self into the background and live for love and service--to employ your great gift for the sake of the giver of it. I suspect that it must need a great deal of self-discipline-- perhaps more than a man can understand. I am sure it must need a great deal of prayer. But it has been done, and can be done again.

And that leads me naturally to the last thing I want to say in this chapter. I have already said in the chapter specially addressed to men that the great help for the difficult early days of life is to be found in religion. [Footnote: Cp. p. 80ff.] And of course that is equally true for girls.

Religion means having a great and worthy interest at the center of our lives, which gives meaning to the whole of them. Being religious means that the essential and eternal part of us is coming into life, and it almost necessarily follows then that the other parts of our personalities slip into their proper places. It means having an object for our affections more than worthy of all our deepest emotions, and more than able to fill our empty hearts. Religion in the early days of life is generally very emotional. I believe that that is perfectly right and natural, provided we also make efforts to be sincere and to love the truth. Because it is emotional, its value as an outlet for feeling is very great. It does not remain at its first emotional level.

Later on there comes an inevitable change when many think, quite wrongly, that they are losing their religion. But at the stage I am thinking of religion naturally and normally expresses itself in intense feeling. We are all hero worshippers at that stage of life. Hero worshipping, however, is apt to get us into trouble, for our heroes fail us in time. The one perfect hero who never fails us is Christ. He alone never disappoints, and to love Him is to have all the n.o.bler chords in our beings set in motion. We are sure to despair of ever becoming worthy of Him. But no leader of men was ever so willing to take us as we are and make the best of us. To be near Him may mean being made to feel deeply ashamed. In His presence we are sure to feel small and mean. But that also is a good thing, and in spite of it He loves us. In other directions we seek with longing to find love, and often fail. With Him we may be quite sure of finding love. And He goes on loving to the end.

Being loved by Him does at last draw out the best in us. Inevitably we begin to want to be more worthy--to serve and love others for His sake--to know and love the truth--to find and worship beauty. And that means having a life full of splendid and worthy interests.

Emotional muddles may in fact be the lot of most of us for a while. But if at the center of them all there is an honest love for Christ, they cannot overwhelm us; and in the long run we are sure to emerge into the life that has both peace and power in it.

CHAPTER IX

INVOLUNTARY CELIBACY

Modern England has for many generations been a place so unhealthy for the young that a vast problem has grown up in our midst which seriously disturbs the normal adjustment of s.e.x relationships. It would seem to have been Nature's intention that there should be slightly more men than women in the world, for boy babies outnumber girl babies [Footnote: The actual figures are 1052 boy babies to 1000 girl babies.]

What it would mean if there were more adult men than women in the world it is hard to imagine. It would at once have enormous social consequences. No woman would remain a celibate except by her own choice. Men would have to behave themselves in order to win wives, and would cease to occupy the demoralizing position of being able to get wives whenever they want them. It would in fact mean a new world in many ways.

As things are, however, the unhealthy conditions of modern life produce a greater mortality among boy babies than among girl babies, and males come to be in a minority. This state of affairs has been greatly aggravated by the war, but it was serious even before 1914. It was then the case that the women outnumbered the men by about a million. The number must be nearer a million and a half to-day.

The result is that over a million women have to face the prospect of a life in which their most deeply implanted instincts--the instincts for wifehood and motherhood--cannot find their normal satisfaction, and the problem thus created is one of the most difficult in the whole of life.

It is, of course, nothing less than insulting nonsense to talk about these women as "superfluous women." Behind the very phrase there lurks the old delusion that women are only needed in the world as wives and mothers. As a matter of fact a great deal of the work that is most needed in our civilization--work in education, art, literature, nursing, social service, and other departments of life--is being done by these women.

But while that is true it is also true that the personal life of the unmarried woman presents acute problems of a most intricate kind.

Probably only a woman can truly understand those problems or justly estimate their urgency, but no man with any insight or sympathy can fail to know that the lot of the unmarried woman involves secret stresses, unsatisfied yearnings, and sometimes hours of dark depression. She may be unmarried because she has persistently refused to try to be satisfied with any second best. As a witty woman friend of mine once put it, she may be unmarried because "the attainable was not desirable and the desirable was not attainable." She may be unmarried because a very true lover of early days went on before, and she has never felt able to put anyone else in his place. Or she may have loved truly some man who loved another. Or nothing may ever have happened to awaken conscious love in her, in which case it is still possible that her nature may cry out at times for the satisfaction of its primary needs. And while all this is true, she is conventionally supposed never to show by any sign that she would have liked to be married. However much she may suffer it is held unseemly for her to show that she suffers, or to ask for sympathy. She is often, and I think quite indefensibly, denied by social convention the stimulus of any really intimate friendships with men. She is made the subject of uncounted third-rate jokes. And if, as life goes on, she develops peculiarities of manner or asperities of temper--if she begins to lose vitality and grace, these things are noted with contempt by people who little imagine how much real heroism may lie concealed in the object of their scorn. I believe, however, that I speak for a very large number of men when I confess that nothing kindles in me quite the same flame of resentment at things as they are, as just this fact that so many gracious and kindly women, plainly made for motherhood and fitted for a fine part in life, should find themselves held in the clutches of this insistent problem.

It may well help all such to realize the fact stated above, namely, that the problem is no part of the eternal and designed order of things, but one of the results of our social misbehavior. In a very real sense the women who suffer in this matter suffer vicariously for the sins of all society. It is not they who are guilty, but all mankind. For all who mean resolutely to face the problem and to win through to victory, it is first of all essential that they should realize the fact that their acute depressions and their restlessness of mind have really a quite well-defined physical and psychological cause.

Somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five these depressions often become very acute, so that the whole horizon of life is darkened.

Sensitive women often torment themselves by wondering what they have done that is wrong, for of course all depression is apt to take the form of a sense of wrongdoing. Further, at this period the religious sensibilities of many seem to suffer eclipse. They can no longer respond in feeling to any of the sublime religious truths. They find they cannot pray. Nothing seems to matter. The memory of earlier days when life seemed bright and religious faith was confident seems only to mock them. Many are beset by definite intellectual difficulties and so are tempted to a general cynicism. Envy of others will suggest itself, and though it be sternly repressed, it still adds to the general strain, while good advice from others will seem just the last straw which cannot be borne.

But one half of this problem has disappeared at once for many from the day when they faced the plain truth that the cause of trouble is physical. Physiological processes with certain inevitable psychological accompaniments are at the bottom of it. Because their natures have not received their natural fulfillment a complicated situation has arisen which cannot be easily lived through, though it may be in the end triumphantly controlled. And if it helps ordinary people to learn that sometimes when they seem to be suffering from a sense of sin they are really only being plagued by indigestion, it may very much more help women in this difficult period to know that they are only going through an inevitable physical readjustment. What is happening is that s.e.xual desire--it may be in vague, unconscious, and very general forms--is a.s.serting itself. Nothing could be more absurd than to suggest that there is anything wrong or immodest in that fact. It is quite inevitable. Indeed, the first step out of the trouble lies in accepting the fact and then in considering how it is to be dealt with.

What is the way out of this difficult bit of life? All said that can be said about the physical and psychological causes, a very real problem remains. There must be a way of meeting it which ends in complete victory, for women who have come through it victoriously are to be found on all hands. What has been the secret of their victory? I prefer to let a woman begin the answer. "I think," writes one, "that the only possible thing for such women to do is to have their eyes fixed on G.o.d, and to know that in some mysterious and wonderful way He understands and meets all our needs. I think it needs a definite act--of our wills, our intellects, and our emotions--an act of consecration and self-offering to G.o.d, and until that is done there will be no peace."

And then, after expressing her conviction as to the insufficiency of the policy of mere sublimation she continues, "I really believe that for women a real act of surrender--a joyful offering to G.o.d--is the only way."

I am sure the ultimate wisdom about this whole matter is contained in those sentences, and I am sure because there are numerous other departments of life in which similar problems a.s.sail both men and women, and in relation to which the way of self-surrender is the only possible way to life.

After all, it is not only unmarried women who have to face the experience of wanting pa.s.sionately something which they cannot have. In various forms that challenge comes to most men and women whether married or not. Our desires demand one thing, and life with its imperious authority offers something different; and it is perhaps in that way that most of us come to the crisis of our lives. It is easy to break oneself against a situation of that sort. It is easy to spoil life completely by an obstinate concentration on the object that is being withheld--to lose life by insisting on finding it in one's own chosen way. Men and women alike make shipwreck of their lives in that way every year.

But there is another way. Our real life is life in G.o.d, and the way into it is always the way of surrender. To say with utter sincerity and absence of self-will, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" is to begin to find deliverance at once. We could not and should not surrender thus to anybody else. He alone perfectly understands. But when we have put ourselves into His hands without reserve, immediately life begins to arrange itself. With such surrender there comes a peace which nothing else can bring. I say it with acute sympathy for all strong-willed, high-spirited people, for whom surrender is very difficult. But I say it with an a.s.surance that is based upon the unanimous verdict of the souls of all history who have found life. "I have learned," said one much hara.s.sed and persecuted man, "in whatsoever state I am therein to be content." He was content because in whatsoever state he might be he was always in the fellowship of G.o.d, and therefore in enjoyment of his essential life. He knew himself secure whatever life might bring, and even though life itself should end. He was inwardly in a state of profound peace and spiritual freedom, and that is why all the gracious powers of his humanity were able to find free and beautiful expression.

So it must be with all of us. We find our real life, and we become masters or mistresses in life only when we have given in and allowed the love of G.o.d to direct and sustain us. For the particular problem dealt with in this chapter and for all other painful and pressing problems of life, the way of victory is to seek and find the life that is hid with Christ in G.o.d.

No doubt at this point two questions will arise in the minds of some.

Firstly, some will want to say, "All that is very well for those who are religious, but how about the people who are not religious?" I have no answer to that question, because I believe there is none. Religion is not a sort of hobby that just seems to suit certain peculiar people.

It is a prime necessity for all of us. In a great many other connections it becomes increasingly plain to all who have eyes to see that there is no solution for the problem of life except the one which G.o.d Himself offers to all seeking souls. We may refuse to seek Him, but in so doing we close the prison doors against ourselves. I am not surprised that in studying the problems of s.e.x I find no answer to the most acute of them apart from religion. That is what I should expect.

Is it likely that men and women who were made for G.o.d should ever find any lasting satisfaction or any way to victory in life apart from Him?

And indeed, in the particular connection I am now writing about, it is the fact that not a few women have lived to be almost thankful for the problem of involuntary celibacy that once confronted them in so menacing a way. It threw them back on G.o.d, and their experience of Him has been so rich that they are thankful for the compulsion that drove them into His fellowship.

There is no mysterious hunger in the inner life of any woman--no restless longing ever torments her--no painful stresses ever make her life seem difficult--no weary loneliness ever makes the world seem desolate, but He understands--perfectly and utterly. And if it be love that a woman longs for, there is no love like unto His love--perfect in tenderness, in understanding and in power. Yes, G.o.d Himself is the final answer to the problem of all lives that here seem to be unfulfilled, whether they be lives of men or women.

The other question that will be raised will be put in these words: "You have said that in the dark hours that come to so many women religious feeling seems to be suspended, and yet you go on to say that the way of escape lies in religion," I know that what I have written may seem for this reason utterly tantalizing to some. I know that in general it is in times when we most need religion that it is apt to seem most remote from us. Most of us have been in that dilemma. But there is a way out.

It consists partly in remembering that religion is not only a matter of feeling, and that when feeling fails us the mind and will remain. But it consists still more in remembering that religion is not so much our affair as G.o.d's. G.o.d does not only answer the prayers of people who are feeling religious. If religion be what the experience of thousands declares it is, then we have reason to expect that our seeking of G.o.d will have results even when our emotions seem dead. We can at least direct our thought life. We can set ourselves towards Him by the deliberate direction of attention. We can think the true and right thoughts. And in that way a religion begins to come into life that is tenfold more abiding and sustaining than any religion that is a mere matter of feeling. It may need rigid self-discipline and really hard work thus to direct attention and attain to a regulated thought life. But then, I am not suggesting that there is an easy way through this problem. There is a way, and a way that leads to real victory; but it is no more easy than any other path that leads to a great goal.

I should like further to draw on the experience of women themselves to add some additional suggestions born of common sense and experiment. A very wise woman once supplied through me some hints to one who was going through this difficult period, and I am sure her hints are worth pa.s.sing on to others. She insisted that no woman at this stage should attempt to live alone. Healthy friendship with other women is one of the greatest possible helps to success. As I have noted in a previous chapter, there is a danger that lurks not far away in this connection.

But too much cannot be said of the helpful and bracing influence of friendships that are kept really healthy. Then, it is a mistake for women to live in inst.i.tutions when that can be avoided. It really helps to have some room or rooms in the care of which the home-making instinct can find expression, and which may thus become a means to self-expression. More important still, my friend insisted that it is better at this period to work with people than with things. Other people always tend to draw us out of ourselves, if we will allow that to happen. They make demands on our affections. They keep us in touch with real life and its vast variety of emotions and interests. They make self-forgetfulness possible. Further, it is important for such women--as important as for all other people--to learn the truth that the way to win love is to give it. When people suffer tortures of loneliness it is essentially loneliness of heart. Like all other normal persons they long to be loved. But nothing is more futile in such a situation than simply to sit down and wait for someone to come along and love us. That way lies despair. What we can do is to awaken to the fact that all around us are people who also long to be loved, and that we have love to give them if we will but be generous. They may not seem very attractive people, but in that case they only need our love the more. Is it not being loved that makes people lovely! And when women rouse themselves to use their own love generously for others, they begin--always--to find the doors of deliverance opening.

A further very great step will have been taken when it is realized that the life force which is not going to have its normal and natural outlet need not on that account be wasted. It can be directed to other ends with enormous benefit to the world. I cannot hope to say anything on this point one-half so adequate or so helpful as the chapter Miss Royden has already written in _s.e.x and Common Sense_. Out of the fullness of knowledge she has gained by an amazingly sensitive sympathy she has there written the best account I have ever seen of how thwarted s.e.x emotion can be sublimated to other ends, and made an immensely effective force for the progress of the race. In both men and women s.e.xuality is just life force. If the natural method of expression be denied to it, it will still seek out ways in which to express itself.

If it has been merely repressed unwillingly and incompletely the results, as the psychologists are telling us, are apt to be disastrous.

But if the situation is openly faced, and honestly accepted--if a conscious surrender of the normal s.e.x career be achieved--then it is possible to utilize the life force that springs from our s.e.x natures for great physical, mental, or emotional activities, and that without any of the evil results that follow from mere repression. In fact by living an abundant life in natural, useful, and absorbing ways the problem becomes capable of a truly happy solution.

I have written the word "happy" deliberately. But I am not sure that at first this way out will seem happy. Useful it certainly will be, but all said and done I fancy that some residue of regret will be apt to remain, and that because of it women will be tempted to indulge in self-pity. And self-pity both for men and women is the most enervating of all emotional luxuries. Therefore, I wish to insert here a word of grateful testimony. If the sublimation of s.e.x instinct seems to some women a poor and pale subst.i.tute for the normal career of marriage and motherhood, I am at least sure that for society at large it is a very blessed subst.i.tute. My chief experience of life has been in those places called slums, where life is always seen in its most drab and pitiful guise, and I can speak with certainty about this problem in relation to them. In the districts in which I have worked there have always been at least a few unmarried women who were spending with lavish generosity their whole life force in practical service and sympathy for needy children, hara.s.sed mothers, wayward men, and the sufferers of the district in general. No members of the human race are living anywhere with greater effect. No other women are called blessed with greater sincerity. Half a dozen in particular I can think of who in this way have done more for the redemption of society in such places than a score of happily married mothers could have accomplished. I do not know whether they feel that the sublimation of their instincts has been a complete success, but I do know that hundreds of grateful people have no doubt about it whatever. The whole world in its modern guise is crying out for such services as women alone can render, and if, on the one hand, women are the chief sufferers through the confusions of human affairs, they have at least a wonderful chance of finding and applying the remedy. The world can never make good to them the wrong it has done them; yet they may, if they will, put the world inexpressibly in their debt. No doubt mankind does not deserve it, but the one perfect lover in history was willing to die for an undeserving world. It can never be other than a great calling to follow where He leads the way.

A woman of great experience tells me that here I ought to suggest that in that minority of cases where it is possible, an unmarried woman may with great advantage adopt a child. There are many children in the world to-day without parents, and these children have a greatly lessened chance of life. But when one of these children is adopted in the way suggested a great benefit is brought firstly to the child, secondly to society, and thirdly to the woman herself, who thus acquires a worthy object for all the pa.s.sionate devotion she possesses.

Having known this plan adopted in several instances, I have wondered why it is not more common, at least when financial considerations make it a possibility.

No doubt to take this course or any of the other courses here suggested will need courage. But all successful ways of life need courage. Life itself is a challenging summons to courage. There is no happy way through for those who sit down in fear or who give in to their own distresses. Fate is a tyrant only to those who will not face him with spirit. A full and satisfying life has to be s.n.a.t.c.hed from under the enemy's guns, but it can be so s.n.a.t.c.hed. Neither men nor women need give in though often defeated. "Unconquering but unconquered" may be the best motto that we can hope to deserve, but for all those who inscribe it on their banners a strange happiness does creep into the soul.

CHAPTER X

THE ART OF BEING MARRIED