The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons Part 11

I say again I do not think, I simply _know_, by my own experience, that men will rise to any standard which women choose to set them. Ruskin's n.o.ble words are the simple truth:

"Their whole course and character are in your hands; what you would have them be they shall be, if you not only desire to have them so, but deserve to have them so, for they are but mirrors in which you will see yourselves imaged.... You fancy, perhaps, as you have been told so often, that a wife's rule should only be over her husband's house, not over his mind. Ah no! the true rule is just the reverse of that: a true wife, in her husband's house, is his servant; it is in his heart that she is queen. Whatever of best he can conceive, it is her part to be; whatever of highest he can hope, it is hers to promise. All that is dark in him she must purge into purity; all that is failing in him she must strengthen into truth; from her, through all the world's clamor, he must win his praise; in her, through all the world's warfare, he must find his peace."

Last, but not least, we must set ourselves to make our lives simpler and plainer, and oppose the ever-increasing luxury and love of pleasure, with its sure and certain result, a relaxed moral fibre, which, to a race called to such high destinies and difficult tasks as our Anglo-Saxon race, is simply fatal. It can, and it must be done. As Philip Hammerton remarks:

"It is entirely within the power of public opinion to relieve the world from the weariness of this burthen of expensive living; it has actually been done to a great extent with regard to the costliness of funerals, a matter in which public opinion has always been very authoritative. If it will now permit a man to be buried simply when he is dead, why cannot it allow him to exist simply whilst he is living?"

To lessen the expense of dress, which has risen twenty per cent, within the last thirty years; to restore amus.e.m.e.nts to their proper place, as recreation after hard work for the good of others; to resist the ever-increasing restlessness of our day, leading to such constant absences from home as seriously to threaten all steady work for the amelioration of the stay-at-home cla.s.ses, and use up the funds which are needed for that work; to keep a simple table, so that the future Sir Andrew Clark may no longer have to say that more than half of our diseases come from over-eating; to resist the vulgar tendency to compete with our richer or more fashionable neighbors in their style of living--surely these sacrifices are not beyond us, to attain a great end, both for ourselves and our empire. If indeed we think we can meet this evil without making sacrifices amounting to a silent revolution in our life; if we think, as I have sometimes thought some women do think, that we can quench this pit of perdition in our midst by, as it were, emptying our scent-bottles upon it,--shedding a few empty tears, heaving a few sentimental sighs: "It is very sad! of course I can't do anything, but I am sure I wish all success to your n.o.ble work"--possibly even giving a very little money, say a guinea a year, to a penitentiary--all I can say is, _G.o.d is not mocked_. I know but one thing in heaven or earth that will quench it, and that is life-blood. Sometimes I have asked in anguish of spirit: "Will women give it?" I believe they will.

But, whether we give it or not, what Matthew Arnold called "the n.o.blest of religious utterances" holds good here: "Without shedding of blood there is no remission of this sin."

And it is because I know that mothers will spend their heart's blood in saving their sons, and because I believe that women, with their new-born position and dignity, will not go on accepting as a matter of course that their womanhood should be fashioned like the Egyptian sphinx, half pure woman, crowned with intellectual and moral beauty, dowered with the homage of men; and half unclean beast of prey, seeking whom it may slay, outcast and abandoned and forced to snare or starve--it is because of this, my rooted faith in women, that I have hope.

As long ago as 1880 Professor Max Muller, ever anxious for the interests of his Indian fellow-subjects, when Mr. Malabari came to ask him how he could rouse English public opinion with regard to the injuries inflicted on young girls by Hindu child-marriages, answered him at once, "Write a short pamphlet and send it to the women of England. They begin to be a power, and they have one splendid quality, they are never beaten."[44]

And if this can be said of English women, still more may it be said of the women of America.

But, further, to strengthen us in this splendid quality, have we sufficiently recognized the new moral forces that are coming into the world? Have our eyes been opened to see "the horses and chariots of fire" which are silently taking up their position around us, to guard us and fight for us, that we may not be beaten; the deepened sense of moral obligation, the added power of conscience, the altogether new altruistic sense which makes the misery and degradation of others cling to us like a garment we cannot shake off, a sense of others' woes for which we have had to invent a new word? Lord Shaftesbury's legislation does not date so very far back; and yet when his Bill for delivering women and children from working in our mines was hanging in the balance, and the loss of a single vote might wreck it--women, be it remembered, who were working naked to the waist in the coal-mines, and little children of eight or nine who were carrying half a sack of coals twelve times a day the height of St. Paul's Cathedral--the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London left the House of Lords without voting, as the subject did not interest them; while in the lower House Bright and Gladstone both voted against the Bill, Gladstone being the only member who, when the Bill was pa.s.sed by a bare majority, endeavored to delay its coming into operation! I ask, Would such a state of things be possible in these days? Am I not right in saying that new moral forces and sensibilities have been born within us which make such a state of things not only impossible, but simply incomprehensible?

Why then should we despair? What! Has G.o.d built up His everlasting marble of broken sh.e.l.ls, and will He not build up his temple of the future out of these broken efforts of ours? Has He made His pure and splendid diamond out of mere soot, and shall we refuse to see in the blackest and foulest moral problem the possibilities of the diamond, of a higher life worked out in the process of its solution, reflecting His light and His love? Has He made His precious sapphire of the mere mud that we tread under our feet, and, when we insist on our little sisters'

being no longer trodden like mud "under foot of vicious men," may they not in the course of their redemption bring an added hue of heaven to our life, an added purity to home and family, and behold, instead of the old mud, a sapphire throne, and above it the likeness as of a divine man?[45]

But to those who still hang back with a feeling of almost angry repulsion from the whole subject which makes them refuse even to face the perils and temptations of their own boys, I would address no hard words, remembering but too well the terrible struggle it cost me to make this my life work. Only I would remind them of that greatest act in all history, by which the world was redeemed. The Cross to us is so a.s.sociated with the adoration of the ages, so glorified by art, and music, and lofty thought, that we have ceased to realize what it was in actual fact such as no painter has ever dared to portray it; the Cross, not elevated as in sacred pictures, but huddled up with the jeering crowd; the Cross with its ribald blasphemies, its shameful nakedness, its coa.r.s.e mockeries, its brutal long-drawn torture. Do you think it cost the women of that day nothing to bear all this on their tender hearts? Yet what was it that made men draw nearer and nearer, till the women who at first "stood afar off, beholding these things," we are told, at last "stood by the cross of Jesus"; and, when all men forsook Him and fled, placed themselves heart to heart with the Divine Love bearing the sins of the world and casting them into the abysmal depths of its own being, deeper even than the depths of man's sin? What was it but their faithfulness to the Highest that they had known which made them endure the Cross, despising the shame?

And now, when at the end of the ages He once again calls us women to stand heart to heart with Him in a great redemptive purpose, shall we hang back? Shall we not rather obey the Divine call, enduring the Cross, despising the shame, and, like those women of old, winning for ourselves, by faithfulness unto death, the joy of being made the messengers of a higher and risen life to the world?

G.o.d grant that the power of the Holy Ghost may overshadow us and enable us to make answer with her whom all generations have called blessed: "Behold the hand-maiden of the Lord!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 42: Late Head-Master of Harrow; now Metropolitan of India.]

[Footnote 43: I would especially commend this modern order of knighthood to the prayers and support of women. It is bravely fighting our battle for us and doing the public work among men. As it attacks what is especially the sin of the moneyed cla.s.ses, it is unpopular, men resenting its interference with what they call their private life, and it is always in peril for want of funds. The White Cross league admits women a.s.sociates for intercessory prayer--and what mother will not be thankful for that?--for any work where women's aid is needed, and for raising funds for what is so emphatically our own cause. I would earnestly suggest to women who have incomes of their own that they should leave the White Cross a small legacy, so as to place it on a firmer basis. I hope myself to leave the English branch 2000.]

[Footnote 44: From an article in the _Nineteenth Century_ on "Meddling with Hindu Marriages."]

[Footnote 45: Ezek. i., 26.]

APPENDIX

In Mr. Edward Thring's address to the Church Congress at Carlisle in 1841, he said:

"Curiosity, ignorance, and lies form a very hot-bed of impurity. We pay heavily for our civilized habits in false shame and the mystery in which s.e.x is wrapped.

"I confess that for curiosity I have no remedy to propose. Ignorance and lies are on a different footing. I suppose everyone is acquainted with some of the current lies about the impossibility of being pure. The only answer to this is a flat denial from experience. I know it is possible, and, when once attained, easy. The means, under G.o.d, in my own case, was a letter from my father. A quiet, simple statement of the sinfulness of the sin and a few of the plain texts from St. Paul saved me. A film fell from my eyes at my father's letter. My first statement is that all fathers ought to write such a letter to their sons. It is not difficult if done in a common-sense way. Following out this plan at Uppingham in the morning Bible lessons, I have always spoken as occasion arose with perfect plainness on l.u.s.t and its devil-worship, particularly noting its deadly effect on human life and its early and dishonored graves.

Ignorance is deadly, because perfect ignorance in a boy is impossible. I consider the half-ignorance so deadly that once a year, at the time of confirmation, I speak openly to the whole school, divided into three different sets. First I take the confirmees, then the communicants and older boys, then the younger boys, on three following nights after evening prayers. The first two sets I speak very plainly to, the last only warn against all indecency in thought, word, or deed, whether alone or with companions. Thus no boy who has been at school a whole year can sin in ignorance, and a boy who despises this warning is justly turned out of the school on conviction."

Finally, he dwelt upon the necessity of school life having joined to it a home life. The purifying influence of a good woman and a fuller recognition of woman's work and place in the world he looked upon as that which promised most for lifting mankind into a higher atmosphere of pure life.

THE END.

White Cross Series of Tracts.

1. AN ADDRESS TO THE MEMBERS OF THE WHITE CROSS ARMY.

By the Right Rev. the BISHOP OF DURHAM.

2. THE WHITE CROSS ARMY.

A Statement of the Bishop of Durham's Movement. BY ELLICE HOPKINS.

3. PER ANGUSTA AD AUGUSTA. BY J.E.H.

7. THE RIDE OF DEATH. By ELLICE HOPKINS.

8. THE BLACK ANCHOR. By ELLICE HOPKINS.

9. THE AMERICAN ZULU. By ELLICE HOPKINS.

Shorter papers.

LOST IN QUICKSAND. By J.E.H.

IS IT NATURAL? By J.E.H.

MORAL MONEY CLIPPERS. By J.E.H.

WHO HOLDS THE ROPE? By J.E.H.

ROLLING AWAY THE STONE. By ELLICE HOPKINS.

TOUCHING PITCH. By ELLICE HOPKINS.

THE DEFACED IMAGE RESTORED. By ELLICE HOPKINS.

POWER TO LET. By ELLICE HOPKINS.