The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons Part 5

You could then pa.s.s upwards through fish with the soft and hard roe, or male and female elements which are familiar to children, and through frogs with their sp.a.w.n to birds. Here comes in an upward step indeed. "A world that only cared for eggs becomes," as Professor Drummond observes in his _Ascent of Man,_ "a world that cares for its young." The first faint trembling dawn, or at least shadowing forth, of a moral life, in the care of the strong for the weak, makes itself seen, which henceforth becomes as pervasive an element in Nature as the fierce struggle for existence in which the weak are destroyed by the strong.[20]

In the bird--till now "the free queen of the air," living at her own wild will, suddenly fettered and brooding on her nest, and covering her helpless young with her tender wings--we see some faint image of the Divine tenderness. In the ceaseless toil of both the parent birds from morning till night to fill the little gaping throats we begin to feel the duty of the strong to serve and protect the weak; and in the little hen partridge, still clinging to her nest, when the flash of the scythe is drawing nearer and nearer, till reapers have told me they have feared the next sweep of the scythe might cut off her head, we see more than a shadow of that mother's love which is stronger than death. And when we pa.s.s lastly to the highest order of animals, the mammalia, we find them named after the mother's function of giving suck to her young from her own breast. They are no longer matured in an external egg, but are borne in her own body till they are able to breathe, and seek their nourishment from her, and then they are born so helpless that, as with kittens and puppies, they often cannot even see.

In this higher order of animals nothing can exceed the devotion of the mother to her young in their helpless infancy. The fierce bear will recklessly expose her s.h.a.ggy breast to the hunter in their defence.

Here, too, we find, as the Duke of Argyle points out in his book on _The Unity of Nature_,

"that the equality of the s.e.xes, as regards all the enjoyments as well as the work of life, is the universal rule; and among those of them in which the social instincts have been especially implanted, and whose systems of polity are like the most civilized polities of men, the females of the race are treated with a strange mixture of love, loyalty, and devotion."

"Man" as the Duke says, "is the Great Exception," and has been defined as the only animal that ill-treats and degrades his female.

And when at length we come to the topmost step, "the roof and crown of things,"--Man, as you have already explained the physical facts of life-giving on the plane of plants, and ants, and bees, where they can excite no feeling of any kind, you will have no need to go over them again, but will find yourself free to express the physical in terms of the moral. Man, as a spiritual being, incarnate in an animal body, takes this great law of s.e.x which we have seen running through the animated creation, and lifts it into the moral and the spiritual. The physical love which in animals only lasts for the brief time that is needed for the production and rearing of offspring--becomes in him a love which "inhabiteth eternity," and unites him to the mother of his children in the indissoluble union of marriage. His fatherhood becomes the very representative of the Father in heaven. The mother becomes the very type and image of the Love that has loved us with more than a mother's love, borne with us with more than a mother's patience, suffered for us, in the Cross and Pa.s.sion, more than a mother's pangs, to bring us into a higher life. The love of brothers and sisters becomes the first faint beginning of the universal Church and the brotherhood of man; and the sweet babble of their voices grows choral at length in the songs of the Church triumphant, the unbroken family in heaven; while the Christian home shadows forth the eternal home which awaits us hereafter.[21]

The only warning you would have to give your boy would be to point out that, as a cathedral takes longer to build than a shanty, so the human body, which is meant to be the temple of the "Lord and Giver of life,"

takes much longer to mature than an animal's. Many an animal lives and dies of old age in the fourteen years that leave man still an immature boy. And you must earnestly impress upon him that the whole of this part of his nature which you have been explaining to him as a great law running through animated creation and finding its highest uses in Man, must be left to mature itself in absolute rest and quiet. All premature use of it is fatal to perfect health of soul and body. The less he thinks of it, and the more he thinks of his work and his athletics, the better for him. Above all, you hope, now that he knows the truth and his curiosity is satisfied, he will loathe all filthy jests and stories about that which is the source of all beautiful living things on the pleasant earth and, in his own little world, of all happy family life and innocent home love and joy.

Let me quote here, in conclusion, a little poem, called "The Golden Ladder," which seems to me to embody some of the teaching of this exquisite page of the illuminated Word of Creation, which man has so blotted and defiled with his obscenities, but which to "open hearts and love-lit eyes" is the spring of all that is highest--the birth of the moral and the cradle of the divine.

"When torn with Pa.s.sion's insecure delights, By Love's dear torments, ceaseless changes worn, As my swift sphere full twenty days and nights Did make, ere one slow morn and eve were born;

"I pa.s.sed within the dim, sweet world of flowers, Where only harmless lights, not hearts, are broken, And weep out the sweet-watered summer showers-- World of white joys, cool dews, and peace unspoken;

"I started, even there among the flowers, To find the tokens mute of what I fled-- Pa.s.sions, and forces, and resistless powers, That have uptorn the world and stirred the dead.

"In secret bowers of amethyst and rose, Close wrapped in fragrant golden curtains laid, Where silver lattices to morn unclose, The fairy lover clasps his flower-maid.

"Ye blessed children of the jocund day!

What mean these mysteries of love and birth?

Caught up like solemn words by babes at play, Who know not what they babble in their mirth.

"Or of one stuff has some Hand made us all, Baptized us all in one great sequent plan, Where deep to ever vaster deep may call, And all their large expression find in Man?

"Flowers climb to birds, and birds and beasts to Man, And Man to G.o.d, by some strong instinct driven; And so the golden ladder upward ran, Its foot among the flowers, its top in heaven.

"All lives Man lives; of matter first then tends To plants, an animal next unconscious, dim, A man, a spirit last, the cycle ends,-- Thus all creation weds with G.o.d in him.

"And if he fall, a world in him doth fall, All things decline to lower uses; while The golden chain that bound the each to all Falls broken in the dust, a linkless pile.

"And Love's fair sacraments and mystic rite In Nature, which their consummation find, In wedded hearts, and union infinite With the Divine, of married mind with mind,

Foul symbols of an idol temple grow, And sun-white Love is blackened into l.u.s.t, And man's impure doth into flower-cups flow, And the fair Kosmos mourneth in the dust.

O Thou, out-topping all we know or think, Far off yet nigh, out-reaching all we see, Hold Thou my hand, that so the top-most link Of the great chain may hold, from us to Thee;

"And from my heaven-touched life may downward flow Prophetic promise of a grace to be; And flower, and bird, and beast, may upward grow, And find their highest linked to G.o.d in me."

Possibly you will say at once, "Oh, my boy has no taste for natural history, and he would take no interest in this kind of thing." All the better his finding it a bit dry--it will rid the subject of some of its dangerous attraction. I have yet to find the boy for whom the Latin Grammar has the least interest; but we do not excuse him on that ground from grinding at it. Whether he takes an interest in it or not, you have to teach him that he has got to know about these things before going to school, to guard him from the danger of having all sorts of false, and often foul, notions palmed off on him. I do not say that pure knowledge will necessarily save, but I do say that the pitcher which is full of clear spring-water has no room for foul. I do say that you have gained a great step, if in answer to the offer of enlightenment which he is certain to receive, you have enabled your boy to acquit himself of the rough objurgation--forgive me for putting it in schoolboy language: "Oh, hold your jaw! I know all about that, and I don't want any of your rot."

I do say that early a.s.sociations are most terribly strong, and if you will secure that those early a.s.sociations with regard to life and birth shall be bound up with all the sanct.i.ties of life--with home, with his mother, with family, with all that is best and highest in life; then his whole att.i.tude in life will be different. But if these early a.s.sociations are linked with all that is false and foul, some subtle odor of the sewer will still cling about the heart of the shrine, a nameless sense of something impure in the whole subject; an undefinable something in his way of looking at it, which has often made the purity of men--blameless in their outer life--- sadden and perplex me almost as much as the actions and words of confessedly impure men.

IV

But, whatever is the importance I attach to pure teaching, I return to my old position, that purity is an att.i.tude of soul, or, perhaps I ought to say, the "snowy bloom" of the soul's perfect health, rather than anything you can embody in moral maxims or pure knowledge--that perfect bloom of spiritual health which may be as much the result of a mother's watchful care and training as the physical health of the body. It is for you to train your boy in that knightly att.i.tude of soul, that reverence for womanhood, which is to men as "fountains of sweet water" in the bitter sea of life; that chivalrous respect for the weak and the unprotected which, next to faith in G.o.d, will be the best guard to all the finer issues of his character. Truth of truth are the golden words of Ruskin to young men:

"Whomsoever else you deceive, whomsoever else you injure, whomsoever else you leave unaided, you must not deceive, nor injure, nor leave unaided according to your power any woman whatever, of whatever rank. Believe me, every virtue of the highest phase of manly character begins and ends in this, in truth and modesty before the face of all maidens, in truth and reverence or truth and pity to all womanhood."

Can we doubt or question this, we who worship Him who came to reveal the true man quite as much as to reveal the only true G.o.d--the real manhood beneath the false, perishable man with which it is so often overlaid by the influence of society and the world? Look at His att.i.tude towards women, ay, even Eastern women, who had not been enn.o.bled by centuries of Christian freedom and recognized equality of the s.e.xes, but who, on the contrary, belonged to a nation tainted to some degree with that Eastern contempt for women which made a Hindu answer the question of the Englishman, perplexed by the multiplied of Indian G.o.ds and sects, "Is there _no_ point of belief in which you all unite?" "Oh, yes," the Pundit replied, "we all believe in the sanct.i.ty of cows and the depravity of women!"

These Eastern women, therefore, had much to enslave and lower them; but see how instantly they rose to the touch of the true Man, just as they will rise, the women of to-day, to the touch of the true manhood of your sons, if you will train them to be to us such men as Jesus Christ was.

See how He made women His friends, and deigned to accept their ministry to His human needs. Many severe rebukes are recorded from His lips to men, but not one to a woman. It was a woman, ay, even a degraded woman, who by her kisses and her tears smote the Rock of Ages and the water of life flowed forth for the world, who won for the world the words: "He who hath been forgiven much loveth much," and the burden of guilt is changed into the burden of Love. It was to a woman He first gave the revelation of life, that He first revealed Himself as the Water of Life, and first uttered the words, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." It was women who remained faithful when all forsook Him and fled. It was a woman who was the last to whom He spoke on the cross, to a woman that the first words were spoken of His risen life. It was a woman He made His first messenger of the risen life to the world. Nothing in the life of the true Man on earth stands out in more marked features than, if I may venture to use the words, His faith in women, as if to stamp it forever as an attribute of all true manhood, that without which a man cannot be a man.

Now, side by side with this att.i.tude of the true Man, this perfect loyalty to all womanhood as such, ay, even degraded womanhood, place the present debased att.i.tude of men, even of some Christian men, which we are looking to you mothers of boys to change _in toto_. Is not a powerful writer in the _Westminster Review_ right when he says, "There is not found a chivalrous respect for womanhood as such. That a woman has fallen is not the trumpet call to every n.o.ble and wise-hearted man to raise her up again as speedily as may be; rather it is the signal to deepen her degradation and to doom her to moral death." Is it not a received code even among Americans as well as Englishmen that if a woman knows how to respect and protect herself men are to respect her--it is only a scoundrel that will dare to say an insulting word to her? But if she is a bit fast and giddy, if she has little or no respect for herself, if her foolish feet have slipped ever so little, then she is fair game. "She gave him encouragement; what else could she expect? It was her own fault." To expect that any man with an ounce of true manhood in him would at once say, "That young girl does not in the least realize the danger she is in, and I must get between her and the edge of the precipice, and see that she comes to no harm."--this would be to expect the wildly impossible. Have we not made up our mind that the beast and not the Christ is our master here; and does not every beast spring at once on a fallen prey? It is human nature, and you will never get men to think and act any differently. As to faith in man as such, not only in the church-going man, but in the rough-spoken fisherman, the contemned publican, the infidel Samaritan, faith in his power of recognizing and rising to the truth, the higher standard placed before him, _that_ I sometimes think lies buried in that Eastern garden--in the Sepulchre "wherein never man yet lay."[22] And yet it is the man as revealed in Jesus Christ, not the man as fashioned by the world, with its low traditions and low public opinion, that is true to human nature.

In moments of excitement or danger he reverts to this true nature, which has been so warped and overlaid by the world. In the great ma.s.s meetings which I held for the purpose of pleading with men to come over on my side and help me in the work of saving women from the awful doom to which men sentence them, I used to bring this home by saying to them: "If a fire were to break out in this vast hall, who would be the first person that you would try to save? It would be me because I am a woman"; and the roar of a.s.sent that burst forth from all parts of the building showed that I had struck home. I used to bring before them--and the sooner you bring it before your boys the better--the conduct of the men on the ill-fated _Birkenhead_--ah! dear men, voiceless and nameless, and lost in that "vast and wandering grave" into which they sank, what have they not done to raise the tone of England? You will possibly remember that the _Birkenhead_, with a troop of our soldiers on board, struck and foundered not far from land. The women and children were at once crowded into the boats, and it was only when, in a few minutes, the ship began to settle that the cry was heard among the men, "To the boats! to the boats! every man for himself!" But the officer in command stood up and shouted, "What! and swamp the women and children? Die rather!" And those men did die. Drawn up in military array, without moving a muscle, those men sank into the bitter waters of death, that the women and children might live.[23] That I contend is man's true nature, to love the woman, and, if needs be, to give himself for her.

It is, therefore, to recognize and strengthen this true nature of man, to get it deeper into him, and not to get it out of him, as I cannot but feel we have hitherto more or less done, to train your boys in this perfect loyalty to all womanhood as such; and to send forth men into the world to "die rather" than save themselves at the cost of a woman, to "die rather" than drive a woman down into those deep waters of degradation and death, that we look to the mothers of the future as the sole hope of the world. I say again you have got to see that they learn in relation to their own sisters what they have to practise towards all women, however humble, ay, and however degraded, in their future life.

As the great English oaks are built up of tiny cells, so this true manliness must be built up by a mother's watchful use of a thousand small daily incidents--by what Wordsworth rightly calls the best part of a good man's life--

"His little daily, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love."

In themselves they seem almost too trivial to mention:--the easy chair instinctively given up on the sister's entrance; the door opened for any woman pa.s.sing out; the cap removed in the presence of ladies, even though those ladies are his own relatives; the deck-chair taken out by the seaside to make the mother comfortable; the favorite cricket-match given up if an expedition has been fixed in which his services are needed; the window raised and the door shut on leaving a railway-carriage in which women are travelling, so as not to expose them to draught; and, when men-servants are not kept, the sister's bicycle cleaned or the skates polished--all those "little daily, unremembered acts" of knightly service which the mere presence of a woman ought to inspire in a man.

I am well aware that here again, as Mr. Philip Hamerton points out, the boarding-school presents a difficulty. As he says, "The worst of the distant school system is that it deprives the home residence that remains of all beneficial discipline; for the boys are guests during the holidays, and the great business is to amuse them."[24]

But surely this needs only to be mentioned to be remedied. You do not make your boys happier during their holidays by making them selfish: what is really a novelty to a schoolboy, fresh from the a.s.sociation with boys only, is to have sisters to look after and a mother to depend upon him for all sorts of little services. A joyous exclamation on your part, "Oh, what a comfort it is to have a boy in the house to do things for one!" will make him swell with manly pride; and should he show the least tendency to put upon his sisters and make them fetch and carry for him, as they are only too willing to do, you can easily put a stop to that by a few caustic remarks that you don't want savages in your house; and a pointed use of that delightful story in one of the White Cross papers,[25] of the Zulu chief to whom the Government sent a propitiatory present of wagons and wheelbarrows, thinking that it would be sure to please him. But he gazed on them with fine scorn, exclaiming: "What's the use of those things for carrying our burdens when we have plenty of women!" Or you can use that equally good story, told by Sir John Lubbock at a sectional meeting of the British a.s.sociation for the Promotion of Science, of a remote tribe of savages who had never seen a bullock, and when the white man arrived with his bullock wagons, after much perplexed discussion, they came to the conclusion that, as they were used for heavy loads, they must be the white man's wives!

A little wholesome, if incisive, raillery on your part will quickly extinguish any tendency to make willing slaves of his sisters. If, however, you prefer to indulge your foolish fondness for him, that subtle self-indulgence which makes it easier for you to sacrifice yourself and his sisters to him rather than discipline him to work out his true nature, remember you gratify yourself at his most cruel cost.

You produce the boy whose youth is marked by a tacit contempt for girls and whose manhood will be disfigured by a light estimation of the beauty and sanct.i.ty of womanhood.

I know well I shall be told that all this is quite out of date; that modern girls are so independent that they stand in no need of brothers, but like to place themselves on a level with them and share as good comrades in all their rough-and-tumble games. Let us be of good cheer.

s.e.x is a very ancient inst.i.tution, the slow evolution of hundreds of centuries, and is in no danger of being obliterated by the fashion of a day. Take the most advanced "new woman"; yes, concealed under that virile shirt-front, unchoked by that manly necktie and turned-up collar, lurking beneath that masculine billy-c.o.c.k; nay, hidden somewhere deeper down than the pockets of even those male knickerbockers, you will find the involuntary pleasurable thrill at a strong man's chivalrous attention, the delicious sense of a man's care and protection, which centuries and centuries of physical weakness have woven into the very tissues of her being, in however loud and strident a voice she may deny it. Whatever changes in the position of women may take place, the basic fact remains, and will always remain, the man is stronger than the woman, and his strength is given him to serve the weaker; and you have got to get your girls to be your fellow-helpers in developing all that is best and most chivalrous in their brothers, and not so to run riot in their independence as to subst.i.tute a boyish camaraderie for the exquisite relations of the true man to the true woman.

There rises up now before me a boy, one of those delightful English boys overflowing with pluck and spirits. His mother had come to one of my meetings, and, like so many other mothers, I am thankful to say, had received a lifelong impression from what I said with regard to the training of boys, and she resolved, there and then, to act upon my advice with her own boys. She told me some two years after, that this boy had come in late one afternoon and explained to her that a little girl had asked him to direct her to rather an out-of-the-way house. "I thought she might ask that question of some one who would tell her wrong, or that she might come to some harm, so I thought I had better go with her and see her safe to the house." "But what of the cricket-match that you wanted so to see?" his mother asked. "Oh, I had to give that up. There wasn't time for both."

On another occasion, when a Christmas-tree was being prepared in the schoolroom for some choristers, as he and his mother left at dusk a chorister tried to force himself past her and gain a private view; and when she refused him admittance, not recognizing who she was, called her a very disrespectful name. Instantly the boy flew at him like a little tiger, "How dare you speak to my mother like that!" "I didn't see it was your mother," the chorister pleaded, trying to ward off the blows. "But you saw it was a woman, and somebody's mother, and you dare to speak to her like that!" And such a storm of fisticuffs fell on every part of that hulking young chorister's person as forced him at last to cry for mercy and promise that he would never do so again. That boy's master wrote to his mother towards the end of his school-time--he was a Bluecoat boy--and said that he positively dreaded his leaving, as his influence on the side of everything good, and pure, and high was quite that of a master.

And now I come to the question of religious teaching, which you may be surprised that I have not put first of all. First of all, in one sense, I do put it. There can be no greater safeguard to purity of life than vital religion. I do not go so far as some evangelical mothers who have told me that nothing less than the conversion of their boys would be of the least avail to keep them morally straight; on the contrary, I have known men who have never come under any strong religious influence, but have grown up sceptical scientific men, yet who have led lives as pure as any woman's. Common manhood, with the "Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world"; common love for mother and sister, which for their sakes maketh it impossible to wrong their womanhood, even when fallen into the dust; common self-respect, which is so strong in some men, and makes them shrink from anything in the nature of mud, is often sufficient to accomplish this end. But still, when all is said, if in answer to your mother's prayers you can implant in your boy a sense of the Divine Presence and the cry of the quickened conscience, "How can I do this great sin and wickedness against G.o.d?" you have doubtless given him the best panoply against the fiery darts of temptation. Only I would again warn you that there must be no forcing of the religious emotions, no effort to gather the fruits of the spirit before the root, in the shape of the great cardinal virtues everywhere presupposed in Christian ethics, has been nourished, and strengthened, and watered into strong, healthy growth. We have to bear in mind our Lord's words, which it seems to me religious parents sometimes forget, that there is an order of growth in spiritual things as in natural--first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear; and we are not to try to force the full corn in the ear before the stalk and the blade have grown. For the want of laying to heart these words of the great Teacher, I have known much pulpy, emotional religion engrafted on young souls--admirably adapted to exhaust the soil, but with the smallest possible bearing upon right conduct; a religion perfectly at its ease with much scamping of lessons and hard work in general; indulgent of occasional cribbing, and of skilful manipulation of awkward truth, of betting and small extravagances; and innocent of all sense of dishonesty in allowing a struggling parent to pay large sums for education while the school-time so purchased, often at the cost of home comforts and pleasant outings, is squandered in idleness.

What a boy really needs, and, indeed, all immature things--for I found it equally true of immature men--is a simple, practical religion, based more on the facts of life and conscience than on doctrines and dogmas.

To know G.o.d as his Father; to know that he has a Redeemer who laid down His life to save him from sin and who takes account of his smallest and most broken effort to do what is right; to realize that it is only so far as he is like Christ and in Christ that he can be really a man and work out what is highest in him; to know that he has been baptized into a Divine Society, binding him to fight against all wrong, both within and in the world without; above all, to know that there is a supreme spiritual Power within him and about him to enable him to do right, and that in the line of duty "I can't" is a lie in the lips that repeat, "I believe in the Holy Ghost"; this is as much as his young soul can a.s.similate, not as mere religious phrases, but as realities to live by.

"So nigh to glory is our dust, So nigh to G.o.d is man, When duty whispers low 'Thou must,'

The soul replies, 'I can.'"

But see that beneath all this he has the special Christian teaching with regard to the sanct.i.ty of the body thoroughly instilled into him. If the Incarnation means anything, it means not the salvation and sanctification of a ghost, but the salvation and consecration of the whole man, of his body as well as his soul. True, the animal body to a spiritual being must always be a "body of humiliation," but nothing can be more unfortunate and misleading than the epithet in the Authorized Version of "vile" as a translation of the Greek word used by St. Paul.

On the contrary, we are taught that even this mortal body is a temple of the Holy Ghost.

In teaching this there can be no difficulty; you can make use of a child's natural reverence for a church. You can say, "What would you think if you heard of some loose lads breaking into a church, and just for the fun of the thing strewing the aisles with cinder dust and all sorts of loose rubbish; tearing out the pages of Bibles and hymn-books to light their pipes, and getting drunk out of the chalice? You would be honestly shocked at such profanity. Nay, even in the dire exigencies of war we do not think better of the Germans for having stabled their horses in one of the French churches and left their broken beer-bottles on the high altar and the refuse of a stable strewn up and down the nave. Yet a church is, after all, only a poor earthly building, built by human hands. But there is one temple which G.o.d has built for Himself, the temple of man's body; and of that the terrible words are written, and ever fulfilled, "If any man defile that temple, him will G.o.d destroy." G.o.d's great gift of speech is not to be defiled by dirty talk, by profane language, by lies, or evil speaking. The organs which are given us for its sustenance are not to be denied by gluttony and piggishness, either in food or drink. The boy is not to use any part of his body in defiling ways which he would be ashamed for his own mother to know of. To do so is not only to defile, but--with the double meaning of the Greek word, which we cannot render into English--to destroy; to weaken his brain-power, which he wants for his work in life, to weaken his nervous system, lessening his strength thereby and rendering him less able to excel in athletics, and often, if carried to excess, in after-life bringing results which are the very embodiment of the terrible words, "Him will G.o.d destroy." The full force and bearing of this teaching he may not apprehend. I have already said that with a young boy the lower appeal never to do anything that is low and dirty and blackguardly will have far more practical weight, and will also avoid laying undue stress on the religious emotions. But I am quite sure that the Christian teaching of the sanct.i.ty of the body must be laid deep and strong with all the force of early impression in a boy's inmost being, in order that it may lie ready for future use when Nature has developed those instincts of manhood which will teach him its full significance.

If you are an Episcopalian, you will of course find the time of your boy's confirmation simply invaluable as one of those turning-points which will enable you to speak, or possibly write, more unreservedly than is possible on more ordinary occasions. I would earnestly ask you to give him a little White Cross confirmation paper called _Purity the Guard of Manhood_, a paper which an Eton master p.r.o.nounced the best thing he had met with of the kind, and which has been widely used. Do not rest content with merely giving the paper in a perfunctory way, but follow it up with a few living, earnest words of your own.