Part 14

Have any of you the lurking thought, "I was born by no choice of my own: those who brought me into the world owe duty to me, not I to them?" I have known some say this, and I have known many act as if they thought it, and I have known some who felt as if God had better work for them to do outside home, and have either gone off to do it, or have chafed against life because they could not go. It does seem to me that the present very general eclipse of the old Roman virtue of filial piety lies at the root of much of the unsound work, and of the undone work, of the present day.

Know your own work, and do it. What is your work on leaving school? Is it not to learn to fit into your home? At school, when you got your remove, your duty was to get into the work of the new form, and to do it. You have now been moved to higher and far more difficult work than any sixth form, you are in the school of home. Are you learning its lessons, or are you fretting for a remove? It may be you find life so easy and pleasant at home that you feel any talk of its difficulties does not apply to you; it is all play so far. But I know so many who feel this friction on leaving school, that I am sure it must be the case with some of you.

If any here fail to feel the debt they owe at home--the debt which God enforced as next to the debt owed to Himself--let me remind them that the whole instinct of mankind has responded to the appeal of parents; filial piety has always been reverenced and held beautiful, and the hereditary sense of mankind must be taken into account in deciding what is, or is not, a virtue. But supposing I granted, for the sake of argument, that the original debt was on your parents' side and not on yours, what then? You remain as bound as ever to show them submission and devotion; all, in short, that the old-fashioned believers in the Fifth Commandment thought to be due from a daughter. If you are striving after a noble life you must give all this,--if you owe allegiance to either the Christian ideal of love or to the Pagan one of strength. "If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God Whom he hath not seen?" and, equally, if he love not his brother close at hand, how can he love brethren afar off? It is a poor sort of love which lavishes itself on self-chosen and, therefore, less irritating objects of charity, and is powerless to influence the home atmosphere. It is a poor sort of strength which shrinks from the hardest fight, from the conquest of self at home.

Is not every right and wise piece of good work for others an attempt to help them to train themselves to live a higher life? And can we dare to put our hand to this plough while neglecting our own training?

I was asked to speak to you about WORK, and you may think I am forgetting this in dwelling on home life. Not at all; I am looking on home life not as an end in itself, but as God's great training-school for His best workers; as the special place for the development of those qualities which are essential to all true and lasting work for "the Relief of Man's Estate."

I do not think I underrate the difficulties girls find; quite apart from her own faults and weaknesses, a girl who leaves school and goes home has probably three difficulties to contend with.

First, the change from restraint to liberty, which is a difficult phase in every life. Will you make it a change from "the rich bounties of constraint" to self-restraint, which is better still; or will you let it be a change to the weak lawlessness of a drifting life? If you would respect yourselves, and be worthy to take part in the great battle between good and evil, make and keep some rules for yourselves. Have a rule about getting up in the morning and (almost equally important) about going to bed at night; a rule against novels in the morning; a rule to read something sensible every day. Make what rule you please, only keep it, or you will never be more than a cumberer of the ground. Reading is the best thing to save your life from being eaten away by trifles. The best advisers say to a man taking a country living, "Read, read, read;" I say to you, read doggedly; the snare of a free life is desultory reading. Make any plan of stiff reading you like, and stick to it for one year, writing out notes of what you read, and you will be fitter for real work if it comes, as come it will.

I dare say you find reading is cold work,--very few women really enjoy knowledge for its own sake,--you are tempted to throw it up, and to drift in an easy good-tempered way, which pleases the others much more than your shutting yourself up to read. And the others are quite right in expecting you, now school is over, to be a woman, "with a heart at leisure from itself" and from self-improvement. One of the hardest home lessons for some girls to learn is the power of sitting idle and chatting. They feel it waste of time; they long to be doing something tangible; and yet a home atmosphere is mainly the result of the mother having acquired the art of leisure. You will be very unrestful house-mothers when your turn comes, and very unsatisfactory daughters and sisters in the mean time, if you are always at high pressure, and giving your family to understand that you must not be spoken to!

Too often the girl, who by dint of conscientious struggles keeps up real study, gets out of touch with her surroundings, and sees the stream of family confidences, and affections, and appeals for help and sympathy flowing towards the easy-going sister, who makes no struggles of any kind. Your great wish is to be a true woman, "with continual comfort in her face." Are your books, and your self-discipline, and your time-table, only a hindrance to this? Must you starve either head or heart? Why cannot you seem outwardly at leisure, and yet live an inner life of thought and work? It needs self-denial, forethought, economy of time, and that most Christian grace of tact; but these are all attainable, all part of that Wisdom which "orders all things sweetly and strongly," and which is the rightful heritage of every true woman. Let no delusion about amiability induce you to leave off reading and study, only be very discreet as to how and when you do it.

Let your time-table be a secret hair shirt, and not a red rag flaunted in your family's face. But never give up reading and thinking, the keeping in touch with abstract ideas. As long as you are young you can get on without this, but, when the charm of youth deserts you, you will find life (and others will find you) a blessing or a curse, according as you have developed or starved your powers of mind. It may be that you find little pleasure in your steady reading, and see no immediate results from it; never mind, read on, lest you become in middle life one of those amiable, empty-headed women who can give neither help, nor comfort, nor advice, worth the taking. How many old maids, and young maids too, tied by home duties, allowed their minds to get thin and empty: when, at last, they were set free they were silly and inconsequent; no work requiring thought and insight could be entrusted to them.

The second difficulty which is felt by many comes from the new lights of the day. At school, girls come in contact with varied ideals and inspirations,--they drink new wine, and they go home to find that old bottles are still used there. Very often this difficulty is greater in proportion as a girl has rightly profited by school--in proportion as she has been teachable and ready to assimilate good; she goes home with new aspirations to be met by old prejudices--prejudices intensified by half-loving jealousy of the alien influences of school. Are you to shut your eyes to the new lights, and be as though you had never known them? No, but do not keep one Commandment by breaking another. The First Commandment is supreme, Thou shall have none other gods but Him Who is the Truth; Truth must be obeyed at all costs, but if your truth-seeking breaks the Fifth Commandment, it probably breaks the Second also, and the principle you are obeying will turn out to be a graven image of God, and not the voice of God Himself. Very grave doubt rests on any form of goodness which is in opposition to your mother; it may be good for others, but can scarcely be so for you. I know of a girl who got under High Church influence at school, and who, in pursuit of spiritual good, gets surreptitious High Church books and newspapers, under cover to a friend. Another got under Low Church influence, and refuses to please her mother by dressing prettily or going out. It seems to me that both girls read their lesson backwards and neglect the weightier matters of the law, truth, and obedience,--while they seek what is good in itself but not good for them. Others persist in going to a church their mother disapproves of,--they say they can get good at a musical church, and only irritation and harm by going with her. I feel heartily for the trial of going to a church they dislike, but surely conquering self or pleasing a mother is good in itself, quite apart from the help given by the service; while, as to the good derived from the musical church under those circumstances, I doubt much if it comes down from the Father Who gave us the Fifth Commandment.

I should say, mistrust new lights which are a hindrance to old duties, "For meek obedience too is Light." It is more likely that we should be mistaken, than that a duty should cease to be binding. Let us take to heart Cromwell's appeal to his Parliament, "I beseech you, my beloved brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of Christ, to believe that you may be mistaken."

The third difficulty is that girls often fail to see that home life is one of the "Home Arts," which requires training and practice as much as music does. How much of our home life is set to music? How much of it sets all harmony and rhythm at defiance? A true woman is

"Like the keystone to an arch That consummates all beauty: She's like the music to a march That sheds a joy on duty."

Do you make your father forget his bothers when he comes in from his business? Do you give your mother a share in your interests? Does your brother look forward to his time at home, instead of thinking it a bore? No one has such power over your brothers as you have: you can do more than any one to give them high ideals: how many a brother, who has fallen to the stable-yard level of company, might have been held up if his sister had used her wits and tact to make herself as agreeable to him as she does to other people!

Sometimes it is not selfishness which makes home life a failure, but the not having

"among least things, An undersense of greatest."

A girl tries to live nobly at home and fails: she is not enough wanted, her mother is not blind, and does not want to be deposed from housekeeping; her father is not paralytic, and only wants her to play to him in the evening; life seems choked by tiny interruptions, such as doing the flowers, or writing notes, and she sinks into a placid or unplacid drudge--the aspirations with which she left school have died out.

Need this be? If she went into a sisterhood or a hospital, the tiny details would all be glorified by the halo which surrounds a vocation; it would all be part of a saintly life. Why is home not felt to be a vocation? Why cannot a girl welcome some tiresome commission or fidgeting rule of her mother's, as much as if it were imposed by some Mother Superior? Ought not the trifling duties to be fuel to her burning desire for her nobleness of life, instead of dust to choke it? You can make them which you will.

Girls often say, "I have nothing to do, worth doing, at home; I want to go and do some real work;" and they sometimes have the face to say this, while they are still as full of faults as when they left school, and when every hour of the day, at home, brings with it an opportunity of conquering some fault.

Are you ready for real work? Can you take criticism or contradiction with a perfectly unruffled face and voice? Do you overcome your hindrances to usefulness at home, e.g. do you improve your handwriting so that your mother need not be ashamed to let you write for her? Do you help her tactfully and consentingly--the only help which rests people--or do you argue each point, so that it is far less trouble to do the thing twice over than to ask you? Are you prompt and alert in your movements, or do you indulge in that exasperating slowness, which some girls seem to consider quite a charm? Do you wait till the last minute, and then leisurely put on your things, with serene unconsciousness of the fret it is to every one's temper? If you want to see how unthoroughbred such a habit looks, read "Shirley," and study the character of Mr. Donne, the curate, who flatters himself that he enhances his importance by keeping the others waiting while he complacently finishes his tea.

Do you lay down the law. Do you allow yourself the tone of positive, almost dictatorial, assertion, which, coming from a girl, so sets an old-fashioned person's teeth on edge; or do you try to speak in the tentative, suggestive, inquiring tone, which is not only required by good manners, but is also a real help to humility of mind?

Do not say that these things are too simple and obvious to bear on your future work for the Relief of Man's Estate,--on Work with a big W. They are of the very essence of the formation of character, and your Work for others stands or falls by that.

The sanctifying influence of home-life lies mainly in its necessity, its obviousness,--in the fact of our remaining unprofitable servants after we have done our best. It is the school in which we are placed by God; we are bound to learn its lessons, and do its duties: there is no halo of self-sacrifice around it--the position rightly viewed gives us no choice. "I must,"--there is the sting, the irksomeness to us. We can submit cheerfully to our self-chosen Pope, and seem most sweet-tempered in bearing criticism and in doing tiresome duties,--the "I must" is not there. This wilful obedience is worth just nothing as discipline of character, compared with obedience to our lawful authorities; "Ay, there's the rub!"

Is not this very necessity in home life--this "I must"--just the thing which makes it akin to our Lord's life? Is there not in that Holiest Life a continual undercurrent of "I must"? His earthly life was a course of obedience, not a succession of self-willed efforts; its keynote was, "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?"

Esprit de Corps.

While I was away, I was present at a discussion on Esprit de Corps, and whether it was a good thing in girls' schools. What is esprit de corps?--The feeling that we are one of a large body of which we are proud. A soldier has it when he is proud of his regiment and is proud of belonging to it.

Now, is it good or bad for girls to have a strong feeling of this kind for their school? Many opinions were expressed at the meeting. My opinion is that it is a good thing--a necessary thing. But every virtue has its defect--if you overdo it, you fall into some fault; if you are too amiable, you may fall into being untruthful; and so with esprit de corps. I want you to have it, but I want you to be on your guard against some faults connected with it. I want our School to be full of it, but I want it to be of the best kind.