The Project Gutenberg eBook, An Address to the Sisters of St. Peter's Home, Brompton, by Edward Meyrick Goulburn This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: An Address to the Sisters of St. Peter's Home, Brompton Author: Edward Meyrick Goulburn Release Date: February 18, 2017 [eBook #54191] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ADDRESS TO THE SISTERS OF ST. PETER'S HOME, BROMPTON***
Transcribed from the 1864 Rivingtons edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
FOUNDED FOR
THE RECEPTION OF
CONVALESCENT WOMEN OF GOOD CHARACTER
TILL
THE COMPLETION OF THEIR
RECOVERY:
DELIVERED
ON
THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION,
JUNE 30, 1864.
BY
EDWARD MEYRICK GOULBURN, D.D.
PREBENDARY OF ST. PAUL’S,
CHAPLAIN OF THE BISHOP OF
OXFORD,
AND ONE OF HER MAJESTY’S CHAPLAINS
IN ORDINARY.
LONDON;
RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE:
AND HIGH STREET, OXFORD.
1864.
p. 2LONDON:
GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS,
ST. JOHN’S SQUARE.
p. 3TO
THE RIGHT HON. AND RIGHT
REVEREND
ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL, LORD BISHOP OF LONDON,
THE VISITOR OF ST. PETER’S
HOME,
THESE PAGES
ARE
BY HIS KIND PERMISSION
INSCRIBED.
Among the many signs of the vitality of the English Church, which every dutiful son of hers will hail with joy, are the various organizations of the Work of Women which have recently sprung up amongst us, the Institution of Deaconesses, the employment of Parochial Mission Women, and the foundation of Sisterhoods. It is a mistake surely to look coldly upon such movements, because they assume (what to our generation is) a somewhat novel form. There ought to be in every living Church a plastic power, which adapts its machinery to the wants of the age, and to the ever-varying shapes which Society is taking; and we rejoice to find in our own Church evidences of this power. Enthusiasms many and fervent are rising up in her, and driving her members to these new agencies, which should not be regarded with suspicion because they are new, but rather tried fairly, and guided discreetly, and watched vigilantly.
Watching and guidance they will doubtless all p. 6of them want; and most of all, Communities of women banded together under a Superior for devotion and for acts of mercy. The very first step of joining such a community may easily be taken in violation of the principle (if not of the letter) of the Fifth Commandment. It may be an act of will-worship deliberately committed by one who slights God’s Ordinance of the Family, and prefers ties and sympathies of her own creation to those with which it has pleased Him in His Providence to surround her. But supposing the community composed exclusively of those who have a moral right to join it (of those who have no ties, or none which they cannot perfectly satisfy while living in the comparative seclusion of a Sisterhood), the perils to which their life exposes them are not few, and all the more dangerous because they are subtle. First; there is a constant tendency to erect a false standard of spirituality in the mind, and to imagine a higher degree of perfection to attach to the life of a Sister than to that of an equally devoted Christian woman living in the world. This tendency culminates in the Roman phraseology “Religious,” as applied to the members of Monastic Orders, a phraseology which I for one earnestly deprecate, and greatly regret to see adopted by some of my clerical Brethren in speaking of these Communities. “Words,” says Bacon, “are like the Tartar’s arrows; they shoot backwards;” and if we allow ourselves to call the members of our p. 7Sisterhoods “Religious,” or to speak of them as being “in Religion,” we shall soon come to regard their vocation as more spiritual than that of the Christian wife and mother,—a notion most unspiritual and unscriptural in the mind of the writer of this Address. Possibly the life of a Sister may present fewer difficulties to the attainment of a high standard of sanctity than life (under its ordinary conditions) in Society; but even if this be granted, which must we rate higher, the faith and zeal which evades difficulties, or the faith and zeal which meets and triumphs over them? I believe it might be shown that many of the most eminent doctors of the Church, previously to the Reformation, have decided that life in the World may be altogether as spiritual, and exemplify a standard of holiness at least as high, as life in a Convent. Then, again, it must be remembered that the relations which the members of a religious Community contract are artificial. These Communities are a kind of hotbed for rearing devotional feeling and piety of a high caste. It is not at all necessary to deny that very beautiful forms of piety are often reared there, as very beautiful flowers are under glass. But we may reasonably expect the beauty of form to be somewhat compensated by want of vigour. And of course this is especially likely to be the case with Communities of Women. Without denying to the piety of Women very great and peculiar excellences, beyond p. 8those which characterize the religious feelings of men,—while fully appreciating all the sympathy and power of heroic endurance manifested by Christian Women, and fully recognizing the general truth, that Religion thrives far better in the soil of a susceptible heart than in that of a powerful understanding,—we must yet grant that the female type of piety has a weak side,—the side, namely, of a morbid sentimentalism. Now this side may be expected to exhibit itself in high relief in our Sisterhoods, where the sentiments of devout Women constitute the religious atmosphere of the place. And as the tone of the disciple insensibly reacts upon the tone of the teacher, and what the first is eager to receive the second is usually prompt to supply, it is likely enough that the spiritual pastors and guides of such communities will (with perfectly pure intention and without dreaming of evil) pander to a style of religion very much out of keeping (to say the least of it) with the sobriety of Holy Scripture, and with the staid and dignified tone of the Book of Common Prayer. Those who have read the Spiritual Letters of St. Francis de Sales, and have observed the difference of tone between the generality of them which are addressed to women, and the few in which his correspondents are men, will immediately recognize what I mean. Souls should be dealt with on the same principles, whatever souls they be; the same fervour, the same unction, p. 9should be manifested in the guidance of either sex; but in the direction of his female disciples, this saintly man displays now and then a tincture of sentimentalism which can hardly be called healthy. Madame de Chantal and the others craved for something of that sort, and he, as their director, with the utmost artlessness, supplied it. There may be the truest unction in religion without unctuousness. Our Litany is an instance of this.
The great receipt for keeping the tone of piety sound and healthy doubtless lies in one word, Work,—work in the cause of our suffering fellow-men. And it seems to me to be a proof of the reality of the danger which I have just been pointing out, that in some of these Communities the Sisters have begun to affect a life of entire seclusion from works of mercy, under pretence of a higher devotion. Does not this show that there is something in the moral atmosphere of these communities, to which the healthy, practical, sobering tendencies of work are uncongenial? I have spoken strongly in the Address on the great danger and mischief likely to accrue from making the purely contemplative or devotional life the ideal of high sanctity; and indeed I have desired to make the whole Address a protest against this false theory by assuming (what I know to be the case) that the Sisters of St. Peter’s Home are all busied in works of mercy, and giving them p. 10plain, practical counsels, such as would be equally applicable to all the work which has to be done by Christians in active life. These counsels are so commonplace that those who care to read them will probably ask for the reasons which justify me in publishing them.
My only reason is, that the Founder of the Home pressed their publication, under the idea that it might be of some use in making the Institution known. As he is one of those munificent Benefactors of the Church, occasionally found among the wealthy Laity of this great City, to whom the Clergy at all events are bound to hold out the right hand of fellowship, I did not feel at liberty to decline his request when it was pressed upon me. In the vigilant superintendence of our Diocesan (who kindly permits me to inscribe these pages to him) we have every guarantee that reasonable people can desire for St. Peter’s Home being conducted on the soundest principles, for its members being kept in faithful allegiance to the Church of their Baptism, warned against and secured from those dangers to which the experience of the Church teaches that Religious Communities are exposed, and made a great blessing to those who are sheltered and tended in their quiet retreat, and to the poor and sick people in their neighbourhood.
My Sisters in Christ,
I READ in your Primary Constitution and Statutes that “the whole work carried on in this place is dedicated to St. Peter, who, more than any other Apostle, ministered to the sick.” I suppose that there is in these words a reference to that passage of the Acts of the Apostles, in which we are told that the people of Jerusalem “brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them.” It is in every way a remarkable passage. Though the notice of these cures wrought by the Apostle’s shadow is so incidental, it is full of instruction. A shadow is an influence cast by a man’s body, and may usefully remind us of the influence cast p. 12by his mind. As all bodies must cast a shadow in the sunlight, so every rational soul must, by the law of our nature, exert an influence in its walk through life on every other rational soul with which it comes in contact. However narrow and however humble be the circle in which we move, our character, habits, tone, certainly tell in it; each action, each word, nay, each gesture and glance, is an item in the sum total of our moral weight.—Then again, as we cast our shadow on the pavement unconsciously, without deliberate intention, so the moral influence, of which I am speaking, is exercised when we least think of it. Words thrown out when we are off our guard, ways of acting which have become more or less instinctive, are all full charged with this moral influence, and have in fact a much more powerful (though a more subtle) efficacy than the things we say and do of set purpose.—Then again, the shadow is always a correct outline of the body of which it is a shadow. And the moral influence which we exert without being conscious of it is always exactly true to our character, which cannot be said of our voluntary influence. A man may preach, and exhort, and throw himself into Christian enterprises, and thus gain a reputation for piety, and yet be a self-seeker, actuated by ambition, or a desire to stand well with others. Many will say to Our Lord at the last day, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? and p. 13in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works?” to whom He will have to profess, “I never knew you.” In this case the deliberate and voluntary influence exerted by the man misrepresents him; we gather one impression from his efforts, and another from his real character. But the influence which he exerts unconsciously never deceives us. Live side by side with him for a month; watch him when he is not on parade before society, but with his family, with his children, with his servants; listen to his casual remarks; observe his character as it transpires at all the thousand pores of daily life; and the impression will be in the main true; it will correspond to what he really is.
It would be a very curious, and I doubt not a very alarming spectacle, if we could all of us see how very much we have done in the course of our lives by unconscious influence. But this is what history and biography never reveal. They tell us of enterprises taken in hand, battles fought, good causes advocated and won, in short, of every stir and movement made in the world. But of that subtle reciprocal leavening of human characters by one another of which we are speaking, because it is so noiselessly effected, they take no account. Yet secret and silent as it is, this involuntary influence is infinitely more powerful than the voluntary. Just so some of the most powerful agents in Nature are the quietest—do p. 14not thunder upon the ear or flash upon the eye. Gravitation is a tremendous force, operating all around us, and binding the planets to the Sun. Yet Gravitation is perfectly noiseless. [14]
p. 15You would consider, I suppose, that the ends of an Institution like this were fully answered, and p. 16then only fully answered, if the shadow of St. Peter’s Home were, in the high sense of the word, a healing shadow—if the moral and spiritual influence exercised by the Sisters upon the patients were such that souls were won by it to Our Lord. And I can quite conceive that this might be so under the proper conditions. True; the period for which each patient may reside in the Home is but short. But then three or four weeks’ association with devoted servants of Christ, whose devotion transpires naturally and is not obtrusively put forward, may, under His Grace, work a great change, and leave an impression which will never be erased. Even the shadow of Peter passing by is sometimes effectual to a spiritual cure. If the fire of God’s Grace is burning bright and clear upon the altar of our hearts, it will throw out sparks in our passage through life. And it is in the nature of sparks to kindle, when they light on combustible material. Every soul with which we come in contact is sympathetic, and accessible at all times through its sensibilities. And its sympathies and sensibilities become greater oftentimes in the hour of weakness and necessary withdrawal from the world. Persons come to your Home to convalesce. They are not in bodily pain; for their cure is supposed to be already effected in the Hospital. Their hearts are in some measure predisposed to gratitude by a sense of God’s goodness in restoring them, and of your kindness in receiving them under your roof. p. 17Hence you have a very fair field for the exertion of Christian influence. And I can well conceive that many might derive a lasting benefit from association with you; and that looking back upon their past lives in advanced age they might say: “The first impressions I had of the reality of things unseen, and of the powers of the world to come, was given me at St. Peter’s Home, not so much by any definite teaching I carried away, as by the whole conduct and way of life of the Sisters. In tending me, they made me feel that their ways and aims were not of this world; and I still retain the impression which that sight of living goodness made upon me.”
It will be so, my Sisters in Christ, if while you diligently tend these patients in pursuance of the vocation which you have undertaken, you at the same time diligently cultivate the interior life of piety in your own hearts. And in order to that diligent cultivation, I shall prescribe to you to-day three spiritual exercises, comprehending, as I believe, the sum and substance of Personal Religion. I believe that the diligent practice of all three will enable any one, by God’s good blessing, to cast a healing shadow, to throw all around him a decided influence for good; and that even one of them devoutly observed, and wrought into the texture of the mind, will be the means of great advance. But though I speak of them in these terms, and promise these effects from them, you must not suppose that p. 18I am going to give other than the plainest and most commonplace advice. I have no specific for the conduct of a spiritual life but such as has been given you over and over again; and if I had, you would rightly regard it with suspicion. For the way of Christ’s Saints, blessed be His Name, is a well-trodden way; and the advice for His Church, when she would seek Him, is, “Go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock.”
I. The first practice we recommend for securing a holy influence upon others is the Practice of God’s Presence,—that the mind should be momentarily collected in hours of business, as well as in hours of devotion—the oftener the better—and placed with a holy ejaculation, or a devout aspiration, or an expression of confidence or love, under His Eye. I should not know how better to define this exercise than by calling it a momentary glance at Christ, away even from those occupations which are the task-work He has set us. A momentary glance. Do not think it necessary always mentally to repeat some set ejaculation; that might be a distraction, and create absence of mind, when all your faculties are needed for what you are engaged in; but look away to Him for the instant, and then back again, nothing doubting but that He can interpret for you the need of your heart.
The importance of this practice in the cultivation p. 19of the spiritual life can really be hardly exaggerated. To begin with the beginning. We read that the first effect of the Fall upon the mind of our first parents was to make them shun God, and hide themselves from the Divine Presence among the trees of the garden. Now Grace is corrective of the mischief done by the Fall; and its operations are the very reverse of those of our corrupt nature. As sin therefore drives man to screen himself by diversions, or by business, from God’s Presence, so it is one of the first instincts of Grace to seek God’s Face. We may do so now with the utmost confidence through the Blood of Our Lord, knowing that Justice itself has nothing to allege against us when we come before God with that plea; and the oftener we do so amidst the occupations, hurry, and cares of daily life, the holier and the happier shall we be.—Next; this is the only real method of fulfilling the great New Testament Prayer-precept; “Pray without ceasing.” We must not fritter away the meaning of those sacred words, by representing them to our minds as a rhetorical form of saying, “Pray very often.” To pray is to seek God’s Face—is it not? Then if a state of mind could be more or less realized, in which the soul is always conscious of being under God’s Eye, would not that be prayer without ceasing? And this state is not to be attained except by constant momentary reminiscences of God’s neighbourhood, and fervent breathings of the heart p. 20towards Him. When attained, it does not really interfere with occupations, though it might seem that in any mental work it would be a distraction to turn the mind away. For the state is a consciousness of God’s Presence. Now consciousness of the human presence is quite compatible with vigorous exercise of the mind. I am thinking at present of the subject on which I am speaking to you, and how I am to prosecute it; yet not for a moment do I lose the consciousness that your eye is upon me. Again; say that I am walking to a certain place, and that in doing so, I am engaged in earnest conversation with a friend. We are both thinking of our arguments, and how we shall meet what is advanced by one another; but all the while, the consciousness is present to us that we are making the right turns, and really advancing to the place for which we are bound. But I should wrong the sense of the Divine Presence, if I said only that it need be no interference with our occupations; I should rather say that it is the greatest furtherance to them. For every work needs energy to be done well; and what secret of energy is comparable to the refreshment of spirit which may be derived from the thought that we are under God’s Eye, working for Him, and with the encouragement of His smile? The thought is as like a breath of sweet air sweeping across a wayside dusty heather.—Once again; Faith is the great principle of the renewal of our character. p. 21Without Faith there is no elevation of mind, no spiritual buoyancy, no hope, no possibility of advance or improvement. Now when we recommend the constant reminiscence of God, we recommend virtually a constant exercise of Faith. “Faith is the evidence of things not seen.” The Presence of God is of course a “thing not seen.” And of all things not seen it is the nearest to us, and that in which we have the most vital interest. Habitually to assure our hearts of this “thing not seen” is to live by Faith. And to live by Faith is to overcome the world and self; it is the life for which Christ redeemed, and for which the Holy Ghost regenerated us.
Most true it is that those who honestly attempt this exercise of Faith find it difficult. What attainment worth making, either in things natural or spiritual, was ever easy? Every thing is granted, not instantaneously, but in course of time, to prayer and striving. “Try again” is the simple expedient, which must be resorted to after a hundred failures. No wonder that in a world of sense and numberless distractions the Presence of God should be a hard lesson to learn. But when learned, it is a great secret of holy influence; for it transpires, though we say nothing to that effect, through the calmness and brightness of our minds, that we are much with God. And a portion of this lesson may be mastered daily.
p. 22II. The second practice recommended for the cultivation of the interior life is that of submission to the Will of God. This submission we may and must learn to yield in the little trials and crosses of daily life. The real reason why, when great trials come, Christians are so little prepared to meet them—why even persons religious in the main are all abroad, and know not which way to turn, when they are visited with bereavement or bodily suffering—is, that they have never, if I may so say, acclimatized themselves to the loving endurance of God’s Will amidst the numerous little thwartings and contradictions of daily life. People will go on thinking (or acting as if they thought) that nothing short of a calamity is a sufficiently dignified occasion for the display of religious principle; and thus they do not avail themselves of the annoyances of daily life, as a field for the cultivation of patience and surrender of the will. And thus numerous precious opportunities of growth in grace run to waste.
My Sisters in Christ, cultivate this habit of surrendering your will in trifling matters to God. You must know by experience that the discipline of an Institution like this is by no means a security against the little crosses and contradictions of daily life. A task falls to your lot which is not that which you like best, or think yourself most fit for. Or, a patient is discontented and hard to p. 23please, peevish in the course of convalescence, and apparently unmindful of the kindness you are showing her. Or, there is some collision of tempers between Sisters of very different characters. Or, there is some cause of anxiety connected with your absent family, which weighs heavily upon your mind, and tempts you to collapse into a mechanical performance of your duties. Now these and the like circumstances may all be accepted devoutly as the little cross—the cross exactly fitted to your stature and strength—which your Divine Master bids you take up and carry after Him. Pray and try to embrace it as His choice for you. Say in your heart, when the stress of the trial is painfully felt, “This is the Will of God in Christ Jesus concerning me;” and give God thanks for it, as for all the incidents of your lot. Not the Will of God simply, but the Will of God in Christ Jesus concerning me; a Will therefore of infinite Love and Grace, reaching me as it does through the avenue of my Saviour’s Mediation. Practise this with prayer continually; and the gradual result will be a growing suavity and equableness of spirit, which cannot be disturbed even by great reverses. And there is no part of the Christian Example which tells more upon others than this suavity and equableness. A mind which (though all its susceptibilities are alive) cannot be thrown into disorder or robbed of its serenity by troubles, makes itself felt by all who come within the range p. 24of its influence as a heavenly mind. It is St. Peter’s shadow falling on a fever patient.
III. The third and last practice recommended to you is that of a single intention, directing all you do, however secular and commonplace, to the Service of Christ in His members. In a place like this you have great advantages for this exercise. In ordinary life the pursuits of men and women (with the exception of the Pastoral Charge) can only be connected remotely with the great end of Our Lord’s Service. It is His will, no doubt, that the present system of Society should work on till the Second Advent; and its continuance involves all the various duties which flow out of various positions. I am well aware that the humblest of these duties may have the right intention imported into it, and become through that intention an acceptable service; but still it is an advantage to have a duty which stands in very near relation to the great end. Now your duties here are of this character. You tend the infirm, or you instruct the ignorant, or you visit the poor. Now it is very easy to see in each sick person, in each ignorant person, in each poor person, a member of Christ. He Himself has constituted the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the prisoner, His representatives, and has assured us that what is done to them, He will count as done to Himself. So that these patients, p. 25these pupils, these destitute people, are in fact a Sacrament, having Christ hidden underneath them. They indicate to us where He is, and in what quarter we may do Him direct Service. Now this should be to you, not a great comfort only, but a great help in the Divine Life. The intention to serve Him in His members may be so readily formed, no doubt whatever resting on the fact that He may be really served in this shape. Then, too, this thought will stand you in good stead, when your kindness is not reciprocated; when you are met by indifference and coldness, or thrown out of heart by ignorance and perversity. It was not to them you offered your service, but to Him in them. And you may be sure that, whatever their mind may be, He is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which love ye have showed for His Name’s sake. You may have failed in your object of giving relief, or communicating instruction, or soothing a sufferer; but there can be no failure in the Service rendered to Him, if your intention to render it has been sincere. Remember in this matter of intention that there is no duty so trifling, no service so humble, which may not be done to the Lord. And in doing the commonest things, pray and strive to exclude as much as may be the operation of lower motives. Let the thought be simply, “For Thee, dear Lord.” When the habit has been acquired of doing trifles thus, it p. 26will communicate a grace to our actions, and a brightness and alacrity to our spirits in performing them, which cannot fail of being felt by those under whose eyes we act. Men and women are very quick at reading one another’s real motives. Worldliness of heart and secularity of aim is sure to transpire to those around us, however much we may array ourselves in the livery of religion. Love of power, or love of pre-eminence, or mortified vanity,—if we are under the dominion of these sentiments, we cannot easily disguise them from others, however effectually we may close our own eyes to their presence within. And similarly, when the simple motive to serve and please Christ reigns in any heart, men speedily discover it, and recognize it as something above nature. And the discovery of this supernatural aim impresses them much more forcibly for good than a thousand efforts made of set purpose to reclaim and convert them.
We have spoken of the Service rendered to Christ in His members. Fervently do I trust that in all English Sisterhoods this Service will ever hold a foremost place. We tremble for these Institutions as sure rapidly to deteriorate, whenever the notion insinuates itself that there is any life higher than that of active beneficence fed from the springs of devotion. My Sisters in Christ, if such a thought ever creeps into your heart, let p. 27me pray you instantly to reject it, as totally contrary to the Word of God and to the Mind of Christ, however specious in appearance. It is indeed wonderful how, to any person who has the Holy Scriptures in his hand, the notion of a life of exclusive contemplation and devotional exercise can ever approve itself. The instances usually quoted in favour of such a life, St. John the Baptist and Elijah the Prophet, are singularly out of point. For while it is of course true that these men did not live the ordinary domestic life of their times, that for the great purpose of their miraculous vocation they withdrew from home and family ties, it is notoriously untrue that they came into no contact with their fellow-men. They were national reformers; and national reformers cannot do their work without coming into rude collision with the sins, and prejudices, and errors of their day; when they were taken from the earth, it was with all the soil and dust of Earth’s conflict upon them. Thus these eminent characters lend not a particle of support to the idea that a life of entire isolation from our fellow-creatures is legitimate or after the Scriptural model. Nor does the idea gain any real countenance from the example of St. John the Apostle. True it is that he was not conspicuous for activity, like his great colleagues, St. Peter and St. Paul; that his character had in it probably a larger share of reflection than of will; but, whether we look at the fact of his p. 28having composed under Inspiration the profoundest part of the Canon of the New Testament, and having presided over the Seven Churches of Asia, or at the traditions of his bringing the robber chieftain, who had been one of his flock, to repentance, and of his Sermons in old age reducing themselves to the one precept, “Little children, love one another,” it is clear that, however contemplative the bent of his mind, he did a work of vast importance for his fellow-men. Indeed he is the great human model of the grace of Charity. And I may remind you that the inspired description of this grace (the highest of all the Evangelical Virtues) sets it forth almost exclusively in its aspect towards man. Charity is the sweetest flower which grows in the garden of the soul. And in what spots does this flower flourish? St. Paul’s panegyric of Charity plainly shows that its place is in the world, where are oppositions, collisions, provocations, suspicions; “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”
But the most conclusive of all arguments against a life exclusively contemplative in a world of sin and sorrow is the pattern of Our Blessed Lord Himself. One would have thought that at least His Example might have saved His followers from p. 29this miserable delusion. If His contact with Society was the closest; if He went about doing good; if His active works of mercy did not cease even at the moment of His apprehension; if the Cross itself could not silence His tongue from words of consolation, nor make Him unmindful of the sorrows of others; how shall any one profess to follow Him, who on principle ignores the claim which the sins and sufferings of men have upon Him; how shall any one presume to think that he has found a higher walk of the spiritual life than that in which Our Lord Himself walked? My Sisters in Christ, it is because this yearning after a complete withdrawal from the active works of mercy, this false ideal of a life holier than Christ’s life, has unhappily shown itself in some of the English Sisterhoods, that being here by the invitation of your Superior, I speak thus strongly and plainly on the subject. Be well assured that any life, the plan of which is out of conformity with the Word of God and the Example of Christ, will be attended with the worst results upon the character of her who adopts or seeks to adopt it. The mind recoils (and that not at all in virtue of its sinfulness) from mere contemplation. It was made by God for action, and for the reciprocation of sympathy; and mischief is sure to ensue from any attempt to alter the laws of its constitution. Without healthy exercise in Acts of Mercy it must grow morbid, p. 30narrow, superstitious, fanatical. I know that your rule in this Institution is to devote yourselves to works of Benevolence; still it cannot be out of place to warn you against dangers, which beset similar Communities with your own; and I find a trace of your Founder’s jealousy of your diversion from these works in the ninth of your Primary Statutes: “No Sister shall be required to spend more time in her private devotions than her own conscience shall lead her to desire; nor shall she spend any time for this purpose to the hindrance (in the opinion of the Superior) of the active work of mercy to which she shall be dedicated.” Those who framed this wise rule must have been aware of the morbid tendency in Communities like these to withdraw from the field of Active Benevolence, under the plea of more entire dedication to God.
Presuming therefore that your work in this place, like all active work, will be beset by many of the distractions and hindrances of ordinary life, I have given rules for the cultivation of spirituality amidst common engagements, which under God’s Blessing may serve to keep the heart true to the Lord, while there is much work upon the hands. In conclusion I will recapitulate these rules;
Practise the Presence of God.
Practise submission to His Will in little Crosses.
Practise the doing all things for Christ.
p. 31Thus the Patients, whom you shelter and tend, shall feel a calming, sanctifying influence from their temporary association with you; and shall look back with grateful reminiscences to the period when, before their return to the heat and dust and turmoil of Life, and to the glare of Life’s temptations, they were gathered in under the quiet shadow of St. Peter’s Home.
THE END.
GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOHN’S SQUARE, LONDON.
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PARISH SERMONS preached at Holywell, Oxford.
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[14] This illustration, as well as all the thoughts of the paragraph containing it, is borrowed from the noble Sermon of Dr. Bushnell on “Unconscious Influence.” I give his words in extenso; for I believe few grander passages can be found anywhere: “But you must not conclude that influences of this kind are insignificant because they are unnoticed and noiseless. How is it in the natural world? Behind the mere show, the outward noise, and stir of the world, nature always conceals her hand of control, and the laws by which she rules. Who ever saw with the eye, for example, or heard with the ear, the exertions of that tremendous astronomic force, which every moment holds the compact of the physical universe together? The lightning is, in fact, but a mere fire-fly spark in comparison; but because it glares on the clouds, and thunders so terribly in the air, and rives the tree or rock where it falls, many will be ready to think that it is a vastly more potent agent than gravity.
“The Bible calls the good man’s life a light, and it is the nature of light to flow out spontaneously in all directions, and fill the world unconsciously with its beams. So the Christian shines, it would say, not so much because he will, as because he is a luminous object—not that the active influence of Christians is made of no account in the figure, but only that this symbol of light has its propriety in the fact, that their unconscious influence is the chief influence, and has the precedence in its power over the world—and yet, there are many who will be ready to think that light is a very tame and feeble instrument, because it is noiseless. An earthquake, for example, is to them a much more vigorous and effective agency. Hear how it comes thundering through the solid foundations of nature! It rocks a whole continent. The noblest works of man, cities, monuments, and temples, are in a moment levelled to the ground, or swallowed down the opening gulfs of fire. Little do they think that the light of every morning, the soft, genial, and silent light, is an agent many times more powerful. But let the light of the morning cease and return no more, let the hour of morning come, and bring with it no dawn; the outcries of a horror-stricken world fill the air, and make, as it were, the darkness audible. The beasts go wild and frantic at the loss of the sun. The vegetable growths turn pale and die. A chill creeps on, and frosty winds begin to howl across the freezing earth. Colder, and yet colder is the night. The vital blood at length, of all creatures stops congealed. Down goes the frost toward the earth’s centre. The heart of the sea is frozen; nay, the earthquakes are themselves frozen in under their fiery caverns. The very globe itself, too, and all the fellow-planets that have lost their sun, are to become mere balls of ice, swinging silent in the darkness. Such is the light, which revisits us in the silence of the morning. It makes no shock or scar. It would not wake an infant in his cradle, and yet it perpetually new creates the world, rescuing it each morning as a prey from night and chaos. So the Christian is a light, even ‘the light of the world;’ and we must not think that because he shines insensibly or silently, as a mere luminous object, he is therefore powerless. The greatest powers are ever those which lie back of the little stirs and commotions of nature; and I verily believe that the insensible influences of good men are as much more potent than what I have called their voluntary or active, as the great silent powers of nature are of greater consequence than her little disturbances and ‘tumults.’”
I have been told that Dr. Bushnell’s Theology is unsound on the fundamental doctrine of the Trinity. I have not seen any thing to prove this charge in “The New Life” (the only volume I have ever seen of his); but, while I cannot borrow his thoughts without an acknowledgment, I am bound to mention the allegation as a caution to those who fall in with his works. “The New Life” is full of noble sentiments, most eloquently enforced; and there is great danger now-a-days lest sentiments of this sort should be accepted as compounding for want of definite dogma—the only foundation of all true Religion. A Religion of sentiment only, not holding of a Creed, would resemble a body of flesh and blood, without a substructure of solid bones.
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