Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE

ENGLISH REVIEW.

MARCH, 1849.

ART. I.-Report of the Association for the Aid and Benefit of Dressmakers and Milliners. London. 1848.

We have not altogether shut the door of this Review against subjects connected with the improvement of the female members of the Church. On the contrary, we have more than once addressed ourselves especially to our female readers; and in pointing to the fair examples of saintly churchwomen of old, we endeavoured to provoke those of our own day to a godly rivalry in love and good works, hoping to see them tread in the shining footsteps of their great forerunners. We have had no reason to repent of these digressions from the sterner road of theological discussion; and would rather hope that we raised some sparks of pious emulation, some warm desires to reach a higher standard of Christian service among the daughters of the Church.

But as in our former remarks we concerned ourselves exclusively with the condition and duties of the higher orders, we are now minded to step out of that high circle, where there is so much that is pure and good, and to descend, not only into the lower, but into the darker states of female life. We cannot content ourselves with showing only the brighter and purer side of the female portion of the community, while we are oppressed with the dreadful consciousness, that there is another portion in the midst of us which is given up to the advancement of the mystery of iniquity, which is undoing the work of God's Spirit, and is itself undone, which is hurrying in sin and woe to the fiery indignation of God. It makes the heart ache to think how many tread, and we may add, with unwilling feet, the way of certain death; how many, from the humbler classes, once daughters of the Church, are among the living instruments of the Evil One, and are entirely in his power; how many who have been baptized, are now serving devils and doing the work of hell ruined themselves, and now spreading ruin. We might wish to cast such a subject into the shade; we might like to pass by on the other side, and to turn away our thoughts from a question so full of pain, so beset by difficulties, so shunned, so feared by the over-refined and over-sensitive spirit of the age. But while we hear on all sides of the improved condition and altered temper of the Church; while we are congratuVOL. XI.-NO. XXI.-MARCH, 1849.

B

lating ourselves on the infusion of fresh life and activity into a once-dormant body; while, with much complacency, we are fastening our eyes on the tokens of good that shine around us, we cannot but feel ourselves urged to point to one vast and hideous mass of living iniquity, which may well check our over-hasty congratulations and humble us to the very dust. There are, doubtless, signs of renewed and awakened life; there are gleams of hope in the Church's sky; there are the stirrings of heart inspiring us with great thoughts; and we are far from wishing to depress or damp warm and ardent minds that turn from heavy times to the brightening horizon of the Church. But still let us face our true condition, and not throw a veil over the darker parts of our present state. The blots will not disappear, because we refuse to look; neither are we riding on a safe tide, when we shut our eyes to the rocks. And hence, if there are in the midst of us guilty multitudes of fallen women, who are contending daily against the Church, who are undermining those whom the Church is training up, who are sapping out the spiritual life of thousands of the opposite sex, and are themselves a sort of living suicides-but surely it is wise bravely to look this mighty evil in the face.

With fallen women we have hardly dealt at all; the painfulness of the subject, the difficulty, the delicacy, have been among the excuses with which we have tried to shift off our responsibility; but yet the responsibility is on us still. We have but to consider one great office of the Church, to see the burden of unfulfilled duties that rests upon us; we allude to her office as one who should call sinners to repentance; who should supply cells of penitence to returning wanderers; who should go after the lost sheep in the wilderness; who should seek, as a mother, to reclaim her erring daughters as well as her erring sons; who should impose penitential discipline, and preach in all its fulness the great doctrine of Gospel repentance.

Now we cannot but confess, that this office has been but feebly exercised, and this doctrine of repentance but only in part proclaimed, and that with but little system and little discipline. First of all, as regards male penitents, we see them suffered to regain their place without any Church correction, however secret; any confession of sin. Those who have notoriously brought scandal on the Church have but to " steady down," as it is called, to turn over a new leaf," and they are admitted, without any profession of penitence for that scandal, to the very fullest, highest privileges. The path of return is not rough or full of shame: there is no outward discipline for their outward acts of disobedience.

66

And not only this, but the doctrine of repentance is but partly preached; the need of restitution is left out; it is not insisted on in the cases of those who are known to have transgressed. Of

those who have given themselves to youthful lusts, and now grieve over their stained and dishonoured youth, how few have made restitution !-how few have been pressed to make it! Even when they have been brought to positive seriousness of life, they do not try to heal those very wounds which they have made, or to give alms for the reformation of that very class of sinners which they have helped to swell. They may be merciful to the poor, generous to hospitals, promoters of schools, contributors to churches; in these various ways the feeling of penitence instinctively breaks forth they want to do something in an opposite direction to their former life, and they seize hold of these more prominent channels in which to cast their penitential offerings. But if the doctrine of repentance were fully taught or fully preached, besides these acts of general mercy, penitential gifts would be required for the advancement of purity, for the restoration of the fallen of the opposite sex. To give to schools is not to make restitution for the lusts of the flesh. Repentance has not borne its own proper fruit. Alas! what little difficulty would there be in supporting ten times the number of female penitentiaries, if male penitents had acted up to the principle of restitution! if, in the very way in which they sinned, they endeavoured to make amends!

In this way then, that is, from this imperfect teaching, the male penitent really suffers; he regains his place too easily, and is not pressed to perform the penitential act proper to his peculiar sin; his penitence finds vents, voluntarily, in self-chosen and less appropriate alms-giving. It would be clearly good for him to concern himself in the recovery of the fallen daughters of the Church; as he has helped to increase that degraded company of most wretched sinners, so in his altered and repentant state should he be taught to lessen, by all possible means, that guilty host of outcast women. But how fearful is the wrong done to these female wanderers, when the male penitent is not urged to restitution! Not only does he fail to bring forth the proper fruit of repentance, but they fail to have the benefit of his repentance: that fruit would have been for their gain; but as he directs his penitential feelings into other channels, they are left to wander without hope, to sin without any to call them from their sin; nay, as is often the case, when they arise and go to the few penitential hospitals that seem to invite them to enter in, they are driven from the doors for want of room. As it is, we venture to say, that not one among a thousand male penitents has ever done more than feel sorrow for his companions in sin.

Not only, however, is the doctrine of repentance softened down towards the men who err, but as it fails in severity on the one side, it exceeds in severity on the other: men are too easily lifted

up, women are too pitilessly cast down; too little of stern discipline is used towards the one, while all the vials of human wrath and condemnation are poured out upon the other. The one suffer too little, the other too much. As the legitimate discipline of the Church is relaxed, so the irregular discipline substituted in its place wants that principle of equity, of impartiality, of pity mixed with strictness, which characterizes all the sentences of the Church. How well might the sin-stained daughters of the Church yearn for the very severest forms of her discipline! The world passes upon them a practical excommunication far sterner, far more pitiless, far more intolerable than the heaviest excommunication of the Church; for, by the one, they are cast out for ever from the pale of social intercourse and fellowship, whereas the other casts them out for a season only, that, being chastened for their profit and put to shame, they may be moved to repentance. When repentance comes, then the door again is opened; the wanderer is welcomed home; the sentence is reversed; the sinner is reconciled to the Church, and, after a certain penitential progress, is admitted into full communion, full fellowship with the elect. How can we compare with this strict, yet merciful, system the conduct of the world towards these offenders? On them, indeed, the world hurls its fearful "Anathema Maranatha," the words of eternal excommunication, and the door of its pardon is closed for ever against youthful sin in one sex, which it over-easily forgives and forgets in the other.

Nay, if we venture to speak of pity, or of milder forms of treatment, we run risks of being accused of a morbid sympathy for the vicious; of encouraging the young to hurry into the ways of vice, by offering them a place of repentance, by preaching evangelical repentance, by holding forth the hope of forgiveness, and by giving them opportunities for the amendment of life. And yet, as though this strange fear of telling fallen women that they may be forgiven were deserving of marked reproach, there is no class of sinners so often specified in the Gospels as receiving our Lord's forgiveness.

While, indeed, we speak of pity, we must not forget the circumstances under which so many fall; we take no true view of the degree of sinfulness in such a sin, if we set it apart from all its surrounding circumstances, and then gaze at it abstractedly. Commonly, however, this sin is considered in an abstract way, or rather, it is looked upon in its worst circumstances; fallen women are commonly supposed to have yielded to an inordinate love of pleasure to have given rein to their lust-to have been driven on solely by passion, and thus to have fallen. This is supposed to be the ordinary history of those who are now treading an unceasing round of sin. Now, even if this were a true picture of

the state of the case, we should ask for pity for those whom passion has blinded and betrayed: even to them the doctrine of repentance should be preached; they are not castaways or reprobates at once, whatever they may become; one short course of indulged passion is not to shut them out from all sound of the hope of pardon. To have fallen once is not a Gospel synonym for lasting excommunication. Let it be true, that they had good guides in their youth, happy homes, kind parents, holy training, gifts of God's Spirit, stirring voices of conscience in the midst of their sin-still, we say, they should not be utterly given up, though they went against all these restraining influences.

But, as a matter of fact, we are treating an exception as a rule. All the writers who have studied this question, whether English, Scotch, or French, agree in telling us, that we misjudge the case, if we suppose that the mass of women fall simply by the force of unbridled passion, of an unrestrained and unruly love of pleasure. However disinclined we may be to give up our accustomed view of this class of sinners, yet the more we read and the more we inquire of those competent to speak, the more we shall be convinced that, though guilty pleasure may come in as a partial incitement to sin, the stronger tempters are altogether of a different kind. In short, inquiry will help to soften our feelings towards these our erring sisters, by setting before us the many palliating circumstances which have combined in most cases to lessen the 'wilfulness of the fall.

Thus the writers we allude to unanimously place Poverty among the principal and most active causes of female dishonour. Overwork and under-pay stand out as the most prominent temptations to this sin. When, indeed, we are told, that the various kinds of sempstresses yield the largest quota to these sinful hosts, it needs no prophet's eye to detect the hand of Poverty in the act of beckoning them on to sin. Poverty, poverty, we repeat, is often the principal, and pleasure the second, in these cruel woundings of girls' souls. "What,"-we quote from a copy of The Times which is before us," What," asked Mr. Norton of the prisoner, "were you paid for making these shirts?"

"Prisoner.-2s. 6d. a dozen, your worship, or 24d. a piece.” "Mr. Norton.-What, 24d. a piece! Well, that seems to be an improvement; for I recollect a memorable case which came before me, where two women were paid only 1d. a shirt for what they made; but, from the exposure that then took place of this system of starvation and hard work, I was in hope the practice was much improved."

We again take up The Times, of the same period last year, and extract another case. "In answer to a question from the magis

« PreviousContinue »