MISS MAUDE ROYDEN
. . . _their religion, too (i.e. the religion of women), has a mode
of expressing itself, though it seldom resorts to the ordinary
phrases of divinity.
Those "nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love," by
which their influence is felt through every part of society,
humanising and consoling wherever it travels, are their theology.
It is thus that they express the genuine religion of their minds;
and we trust that if ever they should study the ordinary dialect of
systematised religion they will never, while pronouncing its harsh
gutturals and stammering over its difficult shibboleths, forget
their elder and simpler and richer and sweeter language._--F.D.
MAURICE.
Pushkin said that Russia turned an Asian face towards Europe and a
European face towards Asia.
This acute saying may be applied to Miss Royden. To the prosperous and
timid Christian she appears as a dangerous evangelist of socialism, and
to the fiery socialist as a tame and sentimental apostle of
Christianity. As in the case of Russia, so in the case of this
interesting and courageous woman; one must go to neither extremity,
neither to the _bourgeoisie_ nor to the _apacherie_, if one would
discover the truth of her nature.
Nor need one fear to go direct to the lady herself, for she is the very
soul of candour. Moreover, she has that charming spirit of friendliness
and communication which distinguished La Bruyère, a philosopher "always
accessible, even in his deepest studies, who tells you to come in, for
you bring him something more precious than gold or silver, _if it is the
opportunity of obliging you_."
Certainly Miss Royden does not resemble, in her attitude towards either
God or the human race, that curious _religieuse_ Mdme. de Maintenon, who
having been told by her confessor in the floodtime of her beauty that
"God wished her to become the King's mistress," at the end of that
devout if somewhat painful experience, replied to a suggestion about
writing her memoirs, "Only saints would find pleasure in its perusal."
Miss Royden's memoirs, if they are ever written, would have, I think,
the rather unusual merit of pleasing both saints and sinners; the saints
by the depth and beauty of her spiritual experience, the sinners by her
freedom from every shade of cant and by her strong, almost masculine,
sympathy with the difficulties of our human nature. Catherine the Great,
in her colloquies with the nervous and hesitating Diderot, used to say,
"Proceed; _between men_ all is allowable." One may affirm of Miss Royden
that she is at once a true woman and a great man.
It is this perfect balance of the masculine and feminine in her
personality which makes her so effective a public speaker, so powerful
an influence in private discourse, and so safe a writer on questions of
extreme delicacy, such as the problem of sex. She is always on the
level of the whole body of humanity, a complete person, a veritable
human being, neither a member of a class nor the representative of a
sex.
Perhaps it may be permitted to mention two events in her life which help
one to understand how it is she has come to play this masculine and
feminine part in public life.
One day, a day of torrential rain, when she was a girl living in her
father's house in Cheshire, she and her sister saw a carriage and pair
coming through the park towards the house. The coachman and footman on
the box were soaking wet, and kept their heads down to avoid the sting
of the rain in their eyes. The horses were streaming with rain and the
carriage might have been a watercart.
When the caller, a rich lady, arrived in the drawing-room, polite wonder
was expressed at her boldness in coming out on such a dreadful day. She
seemed surprised. "Oh, but I came in a closed carriage," she explained.
This innocent remark opened the eyes of Miss Royden to the obliquity of
vision which is wrought, all unconsciously in many cases, by the power
of selfishness. The condition of her coachman and footman had never for
a moment presented itself to the lady's mind. Miss Royden made
acquaintance with righteous indignation. She became a reformer, and
something of a vehement reformer.
The drenched carriage coming through a splash of rain to her home will
remain for ever in her mind as an image of that spirit of selfishness
which in its manifold and subtle workings wrecks the beauty of human
existence.
Miss Royden, it should be said, had been prepared by a long experience
of pain to feel sympathy with the sufferings of other people. Her mind
had been lamentably ploughed up ever since the dawn of memory to receive
the divine grain of compassion.
At birth both her hips were dislocated, and lameness has been her lot
through life. Such was her spirit, however, that this saddening and
serious affliction, dogging her days and nights with pain, seldom
prevented her from joining in the vigorous games and sports of the
Royden family. She was something of a boy even in those days, and pluck
was the very centre of her science of existence.
The religion of her parents suggested to her mind that this suffering
had been sent by God. She accepted the perilous suggestion, but never
confronted it. It neither puffed her up with spiritual pride nor created
in her mind bitter thoughts of a paltry and detestable Deity. A pagan
stoicism helped her to bear her lot quite as much as, if not more than,
the evangelicalism of Sir Thomas and Lady Royden. Moreover, she was too
much in love with life to give her mind very seriously to the
difficulties of theology. Even with a body which had to wrench itself
along, one could swim and row, read and think, observe and worship.
Her eldest brother went to Winchester and Magdalen College at Oxford;
she to Cheltenham College and Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford. Education
was an enthusiasm. Rivalry in scholarship was as greatly a part of that
wholesome family life as rivalry in games. There was always a Socratic
"throwing of the ball" going on, both indoors and out. Miss Royden
distinguished herself in the sphere of learning and in the sphere of
sports.
At Oxford the last vestiges of her religion, or rather her parents'
religion, faded from her mind, without pain of any order, hardly with
any consciousness. She devoted herself wholeheartedly to the schools. No
longer did she imagine that God had sent her lameness. She ceased to
think of Him.
But one day she heard a sermon which made her think of Jesus as a
teacher, just as one thinks of Plato and Aristotle. She reflected that
she really knew more of the teaching of Plato and Aristotle than she
knew of Christ's teaching. This seemed to her an unsatisfactory state of
things, and she set herself, as a student of philosophy, to study the
teaching of Jesus. What had He said? Never mind whether He had founded
this Church or that, what had He said? And what had been His science of
life, His reading of the riddle?
This study, to which she brought a philosophic mind and a candid heart,
convinced her that the teaching should be tried. It was, indeed, a
teaching that asked men to prove it by trial. She decided to try it, and
she tried it by reading, by meditation, and by prayer. The trial was a
failure. But in this failure was a mystery. For the more she failed the
more profoundly conscious she became of Christ as a Power. This feeling
remained with her, and it grew stronger with time. The Christ who would
not help her nevertheless tarried as a shadow haunting the background of
her thoughts.
There was a secret in life which she had missed, a power which she had
never used. Then came the second event to which I have referred. Miss
Royden met a lady who had left the Church of England and joined the
Quakers, seeking by this change to intensify her spiritual experience,
seeking to make faith a deep personal reality in her life. This lady
told Miss Royden the following experience:
One day, at a Quakers' meeting, she had earnestly "besieged the Throne
of Grace" during the silence of prayer, imploring God to manifest
Himself to her spirit. So earnestly did she "besiege the Throne of
Grace" in this silent intercession of soul that at last she was
physically exhausted and could frame no further words of entreaty. At
that moment she heard a voice in her soul, and this voice said to her,
"Yes, I have something to say to you, _when you stop your shouting_."
From this experience Miss Royden learned to see the tremendous
difference between physical and spiritual silence. She cultivated, with
the peace of soul which is the atmosphere of surrender and dependence,
silence of spirit; and out of this silence came a faith against which
the gates of hell could not prevail; and out of that faith, winged by
her earliest; sympathy with all suffering and all sorrow, came a desire
to give herself up to the service of God. She had found the secret, she
could use the power.
Her first step towards a life of service was joining a Women's
Settlement in Liverpool, a city which has wealth enough to impress and
gratify the disciples of Mr. Samuel Smiles, and slums enough to excite
and infuriate the disciples of Karl Marx. Here Miss Royden worked for
three years, serving her novitiate as it were in the ministry of mercy,
a notable figure in the dark streets of Liverpool, that little eager
body, with its dragging leg, its struggling hips, its head held high to
look the whole world in the face on the chance, nay, but in the hope,
that a bright smile from eyes as clear as day might do some poor devil a
bit of good.
She brought to the slums of Liverpool the gay cheerfulness of a
University woman, Oxford's particular brand of cheerfulness, and also a
tenderness of sympathy and a graciousness of helpfulness which was the
fine flower of deep, inward, silent, personal religion.
It is not easy for anyone with profound sympathy to believe that
individual Partingtons can sweep back with their little mops of
beneficence and philanthropy the Atlantic Ocean of sin, suffering, and
despair which floods in to the shores of our industrialism--at high tide
nearly swamping its prosperity, and at low tide leaving all its
ugliness, squalor, and despairing hopelessness bare to the eye of
heaven.
Miss Royden looked out for something with a wider sweep, and in the year
1908 joined the Women's Suffrage Movement. It was her hope, her
conviction, that woman's influence in politics might have a cleansing
effect in the national life. She became an advocate of this great
Movement, but an advocate who always based her argument on religious
grounds. She had no delusions about materialistic politics. Her whole
effort was to spiritualise the public life of England.
Here she made a discovery--a discovery of great moment to her subsequent
career. She discovered that many came to her meetings, and sought
personal interviews or written correspondence with her afterwards, who
were not greatly interested in the franchise, but who were interested,
in some tragic cases poignantly interested, in spiritual
enfranchisement. Life revealed itself to her as a struggle between the
higher and lower nature, a conflict in the will between good and evil.
She was at the heart of evolution.
It became evident to Miss Royden that she had discovered for herself
both a constituency and a church. Some years after making this discovery
she abandoned all other work, and ever since, first at the City Temple
and now at the Guildhouse in Eccleston Square, has been one of the most
effective advocates in this country of personal religion.
She does not impress one by the force of her intellect, but rather by
the force of her humanity. You take it for granted that she is a
scholar; you are aware of her intellectual gifts, I mean, only as you
are aware of her breeding. The main impression she makes is one of full
humanity, humanity at its best, humanity that is pure but not
self-righteous, charitable but not sentimental, just but not hard, true
but not mechanical in consistency, frank but not gushing. Out of all
this come two things, the sense of two realisms, the realism of her
political faith, and the realism of her religious faith. You are aware
that she feels the sufferings and the deprivations of the oppressed in
her own blood, and feels the power, the presence, and the divinity of
Christ in her own soul.
It is a grateful experience to sit with this woman, who is so like the
best of men but is so manifestly the staunchest of women. Her face
reveals the force of her emotions, her voice, which is musical and
persuasive, the depth of her compassion. In her sitting-room, which is
almost a study and nearly an office, hangs a portrait of Newman, and a
_prie-Dieu_ stands against one of the walls half-hidden by bookshelves.
She is one of the few very busy people I have known who give one no
feeling of an inward commotion.
Apart from her natural eloquence and her unmistakable sincerity, apart
even from the attractive fullness of her humanity, I think the notable
success of her preaching is to be attributed to a single reason, quite
outside any such considerations. It is a reason of great importance to
the modern student of religious psychology. Miss Royden preaches Christ
as a Power.
To others she leaves the esoteric aspects of religion, and the
ceremonial of worship, and the difficulties of theology, and the
mechanism of parochial organisation. Her mission, as she receives it, is
to preach to people who are unwilling and suffering victims of sin, or
who are tortured by theological indecision, that Christ is a Power, a
Power that works miracles, a Power that can change the habits of a
lifetime, perhaps the very tissues of a poisoned body, and can give both
peace and guidance to the soul that is dragged this way and that.
One may be pardoned for remarking that this is a rather unusual form of
preaching in any of the respectable churches. Christianity as a unique
power in the world, a power which transfigures human life, which tears
habitude up by the roots, and which gives new strength to the will, new
eyes to the soul, and a new reality to the understanding; this, strange
to say, is an unusual, perhaps an unpopular subject of clerical
discourse. It is Miss Royden's insistent contribution to modern
theology.
She tells me that so far as her own experience goes, humanity does not
seem to be troubled by intellectual doubts. She is inclined to think
that it is even sick of such discussions, and is apt to describe them
roughly and impatiently as "mere talk." Humanity, as she sees it, is
immersed in the incessant struggle of moral evolution.
There is an empiricism of religion which is worth attention. It
challenges the sceptic to explain both the conversion of the sinner and
the beauty of the saint. If religion can change a man's whole character
in the twinkling of an eye, if it can give a beauty of holiness to human
nature such as is felt by all men to be the highest expression of man's
spirit, truly it is a science of life which works, and one which its
critics must explain. The theories of dogmatist and traditionalist are
not the authentic documents of the Christian religion. Let the sceptic
bring his indictment against the changed lives of those who attribute to
Christ alone the daily miracle of their gladness.
What men and women want to know in these days, Miss Royden assures me
out of the richness of her great experience, is whether Christianity
works, _whether it does things_. The majority of people, she feels sure,
are looking about for "something that helps"--something that will
strengthen men and women to fight down their lower nature, that will
convince them that their higher nature is a reality, and that will give
them a living sense of companionship in their difficult lives--lives
often as drab and depressing as they are morally difficult.
Because she can convey this great sense of the power of Christianity,
people all over the country go to hear her preach and lecture. She is, I
think, one of the most persuasive preachers of the power of Christianity
in any English-speaking country. It is impossible to feel of her that
she is merely speaking of something she has read about in books, or of
something which she recommends because it is apostolic and traditional;
she brings home to the mind of the most cynical and ironical that her
message, so modestly and gently given, is nevertheless torn out of her
inmost soul by a deep inward experience and by a sympathy with humanity
which altogether transfigures her simple words.
It must be difficult, I should think, for any fairminded sceptic not to
give this religion at least a practical trial after hearing Miss
Royden's exposition of it and after learning from her the manner in
which that experiment should be carried out. For she speaks as one
having the authority of a deep personal experience, making no dogmatic
claims, expressing sympathy with all those who fail, but assuring her
hearers that when the moment comes for their illumination it will come,
and that it will be a veritable dayspring from on high. Earnestness is
hers of the highest and tenderest order, but also the convincing
authority of one who has found the peace which passes understanding.
She has spoken to me with sympathy of Mr. Studdert-Kennedy, whose
trench-like methods in the pulpit are thoroughly distasteful to a great
number of people. It is characteristic of Miss Royden that she should
fasten on the real cause of this violence. "I don't like jargon," she
said, "particularly the jargon of Christian Science and Theosophy. I
love English literature too much for that; and I don't like slang,
particularly slang of a brutal order; but I feel a deep sympathy with
anybody who is trying, as Mr. Studdert-Kennedy is trying, to put life
and power into institutionalism. It wants it so badly--oh, so very
badly--life, life, life and power."
Of one whose scholarship greatly impresses her, and for whose spiritual
life she has true respect, but whose theology fills her soul with dark
shadows and cold shudders, she exclaimed, as though it were her own
fault for not understanding him, "It is as if God were dead!"
Always she wants Christianity as life and power.
She remains a social reformer, and is disposed to agree with Bishop Gore
that the present system is so iniquitous that it cannot be
Christianised. She thinks it must be destroyed, but admits the peril of
destructive work till a new system is ready to take its place.
Yet I feel fairly certain that she would admit, if pressed with the
question, that the working of any better system can depend for its
success only upon a much better humanity. For she is one of those who is
bewildered by the selfishness of men and women, a brutal, arrogant,
challenging, and wholly unashamed selfishness, which publicly seeks its
own pleasures, publicly displays the offending symbols of its offensive
wealth, publicly indulges itself in most shameful and infuriating
luxuries, even at a time when children are dying like flies of
starvation and pestilence, and while the men of their own household, who
fought to save civilisation from the despotism of the Prussian theory,
tramp the streets, hungry and bitter-hearted, looking for work.
On her mind, moving about England at all times of the year, the reality
of these things is for ever pressing; the unthinkable selfishness of so
many, and the awful depression of the multitude. She says that a system
which produces, or permits, such a state of things must be bad, and
radically bad.
There are moments, when she speaks of these things, which reveal to one
a certain anger of her soul, a disposition, if I may say so with great
respect, towards vehemence, a temper of impatience and indignation which
would surely have carried her into the camp of anarchy but for the
restraining power of her religious experience. She feels, deeply and
burningly, but she has a Master. The flash comes into her eyes, but the
habitual serenity returns.
I think, however, she might be persuaded to believe that it is not so
much the present system but the pagan selfishness of mankind which
brings these unequal and dreadful things to pass. The lady in the closed
carriage would not be profoundly changed, we may suppose, by a different
system of economics, but surely she might be changed altogether--body,
soul, and spirit--if she so willed it, by that Power which has directed
Miss Royden's own life to such beautiful and wonderful ends.
Nevertheless, Miss Royden must be numbered among the socialists, the
Christian socialists, and Individualism will be all the better for
asking itself how it is that a lady so good, so gentle, so clear-headed,
and so honest should be arrayed with its enemies.
I should like to speak of one memorable experience in Miss Royden's
later life.
She has formed a little, modest, unknown, and I think nameless guild for
personal religion. She desires that nothing of its work should get into
the press and that it should not add to its numbers. She wishes it to
remain a sacred confraternity of her private life, as it were the lady
chapel of her cathedral services to mankind, or as a retreat for her
exhausted soul.
Some months ago she asked a clergyman who has succeeded in turning into
a house of living prayer a London church which before his coming was
like a tomb, whether he would allow the members of this guild, all of
whom are not members of the Church of England, to come to the Eucharist.
He received this request with the most generous sympathy, saying that he
would give them a private celebration, and one morning, soon after dawn,
the guild met in this church to make its first communion. No one else
was present.
Miss Royden has told me that it was an unforgettable experience. Here
was a man, she said, who has no reputation as a great scholar, and no
popularity as an orator; he is loved simply for his devotion to Christ
and his sympathy with the sorrows of mankind. Yet that man, as no other
man had done before, brought the Presence of God into the hearts of that
little kneeling guild. It was as if, Miss Royden tells me, God was there
at the altar, shining upon them and blessing them. Never before had she
been more certain of God as a Person.
It is from experiences of this nature that she draws fresh power to make
men and women believe that the Christian religion is a true philosophy
of reality, and a true science of healing. She is, I mean, a mystic. But
she differs from a mystic like Dean Inge in this, that she is a mystic
impelled by human sympathy to use her mysticism as her sole evangel.
CANON E.W. BARNES
BARNES, Rev. ERNEST WILLIAM, M.A., Sc.D., F.R.S., F.R.A.S.; Canon
of Westminster since 1918; b. 1 April, 1874; e.s. of John Starkie
Barnes; m. 1916, Adelaide Caroline Theresa, o.d. of Sir Adolphus W.
Ward; two s. Educ.: King Edward's School, Birmingham; Trinity
College, Cambridge (Scholar). Bracketed 2d Wrangler, 1896;
President of the Union, 1897; First Class First Division of the
Mathematical Tripos, Part ii., 1897; first Smith's Prizeman, 1898;
Fellow of Trinity College, 1898-1916; M.A., 1900; Ordained, 1902;
Assistant Lecturer Trinity Coll., 1902; Junior Dean, 1906-8; Tutor,
1908-15; Master of the Temple, 1915-19; Examining Chaplain to
Bishop of Llandaff, 1906-20: a Governor of King Edward's School,
Birmingham, 1907; F.R.S., 1909; Select Preacher, Cambridge, 1906,
etc., and Oxford, 1914-16; Fellow of King's College, London, 1919.
[Illustration: CANON E.W. BARNES]