Transcribed from the 1864 Rivingtons edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Pamphlet cover]
AN ADDRESS
TO
THE SISTERS OF ST. PETER’S HOME,
BROMPTON,
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.
* * * * *
LONDON:
GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS,
ST. JOHN’S SQUARE.
* * * * *
TO
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.
INTRODUCTION.
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 of 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 Sisterhoods “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 those 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, should 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 plain, 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.