‘It was a time of great religious revival: the bald services of my childhood were beginning to develop into the musical services of our own time.... The beautiful music of to-day is not more dear to me than those plain services with often grotesque accompaniments where I learned to see Heaven opened. Miss Sewell’s writings, especially The Experience of Life, helped me in early youth to work out the problems of my daily life. Religion quickened the intellectual life, for Sacramental teaching was to the leaders of that movement no narrow dogmatism, but the discovery of the river of the water of life flowing through the whole desert of human existence, and making it rejoice and blossom as the rose, revealing a unity in creation, a continuity in history, a glory in art, a purpose in life, making life infinitely worth living.’[29]
When quite young she began the practice of Sunday Communion, and many a week day found her at the 6 A.M. celebration at St. Bartholomew’s Church. From first to last her scanty diary records this service among the leading facts of ordinary life.
In the power thus gained she had ever before her the thought of co-operation, of working out salvation, of putting on Christ by daily dying to self by minute watchfulness, and in every sense of the word painstaking diligence. At a time when the pulpits of Cheltenham were ringing with statements which seemed to her to misrepresent the great doctrine of the Atonement, she was speaking to her children of the true nature of the Redeemer’s Blood, of the living stream flowing from the Heart through all the members; she was seeking for herself and for them the righteousness of Christ, not as a mere substitution, but as a real attainment won by the union of a soul wholly surrendered to the workings of the grace of God.
This chapter may fitly close with a passage from the diary, which she appears to have begun to keep for the first time this year, when she was to some extent forced back upon herself, when she was making her own scheme of daily work. Begun on Ash Wednesday, February 17, 1858, it was continued intermittently at least to 1901, when the increasing infirmities of age made all reading and writing difficult. Sometimes dropped for many months, it was taken up again as if with the suggestion of a sense of culpability for neglect. It was never full; never, so far as outward events are concerned, of any great interest. Some of these, indeed, as the writing of certain letters, the visits of certain friends, or business engagements, are just mentioned and no more; doubtless for the sake of reference only. It remains for us as a revelation of the keen self-scrutiny with which she, who had to guide and warn others, was daily searching her own soul. Very often for weeks there is no mention of anything done, or seen, or thought as far as the matters of this world are concerned; but she never failed to note what she regarded as the real life, spiritual growth or the reverse, right or wrong conduct, faithful or unfaithful performance of religious duties. This diary cannot be ignored if a true presentment of Dorothea Beale is to be given. Hence, intimate as it is, enough extracts as may display the persistent effort of her life are inserted here. They are not consecutive, but chosen as characteristic and interesting, and showing to some extent the occupations of the period. Scanty traces indeed of what she was doing and thinking, they are yet enough to show a little of the anxiety and conflict of which she wrote in 1901 to Miss Margaret Richardson, in these words: ‘Once I had an interval of work, and I thought perhaps God would not give it me again—but after that interval He called me here. I think now I can see better how I needed that time of comparative quiet and solitude, and a time to think over my failures, and a time to be more helpful to my family.’
Extracts from Diary of 1858
‘February 17th.—Ash Wednesday. [To] S. M’s. [Applied] for school at Holloway. Lip-service. Snappish. Resolution. [to strive for more] humility, patience, charity.
‘February 26th.—Miss Alston came. Idle [meditation] on peace. To be less anxious.
‘February 27th.—History for seven hours. Church. Some idleness.
‘March 5th.—Went to see Mr. Sankey about boy’s evening school. To church. History. Many impatient answers to Mama.