This was the motto of the Storm-Bell, a periodical in which Josephine Butler published her thoughts month by month from January, 1898, to August, 1900. We give in this chapter some specimens of these thoughts of hers.
Sir James Stansfeld, the dear friend and leader of our cause, has passed over to the other side. There are judgments on earth of men’s acts, and there are judgments in heaven. It is not improbable that the parts of his life and character regarded as the least praiseworthy on earth will appear up there as the brightest parts of all. He had nothing to gain, and much to lose by separating himself in a measure from his colleagues in office, and setting aside chances of brilliant promotion and political prestige in order to descend with us into the inferno of human woe, to bring a gleam of hope to that world of doomed women, who more than all human sufferers are cast out from the favour of earth and the light of heaven. I have seldom met with a man who had so much of the woman’s heart in this matter. He had so deep a respect for womanhood, even at its worst, and so much tenderness for the fallen, that—like another great friend of Mazzini—he felt“instinctively the impulse to lift his hat when he met one of that sad sisterhood in the street, as a mark of his reverence for her poor wrecked womanhood, which would not have been ruined but for the co-operation (to use no sterner word) of the stronger being—man”.
When he first appeared for us in public, and for years after, he was pretty well baited and abused in newspapers of the Saturday Review type as a “faddist,” a champion of the “shrieking sisterhood,” a “friend,” in fact, of “publicans and sinners.” All that is past for him. His record is in Heaven. He does not need, he never needed, and never desired the poor praise of men. The quality which stands out the most prominently in my remembrance of him is his courage, his dauntless hope and confidence of final victory in a good cause. That cheerful confidence, that pluck characterised him to the very last. I wish there were more like him in this. I never remember to have heard a word from him indicating a feeling of depression about our work, not even at its darkest times. Good workers in a good cause, even when they know it to be God’s cause, sometimes fall into a minor key, and utter sad wails concerning the gathering clouds, the dark outlook, and the power of evil. I do not think, that with all his command of speech, our friend would have known how to formulate any such wail.
He was a born forlorn hope leader. No one is fit or safe to lead, or even I would say to follow, in a misunderstood and unpopular cause, or ever so humble a forlorn hope, who has not attained to so much of self-control as to be able to close his lips if he has reason to fear any utterance may be coming forth from them which is not a note of victory. Courage and faith are highly infectious. A sigh, or a sad look, or a “but” from a leader is equally infectious, and not in a good sense. Sometimes they are disastrous. And after all what is this kind of courage except moral faith? It is that faith in God and in His eternal promise which removes mountains, and which sees hope in the darkest hour, and more than hope—certainty of victory. The love of justice and liberty was born in him; it was in his bones, so to speak. From his youth upward he was an uncompromising defender of those principles, which have contributed to the true greatness of England; and so far he was, as he often said himself, a Conservative, for he was jealous for the conservation of principles and truths, which Tories and Radicals alike lose sight of when personal and party ambition begins to take the first place with them, to the exclusion of what is nobler and worthier than one’s wretched self or one’s poor party. He was also an international man in the best sense. His friends, good men of other countries, felt the warmth of his friendship and the soundness of his judgment to be untainted by narrow or insular prejudices.
A great Spanish politician, Señor Emilio Castelar,[16] published some thirty years ago a manifesto, in which he set forth the doctrines and principles of what he considered a true and moderate Republicanism. He expressed his belief that Democracy can never attain to any lasting reforms and real progress unless it holds in respect the best elements of national life—its history, religious faith, and most honourable traditions; and he therefore earnestly called upon the Liberals of Spain (a minority impatient of the stagnation of life in their nation) to give up their position of conspirators, to avoid all violence, and to seek reform by organised and legal action, and so to educate themselves and their countrymen for a better state of government and national life. His words and actions won for him and his group of friends the title of Los hombres de manana, “the men of to-morrow.”
For the salvation of our country, and indeed of the world, we need that there should arise amongst us men of to-morrow, and women of to-morrow, that there should be watchmen on all our watch-towers, more than in times past, who will “watch for the morning,” and be able, with a clear and unfaltering voice, to answer the cry of their brethren, “Watchman, what of the night?” Such men and women of to-morrow will possess a living, though often a silent power, in the midst of all the noise and hurry of our social and political life; they will be not only the party of true progress, but the party of true conservatism, watchers for and guardians of the preservation of precious principles which are constantly threatened with destruction.
It is not enough to be wide-awake men of to-day. There is an urgent need for some among us to look on in advance. We need seers as well as workers. History teaches us how much we need them, and how much of human suffering has been needlessly inflicted and prolonged by the want of such seers among men. Especially is this evident in the moral and political life of a nation. A leader in politics of the early half of the century, speaking of a wrong to which he wished to put his hand in order to remove it, said, “We did not know, we did not perceive; and only now we are learning, and only now we begin to see.” There is a deep sadness in this confession, even when humbly and honestly made. It brings to our minds the words, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if thou hadst known the things that belong to thy peace; but now they are hid from thine eyes.” It is well to ask ourselves truthfully before God, “How far has such ignorance the character of moral guilt?” And it is well that we should realise that that moral guilt of ignorance needs none the less to be repented of and purged away because it is shared by thousands and because it may even be chiefly laid to the charge of generations gone by. Daniel the prophet was a great patriot and a wise politician. His confession was, We and our fathers have sinned; and prophet-like, and like a high priest of the people, he pleaded with God, as if he himself bore on his shoulders alone the guilt of the whole nation, in the past and the present.
It is impossible for the Christian patriot to look forward to the future of our English race, and even into the next few years, without some misgiving. The outlook also for the whole of Europe and of the world seems charged with the clouds and portents of a coming storm. “The morning cometh, and also the night.” The shadows of night will deepen, and the darkness increase awhile, before the glad cry is heard: “The morning cometh.”“Now is come the kingdom of our God and of His Christ.” God grant that heaven-taught spirits may again arise among us, not only one here and there, but many, like the stars appearing in the firmament as the shadows of evening deepen into night. God has such in preparation, I cannot doubt. They are arising—the prophets and prophetesses, the seers of the latter days. They are found and will be found among those who elect to live in the silence very near to God, and who realise in the most tenderly human sense the saving friendship of Christ.