Dare I to ask our friends who will assemble in Paris to keep their ears open to this cry, and to remember that there, close by, in the midst of all the charms of the Exhibition, and the interest of social gatherings and meetings on behalf of every good end, there, close by, are crushed hearts and maddened spirits, whose existence as an officially acknowledged social necessity is a crime prophetic of woe for that charming city en fête just now, but which must pass under a cloud sooner or later, if for these and other slaves the sword of justice is not unsheathed?
In the years past I visited sometimes houses of ill-fame in my own country, where the law is with us and not against us in entering such places. I recall one day sitting in a room with some score of young women of the unhappy sisterhood. They were seated mostly on the floor around me, some with an expression of weariness or indifference on their faces, some hard, others gently inquisitive. I spoke to them (do not be surprised, any friend who may read this) of the sweetness of family life, of the blessing of the love of a pure and chivalrous man, and of happy married life, of the love of little children, the gaiety, the gladness they shed in the home, of the delight even of the humblest household work in such conditions in a home where true love reigns, and of the affection between a true husband and wife, which deepens and becomes more holy as life goes on. Was it cruel? It might seem so. But the effect was not so. All round me there were heads bowed low; no more hardness nor indifference, but tears dropping on clasped hands and faces hidden on the shoulders of their companions. The room seemed to be full of the sound of sighing and sobbing; it seemed to me a wail—almost like the wail of lost spirits:“Too late! too late! That is not for us. Once we had now and then such a dream, but now—nevermore!” I dropped on the floor to be nearer and in the midst of them, and spoke words which I cannot remember, but to this effect:“Courage, my darlings! Don’t despair; I have good news for you. You are women, and a woman is always a beautiful thing. You have been dragged deep in the mud; but still you are women. God calls to you, as He did to Zion long ago, ‘Awake, awake! Thou that sittest in the dust, put on thy beautiful garments.’ It may be that the picture I have drawn is not for you, yet I dare to prophesy good for you, and happiness even in this life; and I tell you truly that you can become, in this life, something even better than a happy wife and mother—yes, something better. You can help to save others. You can be the friend and companion of Him who came to seek and to save that which was lost. Fractures well healed make us more strong. Take of the very stones over which you have stumbled and fallen, and use them to pave your road to heaven. My beloved ones, I have come to tell you of a happiness in store for you, greater than any earthly happiness.”
Did I speak to them of their sins? Did I preach that the wages of sin is death? Never! What am I—a sinner—that I should presume to tell them that they were sinners? That would have stirred an antagonism in their hearts, a mental protest:“Perhaps you are not much better than we. If you had had to go through what we have gone through, if you had been neglected, poor, betrayed, kicked about by society——” Ah, yes, I knew all that; and I knew that the vision of what they might have been had stirred in every poor heart of them a sad, dreary sense of loss—of irreparable loss—and a keen sense of shame and of bitter regret that they were what they were.
And the seal set upon every such message was the seal of the blessed name of Christ the Lord, the Lover of the lost, the Friend of sinners; of Him who welcomed the sinful woman, the sister of those who are called in police reports “habitual prostitutes,” “abandoned women,” “recalcitrants,”“social nuisances”; of Him who accepted her tears, who suffered her to kiss His feet; of Him who said, “The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost”; the noble Shepherd who goes forth in search of His lost sheep, following it over hill and dale, rock and torrent, and through the wide, waste wilderness —till when? till He sees that that erring creature does not want to be saved, is too stupid and silly and perverse, too tainted with vice to be saved, and then does He turn back and give it up? No. It is written: “He goeth after the sheep that is lost until He finds it.” How is it that the Chief Shepherd never turns back (as we do) from the search after a lost soul, or His vast lost humanity? The answer comes to me—because of His faith. He had faith in God the Father, and He had faith also in that human nature created by God. He sees what we cannot see—the spark, all but extinguished, in the most wretched soul of man or woman, which can be fanned into a flame when the Divine breath breathes upon it.
We know that the words translated in our Scriptures, “Have faith in God,” are now more truly translated, “Have the faith of God.” In order to follow our lost sheep until we find them—never stopping short of that—it seems that we must have, in some degree at least, the faith of the Son of God; His faith in the creative power of the Father of the human race, who can create and recreate, and His faith in the possibility of resurrection for every dead soul.
Among those whom we call “lost women” I have known better rescuers of other lost women than I have known among the truest Christians who have kept firmly in the paths of righteousness. There are among them—perhaps not many, but some—whose ardour and spirit of self-sacrifice in the work has amazed us. Their own experience drives them on, and once given and having accepted such a work, they rise to a height, or rather, I might say, they stoop to a depth, of self-abnegation which comes near to the highest ideal of saintliness. “We are poor creatures,” as one of them said; “we have done badly. We can do little, but at least we may be of use in raking a few of our dear fellow-sinners out of the mud.” And they have raked them out of the mud—those lost diamonds in the dust, trodden under foot. They have plunged into the dust heaps and refuse of society, and brought out thence treasures which, when cleansed—even as we all need to be cleansed—become as the stars which shine for ever and ever.
Is it any wonder that such memories visit one in the night season, and that a prayer rises from the heart that the God of Love may send a message of fire into the hearts of our so-called purity workers, our higher morality pleaders, a message which will not be ignored or set aside, but which will compel them to seek a way to the direct deliverance of these captives and the breaking of their chains. And if these workers feel that this work is not theirs, or that they are not fitted for it, or called to it, then I pray that God will prepare and call up a relief army, a forlorn hope brigade from among the humble, the uneducated, the poor and unambitious, who are not so “awfully busy” with good works that they cannot turn aside to lift the wounded or carry the dead; and that He will give to this relief army to fight, in this humble but holy war with the inexpressible bravery, endurance and self-sacrifice with which men are fighting to-day in another war.
I know it will be said, as it is often said: “But rescue work is such discouraging, such hopeless work. It is far better to act on public opinion, to elevate the morality of men, to educate the young in principles of justice and purity, to strike at the root, at the causes of prostitution. What you are counselling is but ambulance work for picking up and helping the wounded. Is it not far better to abolish war, which necessitates ambulance work?” All this is quite true. I have preached it many a time myself. Nevertheless, while we are still in the midst of war can we, in the name of pity, neglect our wounded and leave them to die? “This ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone.”
Moreover womanhood is solidaire. We cannot successfully elevate the standard of public opinion in the matter of justice to women, and of equality of all in its truest sense, if we are content that a practical, hideous, calculated, manufactured and legally maintained degradation of a portion of womanhood is allowed to go on before the eyes of all. “Remember them that are in bonds, as being bound with them.” Even if we lack the sympathy which makes us feel that the chains which bind our enslaved sisters are pressing on us also, we cannot escape the fact that we are one womanhood, solidaire, and that so long as they are bound, we cannot be wholly and truly free. We continue to be dragged down from that right place and influence which we aim at by the deadweight of this accursed thing in the midst of us.
This year (1900) Josephine Butler wrote two books about the South African War. In the first, Native Races and the War, she endeavours to prove that the treatment of the native races of South Africa, though it had “not yet in England or on the Continent been cited as one of the direct causes of the war,” really lay “very near to the heart of the present trouble.” We suspect that the writing of this book was partly due to the fact that her patriotic spirit recoiled at the violent denunciations against England, especially by continental writers, for having entered upon the war from base and covetous motives; but perhaps she fell into the opposite extreme of exaggerating the faults of President Kruger’s Government. In any case, whether or not she proves her thesis that the native question had anything to do with the origin of the war, all will agree with her view, that “Great Britain will in future be judged, condemned or justified according to her treatment of those innumerable coloured races, over whom her rule extends;” and that “race prejudice is a poison which will have to be cast out if the world is ever to be Christianised, and if Great Britain is to maintain the high and responsible place among the nations which has been given to her.” In Silent Victories she does not deal with controversial questions, but tells the simple story of humane and spiritual work carried on amongst the troops by various religious agencies, giving many pathetic incidents from soldiers’ letters from the front, which showed that in the midst of the horrors of war silent victories were won in many hearts, lifted from selfishness to true manhood and brotherliness.