In order to impress a portion of Scripture upon the minds of our members, I request them, after the prayer is over, to repeat a verse. This is not, of course, compulsory; but most of them comply, or attempt to comply. As some of them cannot read at all, and others very imperfectly, there are not many who repeat the passage correctly. I generally make a few remarks upon the verse which I select, with the hope that they will better remember it, and take it as their motto for the week. I remember, one evening, I repeated—“Fear not, little flock; it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” I told them I once heard of a man who had a great deal of money—more than he really knew what to do with. He had a brother, who was very poor, and who used sometimes to ask his rich brother for help. One day, he begged for the loan of £20. The rich brother said he would advance the sum, on the condition that the poor brother would write and promise never to trouble him any more. I contrasted this with God’s way of bestowing His gifts upon us. He not only gives, but it is His good pleasure to give (as we say, sometimes, we are happy to do so and so), and bestow, not a perishing sum of money only, but a kingdom. A poor chimney-sweeper’s wife, sitting near me, was evidently listening with even more than her usual earnestness. She could not read, neither could her husband, and they had no children old enough to go to school; therefore, repeating a verse was to her a considerable undertaking. She was, however, one of those energetic people who cannot bear to be left behind. A fragment of a verse, if nothing more, we were sure to get from her; and the mutilations did not trouble her, as she was not conscious of them. I saw, upon this occasion, she was bent upon getting possession of this verse; and I therefore took care to repeat it distinctly two or three times. Next week, when it came to her turn, she repeated, in a triumphant voice, as if she thought her verse now as good as any one’s—“Fear not, little flock; yer Father will be very ’appy to give yer the kingdom.”
The narratives of Scripture, when explained and illustrated, interest them more than any story-book that I have ever found. The pressure of their domestic duties prevents many of them from attending a place of worship; and the imperfect way in which they read, obliges them to give more attention to the words than to the sense, and keeps their stock of book-knowledge very small. The history of Daniel in the lion’s den has the same charm for them as for children. I remember once, when reading the verse—“Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for ever.” I said, these words strikingly shewed how perfectly calm and self-possessed the prophet was. We might have supposed, from the terrible position in which he was, that he would have said at once, “Oh, take me away from this dreadful place!” but instead of that, he did not even forget to preface his answer to the king with the usual courtly phrase, “O king, live for ever.” After the meeting was over, I observed two women standing together, and talking about this. One of them was an Irishwoman, and a professed Roman Catholic. She was saying to the other—“And jist to think now, that he should have minded his manners, and all, at sich a time as that.” Little expressions of this kind are not only amusing, but valuable as a criterion by which to judge how far the women understand what is said, and are interested in it. A friend of mine, who attended the meeting once, was so much diverted by some of these original sayings and doings, that she said afterwards—“I am afraid you must find the society of polite people, who never say or do anything but what is strictly correct, rather dull after this.”
CHAPTER VII.
Giving and Receiving.
“The world’s a room of sickness, where each heart
Knows its own anguish and unrest!
The truest wisdom there, and noblest art,
Is his who skills of comfort best;
Whom by the softest step and gentlest tone
Enfeebled spirits own,
And love to raise the languid eye,
When, like an angel’s wing, they feel him fleeting by.”Keble.
One principal motive which has induced me to write this little book is the hope that, by facts and illustrations, I might remove the idea of difficulty which many people attach to the management of such institutions as I have described. Many excellent and kind-hearted ladies have said to me, “I should be so afraid to attempt it.” “It must require a person very clever, I am sure; I should never be able to interest them.” These objections arise out of the mistaken notion that the necessary qualifications belong more to the head than to the heart; that some great thing is required of us, rather than a good thing.
I received a letter, a few days ago, from a gentleman at Plymouth, in which he tells me of the progress of a Mothers’ Society in that town, conducted partly by his wife. Speaking of one of their tea-meetings, at which he had been present, he says, “Whilst there, I was much struck by the fact that, notwithstanding the great difference in our circumstances, our wants are much the same. We all have anxieties to be allayed, weaknesses to be supported, sins to be forgiven, hopes to be assured, and aspirations to be encouraged. The maladies of all classes are the same, and require the leaves of the tree given for the healing of the nations. In this view we are one with the poorest and the lowest, and we speak to them as one of them.”
It is the realisation of this great thought of being one with them, which is the true qualification. No amount of ability will avail without this. When the head is simply to be stored with knowledge, the greater the ability which the teacher possesses the better. But the evils that we hope to remove by meeting the poor in this way, have more of a moral than a mental origin; and consequently they must be met as moral evils, proceeding from the frailty to which we are all liable. The great object of the teacher must be to awaken in the mind of the poor mother a deep sense of her responsibility; and this must be spoken of (and how truly!) as our responsibility. The very slighting way in which poor girls generally hear themselves mentioned, the little account in which they are held, the absence, in fact, of almost everything that can make them feel of importance in society, induce a habit of thought very unfavourable to a conscientious discharge of their duties. The feeling I speak of is something perfectly distinct from either vanity or pride. It is the conviction that interests of great importance are committed to us, out of which arise duties for whose performance we shall be held responsible, not only to society, but to Him who has consigned these sacred trusts to our care, saying, “Occupy till I come.”
I was lately visiting one of our poor women, whose progress I have now had the pleasure of watching for some years. She was lamenting the death of one of her favourite plants, and said—
“I do like to see them pretty green things agin the white curtains; ’tis something cheerful, like, for the children to watch; they looks after the buds and flowers as if they could see ’em grow.”
I replied—“The little slips you planted a few weeks ago will soon be up; and in the meantime, your nice white curtains will make the room look very neat.”