Cheerfulness a Characteristic of the Active Sisterhoods.
The active sisterhoods are repaid to some extent in this world by a beneficent law of human nature. They have one remarkably uniform characteristic; they seem to be invariably cheerful, with bright moments of innocent gaiety. This serenity of mind may be explained naturally without having recourse to miracle. It is gained by the ever-present sense of duties accomplished in the past and the determination to face them in the future. It is the spirit that inspired Wordsworth’s “Ode to Duty” with a health surpassing all songs of love and wine.
The Saintly Nature in Protestantism.
An Anglican Saint.
Life of an Anglican Saint.
These are instances of the saintly nature in practice. I remember a very dear Roman Catholic friend of mine, a Frenchman, asking me if I thought it possible that the saintly nature could develop itself under the influences of Protestantism. It seemed to him that Protestantism must check its heroic spirit and bring it down to the commonplace. I answered that the purest example of the saintly nature I had ever known was an Anglican lady. She belongs to no order and is nothing but a lonely old maid, who has taken all who suffer to be her sisters and brethren. She gives them the whole of her time, the whole of her strength, and all her money except what is reserved for a bare subsistence. She spends seven shillings a week on her own food and lodgings, and as for dress, she is content with anything that will cover her.[38] For perfect courage she is as good as any Catholic saint in the calendar. There is no malady so repulsive or so contagious that she will not cheerfully nurse the patient. These practices are by no means of recent adoption. The lady in question has been leading a saint’s life for twenty or thirty years. The intensity of her religious belief reaches the limits of hallucination. Like Joan of Arc, she hears the angels sing. Whenever a good Christian dies she is filled with a serene joy, thinking only of the glad new birth in heaven. Like Sister Dora, she has strong physical health, and can therefore forget the body as the rich need not think of money. Her existence is almost angelic already; she lives in a sort of ecstasy, and is as ignorant of this world as a cloistered nun. Had she been a Roman Catholic she would have attained to papal beatification.
Romanism and Anglicanism with regard to the Saintly Life.
This example is good evidence that the saintly nature may flourish in perfection outside the Church of Rome, though the fact remains that Roman Catholicism encourages the development of that character beyond the limits of reason, whilst the cooler faith of Anglicanism does not encourage it so far. It is therefore not improbable that saints of the heroic type are more common in France than in England.
Religious Work in Common Life.
An Anglican Layman.