MISS WORDSWORTH ON THE DECALOGUE.* Miss ELIZABETH WORDSWORTH is Principal
of Lady Mar- garet Hall, Oxford. The connection of her family with the high thinking" of England, as well as her own gifts, would doubtless obtain consideration for her words; but they have a twofold interest in their present appeal in volume-form to • The Deralogue. By Elisaboth Wordsworth, Principal of Lady Margaret Ball, Oxford. London and Now York; Longmans, Groan, and Co. 1893 cultivated girls, and in their previous treatment of the sub- ject for the unique audience of the Hall. It is a limited but very interesting set of personalities over whom Miss Words- worth exercises discipline and influence ; their possibilities are great. The class to which the printed study might be useful is one of the most interesting to lead, and by no means the most accessible to religious educational influences.
Except for the inevitable limitations of womanhood, there is, as yet, every chance that the majority of feminine students will make more practical use of their training, paid or unpaid, than the majority of equivalent young men. It is difficult, of course (everything is difficult, if we begin to think about it), but it ie quite simple for those young women to use their influence who, by marriage or position, have the right to make the home, the school, the institution, or to head a movement, or even to slip into any definite though subordinate post when the community days are over. It is much more complicated to fit the new definite education to the old indefinite home. Home-worries and home-burdens of what may be called the apparently unnecessary kind, are not quite so readily borne by those whose grown-up lives have opened in a community where comparatively little is at the mercy of caprice, where those who are not contemporaries have for their chief obvious objects the convenience and stimulus of the younger generation, and all alike are bent on the same class of recognised interests. But on the home- coming the girl sees, for example, her mother worried with accounts, and would be willing, and not unwilling, to help her.
It would seem obvious that the daughter should do what would take her "fifteen minutes to set straight and three to explain to any one !" But the girl does not realise that what is wanted is not the speedy and correct doing of those ac- counts—which, if they are a worry, are also the means of exercising a sense of ownership, and are a bit of occupation —but sympathy with one who thinks the figures are very hard and her " books " something that nobody else could possibly add up in the right way but herself at the expenditure of so many hours of labour. Now, of course, supposing other things be equal, the girl with trained brains is more likely than her untrained sister to " see " such a situation ; but where the girl has not sympathetic instincts nor a practical conscience, the indefinite strain of the young-lady life in some homes is a more severe trial to the girl who comes back to it as a graduate, than to one who has grown up in it, or earlier returned to its ways. Superficial difficulties test deep motives, where women are concerned. At one time no money was spent on their higher education ; and as yet, definite leisure for study or work is not permitted in many households where time is never grudged for the least profitable forms of unrecrea- tive amusement. This is a trial which will pass away.
The educated girls who have been always at home also have their own difficulties, and thoughtful women almost always spring from households which in some form or other have known trouble, monetary or domestic,—the pressure of circum- stances without, or of tempers within. The young debutante generation of to-day below the age of twenty, seems physically stronger and mentally more slothful than its immediate pre- decessor at the same age ; it is apparently not quite satis- factory, but we have not had time to judge it yet by its fruits. Its predecessor needs, and looks for, help from women such as Miss Wordsworth. We could name many older women who are doing much to help the educated young girl as she grapples with the old motives under the conditions of her own life, but it is Miss Wordsworth who is at present before us as a type of the new teacher of the new student. What message does she give to her young hearers ? She knows, whatever be their future, if they live, they live to-day and will live into to-morrow, and that although some obstacles are floating, and fog or storm may appear to sweep down suddenly, yet, generally, we must navigate according to the height of the tide. To-day there is deep water over the rocks that a short time hence will be dangerous, or the impassable channel in this darkness will be filled with the returning sea when the day breaks. Yet we are not left to ourselves, we are not separated from the past, and the one definite rule of conduct is the Decalogue interpreted by the Beatitudes. Whether the aspect of any difficulty be ancient or modern, the Decalogue is the test of action. We believe that the best of the young would rather face any difficulty than be left in an indefinity ; but they scarcely realise that every attempt at " tying up minds into bundles," betrays limited and human understanding of humanity Hence the need of older ad- visers to show that the highest intellectual training can lead to no more "understanding " of life than is implied in obedience to the ancient Ten Commandments. But human limitations from time to time grow up round them, and in the reaction against those, there is always a period when it is necessary to restate what they mean in the circumstances. It is interesting to see how they are explained by an able woman for her juniors; and, on the whole, we think that Miss Wordsworth's book is admirable for its purpose. We know of nothing else which for educated young women so wisely suggests principles by which they can test the difficulties they, as educated and active young women, will meet with. Miss Wordsworth deals with things as they are for those who have to live in the world, but, as she hopes, will not be conformed to it. She is very sensible. She deals acutely with temper- ance, and incidentally presents a view which the ascetic young girl is very likely to overlook :—
" Many people would rather do some act of physical mortifica- tion than make a mental or spiritual effort such as is required for prayer, meditation, and the like. To pray requires concentra- tion of thought and the power of dwelling in a region of abstraction. It is a very severe mental effort if we do it with any earnestness ; whereas one can lie on a hard board with some discomfort indeed, but with no strain on our higher faculties. The worst of it is that a prolonged course of injudicious asceti- cism (I am not now speaking of authorised and wisely regulated fasting or abstinence) has a tendency so much to weaken the brain that it makes the higher spiritual life,—to which the intellect as well as the emotions should be, surely, ministerial,— more and more difficult, if not impossible. A good deal of religious silliness—if the phrase may be used—and a miserably materialistic view of sacred things are fostered in this way."
Again, Miss Wordsworth is admirable in practical treatment of women as speakers, as reformers, as workers, writers, and the like. She recognises that all these occupations are actually theirs, and that the present conditions of life have need of them at their best for objects necessarily entirely disclosed to women of the past. Sundays, for instance, have changed as much as the spirit of philanthropy. Whilst pleading most earnestly for the Sunday rest and revival, Miss Wordsworth speaks wisely of the modern elasticity necessary for the comfort of the family life on the one hand, and on the other she administers a kindly snub to those who "think they are keeping their Sundays properly if they do not leave them- selves a single unoccupied minute." It is very difficult, no doubt, for the willing horse to obtain leisure, because no one else will draw the cart, but in some oases the cart had better stay in the ditch than be dragged by the tired animal, who will, moreover, break down in all probability over his proper load. We have our duties even to our duties. It is desirable that all who can should read this little volume, and as it is in itself a key, it is not needful to explain it; but, as an incitement to its purchtise by thoughtful women of all ages, and especially by those who can adapt it for classes, we note that it has an admirable introduction on the relation of the individual to the three great acts of the historical Church, as accepted by the Christian. However we come by them, we have certain possessions in ideas of virtue, but if we believe in their supernatural origin, we " shall feel the Church has been wise in putting into the mouth of every candidate for Baptism, the threefold renunciation the Deca- logue and the Creed." Miss Wordsworth alludes to omissions "likely to be felt by every independent thinker," but we think she has gauged the capacity of her audience in a remarkable way in her general limitations. She defines what such as her pupils—to-day—mean, in general, by any earnest renunciation of the Evil, in the forms of world, flesh, or devil, and then comes to her wise treatment of the Decalogue :- " The ingenuity which the human mind displays, the sophistries which it employs in order to make what is supposed to bo expe- dient seem right, the delicate shading by which it veils a dis- graceful or undutiful act, the artifices to which it condescends, the self-flatteries which it is capable of where conscience is con- cerned, can only be met by plain, simple, distinct laws, with great principles behind them, such as we meet with in the Ten Commandments" Miss Wordsworth gives instances of the cases in which stealing, murder, suicide, breach of marriage-contract, appa- rently can be absolutely justified by expediency :- " It is quite conceivable that any one of the perpetrators of such deeds might profess (and think he felt) groat love to God and man. No doubt a careful thinker would see in each Case that the violation of an important principle would de more harm than the immediate relief of those on whom it seems to press heavily could possibly do good. But what we want is something at once accessible to the everyday mind."
Having the principle is a help. But it must be valued, and it must be applied. Here Miss Wordsworth is excellent. We could sometimes have wished (speak it softly of a Principal) that her sentences had been more carefully corrected from the points of view of grammatical accuracy and of literary force. But she conveys her ideas most readably, and we know that they are understood and appreciated by some of those for whom they came into being. For the book is not one which aims at original, but at allusive and comprehensive teaching; it is not for the experienced and advanced, but for the aspiring and experiencing mind. And here, indeed, we may point out a vacant spot which some of our best women might wish to occupy. Innumerable little books are published, many are the volumes of devotion, but for those who have spiritual pupils amongst the girls of the comfortable classes, so far as we are aware, very little exists to help those of our com- munion as those of another are helped on the practical side of the spiritual life. In some cases, the pupil is sufficiently ardent and capable to adapt for herself the great master- pieces of the kind, of any age or branch of the Church ; but this is not always so. Between the goody-goody, uncritical, old-fashioned, or gushing writer and the strong authors of great works there is very little, and that little is coloured by party phrase or suggestion. The various modern organisa- tions in which women work are rapidly teaching them to exclude the non-essentials, and to elude the marked stumbling- blocks. Cannot some one used to work with educated young women, who knows the social lines and the general charac- teristics of their action, produce something which would be generally useful as a practical key to the religious principles of present-day lives ? The result of the higher education of women, so far, has been to produce a conscientious generation of young mothers and teachers, clear-sighted and mentally capable ; and the standard of the highly educated Affects more than we know or than they know. But—we think of special instances—the want of repose, generated by the friction between awakened intellect and unsatisfied soul, in the clear- sighted woman of no particular.. religions belief, contrasts vividly with the restfulness of the personality of her who is obedient to the old principles, and has not to construct her creed fOr herself. From every point of view, the higher education of a woman should include the education of her highest self. But the little book before us is a witness to one of the facts, as we have often noted with pleasure, which show that the women who work, as a rule, are unselfish in their desire for privileges, and do not overrate the head-work of life ; and further, that cultivation of mental power, in woman as in man, is compatible with self-sacrifice and with that for which there is no other word than holiness.
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