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‘The ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.’
1Pe_3:4
Now, what shall we say as to the true place and perfection of a Christian woman? What is to be her model? What is she to aim at? In a word, what is the highest life to which she can aspire? Well, to most, there will occur the previous difficulty. Is it better to be a matron or a maid? Which is the higher life? And to this question you will get answers wide as the poles asunder. But the special advantages and disadvantages of the two states do not strictly come within the limits of our subject, for I want to speak not of what constitutes a good matron or a good maid, but what are the characteristics of a good woman.
I. What are the natural characteristics of women?
(a) They are physically weaker than men, and on this sense of weakness is based their feeling of dependency. I know, alas! (to the shame of men be it spoken) that men have used this, their physical superiority, for cruelty and tyranny—have used, did I say?—do use it in our Christian land, aye, here at our very doors; but they are more like brutes than men who do it, and, thank God, these are exceptions in Christian England; but in no wise does this shameful fact of cruelty on the one side touch the fact of the inferiority of women in mere physical strength.
(b) They are weaker in reasoning and scientific processes. When she advances in scientific power she loses in womanly tact. Men’s reasoning, of which we boast, continually leads us wrong, but the instinct of a woman seldom errs. Poets and satirists constantly talk about women as beings that no one can comprehend, and this is put down to the fact that they are so illogical, or so wayward and capricious. But there is another explanation. It is this: man is very weak in that power of perception, that capacity for instinctively grasping a character which a woman’s nature gives her. Few men understand women. Few men are not easily seen through by women. People would be shocked if we said that instinct is higher than reason, but it very often is—certainly it is more infallible—and God, in dividing to every one as He would, has given men more of the power of reasoning, and women more of insight and tact.
(c) It follows from this very inferiority in head and superiority in heart that women are more religious than men. We say they ‘jump at conclusions,’ but if the conclusions are right, it is better to reach them anyhow than to lose oneself half-way in vague and unproductive questionings. Men often do this; scientific men, logically minded men, men who at starting admit that they are investigating only secondary causes, of which God is the first cause, sometimes get lost among these second causes, and begin to wonder whether there is a God at all. Women rarely do this. They jump at the conclusion of the reasoning, which is also the beginning of all things on which we reason, God the Creator of the world. It is an instinctive but a true process, and one which they would be indeed unwise to exchange for another method, which may be learned, but is not natural to them. I think this is why an irreligious woman or an unbelieving woman shocks our feelings so much more than a sceptical man.
(d) They are essentially made for ‘home.’ Made to be the centre, far more than the man is, of moral and religious family life. About the true woman there is something of retiredness, something of quiet, something which shows that without being selfish she is self-contained. This does not mean—God forbid—that she is not to be educated, that we should endorse the opinions of those who think her capable of nothing but needlework and cooking, or the still more foolish view of later times that the only thing she is fit for is the fancy work which may kill time, work that can by no conceivable possibility be useful to herself or others. A woman, whether married or single, has it always in her power to take part in the Divine work of teaching others, and no means which will fit her for this work will she be wise to neglect. I say the ‘Divine work,’ for I can conceive of no human labour more Divine than nursing children for God, and directing the fresh, pure souls of infants to their Father in heaven. Those who have given their hearts to such work are often surprised how everything seems to help them—their secular studies, the culture of eye and ear, and even the less intellectual but not less womanly occupations of the house. Yes, thank God! women must work, and women must be taught; and yet with all their work, and all their learning, and all their anxiety to do what they can for others, there will still be a retiredness about the true woman. I believe our instinctive judgments in this matter are right. The woman who is always anxious to be in the front is no true woman; the woman who likes to enter the lists with men is not a true woman; the woman who is so busy running hither and thither that she has no care for the quiet retiredness of home duties is no true woman; the woman whose one thought in her dress is to wear something striking, something that will catch the eye of the other sex, or stir up the envy of her own, is no true woman. Even ‘society,’ as it is called, unchristian as it is in many things, admits this, that the perfection of a woman’s dress is that it should call for no remark. It is a part of woman’s modesty that she should shrink from public gaze, at least that she could not court it; and if in her special work for God she be called to take what some would call a prominent part, the innate womanliness of her bearing will show even there the ‘ornament of a meek and quiet spirit,’ which in the sight of God, aye, and in the sight of men too, is of great price. These are the characteristics which we naturally look for in women, and admire when we see them: dependence on a stronger arm, the instinctive power of a loving nature, a religious and reverent disposition, and a love of retiredness and home. Can we change any of these without loss? I think not.
II. Now turn to what is enjoined by the Word of God.—I must sum up these duties very shortly.
(a) The first is ‘obedience’; obedience of the child to the father, and the wife to the husband. Children, obey your parents in all things; likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands. Here is the dependency which we have noticed as a fact appearing under the form of a duty. ‘Obey: be subject.’ It is, of course, easy to quote these commands, and say it means slavery, an old-world view of the relation of the sexes. But it is not true. The obedience and subjection of child or wife has its root in love, and where love reigns, obedience is easy. When a girl chafes at the restrictions of home, it is a sad omen for her married life; but the good daughter passes almost naturally into the good wife. It is one of Lord Bacon’s sayings that ‘a good wife commands by obeying’; which means, I think, not that she gets her own way by pretending to let her husband have his, but that the husband who finds his wife ready and willing to carry out his wishes, ready to obey, will, if he is a man at all, be all the more kind and courteous; less, not more, exacting, and least inclined to tyranny; more ready, if he has wandered from it, to be won back to the Faith by the gentle influence, the conversation of the wife.
(b) And the second duty which stands out prominently in the Bible is sobriety and retiredness. Listen to St. Peter’s words, spoken indeed primarily to wives, but bringing out clearly the true perfections of womanhood: ‘Whose adorning … is in the sight of God of great price.’
Illustrations
(1) ‘I think if English women sometimes set definitely before them the lives of the holy women as their pattern, and turned to their Bibles to see what is told us, it would be a real help. For instance, suppose an Englishwoman tries to find out what there is told us about her who was chosen to be the mother of Jesus, the first thing she would notice would be how very little is told us about her. The Roman Catholic has filled up the gap with many an apocryphal story, but surely the lesson is an easy one to read, that the true woman loves to be unknown, wrapped in the sacred privacy of home life, from which only the calls of affection or the duties of religion draw her. As the unknown life of Jesus of Nazareth teaches us the need of seclusion and quiet for those who are preparing for a great purpose, so the little known life of the holy mother hints to us the need of retiredness in the true woman.’
(2) ‘Culture, civilisation, laws, all have failed to teach the double truth of the equality of the sexes before God, and their different yet equally noble spheres in the family on earth. The educated Hindoo, no less than the savage South Sea Islander, has failed to realise these truths, and it is only by spreading far and wide the knowledge of God’s love in Christ for every creature He has made, only by teaching the dignity of that nature which the Eternal Son has taken into God, that we can effectually aid the heathen daughters of the One Father. But on the other hand, here in England, and in other Christian countries, there is danger of a very different degradation, for I call that a degradation which draws away any being from its proper objects of ambition, and makes it aim at a place in God’s world which neither nature nor revelation have allotted to it.’