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CHAPTER XVI.
PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES

The year 1896 was marked by the publication of Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade, in which Josephine Butler gives a vivid history of the first ten years of the strenuous fight against the Contagious Diseases Acts. She hoped to be able to continue the history in a subsequent volume, but ill-health prevented the fulfilment of this design.

In the following year the question of the health of the Indian Army came very prominently again before the public eye. The passing of the Act of 1895, which absolutely prohibited the compulsory examination of women, had been followed by a marked increase of disease, perhaps largely due to the fact that the new measure had been accompanied by the closing of the special hospitals in many of the Cantonments, so that no opportunity was afforded of testing the effect of substituting the voluntary system of hospital treatment (always advocated by Josephine Butler and her fellow workers) for the old compulsory system. But, whatever the cause may have been, the statistics were such as to produce a panic among persons, who were not accustomed to study statistics, and did not therefore realise that figures relating to a few years may often deceive, and that a true judgment can only be gained by careful comparison of facts and figures spread over long periods. The panic was so great that a Departmental Committee was appointed at the India Office to enquire into the matter; and the Government received several memorials on both sides of the question. One of the memorials, praying for the reintroduction of the regulation system, was signed by women, including princesses and other ladies of title. This roused Josephine Butler to issue a passionate and powerful pamphlet, Truth before Everything.

My own countrywomen have been the first in the world to set their seal to the infernal doctrine of the necessity of vice, and to proffer to our Imperial Government before the whole world, what Lady Frederick Cavendish rightly styles their “counsels of despair.” The scene has changed indeed; we accept the fact, and look it full in the face. For my own part, I do so without alarm for our cause, and scarcely even with surprise, although my heart is wounded with a sense of shame, and I mourn for those whose eyes are blinded to the truth. Men and women alike in the most exalted social classes frequently possess extraordinarily little knowledge of the conditions of life among the poor, and consequently little sympathy with the humbler people who are the most liable to suffer under grievances imposed officially, over and above the hardships incidental to their condition. High rank itself tends to confuse and obscure the mental vision on a subject concerning which, of all others, we need to know the instincts and convictions of the people, and to make room for the expression of the great heart of toiling and suffering humanity, which still so largely beats true among us, and in all lands.

The Government however did not reintroduce the old regulation system, but while they expressly laid down that no registration, and no periodical and compulsory examination of women should be permitted, they suggested that the special diseases in question should be made notifiable and dealt with in the same manner as other contagious diseases. Accordingly a new Cantonment Act was passed in the same year, and new Cantonment Regulations made, under which women suspected of being diseased may be expelled from the Cantonments, unless they submit to medical treatment. Abolitionists have always objected to these Regulations, which are still in force, with some later modifications, because they appear capable of being worked in such a way as to involve indirectly, but no less truly, the whole method of compulsion, which was inherent in the old system, and because the Act of 1895, which expressly prohibited registration and examination, has been repealed.

In May, 1897, Josephine Butler contributed to Wings a short article on the “Joy of God,” part of which is here given.

Jesus spoke much of His joy in His last wonderful conversation with His disciples: “That my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John xv, 11). His joy is His Father’s joy. I do not believe that that joy is ever interrupted. It flows on like a mighty river, like God Himself, its source – infinite, unceasing, unfathomable joy; and Jesus offers us to be sharers in it. It is not possible that the joy of God can be interrupted by the works of the devil, by his apparent present victories. God’s joy continues, eternal like Himself, through all the evils and sorrows and horrors of earth, and of the kingdom of darkness, for He sees beyond all. He knows that the end will be victory. Jesus feels for His people’s sufferings, and suffers with them; nevertheless His joy is not diminished. It seemed to me one day, as if for a moment I saw the Divine face looking down at all that is taking place in these days, and (if I dare to express it) it seemed as if there were tears in those Divine and pitying eyes: yet all the time there was a smile upon the lips, for while He pitied He knew what the end would be, and He smiled.

It was a half-waking vision I had when I was recovering from illness at Lausanne. I felt as if the obstacles in the way of all our efforts for reforms and for blessing were like huge high walls blocking the way and darkening the daylight on every side. But as I looked, and as I felt the pitying, smiling face of God, and all these walls got lower and lower, till they were quite low, and above and around them all was God’s great sky, His open, clear, and glorious heavens, I sprang on the top of one of these low walls (like some of the low vineyard walls in Switzerland), and I shouted for joy and victory!

Later in the year she contributed a series of articles to Wings, which were republished under the title, Prophets and Prophetesses: some thoughts for the present times. A French translation of this was also issued. The rest of the present chapter contains extracts from this volume.

How greatly are prophets and prophetesses needed in these days, days in which the air is filled with a confusion of voices – some of them mocking voices, some of them wailing and sorrowful voices – when false prophets abound, lying spirits, demon worshippers and materialists. The promise stands in the Scriptures of God that He will send true prophets and prophetesses in the latter days. Where are they? Why is that promise not abundantly fulfilled? It will be fulfilled if we, who believe His word, combine to ask its fulfilment. The word, to prophesy, is best translated by the learned as “to show forth the mind of God” on any matter. What a high gift! What a holy endowment this, to be enabled to show or set forth to man the mind or thought of God! In order to attain to that gift, the soul must live habitually in the closest union with God, in Christ, so as to realise the prayer of the saint who cried, “Henceforth, O Lord, let me think Thy thought and speak Thy speech.” Many even of our holiest men and women live too active, too hurried a life, to be able to enter deeply into the thought of God, and thence to speak that thought to the thirsty multitudes who are dimly seeking after Him, and in their hearts crying, “Who will show us any good?”

That women as well as men were destined by God to be prophets was fully acknowledged by St. Paul, by his acts as well as his words. He gave careful directions as to how women were to appear as prophetesses, so as to avoid the malicious criticism of the enemies of the new-born faith, ever on the watch for some ground of accusation against the Christians. It is an astonishing and a melancholy thing that the churches and their ministers, and the Christian world in general through all these generations, should apparently have ignored or made light of the following blessed fact, the fact that on the day of Pentecost, the great day when the Holy Spirit was poured forth on that multitude of all peoples and nations gathered in Jerusalem, when the New Dispensation was inaugurated in which we now live, the Apostle Peter, in his magnificent first Pentecostal sermon, proclaimed the actual fulfilment on that day, and for all the days to come, of the promise of the prophet Joel, “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out of my Spirit.”“This has come unto you,” said St. Peter, “which was spoken by the Prophet Joel.” Is it possible that the Church has ever fully believed this, has ever truly heard or understood this mighty utterance from heaven, recorded first in the Hebrew Scripture, and again at the great inauguration of the Dispensation under which we are now living, a Dispensation of Liberty, Life, Impartiality, Equality, and Justice, in which there is, or should be,“neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek”?

When Kepler, the great astronomer, was congratulated on the wonderful discovery he had made – in what are now called Kepler’s Laws, on which Newton based his own still greater discoveries – he (Kepler), full of Christian humility, replied, “I have only thought God’s thoughts after Him.” We need, and we ask of God, prophets and prophetesses, seers, who will see as God sees, and who will judge of all things in the light of God. They will be very unpopular, these seers, if they are faithful. Many of the humbler people will hear them gladly, but the world will not love them. Quite the contrary. Conventional morality does not like to be disturbed; the respectable as well as the disreputable prejudices of ages are hard to root up.

Never did the world and the Church need seers more than at the present time. Looking at any of the great questions before us now – the relations of nation to nation, and of the Anglo-Saxon race to the heathen populations of conquered countries; questions of gold-seeking, of industry, of capital and labour, of the influence of wealth, now so great a power in our country and its dependencies; questions of legal enactments, of the action of Governments, and innumerable social and economic problems – we may ask, How much of the light of heaven is permitted to fall on those questions? How many or how few are there among us who ask, and seek, and knock and wait, to know God’s thought on these matters? The few, who do so, cease to accept as a guide a daily newspaper, or the opinion of the Press generally, or the verdict of any class, theological, social, or political; nor even are they satisfied to set their minds at rest by an appeal to the best and wisest of the servants of God. But in their measure they follow in the steps of the prophets of old. It is in the solitude of the soul, alone with God, that His thoughts are revealed. It is in great humility, in separation from the spirit of the world, in asking and receiving His spirit, “the spirit of truth,” which “shall guide us into all truth,” that we learn to think His thoughts.

It requires much courage to be alone with God, to elect to retire for a time, and even for long times, and to listen to His voice only. It requires more courage than is needed to meet human opposition or to battle with an outward enemy, and is altogether different from worship in the congregation with others around us. Let anyone who doubts this make the trial, in humble determination, “I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me,” until Thou admittest me to the inner sanctuary of Thy presence, and speakest to me. For it is then that the keen searchlight of His presence reveals the innermost recesses of the soul, so that the creature who has been bold enough to seek such a solitary interview with the Creator shall fall on his face, as Daniel did, in self-abasement: “I Daniel fainted, and was sick certain days.” It is then that all which is of self, all subtle egotism – the egotism which takes such a multitude of forms – is searched and hunted out of the soul. It cannot live in His presence. The praise of man becomes as dust beneath the feet, and the soul trembles even to receive any honour of men, or to be recognised in this world as of any worth.

It is then also, that the great enemy of souls essays to draw near, bringing all his forces to bear on that divinely bold but humbled creature, and seeking to wreck the blessing which he knows must come of such an interview between Christ and a human soul. It is then that he disputes every inch of the ground sought to be won on that day by the Saviour, and by the disciple whom His spirit has stirred up to draw thus awfully near to Him. Jesus was “led of the Spirit” into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil. It is in the very heart of this great dispute between our God and Satan, and in such a solitude, that some of the deepest truths are learned, and that God speaks. Then the enemy is defeated, and only the light is left, the light which was sought and which reveals God’s thought. And what is the sequel of such an encounter? There are many who can bear witness that the enemy, discouraged by the courage of the humble and determined soul, departs never to return, and then it pleases the Lord sometimes, in His great love and pity, to grant to His child, in a measure, that communion which the Hebrew saint had, with whom God spoke face to face as a man speaks with his friend.

We are not all called to be teachers, or to declare aloud the mind of God; not all called to prophesy. But all are invited to draw near to Him, to come nearer and nearer, and the humblest, the least gifted or least intelligent, who will elect to receive ever at first hand and from the fountain-head, and not only from secondary sources, light, life and knowledge, becomes, whether he knows it or not, a medium of spiritual life and true thoughts to others, in proportion to the grace given to him.

“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” These words are frequently understood to be spoken of the other life beyond the grave, and of the beauties and glories of our heavenly home, which, as yet, no eye of those living on earth has ever seen. This limited interpretation is not warranted by the latter half of the announcement, “But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” The illumination of the Spirit is not a promise of the future only; it is given here on earth to all who seek and wait for it in truth and singleness of heart. We are living to-day under the dispensation of the Spirit, and there is no limit to the fulness of the promise to those who ask.

Those things therefore, those hidden and deep things of God which we cannot apprehend by the natural eye or ear, and which cannot be conceived by the highest and purest flights of imagination of one whose thoughts do not yet flow in unison with God’s thoughts – those things may be revealed to us by His Spirit; and they are so revealed to those whom from time to time He draws aside for solitary communion with Him, and whom He may, if He wills, appoint to speak His speech to all who will hear. One needful condition for attaining to the seeing eye and the hearing ear in the things of God is soul-leisure, quietness, calm and concentration of spirit. Earth’s voices must be silenced for a time, that the voice of God – the“still small voice” – may be heard by the waiting soul. “In returning and rest shall ye be saved. In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.”

I seem to hear a deep sigh from the heart of many a true servant of God, “faint yet pursuing,” whose soul is athirst for the Living God and for the calm and the silence in which he may hear the Divine voice, but who sees no way of escape from the pressing claims of earthly duty. The case of such (which has also been my own) calls forth my deepest sympathy. “With God all things are possible.” Cease from conflict with circumstances, from this “toiling in rowing,” from this breathless swimming against the tide. Put the matter into His hands. “There was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour” at His command; silence even of the angelic voices. He can create a silence around you, and trace a clear path for your feet to enter into the Holy of Holies, where you shall find Him and hear His voice.

But even then – perhaps you tell me – when the pressure of earthly claims is lightened, and a season is granted in which nothing from without holds you back, and you enter alone into His presence, even then it is found impossible to concentrate the mind, to shake off outward anxieties and the intrusion of restless thoughts concerning the work of your life. The well by which you rest is deep and full, but you have “nothing to draw with.” The opportunity is there, but the soul is dry, and the brain inexpressibly wearied. Again, “with God all things are possible,” and “all things are possible to him that believeth.” Put this also into His hands – this incapacity for rest, even when the hour of rest is granted. He knows the deep desire of your heart to draw near to Him. Your desire for communion with Him is prompted and created by His own desire to draw near to you, to grant you the anointed eyes of a humble seer, and to impart to you His own deep secrets of love.

But to many this thirst of the soul is unknown, or once known is suffered to rest unslaked. Many continue to postpone and to subordinate the claims of the spiritual life to the constantly pressing claims (sacred claims also) of their fellow creatures, and of the good works in which they are engaged. At the last, when earth’s claims are fading and the spirit is called into the presence of God, conscience will speak, and the poor soul may reproach itself in the spirit of the lament which Shakespeare put into the mouth of Wolsey in his last moments: “O Cromwell, Cromwell! had I but served my God with half the zeal that I have served my king!” In the clearer light of eternity all things assume their right proportion. We have worked, we have slaved for duty, we have worn ourselves out in the service of humanity. That is good, that is noble; yet an inward voice will tell us in some silent hour that we should have worked better and served humanity better had we possessed the moral force to withdraw at times from life’s crowded avenues, had we firmly refused some of the thousand claims which pressed upon us in order that our speech and our action might have possessed more of the Divine, more of “spirit and of life.”

CHAPTER XVII.
THE STORM-BELL

 
The Storm-Bell rings, – the Trumpet blows;
I know the word and countersign;
Wherever Freedom’s vanguard goes,
Where stand or fall her friends or foes,
I know the place that should be mine.
 

– Whittier.

This was the motto of the Storm-Bell, a periodical in which Josephine Butler published her thoughts month by month from January, 1898, to August, 1900. We give in this chapter some specimens of these thoughts of hers.

Sir James Stansfeld, the dear friend and leader of our cause, has passed over to the other side. There are judgments on earth of men’s acts, and there are judgments in heaven. It is not improbable that the parts of his life and character regarded as the least praiseworthy on earth will appear up there as the brightest parts of all. He had nothing to gain, and much to lose by separating himself in a measure from his colleagues in office, and setting aside chances of brilliant promotion and political prestige in order to descend with us into the inferno of human woe, to bring a gleam of hope to that world of doomed women, who more than all human sufferers are cast out from the favour of earth and the light of heaven. I have seldom met with a man who had so much of the woman’s heart in this matter. He had so deep a respect for womanhood, even at its worst, and so much tenderness for the fallen, that – like another great friend of Mazzini – he felt“instinctively the impulse to lift his hat when he met one of that sad sisterhood in the street, as a mark of his reverence for her poor wrecked womanhood, which would not have been ruined but for the co-operation (to use no sterner word) of the stronger being —man”.

When he first appeared for us in public, and for years after, he was pretty well baited and abused in newspapers of the Saturday Review type as a “faddist,” a champion of the “shrieking sisterhood,” a “friend,” in fact, of “publicans and sinners.” All that is past for him. His record is in Heaven. He does not need, he never needed, and never desired the poor praise of men. The quality which stands out the most prominently in my remembrance of him is his courage, his dauntless hope and confidence of final victory in a good cause. That cheerful confidence, that pluck characterised him to the very last. I wish there were more like him in this. I never remember to have heard a word from him indicating a feeling of depression about our work, not even at its darkest times. Good workers in a good cause, even when they know it to be God’s cause, sometimes fall into a minor key, and utter sad wails concerning the gathering clouds, the dark outlook, and the power of evil. I do not think, that with all his command of speech, our friend would have known how to formulate any such wail.

He was a born forlorn hope leader. No one is fit or safe to lead, or even I would say to follow, in a misunderstood and unpopular cause, or ever so humble a forlorn hope, who has not attained to so much of self-control as to be able to close his lips if he has reason to fear any utterance may be coming forth from them which is not a note of victory. Courage and faith are highly infectious. A sigh, or a sad look, or a “but” from a leader is equally infectious, and not in a good sense. Sometimes they are disastrous. And after all what is this kind of courage except moral faith? It is that faith in God and in His eternal promise which removes mountains, and which sees hope in the darkest hour, and more than hope – certainty of victory. The love of justice and liberty was born in him; it was in his bones, so to speak. From his youth upward he was an uncompromising defender of those principles, which have contributed to the true greatness of England; and so far he was, as he often said himself, a Conservative, for he was jealous for the conservation of principles and truths, which Tories and Radicals alike lose sight of when personal and party ambition begins to take the first place with them, to the exclusion of what is nobler and worthier than one’s wretched self or one’s poor party. He was also an international man in the best sense. His friends, good men of other countries, felt the warmth of his friendship and the soundness of his judgment to be untainted by narrow or insular prejudices.

A great Spanish politician, Señor Emilio Castelar,¹⁶ published some thirty years ago a manifesto, in which he set forth the doctrines and principles of what he considered a true and moderate Republicanism. He expressed his belief that Democracy can never attain to any lasting reforms and real progress unless it holds in respect the best elements of national life – its history, religious faith, and most honourable traditions; and he therefore earnestly called upon the Liberals of Spain (a minority impatient of the stagnation of life in their nation) to give up their position of conspirators, to avoid all violence, and to seek reform by organised and legal action, and so to educate themselves and their countrymen for a better state of government and national life. His words and actions won for him and his group of friends the title of Los hombres de manana, “the men of to-morrow.”

For the salvation of our country, and indeed of the world, we need that there should arise amongst us men of to-morrow, and women of to-morrow, that there should be watchmen on all our watch-towers, more than in times past, who will “watch for the morning,” and be able, with a clear and unfaltering voice, to answer the cry of their brethren, “Watchman, what of the night?” Such men and women of to-morrow will possess a living, though often a silent power, in the midst of all the noise and hurry of our social and political life; they will be not only the party of true progress, but the party of true conservatism, watchers for and guardians of the preservation of precious principles which are constantly threatened with destruction.

It is not enough to be wide-awake men of to-day. There is an urgent need for some among us to look on in advance. We need seers as well as workers. History teaches us how much we need them, and how much of human suffering has been needlessly inflicted and prolonged by the want of such seers among men. Especially is this evident in the moral and political life of a nation. A leader in politics of the early half of the century, speaking of a wrong to which he wished to put his hand in order to remove it, said, “We did not know, we did not perceive; and only now we are learning, and only now we begin to see.” There is a deep sadness in this confession, even when humbly and honestly made. It brings to our minds the words, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if thou hadst known the things that belong to thy peace; but now they are hid from thine eyes.” It is well to ask ourselves truthfully before God, “How far has such ignorance the character of moral guilt?” And it is well that we should realise that that moral guilt of ignorance needs none the less to be repented of and purged away because it is shared by thousands and because it may even be chiefly laid to the charge of generations gone by. Daniel the prophet was a great patriot and a wise politician. His confession was, We and our fathers have sinned; and prophet-like, and like a high priest of the people, he pleaded with God, as if he himself bore on his shoulders alone the guilt of the whole nation, in the past and the present.

It is impossible for the Christian patriot to look forward to the future of our English race, and even into the next few years, without some misgiving. The outlook also for the whole of Europe and of the world seems charged with the clouds and portents of a coming storm. “The morning cometh, and also the night.” The shadows of night will deepen, and the darkness increase awhile, before the glad cry is heard: “The morning cometh.”“Now is come the kingdom of our God and of His Christ.” God grant that heaven-taught spirits may again arise among us, not only one here and there, but many, like the stars appearing in the firmament as the shadows of evening deepen into night. God has such in preparation, I cannot doubt. They are arising – the prophets and prophetesses, the seers of the latter days. They are found and will be found among those who elect to live in the silence very near to God, and who realise in the most tenderly human sense the saving friendship of Christ.

A mother writes: “I fear he is going to the bad.” This she says of her son, her only son, who has left home to serve his country. “I fear he is going to the bad, but I must,” she says, “be like the woman in the Bible, who came to Jesus to cast the devil out of her daughter, and would not leave Him till He did it.” Yes, poor mother, you must, you must. That is your only hope; and you will conquer, only hold on. A mother’s love is most like the love of God of any human love. He made the mother’s heart, and He knows it to its depths. Secrets have been revealed to mothers which have not been shared by any other human being. Your heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord. You shall not be “afraid of evil tidings.” If troubling reports reach you, and if things seem to have come to the worst, and friends speak coldly of your son, and shake their heads (as even Christian friends will do) over your hope and confidence, yet hold on. You have suffered, they perhaps have not. They are “miserable comforters,” though they think they are speaking truly, and for your good. Listen to the voice of God only; look into the face of Jesus only – as she did, the Syrophenician mother, of whom the disciples only said, “Send her away.” Those, who have never known a mother’s woes, know little of the consolations God has for mothers, nor of the secrets which He reveals to them. “I have been with God in the dark. Go, you may leave me alone!” Thus a mother spoke concerning her dead son, when neighbours bewailed him as a lost soul. “I have been with God in the dark,” not in the light only, when there is hope and outward evidence to cheer the heart, but in the dark. It is in the dark that His light shines the brightest. One hour with Him, alone, in the dark, in the gloom of despair and helpless woe, has taught me more than years when I walked in the light of happy and hopeful circumstances. I fear nothing now, for I have been alone with God in the dark. Hold on, poor mother! Christ has given us His word of honour. That is enough for you and me.

A picture is now held up before the eyes of the whole world of the consequences which may wait upon an injustice inflicted on a single human being. All eyes are fixed upon the bitter conflict raging around the fate of that solitary prisoner in the Devil’s Island. A combination of unusual and wondrously significant circumstances has caused this case to become a cause célèbre, engrossing the interest of the whole civilised world. We may thank God indeed for the deep teachings of this terrible drama. But let us think for a moment of the thousands who have suffered as much, and more than this typical victim; of the crushed hearts of the host of women and men whose martyrdom has been known to none but God; or if known or guessed, has been unheeded, the sufferers being of humble rank, of character suspect, friendless, poor, and uncared for. Their cry has entered into the ears of the God of Sabaoth, as much as the “sorrowful sighing” of those noble prisoners of to-day. That great injustice, against which the “elect spirits” of France are so nobly protesting, could scarcely have been perpetrated among a people trained in respect for justice, and in a measure of self-restraint. It has beneath it a foundation of stricken souls and outraged hearts. It has been built up upon a Golgotha. Those who have eyes to see are beginning to see that the smoke of the impious sacrifice of even one of the humblest and most insignificant of human beings may serve to cloud the heavens, and to shut out the favour of God from a nation; and what must it be when that one is multiplied by thousands?