Читать книгу: «Josephine E. Butler», страница 15

For thirty years past I have pleaded as well as I could the cause of the outcast. The time may not be long in which I shall be permitted to continue to plead it in this world. Pardon me then, Christian people – and all just men and just women, Christian or not – for uttering this cry from the depths of my soul at this close of the year, and approaching close of the century. The happiest of women myself in all the relations of life, God has done me the great favour of allowing me in a manner to be, for these thirty years, the representative of the outcast, of “the woman of the city who was a sinner.” It is her voice which I utter. Oh, hear it, I beseech you! It is by right of the great sorrow with which God pierced my heart long ago for His outcasts, that I speak; a sorrow which will never be wholly comforted till the day when I shall see millions of those cold, dead hands now stretched upon the threshold of our social and national life lifted to the throne of God in adoring and wondering praise for His final deliverance.“Thy dead men shall live” – all who have been done to death in sorrow and anguish; and God shall wipe the tears from all faces. And even for the present, for the near future there is hope, abundant hope, for Jehovah reigns, and the day of sifting has dawned.

My heart is often pained by hearing good women reiterate the statement that “men cannot be expected to exercise the self-restraint which is expected of women.” They say, “Men cannot be strictly virtuous; we women do not know what they have to overcome, nor the force of their temptations; in fact they must sin.” And women, even Christian women, whisper this the one to the other, even to their daughters, and so the low standard is perpetuated. The women who foster this opinion seem not to perceive that in announcing it they are (unconsciously probably) bringing a terrible accusation against God. They are representing Him as not only an illogical, but a cruel and unjust Being. What are the facts? God has created man with a conscience and with a will. He has given to man a Law and has attached penalties to the breaking of that Law; and yet you say that He has so created man that it is not possible for him to obey that Law. If this doctrine is widely accepted by women, it is no wonder that so many of them are atheists at heart. How can you, how can I reverence such a God as you represent Him to be? You might as well ask me to love and worship Baal or Moloch or Juggernaut as such a God as that. But it is not as you say. Look a little deeper.

It has been imposed upon me from time to time during my long life work to speak with men on this point – not only with men of blameless life, but with others who have fallen low. “Is it indeed the very truth,” I have asked, “that you absolutely cannot resist temptation?” And the answer has generally been, if coming from an honest heart, “I could resist if I determined to do so;” or,“I could once have resisted and overcome, but now– ” Ah, there is the secret, the sorrowful truth! After repeated and continual yielding, the will of man comes to be broken down. There comes upon him that most fatal of all moral diseases, the paralysis of the will; what he could do once he can no longer do. The will is as the citadel of a beleaguered city; when the citadel is taken the whole city yields, and then it may be and is true that there comes a time when the man cannot any longer combat or resist.

Shall we then, in so terrible a case as this, seeing such men and such women gliding down the slippery incline, regard them as hopeless, as beyond recovery? Shall we go on repeating the fatalist’s doctrine, which we hear so much around us, that it cannot be helped, it must be so, the man must go on sinning, he cannot recover himself? No, a thousand times no. With God all things are possible. He can restore power to the paralysed will, even as He can raise the dead. He does it, and we have seen with our eyes these His miracles of power and love.

And how, you ask me, by what means may such a restoration be accomplished? Replying from my own experience, I would say it is brought about very frequently by means of the divinely energised wills of others – chiefly of those creatures so dear to God, those mothers, wives, sisters, daughters and friends who have, through the teaching of the heart and the inspiration of God, learned and embraced that holiest of all ministries, the ministry of intercession. It has been said that the nearest, shortest way to a man’s heart is round by the throne of God. It is true. Direct advice, counsel, and warning to those who err may sometimes be effectual, and especially with the young. But too often they are wholly useless, and even excite antagonism. But the love, the power, the promise of God never fail.

But you tell me, “Oh, I am not good enough to pray for others, and to receive answers to my prayer.” This is a great mistake. What is our goodness to God? We are none of us good. Think of all the people mentioned in the Gospels who sought after Christ. What was it that brought them to His feet? It was not their goodness, but their great needs, wants and desires, their miseries, their sicknesses, their deep heart griefs, and the griefs and miseries of those dear to them. Our only claim in coming to Him is that we need Him and want Him. There is none other. It is written that God “turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.” We learn to know God in drawing near to Him on behalf of others. We fathom the deeper treasures of His love in pleading for those whom we love.

I hear people say sometimes, “But I have prayed for So-and-so for weeks, for months, and I have received no answer.” This reminds me of a little boy who made some childish request of God, and ended his prayer by saying, “I will wait three weeks, God, and no more.” We limit God. We measure the great work of His Spirit by the span of our little lives. We must rise above that thought, with courage and patience, and persistent trust and confidence, remembering that His years are not limited. He has all eternity to work in, all eternity in which to remember and fulfil our hearts’ desires.

When the case is one the issues of which reach into eternity, when it is the bringing from darkness into light of an immortal spirit, when it is the training and teaching of a soul, the correction of faults which sometimes requires a whole life’s discipline, or the evolution of some great good from a family’s or a nation’s griefs, then all childish impatience is out of place, foolish, and fatal often to the very fulfilment of that which is desired. “Though it tarry, wait for it,” said the seer, “because it will surely come.”

But your sad hearts are asking still concerning the wanderers whom you love. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? There is, there is. There is hope, not only for the weak and erring, but for the criminal who has been guilty of the moral death of another, for him on whose head rests the guilt of cruelty and treachery. “Nazarene, Thou hast conquered,” were the last words of Julian the Apostate, at the close of a lifetime of rebellion and defiance. The Nazarene is a great conqueror. The heart of the most scornful of the rebels against God’s holy laws may be broken, softened and laid bare to the healing dews of heaven; and his eyes may be opened to see, like Hagar, close at hand a well of water which he knew not of.

In speaking of life and love to some of the most fallen and wrecked of men and women, it has sometimes appeared as if I were speaking into the ears of a corpse, of one in whom there remains no longer any conscience or will to respond to the call of God. Sometimes I have been answered by the wildest blasphemies on the part of men, who later asked with hungry eyes, “Tell me truly, is there any hope for me?” Love is not easily persuaded that the moment of death has arrived. Love, like Rizpah, watches with a constancy stronger than death by the silent corpses of her dearly beloved and longed-for, with all her strength denying that they shall be given as carrion to the wolves and the vultures.

Suffer me to recall an incident, one only. On entering the ward of a large city hospital, reserved for women of the lowest class, I met the chaplain leaving the ward, his hands pressed upon his ears in order to shut out the sound of a torrent of blasphemy and coarse abuse, hurled after him by one of the inmates to whom he had spoken as his conscience had prompted him, and under a sincere sense of duty. I drew near to that woman. She was hideous to look at, dying and raging; a married woman who had had children and lost them, who had lived the worst of lives, descending lower and lower. She had been kicked (as it proved, to death) by the man, her temporary protector. Her broken ribs had pierced some internal organ, and there was no cure possible. Though dying, she was hungry, as indeed she had been for years, and was tearing like a wild beast at some scraps of meat and bread which had been given to her. An unseen power urged me to go near to her. Was it possible for anyone to love such a creature? Could she inspire any feeling but one of disgust? Yes, the Lord loved her, loved her still, and it was possible for one who loved Him to love the wretch whom He loved. I do not recollect what I said to her, but it was love which spoke. She gazed at me in astonishment, dropped her torn-up food, and flung it aside. She took my hand, and held it with a death-grip. She became silent, gentle. Tears welled from the eyes which had been gleaming with fury. The poor soul had been full to the brim of revenge and bitterness against man, against fate, against God. But now she saw something new and strange; she heard that she was loved, she believed it, and was transformed.

I loved her. It was no pretence, and she knew it. At parting I said, “I will come again,” and she gasped, “Oh, you will, you will!” I came again the morning of the next day. The nurse told me that she died at midnight, quiet, humble, “as peaceful as a lamb,” always repeating, “Has she come back? She will come again. Is she coming? Yes, she will come again.” If I had been asked, as I sometimes am, “But had she any clear perception of her own sinfulness, did she understand, etc.?” I could give no answer. I know not. I only know that love conquered, and that He who inspired the love which brought the message of His love to the shipwrecked soul knew what He was doing, and does not leave His work incomplete.

It is told among the many beautiful incidents of the early Church, that a young Roman soldier, converted to Christianity, and received as a catechumen, awaiting baptism, was called to serve in the field with the legion to which he belonged. The night after a battle, he found himself lying under the stars wounded and faint. Near him a fellow-soldier in the same condition as himself was groaning heavily. The night was cold, and his comrade’s wounds were exposed to the frosty air. “Take my cloak,” whispered Martin; and though in sore pain, and shivering himself, he folded his cloak tenderly around his comrade and fell asleep. Then there arose before him in his sleep a strange and beautiful vision. He saw in the skies a number of angelic beings and saints in light, in the midst of whom stood the Saviour, clothed in “raiment white and glistening,” and – strange! – wearing on His kingly shoulders, over the resplendent white, the poor, torn, bloodstained cloak of a Roman soldier. As Martin gazed in astonishment, the Saviour smiled, and turning to His angelic attendants said, “Behold Me with the cloak which Martin the catechumen hath given Me! For inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”

In one of the African provinces of Rome, partly Christianised, there occurred in the second century a sore famine. The inhabitants were driven to terrible straits. In a certain town, it is recorded by one of the old chroniclers, there lived a saintly bishop – not one of “my lords” of modern times, dwelling in a palace, but a humble shepherd or overseer of a scanty flock gathered out of the heathen city in which he dwelt. There lived in the same city a poor street musician, called Xanthus, an ignorant fellow of no good reputation. When the famine had endured some months, and Xanthus’ body presented the appearance of a walking skeleton, he saw, one evening in the twilight, a female form at the corner of a street, with the figure and bearing of a refined lady, though closely veiled and wearing a poor, used, black robe. She was holding out her hand for alms and receiving none, and worn and faint she yielded to the stress of hunger, and was about to accept the last terrible resource of selling her own person to a passer-by, who was apparently far above want. Penetrated with a sudden feeling of pity and horror, Xanthus interposed, and reverently begged the lady to accept of such poor help as he could give her. “Lady, I have little, but all I have shall be yours until these times of tribulation are over.” She moved towards him without replying, her tears alone proving her grateful acceptance of his aid. He led her back to her abode, and from that time forward he worked for her day and night, plying to the utmost his poor skill as a musician, affecting a cheerful manner, and adding to his fiddling various tricks and jokes to arrest the attention of the citizens who crossed his path. Every day he brought to the lady (for such she was) his modest gains, finding her food, and waiting on her, deeming it an honour that she should accept the help of such a creature as he.

The famine over, she was restored to her former position; but Xanthus fell ill, and his music and jokes were no more heard in the streets. Friendless and forlorn, he lay dying, when the good bishop above-named was visited in a dream by a heavenly messenger, who bade him go to such a street and such a house and find there a man called Xanthus, for “the Lord would have mercy on him.” Awaking from his sleep, the good bishop obeyed. He entered the place – more like a dog’s kennel than a human dwelling – where Xanthus lay. “Xanthus!” he cried, “the Lord Jesus Christ hath sent me to you to bring you glad tidings.”“How! to me – to me – your God has sent you to me! No, there is a mistake. I am the street-fiddler, Xanthus, the most miserable, God-forsaken of men – a man who has done nothing but ill all his life.” Then the good bishop recalled to the memory of Xanthus (this having been revealed to him) the day when he turned back a tempted fellow-creature from sin, and the weeks in which he sustained her, at the cost of his own life; and he added, “The Lord bids me say to you, that, for this cup of cold water you have given to one of His redeemed creatures, you shall in no wise lose your reward. Your sins are forgiven. Christ says to you, ‘This day you shall be with Me in paradise.’” And so it came to pass that Xanthus died that day, his poor heart, it is said, broken; but not with sorrow; broken through excess of joy, through the thrill of astonished gladness at the heavenly greeting, and the wondrous announcement that the Lord of Glory had deigned to notice and acknowledge the one redeeming act of his life. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”

Not in the times of old, but quite lately, in Hyde Park, London, on a sultry day in summer, there lay under one of the trees a poor sheep, panting, dying from the heat. By its side there kneeled a little ragged boy, a street arab, his tears marking gutters in the dust of his soiled face. He had run down to the water again and again and filled his little cloth cap with water, which he held to the mouth of the sheep, bathing its nose and eyes, until it began to show signs of returning life, speaking to it all the time loving words such as his own mother may have spoken to him. A gentleman walking near stopped, and looking with amusement at the child, said, “You seem awfully sorry for that beast, boy.” The cynical tone of the speaker seemed to grieve the little boy, and with a flushed face he replied, in a tone of indignant and tearful protest, “It is God’s sheep.” The gentleman grunted and walked away. I felt the presence there of One who said to that child: “Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, you have done it unto Me.”

If the spirit of that boy were fully shared by even a fraction of our Christian population, the brutality and sin of the vivisection of God’s creatures would soon become a forbidden and unknown thing among us. Our Lord’s words concerning the humblest of the animal creation are no mere figure of speech. He meant what He said. There is a penalty attached to contempt for or oblivion of those words of His, as of every other word He spoke. “Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God.” The price of a sparrow was half a farthing, but in case one of four sold might possibly be very small, ill-fed, and not worth its half-farthing, a fifth was “thrown in” to insure the purchaser from loss. Yet even the presumably worthless fifth sparrow was “not forgotten before God.” When the prophet Jonah was in a bad humour because his prophecy of destruction to Nineveh had not been fulfilled, and his sheltering gourd had withered, God said to him: “Thou hast had pity on the gourd, which came up in a night, and perished in a night: and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?”“His mercies are over all His works.” He cares for every living thing.

CHAPTER XVIII.
TWO CONFERENCES

An International Conference was held in Brussels in 1899, for the purpose of considering and promoting international action for the preventive treatment of venereal diseases. As the programme of the Conference was expressly limited to the administrative and medical aspects of the question, and took no account of matters of moral and social order, the Abolitionist Federation declined to take any part officially in the proceedings, although individual members of the Federation accepted invitations to attend. The results of the Conference were a surprise to everyone, being in the nature of a triumph for Abolitionist principles. The prophets, who had been called together to bless the Regulation system, found themselves almost with one accord led by the spirit of truth to curse it. This Conference, and the Conference of the Federation which took place the same year at Geneva, were dealt with in The Storm-Bell in three articles, which are here given with some omissions.

It was very impressive to me and others to hear at our Geneva Conference an account of the Brussels Conference from Dr. Fiaux of Paris, who had attended it, and who with others had nobly fought the battle of the Abolitionists. His report was of such a nature as to fill our hearts with thanksgiving, wonder and praise. The Conference of Brussels, as my readers know, was convened with the confessed purpose of proposing an appeal to the European Governments to establish a uniform system of Regulation – of in fact patching up, if possible perfecting and making universal the unlawful and degrading system which we oppose. The conveners of the Conference were however, it seems, sincere and open-minded men; and the numerous medical and other disputants, who came delegated from different countries of Europe, and who were attached to the evil system, regarding only the material and medical side of the great question, appear to have been shaken in their views, and to have been compelled, even by the confessions of some leading Regulationists, to see that their theories are untenable, and that the system they have so many years upheld is as it were hanging in rags, a miserable failure, an old worn out and infected garment, into which it is worse than useless to introduce patches of new cloth.

Almost all the delegates, of whom the immense majority were Regulationists, acknowledged during the Conference that they had come there to learn, implying that they had need of knowledge. There seemed to prevail an open-mindedness, which had not been anticipated. Some of the English medical delegates, full of the old prejudices in favour of the system of combined slavery and license, must have gone home knowing more than they did before. Finally two resolutions were passed. One of the resolutions was in favour of an appeal to all the Governments to take measures for the better protection of minor girls, in order to prevent their being drafted into the service of organised vice; and another was to the effect that it is desirable that doctors should be better educated in the matter of the maladies in question. These harmless resolutions were voted unanimously.

An observant delegate wrote: “We all have the impression that the Regulationists now fully recognise us (of the Federation) as a force which they must in future reckon with.” A clearer idea of the influence, which was at work in winning for us this victory, was granted to me while listening to Dr. Fiaux’s report at Geneva. He spoke of an influence which hovered over the Conference from the first day to the last; an influence which restrained, which prevented rash or erroneous propositions, an influence which he believed to proceed from the gradually increasing tide of awakened and changed public opinion, and to which he attributed a kind of spiritual force, a restraining and guiding force. He asserted that it was felt by all, that it tended to check all violence of opposition, and disposed the minds of the delegates to accept a position of enquiry, and to begin again afresh the study of the question, rather than to hold to the conservation of the system, in which they could not any longer place absolute confidence. More than once Dr. Fiaux endeavoured to describe this influence, raising his hands above his head to illustrate something which hovered over the assembly, resting above it and making itself felt. Those of us, who have asked that an influence above and beyond all, that we ourselves by our utmost effort can exercise, might come to our aid when the opposing principles should thus meet in conflict, will understand what all this means, and will give thanks.

We have often watched the light thistledown, the winged seed, mount in the air and disappear, carried by the breeze who knows where? We only know it will settle somewhere, drop, die, live again, and spring up to bear in its turn “fruit after its kind.” The career of that special seed is denounced by cultivators as mischievous. But there are good seeds also with wings, which silently travel about the world, plant themselves and bear fruit for which all men bless them. It is of the latter kind that I want to say a word.

I do not think that as yet any adequate appreciation of the character of our last September Conference in Geneva, and its results, has appeared in our English Abolitionist Press. I should like, if possible, in some degree to supply that omission. That Conference has been spoken of in several English reports as “a Conference of members of the Federation.” It was not exactly so. It would be quite correct to say it was a Conference organised by the Federation (and splendidly organised it was by the brave little group of members of the Federation in Geneva). But we have never yet had such a crowded Conference organised by us, at which were present so few members of the Federation. We were a mere handful from England. Several of our allies whom we generally see from other countries did not appear, while many of our prominent members on the Continent and in England were prevented from coming by illness or other circumstances. Yet we had crowded sessions every day and all day. The striking feature of that Conference was the influx to it of new adherents to our principles, many of whom we had never seen, or never even heard of. Adherents to our principles they were, but not members of the Federation; nor did they, with very few exceptions, become there and then members of the Federation. And herein lies the encouragement of which I wish to speak. It is in connection with this fact that I wish my English friends to take courage and thank God with me. They flocked to us – these new adherents to our principles from France, from Belgium, from Germany, from Italy, etc. There were among them persons of many different creeds and opinions, and an extraordinary number of leaders of the Press from different countries, more especially of that enlightened Press minority in France who fought so hard and so noble a battle (in the Dreyfus case) in favour of justice. There were with us also many distinguished ladies – distinguished morally and intellectually – who for the first time greeted us as allies. Those who were at the public evening meeting in the Great Hall of the Reformation must have been struck by the immense variety of nationality, character, creed, and opinion of those who took part in it; and at the same time by the perfect unity, heart, and downrightness of that vast assembly in regard to the great question of Justice for which the Federation labours. Many were asking, “How has this come about? What energising and purifying wind has been blowing through Europe to bear towards us this new unexpected ‘cloud of witnesses’ to testify that truth gains ground in its own mysterious way?”

It seems to me that we – the Federation – are like persons who, wishing to propagate some beautiful flower, should have carefully laid out a garden, hedged it round, dug it well, and then sown in it abundantly the seed which was to produce the beautiful flower. We took great pains with our garden. We sowed our seeds in rows, neatly and measuredly, perhaps a little formally. We arranged with our under-gardeners, training them, and turning them off if they did not suit. Perhaps we pottered a little sometimes, but always with the one desire at heart of seeing some day a great harvest of this beautiful flower – a flower of such pure colour, and wholesome hygienic qualities. Sometimes we sighed, in times of drought or of failure of “hands” for the work. But lo! a day came when the assembled gardeners, coming together to reckon up the results of their work, happened to look over the hedge, and with astonishment noted that the country all round, fields and hillsides, on which they had not bestowed any personal labour, were ablaze with the azure of the beautiful flower which they had cultivated so carefully in their garden. They had forgotten that seeds have wings, and that they could silently distance the garden fence and fly afar. So with the principles which we have cultivated.

There were at Geneva young men, pastors from the French provinces, whose prayers at our morning devotional meetings were an echo of the depths of my own heart; and there were young women, some very young, looking in whose faces I asked myself, “How and where have these young people learned that zeal for justice, that pity for oppressed womanhood, and that grave view of life which we of the Federation could however never, and less now than ever, imagine to be the monopoly of experienced workers?”

The Conference of Brussels pre-eminently brought to us the lesson of the “Winged Seed.” The speech of Dr. Fiaux, of Paris, who came from that Conference to Geneva to tell us its results, was to me full of teaching of which possibly the speaker himself was not wholly conscious. It told of the power and silent progress of a truth carried abroad by the Spirit which “bloweth where it listeth.” The lesson of the “Winged Seed” goes far beyond our own special crusade. We may apply it in the darkest times. For Truth (like Love) cannot die. Therefore we will take heart and labour on, though the End is not yet.

A very friendly critic, in giving a report of the Geneva Conference in September last, asked the question, “Where was Mrs. Butler?” when some sentiment or proposition was announced which seemed not quite in harmony with the principles of the Federation. He added, “But doubtless her silence was to be attributed to her desire to hold the Federation together. She is naturally concerned about the Organisation.” I wish to answer the question, and to rectify the mistaken impression. I was absent from the discussion in question. I am not able to listen to discussions from morning to night, owing to diminished strength of body, and I must leave matters in the hands of younger and abler combatants. But on the other matter, my supposed attachment to our organisation, I want to say a word. I have no faith whatever in organisations except so far as they are a useful means for making known a truth or dispensing help to those who need it, and when they are completely subordinated to those ends. They are apt to become a snare to those who invent them and work them, unless great care is taken to revive continually within them the life by which alone they can usefully exist.

The history of the Jesuits and that of some other great organised societies are monuments of the idolatrous tendency in human beings, of their habit of degenerating to the worship of some gigantic and intricate earthly creation from that of the Unseen, the Living God. Such organisations may become in time the instruments of a propagandism the very opposite of that proposed by their founders; and they may end by following in the stately march of a cruel and murderous Juggernaut, crushing the life out of men and women, and all bespattered with the “blood of the poor innocents.” Short of such a ghastly development as this, vast organisations (the leaders of which may come to be themselves misled by pride or vanity, or the praise of man, to imagine that the life is still in their wheels when it is fast passing out from them) become effete, lifeless and unfruitful. The more they are in evidence before the world, the more showy they become, the more do they lose real power. Their hold on God is insensibly loosened, their members forget the command to “call no man master.” There creeps in upon them frequently a tyrannising spirit. Their leaders become a prey to the great delusion of the Russian ecclesiastical tyrant, that uniformity is a beautiful thing, and that it represents power. Uniformity is not a beautiful thing. There is no uniformity in God’s creation, either in the natural or the spiritual world. The insistence on uniformity crushes out individuality and hinders initiative. It clips the wings of the best human gifts and capacities. It introduces the opposite of that “glorious liberty of the children of God,” which sets each soul free to develop into that good thing which He created it to become. “You shall all speak alike, all work in the same way, all adopt the same manner, and obey implicitly the same rule.” This command is itself paralysing to freedom and to individual development and power. But when it comes to, “You shall all think alike, all believe the same things, all receive what your leaders teach, and act in accordance with a uniform creed,” then there comes down a spiritual blight, which ultimately leaves a body without a soul. It is best then that such an organisation should break up and disappear. If its existence is prolonged it may become the tenement of a spiritual influence which is directly evil, while still wearing the outward garb of what was originally good.