WOMAN\'S WORK IN A
COUNTRY PARISH {1}
I have been asked to speak a few words to you on a lady\'s work in a
country parish. I shall confine myself rather to principles than to details;
and the first principle which I would impress on you is, that we must all be
just before we are generous. I must, indeed, speak plainly on this point.
A woman\'s first duties are to her own family, her own servants. Be not
deceived: if anyone cannot rule her own household, she cannot rule the
Church of God. If anyone cannot sympathise with the servants with whom
she is in contact all day long, she will not really sympathise with the poor
whom she sees once a week. I know the temptation not to believe this is
very great. It seems so much easier to women to do something for the
poor, than for their own ladies\' maids, and house-maids, and cooks. And
why? Because they can treat the poor as THINGS: but they MUST
treat their servants as persons. A lady can go into a poor cottage, lay
down the law to the inhabitants, reprove them for sins to which she has
never been tempted; tell them how to set things right, which, if she had the
doing of them, I fear she would do even more confusedly and slovenly
than they. She can give them a tract, as she might a pill; and then a shilling,
as something sweet after the medicine; and she can go out again and see
no more of them till her benevolent mood recurs: but with the servants it is
not so. She knows their characters; and, what is more, they know hers;
they know her private history, her little weaknesses. Perhaps she is a
little in their power, and she is shy with them. She is afraid of beginning
a good work with them, because, if she does, she will be forced to carry it
out; and it cannot be cold, dry, perfunctory, official: it must be hearty,
living, loving, personal. She must make them her friends; and perhaps
she is afraid of doing that, for fear they should take liberties, as it is called-
-which they very probably will do, unless she keeps up a very high
standard of self- restraint and earnestness in her own life--and that
involves a great deal of trouble, and so she is tempted,