Being and Doing – 16 June – Education of Women (Continued)

Note: The language of some posts about women are very much of their age and may be seen as victim blaming and mansplaining – even when written by women.  Please read them with care.

….fine instincts the pathetic circumstances and dramatic relations, which the historian too often eclipses by his reasoning and disconnects by his arrangement;  it is for her to trace the hidden equities of divine reward and catch sight, through the darkness, of the fateful threads of woven fire that connect error with retribution.   But, chiefly of all, she is to be taught to extend the limits of her sympathy with respect to that history which is being for ever determined as the moments pass in which she draws her peaceful breath; and to the contemporary calamity, which, were it but rightly mourned by her, would recur no more hereafter.   She is to exercise herself in imagining what would be the effects upon her mind and conduct, if she were daily brought into the presence of the suffering which is not the less real because shut from her sight.   She is to be taught somewhat to understand the nothingness of the proportion which that little world in which she lives and loves, bears to the world in which God lives and loves; and solemnly she is to be taught to strive that her thoughts of piety may not be feeble in proportion to the number they embrace, nor her prayer more languid than it is for the momentary relief from pain of her husband or child, when it is uttered for the multitudes of those who have none to love them, and is ‘for all who are desolate and oppressed.’

RUSKIN

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These quotes are from ‘Being and Doing’ A selection of helpful thoughts from various authors arranged for daily reading.

Collected by Constance M Whishaw and first published in 1908 for members of the Being and Doing Guild whose object is to do all they can for the relief of suffering and misery.

Most of the writers are 19th Century Christians from Britain and Europe who were committed to living their faith through deeds as well as words – Being AND Doing.

For many years these words have kept me company and encouraged me on the journey of faith.  I hope they will encourage others also.