Among the many signs of the vitality of the English Church, which every dutiful son of hers will hail with joy, are the various organizations of the Work of Women which have recently sprung up amongst us, the Institution of Deaconesses, the employment of Parochial Mission Women, and the foundation of Sisterhoods. It is a mistake surely to look coldly upon such movements, because they assume (what to our generation is) a somewhat novel form. There ought to be in every living Church a plastic power, which adapts its machinery to the wants of the age, and to the ever-varying shapes which Society is taking; and we rejoice to find in our own Church evidences of this power. Enthusiasms many and fervent are rising up in her, and driving her members to these new agencies, which should not be regarded with suspicion because they are new, but rather tried fairly, and guided discreetly, and watched vigilantly.

Watching and guidance they will doubtless all of them want; and most of all, Communities of women banded together under a Superior for devotion and for acts of mercy. The very first step of joining such a community may easily be taken in violation of the principle (if not of the letter) of the Fifth Commandment. It may be an act of will-worship deliberately committed by one who slights God’s Ordinance of the Family, and prefers ties and sympathies of her own creation to those with which it has pleased Him in His Providence to surround her. But supposing the community composed exclusively of those who have a moral right to join it (of those who have no ties, or none which they cannot perfectly satisfy while living in the comparative seclusion of a Sisterhood), the perils to which their life exposes them are not few, and all the more dangerous because they are subtle. First; there is a constant tendency to erect a false standard of spirituality in the mind, and to imagine a higher degree of perfection to attach to the life of a Sister than to that of an equally devoted Christian woman living in the world. This tendency culminates in the Roman phraseology “Religious,” as applied to the members of Monastic Orders, a phraseology which I for one earnestly deprecate, and greatly regret to see adopted by some of my clerical Brethren in speaking of these Communities. “Words,” says Bacon, “are like the Tartar’s arrows; they shoot backwards;” and if we allow ourselves to call the members of our Sisterhoods “Religious,” or to speak of them as being “in Religion,” we shall soon come to regard their vocation as more spiritual than that of the Christian wife and mother,—a notion most unspiritual and unscriptural in the mind of the writer of this Address. Possibly the life of a Sister may present fewer difficulties to the attainment of a high standard of sanctity than life (under its ordinary conditions) in Society; but even if this be granted, which must we rate higher, the faith and zeal which evades difficulties, or the faith and zeal which meets and triumphs over them? I believe it might be shown that many of the most eminent doctors of the Church, previously to the Reformation, have decided that life in the World may be altogether as spiritual, and exemplify a standard of holiness at least as high, as life in a Convent. Then, again, it must be remembered that the relations which the members of a religious Community contract are artificial. These Communities are a kind of hotbed for rearing devotional feeling and piety of a high caste. It is not at all necessary to deny that very beautiful forms of piety are often reared there, as very beautiful flowers are under glass. But we may reasonably expect the beauty of form to be somewhat compensated by want of vigour. And of course this is especially likely to be the case with Communities of Women. Without denying to the piety of Women very great and peculiar excellences, beyond those which characterize the religious feelings of men,—while fully appreciating all the sympathy and power of heroic endurance manifested by Christian Women, and fully recognizing the general truth, that Religion thrives far better in the soil of a susceptible heart than in that of a powerful understanding,—we must yet grant that the female type of piety has a weak side,—the side, namely, of a morbid sentimentalism. Now this side may be expected to exhibit itself in high relief in our Sisterhoods, where the sentiments of devout Women constitute the religious atmosphere of the place. And as the tone of the disciple insensibly reacts upon the tone of the teacher, and what the first is eager to receive the second is usually prompt to supply, it is likely enough that the spiritual pastors and guides of such communities will (with perfectly pure intention and without dreaming of evil) pander to a style of religion very much out of keeping (to say the least of it) with the sobriety of Holy Scripture, and with the staid and dignified tone of the Book of Common Prayer. Those who have read the Spiritual Letters of St. Francis de Sales, and have observed the difference of tone between the generality of them which are addressed to women, and the few in which his correspondents are men, will immediately recognize what I mean. Souls should be dealt with on the same principles, whatever souls they be; the same fervour, the same unction, should be manifested in the guidance of either sex; but in the direction of his female disciples, this saintly man displays now and then a tincture of sentimentalism which can hardly be called healthy. Madame de Chantal and the others craved for something of that sort, and he, as their director, with the utmost artlessness, supplied it. There may be the truest unction in religion without unctuousness. Our Litany is an instance of this.

The great receipt for keeping the tone of piety sound and healthy doubtless lies in one word, Work,—work in the cause of our suffering fellow-men. And it seems to me to be a proof of the reality of the danger which I have just been pointing out, that in some of these Communities the Sisters have begun to affect a life of entire seclusion from works of mercy, under pretence of a higher devotion. Does not this show that there is something in the moral atmosphere of these communities, to which the healthy, practical, sobering tendencies of work are uncongenial? I have spoken strongly in the Address on the great danger and mischief likely to accrue from making the purely contemplative or devotional life the ideal of high sanctity; and indeed I have desired to make the whole Address a protest against this false theory by assuming (what I know to be the case) that the Sisters of St. Peter’s Home are all busied in works of mercy, and giving them plain, practical counsels, such as would be equally applicable to all the work which has to be done by Christians in active life. These counsels are so commonplace that those who care to read them will probably ask for the reasons which justify me in publishing them.

My only reason is, that the Founder of the Home pressed their publication, under the idea that it might be of some use in making the Institution known. As he is one of those munificent Benefactors of the Church, occasionally found among the wealthy Laity of this great City, to whom the Clergy at all events are bound to hold out the right hand of fellowship, I did not feel at liberty to decline his request when it was pressed upon me. In the vigilant superintendence of our Diocesan (who kindly permits me to inscribe these pages to him) we have every guarantee that reasonable people can desire for St. Peter’s Home being conducted on the soundest principles, for its members being kept in faithful allegiance to the Church of their Baptism, warned against and secured from those dangers to which the experience of the Church teaches that Religious Communities are exposed, and made a great blessing to those who are sheltered and tended in their quiet retreat, and to the poor and sick people in their neighbourhood.