that are only half attempted, if indeed ever attempted at all. They that do their good works to be seen of men, they have their reward. And those good Churchwomen who stigmatize as Dissent all forms of devotion and phases of belief that do not match their favourite practices and dogmas, they too have their reward. While not without the recompense of their own self-satisfaction are the selfstyled "earnest Christians," who see a Romeward inclination and a bowing to Antichrist in every attempt to brighten services or to give to spiritual teaching a form and a substance that will impress the imagination and provide occupations for "idle hands."

The unofficial yet absorbing character of the parochial work upon which Churchwomen are engaged, prevents much spreading of the fame of many who are doing really valiant service to Church and State.

Putting aside the revived Church order of deaconesses whose functions, in their highest aspect, are after all purely parochial, the only office to which a woman can be legally instituted in the Church of England is that of warden. How seldom a woman is elected people's warden is shown by the fact that only a few a very few people here and there are aware that women are eligible for the post. Miss Grace Jones has been warden of the Church of St. Mary, at Kensworth, Dunstable, for eleven consecutive years. She was elected the first time during a short absence from the parish, and the votes and confidence then given to her have never been withdrawn. Kindly-hearted, active-minded and full of piety, Miss Jones ever seeks guidance from Him who permitted her the privilege of becoming "a guardian of His Holy House." She is always happy in the work that comes to her year by year, and is thankful for the honour that was bestowed on her unsought.

CHAPTER X

EDUCATION AND FOREIGN MISSIONS

FRANCES MARY BUSS, DOROTHEA BEALE, LILLA BLANCHE STRONG, MARGARET CLARKE, LUCY SOULSBY, ELIZABETH WORDSWORTH, ANNE MACKENZIE, ANNE JANE ASKWITH, ISABELLA BISHOP, I. CARUS-WILSON

CHURCHWOMEN have been the chief promoters of the Higher Education of Women.

This fact is not in accordance with much of popular belief. It is very largely supposed that only scientificminded females who have analyzed God out of His Creation are advocates of university teaching for women. But the truth is that Mrs. Creighton is but one of many loyal and devoted Churchwomen who have done splendid service in bringing women within the range of the highest instruction to be obtained.

Two most interesting and most intellectual women of the early nineteenth century were Mrs. Grote, wife of George Grote, the historian of Greece, and Mrs. Austin, whose Considerations on National Education had considerable influence in her time. Both Mrs. Grote and Mrs. Austin were aggressively sceptical, and believed themselves to have entered on a better way than that beset by the superstitions of the Churches. Having forgotten, or choosing to ignore, what the Churches had done for the education of the masses at a time when the State was sublimely contemptuous of any claim of the masses for any kind of instruction at all, these two women, and many others of their order, threw their influence into the scale of the secularization of education, arrogantly pre-supposing that Church teaching never did any one any good.

It is significant, therefore, that the only child of the quite extraordinarily well-informed and critically-minded Mrs. Austin, the child who was the pet of the Grotes, the Carlyles, the Sterlings, the John Stuart Mills; of Rogers the poet, Comte the positivist and Heine the pessimist, when she came to years of discretion, entered the English Church.

Subject from earliest childhood to every kind of antiChurch thought and teaching that could be fascinating or bewildering to an ardent soul and pure intelligence, Lucie Austin, at seventeen years of age, voluntarily came forward for baptism and experienced such satisfaction in her profession of faith that she made the artless attempt to bring the agnostical Mrs. Grote to rejoice with her over her new-found comfort. That before Lucie Austin took her great decision she had some rough places of intellectual doubt and difficulty to cross, is proved by letters of hers to the friend— Janet Shuttleworth, a half-sister of the Marianne North who became distinguished as a traveller-who pointed her to the way of salvation. It must be remembered that Mrs. Austin came of Unitarian stock, and in her day Unitarianism was a power in the land.

"Dearest Janet," wrote Lucie Austin on September 27, 1837-she was then sixteen-"I must ask you what you mean by refusing to Unitarians the name of Christians. I never thought, and never can think, you could be by nature intolerant, but certainly I fear you are likely to become so if you do not take care. I will give you the title of a little book on Unitarianism I should like you to read. I do not give it to you as my opinions, not being prepared to define them as yet; and really, dear Janet, our views are, and are likely to remain, so entirely opposite, that it is but vanity and vexation of spirit to have any more discussion on the subject. Depend upon it, that whatever my views may be, I shall always be of opinion that one who follows his own religion quelconque, with a humble and conscientious spirit, is sure of Divine mercy; and my ideas of the importance of doctrines are absolutely nothing.

The following by Lucie of her own religion quelconque, led her to the step that at eighteen years of age prompted this letter:

Dear Mrs. Grote, Perhaps you have already heard of my having, and I hope most conscientiously, sought to be admitted by baptism into the Established Church, and you may think with many I ought not to have taken so important a step solely on my own responsibility; but till you tell me so I will not attempt defence of that which does not appear to come under the denomination optional.' I believe I have done my duty, and acted in obedience to the Giver of the 'commandment with promise,' and that in no way could I more honour my parents than by confident trust they will sanction my conduct. I hope they and I will be but of one heart and one mind on this important point. I am prepared for some slight crosses from many excellent friends, whose creed I never could satisfactorily adopt; but with the 'fear of God' before my eyes, I would not be deterred by this difficulty, through which I know, if I place but perfect trust in Him, and cultivate humility, His strength will guide me. I expect to be pitied for that ignorance and weakness which has made me an easy victim to others' rule; but my own heart tells me that I have no claims upon any such commiseration. My sponsors were wholly unprepared for my application to them to become such, and had not an unlooked-for and quiet opportunity of attending an infant of Mrs. North's to the baptismal font offered itself, I had probably yet remained in the same painfully unsatisfied state of mind that had so long been mine. I already experience happiness and advantage in and from the views and hopes which from day to day seem to unfold themselves more and more; and I expect and pray, if I make religion my guide, that even the most opposed to my present opinions will ultimately rejoice in their influence upon my character and conduct...."

Mrs. Grote certainly thought this child of "advanced" parents should not have taken so retrograde a step on her

own or any one else's responsibility, and told her so, as we learn from Lucie herself. Writing to Janet Shuttleworth after receipt of Mrs. Grote's reply, Lucie said: "I see I shall have a good deal to put up with, but I have incurred it with my eyes open; and what I should sink under if left only to the support of my own strength, God will support me through, I trust, unshaken." God did support her.

From the direction she had taken, Lucie Austin, who very shortly became Mrs. Duff Gordon, never turned back. Yet she was an intensely individual woman, and one of the brightest wit and of the quickest sympathy to be imagined.

The first influences that brought about the "painfully unsatisfied state of mind," which could be satisfied only by the age-long satisfactions of the Christian Church, was the influence of the school to which, at fifteen, she had beenmuch against her will-sent by the mother who was always too much occupied in writing to do more for Lucie's education than teach her Latin.

As with Lucie Austin, so with many other girls from homes where there is either opposition or indifference to, or hesitancy in the expression of Church doctrines, the impulse of her personal embrace of historic Christianity was received from a school teacher and a school friend. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that Churchmen and Churchwomen who have at heart the extension of their communion, and the spiritualizing of the individual and associated life of their countrywomen, desire that the higher as well as the elementary education of the young of the nation should be retained in Church hands. But, to the honour of Churchwomen-if it were in some senses a practical mistake of theirs their first concern for higher education was not to make definite Church teaching its inseparable concomitant. They had what the mother of Lucie Austin saw that Gladstone and other young Christian enthusiasts of 1839 had"faith in their religion," which made them "not to be afraid of a little secular teaching."

Like Gladstone, perhaps, some of them had not too much faith in their religion-it were impossible to have too