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 "THE SPHERE AND DUTIES OF 
 CHRISTIAN WOMEN." 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN NORWICH CATHEDRAL, 
 
 JANUAKY 8th, 1882, 
 
 BEING THE SUNDAY AFTER THE FUNERAL OF 
 
 MARGARET CLIFFORD MELVILLE ROBINSON, 
 
 BY 
 
 Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., D.C.L., 
 Dean of Nor^wich. 
 
 [Reprinted from the Norfolk Chronicle, Jan. 14th, 1882.] 
 
 i
 
 SERMON. 
 
 Luke ii., 19, and 1 Peter iii., 4 : 
 
 ^^ Mary Icept all these things and pondered 
 them in her heart f " The ornament of a 
 meek and quiet spirit, ivhich is in the sight 
 of God of great price.^'' 
 
 '•' Man proposes," says the good old proverb, " God 
 disposes." And more than this. God's disposing 
 is better than man's proposing. I have sketched 
 out my scheme of duty for the day, — so much 
 work to be got through before nightfall. A 
 wholly unexpected incident occurs which drives 
 me off the lines of my scheme. I have done 
 nothing when nightfall comes, or next to nothing, 
 of what I hoped and intended to do. But very 
 possibly I may have done better. Certainly I 
 have done better, if I have worked in a quarter of 
 the field indicated by the finger of God's providence 
 instead of one indicated by the promptings of my 
 own mind. People looking at the records of our 
 Lord's life in the Gospels have observed that it 
 seems to have been a very planless life. Jesus 
 went about doing good, not whithersoever He 
 Himself designed, but whithersoever the Father 
 summoned and guided Him. It must be better 
 that God should direct our steps than that our 
 own heart should devise our way. — This, then, is
 
 the apology which I oflPer to you for digressing 
 from the path which I last Sunday marked out 
 for our January sermons. I had studied the second 
 of the Christmas Psalms, with the view of speaking 
 to you about it, when the tidings came of a 
 mournful event, which at once filled my mind, 
 as I have no doubt it fills many of yours, 
 with another interest. "What I say to you cannot 
 be wholly alien from that interest. My thoughts 
 must flow in the channel which events have carved 
 out for them, if the word is to be a living word ; 
 and none but a living word can be a life-giving 
 word. — The society of a Cathedral Close is 
 of necessity a small one. It is well also if 
 it is a happy and harmonious one. And, I 
 think, that by God's great goodness to us, we 
 are, perhaps, more favoured in this respect than 
 some other societies of a similar character. To 
 lose out of so small a society one whom to know 
 was to love, — whose bright, sunny, sprightly nature, 
 corresponding, I have often thought, with the 
 summer months of her husband's residence, shed 
 some portion of its brightness upon all with whom 
 she came in contact ; and made all sad to lose her 
 when the residence terminated, and joyful to greet 
 her when it re-commenced, — one who combined in a 
 rather unusual degree an enthusiastic warmth of 
 friendship for some who were not akin to her, with 
 a wife's devotion to her husband and a mother's 
 tenderness for her children, — the loss of such an 
 one will for all who were her friends create a very 
 serious gap. There are probably many of us who 
 feel that in May, June, and July, Norwich will be 
 no more to us quite what it has been hitherto. It 
 was her brightness of temperament, and not any 
 weakness of Christian faith, which made the fear 
 of death, or rather of the physical process of dying, 
 all her life long a bondage to her. I say, not 
 any weakness of Christian faith ; for, as her 
 husband read to her but a few hours before her 

 
 death the 23rd Psalm, the sweet smile, which 
 spread itself over her features at those words, 
 " Though I walk through the valley of the 
 shadow of death, I will fear no evil ; for thou 
 art with me," indicated that she took the 
 gracious promise to herself, and found peace 
 in so doing. But her nature recoiled from 
 the thought of the 'process of dying, as sunny 
 natures so commonly do ; and it is, therefore, 
 satisfactory to know that, in God's mercy, the trial 
 which she so much dreaded was spared her, and 
 that she passed out of life in a placid and 
 tranquil sleep ; wearied, apparently, from bodily 
 exhaustion, and yielding to a feeling of fatigue, 
 which passed, by almost imperceptible stages, 
 without a sigh or a struggle, into the final collapse. 
 "It was like her sweet, calm life," writes her 
 husband, " to die thus." " Her sweet, calm life !" 
 A most true commendation, though coming from 
 one so likely to be blinded to the truth by 
 partiality. And I have put it together in my mind 
 with another trait of her character, which requires 
 to be distinctly stated in order to a true apprehen- 
 sion of it. Assuredly sweetness and calmness 
 were compatible with great vivacity, and with 
 a spark of genuine enthusiasm about persons 
 or subjects which interested her. There was 
 nothing languid or mawkish in her character, 
 nor did she fail to express her sympathy 
 with those healthy forms of activity by which the 
 members of her sex are at present doing so much to 
 serve the Church, and help forward the kingdom of 
 the Lord Jesus. Several years ago a sermon was 
 preached in the nave of this Cathedral, which gave 
 some particulars of the work of the London 
 Deaconesses' Institution in Burton Crescent. I 
 shall not soon forget the lively interest which she 
 expressed in these particulars, and the enthusiasm 
 which the work of a deaconess seemed to kindle in 
 her mind. " In short," she said, in her usual
 
 sprightly way, " if I were not a canoness, I should 
 apply to be made a deaconess." It struck me at the 
 time that the words, though so pliyfuUy spoken, 
 as was her wont, probably expressed more of the 
 speaker's mind than she intended to convey. It 
 shewed her sympathy with the Christian activities 
 going on around her, and especially with the efforts 
 now making to bring those activities within the 
 sphere of women. But the "If I were not 
 a canoness," had a meaning also. It shewed 
 that she had the steadying as well as the 
 impulsive principle in her character, — the 
 ballast as well as the breeze, — that she 
 appriciated her providential position as one which 
 had sacred duties annexed to it, from which she 
 would not, if she could, be free, and that devotion 
 to those duties constituted for her the state of life 
 to which it had pleased God to call her. — But 
 enough has been said, and lam sure with your con- 
 currence, to exhibit the grounds of the affectionate 
 regard in which all who knew her hold her memory; 
 and I proceed to the subject of discourse, which 
 reflection on her example has suggested to me. 
 For, believe me, I am mindful of the indictment so 
 often and so justly brought against funeral 
 sermons, that they are for the most part repertories 
 of flimsy, sometimes of false, sentiment, and offer 
 as a general rule no solid instruction to the listener, 
 no protest against rampant sin, no persuasive to 
 holy living. I will speak, then, to you of the 
 sphere and duties of Christian women ; and it will 
 be in keeping with the season, when our thoughts 
 are fixed on our Blessed Lord's childhood, and with 
 the Gospel of the day, in which are preserved some 
 of the few authentic words of Christ's mother, 
 if I propose to you that holy woman as 
 having been, in God's design, a model for her 
 sex. If it can be substantiated that the Blessed 
 Virgin was, in God's design, an example for 
 Christian women, then it will be abundantly clear 
 that the attempt now so often made to bring 
 women out of their natural retirement, and to 
 thrust them into spheres long considered to be 
 the peculiar spheres of men, — to withdraw them 
 from domestic life, and to devolve upon them, as 
 much as possible, professional pursuits, and even 
 the administration of public affairs, — is contrary 
 to the Divine ideal of the sex, and, therefore, 
 however specious and plausible the arguments by
 
 which it may be defended, must and will certainly 
 end in mischief. For the greatest benefactreps of 
 the human race, who was God's honoured instru- 
 ment of bringing the Saviour into the world, lies 
 in the shade altogether ; occupies quite the back- 
 ground, not the foreground, of the evangelical 
 narratives. We augur, indeed, from the text, 
 and one or two similar passages, that she was a 
 pensive character, — one who treasured up in her 
 heart, and devoutly pondered, the works and ways 
 of God, and the wise and gracious utterances 
 of her Divine Son. And in her very few 
 brief sayings we trace womanly interest in 
 a newly-wedded pair ; motherly solicitude about 
 her Son while a child ; great expectations of Him, 
 founded on the extraordinary developements of His 
 character, which she had deeply and duly noted, — 
 these things in the way of natural feeling, — and 
 in the way of spiritual feeling, a believing 
 acquiescence in God's testimony, even when it 
 entirely baffled human reason, and an ecstatic joy 
 in the fulfilment of His promises to her forefathers, 
 of which he had condescended to make her the 
 instrument. Legend and fiction, always ready to 
 supply the large demands made by human curiosity, 
 have been busy about her history ; but what I have 
 stated is all that we know for certain of her, whom 
 all generations should call, and have called, 
 blessed. It is true, no doubt, that there was 
 a special reason for the withdrawal of the 
 Virgin into the background of the Gospel nar- 
 ratives ; that reason being the foresight which the 
 Holy Spirit had, while inspiring the Evangelists, of 
 the dreadful corruptions both of faith and practice 
 which would gather round her figure in mediaeval 
 times, and of the idolatrous worship which would 
 be paid to her as a kind of second mediator between 
 God and man. There was so evidently here a reason 
 for the greatest reticence and reserve in speaking 
 about her, lest any pretext for so false a conception 
 should be afi"orded by the written word of God, that 
 her case must be admitted to be a peculiar one ; 
 and if it stood alone, little or nothing could be 
 founded on it in the way of argument for feminine 
 retirement and reserve in general. But it does not 
 stand alone. Witness St. Peter's words in the text, 
 which, while they make not the remotest allusion 
 to the Virgin, might have been written for her, so 
 completely do they tally with the few notices of her
 
 8 
 
 character which we find in the writings of the 
 Evangelists. He is speaking against excessive 
 dress, then, as now, the besetting weakness of the 
 sex, and which has been, as we all know, with 
 many a poor girl the first step towards her ruin ; 
 and ho says, — (his words are gems I think ; — 
 no gems can be so beautiful), — " Whose adorning 
 let it not be that outward adorning of plait- 
 ing the huir, and of wearing of gold, or of 
 putting on of apparel; but let it be" — what? 
 Something on the surface ? something which shews 
 outwardly, makes a noise, arrests attention r Quite 
 the reverse. " Let it be the hidden man of the 
 heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the 
 ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in 
 the sight of God of great price." Tour women, ye 
 disciples of Christ, are not to be in the foreground 
 of social life, but in the background, — as "our 
 beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom 
 given unto him hath written unto you," they are 
 to be " keepers at home." — And let it be considered 
 to what class of duties the notices of other holy 
 women by the Evangelists lead our thoughts. 
 Mary of Bethany, sitting at our Lord's feet and hear- 
 ing His word, and commended for so doing, seems 
 to reproduce for us her namesake's pensive habit of 
 mind, — "Mary kept all these things, and pondered 
 them in her heart." Anna, the prophetess, was a 
 recluse, " who departed not from the temple, 
 but served God with fastings and prayers night and 
 day." St. Mary Magdalene and the other holy 
 women at the sepulchre, although in some sense 
 apostles to the Apostles, inasmuch as they brought 
 them the tidings of the resurrection, were none 
 of them actually charged with the apostolic 
 office ; and though it is quite true that at 
 the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Ghost, 
 no distinction of sex was observed, that the 
 words of the Prophet Joel might be fulfilled, "And 
 your sons and your daughters shall prophesy," — 
 as also because it must of necessity be shewn 
 that women, no less than men, have their share in 
 the gift of the Spirit as well as in the gift of the 
 Son (for, indeed, " in Christ Jesus there is neither 
 male nor female,") — it is very observable that even 
 then, when women were endowed with the miracu- 
 lous gift of prophecy, the inspired Apostle should 
 lay an inhibition upon the exercise of that gift in 
 the congregation j — " Let your women keep silence
 
 in the churches : for it is not permitted unto them 
 to speak ; but they are commanded to be under 
 obedience, as also saith the law. . . . It is a 
 shame for women to speak in the church." " Let 
 the woman learn in silence with all subjection. 
 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp 
 authority over the man, but to be in silence." It is 
 impossible to have stronger proof than is furnished 
 by these passages, that whatever be the gifts and 
 graces possessed by woman, public offices of trust 
 and responsibility are not her appointed place. — 
 But because women are thus, by God's own 
 ordinance, removed from the eye of the world, and 
 have assigned to them the life of domestic 
 seclusion, as their true sphere, are they, there- 
 fore, precluded from usefulness in the body politic 
 of the Church and the State ? To harbour such 
 a notion as this would be as contrary to the true 
 theory of the manner in which men are helped and 
 benefited, as to the indications of wemen's work 
 which are given us in the New Testament. Phebe, 
 the deaconess of the Church of Cenchrea, " hath 
 been a succourer of many and of myself also," says 
 St. Paul. Priscilla, as well as Aquila, was his 
 "helper in Christ Jesus." Nay, did not certain 
 women, which had been healed of evil spirits and 
 infirmities, attend upon our Lord in one of his 
 circuits through the country, and minister to 
 Him of their substance P And what a mistake is 
 it to imagine that benefactors of mankind on a 
 large scale are not to be looked for, except in 
 positions which challenge observation, as being 
 notoriously positions of public trust ! If this 
 restless, pushing, ostentatious age could only be 
 persuaded to believe it, a position of the deepest 
 retirement is often charged with the most healing 
 influences for the whole body politic. It may be 
 hoped that even now in some precincts of our 
 Cathedral and Collegiate churches there still 
 linger, quite out of the eyes of the world, men 
 of prayer and theological study, — (there will be 
 none soon, if contemplated changes take effect), — 
 whose prayers, perhaps, fetch down blessings, not 
 on themselves only, but on the Church and nation, 
 and whose studies open new veins of thought in 
 that fathomless mine of wisdom, the Scriptures 
 of the Old and New Testament. Such men are un- 
 known beyond the cities of their residence ; but 
 they die the benefactors of their race as much as if
 
 10 
 
 they had moved in more prominent and stirring 
 positions. Woman's sphere is, and it was from the 
 first begiuuint; of things, the family. And do you 
 think it of little or no consequence to the well- 
 being of the body politic that our families should 
 be well-administered? — that there should be at 
 the head of them a wife like that described 
 in the last chapter of Proverbs, whose 
 *' price is far above rubies," and in whom " the 
 heart of her husband doth safely trust;" that habits 
 of devotion, thrift, industry, should be instilled into 
 children and servants ; and that the atmosphere of 
 home should glow with the warm tinge of mother's 
 love, mother's guardianship, mother's good 
 counsel and good example? Is this, or is it not, a 
 security for your State ? — a better security than the 
 most long-headed politicians can devise, than the 
 most powerful armies and navies can afford, than 
 even the wisest and best-administered laws can 
 furnish ? And, if you grant that it is such a 
 security, to whom are these benefits to society to be 
 ascribed ? Under God, to the influence of Christian 
 women. They are not in the high places of the 
 world, but in its nooks and corners; nobody ever 
 hears their names ; their work of beneficence is done 
 silently and noiselessly, and their only panegyrists 
 are their own nearest and dearest ; — " Her children 
 arise up, and call her blessed ; her husband 
 also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters 
 have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." 
 As if to confound human pride and ambition, and to 
 shew that the greatest and most far-reaching 
 blessings can be conferred upon the human race by 
 those " meek souls " who " recline in life's stillest 
 shade," and whose sphere is not the market-place 
 or the senate, but the home, it was ordained that 
 the most precious of all blessings should come to 
 mankind through a woman ; and through a woman of 
 whom all that it is given us to know is, that she was 
 most pure, most devout, and that she sensitively 
 shrank from observation, I say that she " sensi- 
 tively shrank from observation ;" for although it 
 is true that we can trace a special design of God in 
 giving us such scanty information respecting her, 
 doubtless that scantiness of information was in 
 great measure brought about, as God always brings 
 about His results, by the operation of providential 
 and natural causes. The blessed Mary courted 
 privacy and retirement, and the Evangelists
 
 11 
 
 say little of her, because in truth there was 
 little to say. You cannot chronicle a life of 
 pensive devotion ; and yet a life of pensive 
 devotion is, if we could only see the forces 
 which set great movements in action, most fruitful 
 of results. And did the woman's Seed Himself, the 
 only sinless partaker of our nature, " the single 
 perfect flower," as Archbishop Trench so beauti- 
 fully says, — " the single perfect flower that ever 
 unfolded itself out of the stalk of humanity," — did 
 He at all perpetuate woman's retiring character? 
 We have ample assurance that He did. Though 
 Christ was a Benefactor, whose benefits necessa- 
 rily came abroad, and filled all minds with wonder, 
 all mouths with praise. He loved to work noise- 
 lessly. He enjoined restored patients over and 
 over again that they should not make Him known ; 
 He did " not strive nor cry ; neither did any man 
 hear His voice in the streets ; " He sought the 
 seclusion of the mountain-fastness, when He 
 perceived that they would come and take Him by 
 force to make Him a king ; and the words, 
 expressive of His human character and habit of 
 mind, which are put, by prophetic anticipation, 
 into His mouth, are these — " Lord, my heart is not 
 haughty, nor mine eyes lofty ; neither do I 
 exercise myself in great matters, or in things too 
 high for me. But I refrain my soul, and 
 keep it low, like as a child that is weaned 
 from his mother : yea, my soul is even as 
 a weaned child.'' — In conclusion, let me not be 
 supposed to imply, by anything I have said, that a 
 woman throws herself out of her true sphere, when 
 she engages in works of active Christian benevo- 
 lence. There could not be a more serious or fatal 
 misapprehension. If one Apostle tells us that the 
 truest ornament of women is to be " of a meek and 
 quiet sioirit," another expressly adds that they are 
 to " adorn themselves with good works." But it will 
 be found, I think, that the duties recognised by 
 Holy Scripture as appropriate to women are all of 
 a tninistrant character. They are to be, as we 
 have seen, "helpers" and " succourers," words 
 which imply subordination to some one in charge, 
 and not the chief management or control. 
 There were deaconesses, doubtless, in the primitive 
 Church, (Phebe, as we have seen, was one), but 
 a deaconess's office, judging from the name, must 
 be analogous to a deacon's, and the very notion of
 
 12 
 
 a deacon, the fundamental idea of the primitive 
 diaconate, is that of assistant in the subordinate 
 part of a groat function. And let it be observed 
 that this ministrant function of women is 
 only a recurrence to the design of God in 
 creating the sex, and thus to the primitive 
 ideal, which the Apostles everywhere show 
 themselves curiously anxious to maintain. Holy 
 Scripture, as being all the work of one Spirit, 
 is entirely consistent with itself throughout. 
 The chord which it strikes at the beginning of a 
 subject continues to sound, as often as that subject 
 comes under discussion. Woman was made 
 originally as a help for man; — ''I will make him 
 a help meet for him," and it was said to her, after 
 her fall, " he shall rule over thee." It is these 
 chords of Genesis, which vibrate still in the 
 apostolic notices of women's sphere and women's 
 work already quoted ; — " they are commanded to be 
 under obedience," " she hath been a succourer of 
 many, and of myself also." Whether it is not an 
 infringement of this primitive ideal to place 
 women, as is now so often done, in the position of 
 rulers of a religious community, — a position apt to 
 foster ecclesiastical ambition, and to turn a woman 
 into a Wolsey ; than which what transformation 
 can be more hideous ? — I myself have the gravest 
 doubts. But, whatever difference of opinion may 
 exist among good and thoughtful men, as to the 
 application of the principle, there can be no doubt, 
 I think, that this should he the principle upon 
 which woman's work should be organised, — that 
 *A« is ordained to be a help to man, as in the 
 domestic and social sphere, so also in the loorh of 
 the Church of Christ; — and that she does 
 shew herself such a help in thousands of parishes 
 quite noiselessly and unostentatiously, without 
 organisation, without distinctive costume, without 
 any external note to draw attention to her agency, 
 save the blessings and general good influence 
 which are diffused by it, — this is one of the truest 
 glories of the Church of England, and one of her 
 greatest securities in the affections of the English 
 people, that I may not say, in the favour of God ! 
 
 The Benediction v^as pronounced by the Lord 
 Bishop of the Diocese, and the ''Dead March " in 
 Saul was play«d upon the organ as the congrega- 
 tion departed.
 
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