Elizabeth Raikes

“ The story of the great queen whose life was given up to her country, ordered wholly for their good, with no private interests; whose marriage was an act of sacrifice; who ruled her people with large-minded beneficence, and under whom they prospered; who finally, as age came upon her, resigned for their sake, seemed strangely appropriate for the close of Miss Beale’s long work for Cheltenham. The very remoteness of the story, its gravity, the absence from it of such didacticism as abounded in Miss Beale’s interpretation of Britomart and Griselda, made it all the more forcible. ”

“ It was a time when long-accepted opinions were unsettled for many, by new scientific theories, or by a greater sensitiveness to the mystery of pain and the apparent indifference of a part of the so-called religious world in presence of the deepest wrongs and suffering. Dorothea Beale had to take her part in the special difficulties of her own day. The battle has been shifted to another ground for this generation, which scarcely knows what resistance was made, what suffering was endured by some heroic souls in the last, and at what a price a larger spiritual consciousness was bought. ”

“ So, in the best sense the College grew. Not in outward prosperity alone, in teaching power, in class rooms; but within. The invisible fabric of mind, and will, and heart, co-ordinated by one great idea, was slowly being raised. The ‘aborigines,’ as those who were girls of the Cambray House time call themselves, even insist that at no time of her career was Miss Beale’s personal influence so direct as then, when teaching so many subjects herself, and in small classes, she came personally in contact with nearly all the older pupils. ”

“ To Canon Body, who had sent her a letter full of sympathy and interest, she wrote:—
‘I am so glad you wrote thus freely, for it has made me understand better how much you can feel for those in this deepest sorrow, and yet have a sure and certain hope that they will rise out of that Hades. It is, as you say, most cheering to find movements of the same kind in different places. If there is a spiritual tide, the waters can only be lifted by extra mundane force.’ ”

“ There is the unity of consciousness which makes memory possible, and moral judgment possible; and yet there is a secondary consciousness, the “categorical imperative,” the ideal goodness, ever revealing to man a higher and better. What if the conscience has never—I should say Except in One—received the perfect vision of goodness? This is only to say that the receiver is limited and imperfect, not that the perfect spiritual sun is not, or rather I should say the universal light, for the sun is a localisation of that which is invisible; is saturating through infinite space. Words ever fail. ”

“ In any case the battle must not begin without training and discipline. Useless women, because undisciplined in thought, in will, in action, what havoc they make! Having a name to live, yet dead;—these bring in confusion. Those who have not learned obedience, those who want credit for themselves, or excitement, never help to win victory.’
There was one matter outside her own proper sphere of activity in which Miss Beale was never sparing of money or personal trouble. ”

“ I have gained such painful experience, both from within and without, of the misery of those who have once seen and then lost the sight of the invisible; those who have left, especially those who become teachers, often turn to me for help, which I feel so incompetent to give, and which I have not time to do properly. One is writing to me now, who is in a school in which there are sixteen teachers, ten of whom have given up all outward sign of the religious life. I long to be able to refer those who need guidance to some who are able to help them. ”

“ A hundred reasons would keep most girls back from taking the simple steps which would have led them early to find a friend in Miss Beale. While they were reverencing in silence and at a distance there would come along some bright thing of quick perception, accustomed to society and to be welcome everywhere, untroubled by self-consciousness, who would approach the throne with no ‘unaccustomed awe,’ but stand, and chat, and smile, and be obviously acceptable to the lonely sovereign. ”

“ Upon a world which seemed dead, which no prophet staff could restore, they were to stretch themselves, heart to heart, their own warm palpitating life was to rouse, and the power of love could raise [201] the dead. We must learn that old lesson that no creature is common or unclean. We must enter as never before into the full meaning of the Name by which God was known to Abraham—I AM,—the Eternal. Ours has been a God of time, He is the Living God, lighting every man that cometh into the world. ”

“ Perhaps the good have not done themselves justice, and the bad more than justice. Besides, I cannot myself, even in looking over one set of papers, unless I correct all at a sitting, mark them fairly even to my own mind; how much more difficult it must be when the examiners change, and the papers come in after a year’s interval. We, by submitting ourselves to examination, pledge ourselves in some sort to be content. It will never do, in my opinion, to impugn the justice of a University, and I really think they will do justice. ”

“ On this really momentous occasion for the College, when its members as a whole were summoned to catch a glimpse of all it could be of help and blessing in a far larger world than its own, the Principal spoke less of work accomplished than of growth, and ‘the silent witness of a beautiful life as a power to bless.’ She said less about the gifts with which the College had been enriched, than of some visible sacraments of Nature with which these gifts should bring them into touch. ”

“ We are not utterly truthful, unless we do more than act up to our convictions, unless we do our utmost to make those convictions as near the truth as we are able. And do you know I felt so disappointed after talking to you the other day, because it seemed to me as if you had not cared to search into the depths of things, as if you were content to float about instead of searching for the rock beneath the flood. Our apprehension of the truth regarding the goodness of God, and His purpose for us, and our duty to our Father and to one another, seems to me the priceless pearl. ”

“ We see now what a wonderful work she did among the College boys, and it must be that your suffering is a part of the work God has given you to do for the school, and that you, too, will be enabled to say “not one half-hour,” when the darkness passes away, and the true light shines into the things of earth, and we know as we are known. I know that suffering so claims the attention, but one can only know and believe, not feel it; but it is much to live by faith. Faith is the illuminating power through which alone we truly know. ”

“ We see the poor sham education, with its wrong notions of the beautiful and the best, vanish without a regret. Yet, since all human effort has its worth and place, is it possible and fair to say one word above its grave? Was there no genuine wish to give pleasure pleading in the miserable pieces of the boarding-school young lady, and even in the painful drawings which the master’s touch failed to make tolerable? ”

“ We cannot administer “a universal pill”; but we can to some extent support and comfort those who are passing through the darkness; one can out of one’s own experience tell them that the stars will shine out once more; one can teach some few simple lessons of faith and patience and hope; one can show that there are a priori and a posteriori grounds for the faith we hold,—though mysteries unfathomable remain in every department of thought; and in such a meeting, personal help and advice might be given to meet special individual difficulties. It is here that the Christian Evidence Society fails. ”

“ The recognition by the town was from every point of view a triumph and an honour. The year in which it took place and the preceding one were marked by large extension of boarding-house property and many other signs of wealth. But for Miss Beale herself it can have been no time of great gladness. Though her vitality was as great as ever, her health was less good, her deafness much increasing, her sight impaired. Constantly she was called upon to part by death from some old and valued friend or fellow-worker. In January she shared the general mourning for Queen Victoria. ”

“ And shall we doubt which is stronger? We dare not be so faithless. There is such a mighty prevailing power in the spirit of earnest devotion, that when only two or three are gathered together in His Name, for work as well as for prayer, His power is felt. What a power might we be for good if we were His disciples indeed.
‘Some say our school is Church-like. I am glad, for Churches are built to remind us that God is not far away, but very near to us, and this is the thought which should keep us from evil and fill us with gladness. ”

“ For more than a year she remained in Miss Beale’s house, Miss Beale herself sometimes sharing with Miss Gore the task of nursing and caring for her in every way, holding it, indeed, a privilege to wait upon one whose spirit so soared above her circumstances,—she was poor as well as hopelessly ill,—one who, regarding the mysteries of science as a lesson-book given to man by God, did not weary in her study of them even when near the gates of death. ”

“ But it does seem to me quite impossible in education to leave religion an open question, i.e., to teach without hypothesis. How could we unite into one coherent whole the teaching of optics, unless we presuppose the undulatory theory? Or the facts of astronomy without the theory of gravitation? Yet both may be, and are questioned. For some philosophical theory must underlie all things, and no one can, it seems to me, teach history, or geography, or science without it. ”

“ She, who was ever ready to learn from mistakes, from pain, from adverse circumstances, gratefully acknowledged her debt to all that had shown her the real difficulties of her vocation, and her own weakness, and which had deepened her consciousness of the only source of strength. Some lives are led so much at haphazard, that it really hardly appears to matter whether at any given period they have taken one direction or another. In the lives of those who, like Dorothea Beale, are always conscious of an over-ruling [37] and ordering Power, every year is not only known, but seen to have its place. ”