Note 28 — III.

I did not think, certainly, when I wrote the above passage, of Arthur Helps's "Companions of my Solitude;" but, taking up the book during a day of illness, I find a parallel passage in what he writes of the "sin of great cities." In speaking of the many excuses which ought to be made for fallen women, he says: "And then there is nobody into whose ear the poor girl can pour her troubles, except she comes as a beggar. This will be said to be a leaning, on my part, to the confessional. I cannot help this: I must speak the truth that is in me."

It seems to me, that the "narrow" church, against which so much is intimated in our times, is nowhere so narrow as in its human sympathies. Oh that our clergymen knew how many utterly friendless souls sit before them clothed in "purple and fine linen"! It is not to be taken for granted, that, because a woman has a home, a father and mother, and a genial, social circle, she has a friend, or even a counsellor. It is not the beggar-girl alone who needs a "Confessor" within our Protestant churches. Many of the most refined, the most noble, and the most wealthy, are hurried into unfit marriages, because they dare not live alone, and think the superficial confidences of common courtship only a prelude to something deeper which never comes.

Why should not the "Comforter" have come to our churches, with some special significance, before this? If stout-hearted Luther could say, "When I am assailed with heavy tribulations, I rush out among my pigs, rather than remain alone by myself," why should any of us blush to confess our need of help? Herein, it seems to me, lies the vital want of the modern church. Here and there, the rare personal gifts of a single pastor lessen the evil; but what we want, in every religious circle, is a friend to whom we can go, without the smallest danger of being suspected of impertinence or egotism, under the sanction of the divine words, "Bear ye one another's burdens." The burdens of temptation must be borne alone; but the burdens of poverty, sickness, and grief, should be shared in every Christian church, without regard to the social condition of the sufferer. Oftentimes the rich man is poorer than the pauper. I know all the objections that will be raised. I feel, to this day, how I saw one clergyman shrink, years ago, from a tale which he ought to have heard from one agonized woman's lips; and how others, admirable in the usual pulpit and pastoral charge, will think themselves unfit for this. Under such circumstances, let a clergyman call upon those of his congregation who are willing to become the friends of the rest, to meet in his study. From the half-dozen who will have at once the modesty and the courage to come forward, let a man and a woman be chosen to act as a "Committee of Comfort." This might be done with the utmost quietness; the minister alone need know the names of those willing to serve; but if it were an understood thing, that every church had such officers, the blessing would be beyond belief.

In many cases, no actual help could be given, beyond patient listening, a mutual prayer, or tender soothing; but in every church there are souls that need these far more than eloquent preaching,—souls that ask for nothing, except some one to hear and consider who is not in a hurry, some one to appoint those to their true uses who stand idle in a waiting world. I claim such an institution for the sake of friendless women; but such substitutes for it as the world has hitherto had, have been by no means useless to men.