A WOMAN PREACHER

Ladies' Mirror, Volume I, Issue 9, 1 March 1923, Page 53

A WOMAN PREACHER

Miss Maud Royden

She also Writes and Lectures

lyriSS Maude Royden is not IT -*- only a remarkable woman, student and thinker, she also belongs to the small band of pioneers who promise to leave no uncertain impress upon the England of today. She possesses intellectual power that is surprising in one so frail and delicate. At birth both hips were dislocated, and she has been lame all her life, but even this disability did not prevent her from joining in the sports and games of her vigorous brothers and sisters. She is the daughter of Sir Thomas and Lady Royden, and circumstances enabled her to acquire an education that is unusually complete. Her eldest brother went to Winchester and Magdalen College at Oxford. She went to Cheltenham College, and Lady Margaret Hall, and both in the sphere of learning and of sports she soon took a distinguished place. Later, she took brilliant University honours, and then, overwhelmed by the feeling that she must devote her life to the service of others, she joined a Woman's Settlement in Liverpool. "Here," to quote from "Painted Windows," "Miss Royden worked for three years, serving her novitiate as it were, in the ministry of mercy, a notable figure in the dark streets of Liverpool, that little eager body, with its dragging leg,

its struggling hips, its head held high to look the whole world in the face on the chance, nay, but in the hope, that a bright smile from eyes as clear as day might do some poor devil a bit of good." "She brought to the slums of Liverpool," continues the same writer, "the gay cheerfulness of a University woman, Oxford's particular brand of cheerfulness, and also a tenderness of sympathy and a graciousness of helpfulness which was the fine flower of deep, inward, silent, personal religion." In the year 1908 the Woman's Suffrage Movement absorbed her energies. Her great hope then was that woman's influence in politics might have a cleansing effect in national life. Materialistic politics, however, had no real interest for her. She went far deeper. The ideal she kept steadily in view was to spiritualise the public life of England. She held meetings, and gave lectures on various subjects with this end always in view, So remarkable was the influence of this magnetic woman, that even the rigidly conventional University of Oxford took a step in regard to her that was as unexpected as it was progressive. It invited Miss Royden to give a lecture before it on "Purity." Canon Scott Holland was in the chair, and on that occasion she was listened to by about 1200 male undergraduates. Later

on she was asked by the same University to address a mixed audience on the subject of “Sex.” By degrees she has come to discover her life work. From lecturing on subjects that are intimately connected with the spiritual side of human nature, the transition to religion was easy. It was brought about in the following way:—When the Rev. R. J._ Campbell resigned from the City Temple, London, she was asked to occupy the pulpit for the four consecutive Sundays during the interregum between his departure and the arrival of his successor, Dr. Fort Newton. Although she is an Anglican, and has no intention of becoming a Congregationalist, she accepted the call with much reluctance. Her success was instantaneous. She still preaches occasionally in the_ City Temple, but mostly at the Guildhouse, in Eccleston Square, and has been, as an eminent man says, “one of the most effective advocates in England of personal religion.” She is a social reformer of a type that has not before been known in the ranks of women. Her life is one of wonderful beauty and unselfishness, and she is above all an English gentlewoman, cultured, unassuming, clear-headed, full of sympathy with humanity, and withal “one of the most persuasive preachers of Christianity in any English-speaking country.'’