Young Women in the Program of Christ By MARY SWAIL TAFT T was an Oriental palace a-glitter with barbaric splendor, and from a bevy of beautiful maidens a Jewish girl was chosen queen. So Esther came to a crown and throne. Then the emergency arose, the call for a woman and that woman the queen — no other could meet it — and the Jewish girl proved her real royalty. With that splendid “If I perish, I perish,” she gave her¬ self in intercession. Priestess was she as well as queen. And the girl saved her people and herself. Twenty-four centuries have passed, yet to this day a great people scattered all over the world keep the feast of Purim as a memorial to her. To another girl, a shepherdess among the hills of Domremy, came a vision and a voice, “Come it is thine to deliver thy beloved France from the enemy.” And she was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. Battle-axes clanged on her armor but she was not afraid, because of the vision and the voice. She did not falter until Orleans was taken and the king crowned at Rheims. It was the hand of the simple peasant girl that placed on his head the crown of the people’s love and loyalty, and she, too, in the thought of the French nation and of the world, has been crowned together w T ith her king. But there have been other queens, careless, irresponsible, who never realized that royalty has special obligations, that privilege means oppor¬ tunity, that ability is answerability. Marie An¬ toinette, born to the purple, began her royal progress to her royal bridegroom, and an edict was issued, banishing from the path of the proces¬ sion the lame, the diseased, the poor. Her life was to be a bouquet of roses, to be enjoyed, inhaled, consumed on herself. Not a thorn was to prick the royal hand, not a moan of pain must mar the music of that festal day. So the young queen coquetted the fatal hours away and ransacked heaven and earth for new amusements, while women starved in the streets of Paris and babes were found frozen to death. The young nobles followed the royal example, and one of them por¬ trays the life they lived: “We saw the brief years of our springtime wheel by in a circle of such il¬ lusions and such happiness as I think through all time was reserved for us and us alone.” Swift, re¬ morseless, fell their doom. With its own blood. at the ghastly guillotine, privilege wiped out the score and paid its unrecognized debt to the un¬ privileged. The old Book had foretold the fate of such: “Ye have lived delicately on the earth, and taken your pleasure; ye have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter.” And there are such today. The late Bishop of Manchester, being about to preach a sermon to young women, sent a note to a fashionable girl, asking her to write him exactly how she ordinarily spent the day. This was her answer: “My dear Lord Bishop: — We breakfast at ten. I always try to be up and ready for that. Then I arrange the flowers in the vases, feed the birds and write some notes for my mother or myself. Then it is time to get ready for lunch. After lunch, I drive or make visits, and get home for afternoon tea. Then it is time to dress for dinner. After dinner we go to the opera or a party, and I come home at one in the morning so tired I can scarcely hold up my head.” And all the time, He who made us and bought us with His outpoured life blood is calling us to a great life. “And he made us to be a kingdom and priests.” “Ye are a royal priesthood.” It is young women today who are entering a kingdom of knowledge and power such as an old-time Esther never dreamed of in her wildest imaginings. It is American young women today, the crown of our Christian civilization, who are queens with a queen’s power. Our Christ gave us this, and so great a gift it is that we shall not dare use it until we have placed ourselves and all our potentialities of influence and service into His love-scarred hands. and have asked: “ What is Thy plan for me? What is my place in Thy program?” From the depths of our self-abandonment. He takes us to the heights of His vision and we see the kingdoms of this world — His world, for which He paid the price. We hear a voice, “Go tell them all of Me. These I must bring to the safety and shelter of the fold, and I must do it through you. My feet walk no more the streets of the earth world, so it must be your feet that run to publish the good news, or you cripple Me. Your lips must speak the message of good will, or you silence Me.” His sacrificial work completed, now in confidence He expects us to carry out His program. We must not fail Him, we dare not fail Him. The best in us is roused to answer to that mighty trust, “Oh, make me worthy of Thy great expectations of me!” On the height of vision with Him, we see girlhood in non-Christian lands, a poor, paltry thing, the cheapest thing in the realm of human possession. In these lands girls are not taught to read, to write, to think — they are not recognized as human creatures. A fundamental doctrine of vaunted Buddhism is that women cannot be saved. Buddha was promised that he should not be born in hell, he should not be born as vermin, he should not be bom as a woman. India’s “ so-called sacred places — those veritable hells on earth — have become the graveyard of countless child-widows and orphans.” So says Pundita Ramabai. To the Chinese girl, in this very day of ours, has come not simply an awakening but a resurrec¬ tion from a death swoon, and it is the command of Jesus that something be given her to eat. She is famished for mental food, famished for heart-love. f famished most of all for the Bread of Life, broken into portions suited to her need. To us comes the old challenge from Esther’s day, “Who knoweth whether thou art come to thy kingdom for such a time as this?” Young China hurls at us the new challenge, “God has melted old China. Who will mold the new?” It is our unparalleled opportunity to help build an empire, mold a nation, and yonder found the kingdom of God. In less civilized lands, we see girls bought and sold, things of barter, draft animals to plough and till, hewers of wood, drawers of w T ater. So dark the picture, we are tempted to ask, “O Christ, do You not care?” And the answer comes, “I must show My caring through you.” If we fail Him, it is to them as if He did not care. u • • • Hath made me queen, and royalty must give W T ith lavish hand. Largesse, largesse they cry Who follow* regal steps. If I would live Right queenly, help to none I must deny. Love, faith, hope, tenderness, the gifts I bring. Noblesse oblige. I will give like a queen.” Hath made us priests — a royal priesthood. Long before Christ came to elevate and sanctify womanhood, there were priestesses. In the old Roman days, the guardians of the sacred fire — the fire on the altar that must never go out, day or night — were maidens, the vestal virgins. None other received such high honor, nor any such stern punishment. If one deserted her post she was buried alive, amid public mourning. The fire must be kept burning — it was the most precious pos¬ session. The altar fire in the home, the church. the community — the guardianship of the great Christ ideal of world-wide service, — is entrusted in a peculiar sense to young women. As of old, ^Eneas bore the fire from Troy to Italy, so some of us will be called to the splendid task of carrying the fire Jesus came to send on earth, to dark lands, numb in death-like torpor. But many, many more will be as truly called, chosen, ordained to be priestesses of the sacred flame in the homeland. No less honored a place is ours, for it will take just as lofty consecration, as high courage, as clear- visioned faith, as unstinted pouring out of life. Recall Nansen’s dedication of his book, The Farthest North: “To her who christened the ship and had the courage to stay at home.” Mills, the pioneer of the modern missionary movement, leader of the Haystack Meeting, never went as a missionary. He was denied the great passion of his life, but out of his burning devotion at home came the American Bible Society, to bless all lands. Some one has compared us whose work is at home to “the other wise man.” The three went their way and saw the manger and the Child. The other one, held by pressing duties, never reached Bethlehem, but to him was vouchsafed an especial vision of his King and an especial message. A few flaming hearts, a few lips touched with the embers from His altar, can set on fire that great body of young life in the church — the Sunday- school. It is ready to be captured by the Christ ideal, and now is the time. Here are to be found the recruits for the field, here the leaders on the home base without which world-wide operations will fail. A body of young people full of the passion, the fiery energy, the daring audacity of youth, will waste their magnificent possibilities on paltry ends unless some of their number have seen and been captivated by the eternal worth while. The kingdom for the King alone presents the suffi¬ cient motive to employ every atom of physical strength, every cell of brain force, every drop of red heart’s blood. It is ours to announce His program, and to make it fascinating, captivating, irresistible. Why, why should any young woman live in a little segment of life when she may know the greatness, the infinite satisfaction of world service? There are groups of Chinese girls, who today attempt the Hallelujah Chorus, in radiant prophecy of the time when their hands shall help bring Jesus into His large inheritance in a true Celestial Kingdom. We also may know the gracious fellowship of joining with the world’s young life in placing on His head the crown of all humanity’s love. Privileged young women in home churches, will you not enter your kingdom, yours by special appointment to our King? Will you not take the ordination of His pierced hands as priestess of the Christ ideal? Will you not say in a quiet moment apart with Him, “I take the place assigned me in Thy program”? PRICE TWO CENTS woman’s foreign missionary society METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH PUBLICATION OFFICE BOSTON, MASS. (Reprint, 1916)