Looking Back: Notes of the Woman’s Meetings

From July 1933

Notes of the Woman’s Meetings

By Mrs Meredith, President of the Woman’s Guild

Woman’s Guild Mass Gathering

What a glorious note of joyous faith rang out in these words, sung to the grand old tune, St George’s Edinburgh, at the opening meeting of what has come to be looked upon as the Women’s Assembly. The Usher Hall was filled to overflowing, a thrilling and inspiring scene.

No wonder the Moderator cast aside (if rumour is to be believed) the notes of the speech he had prepared, and yielded himself up to the inspiration of the occasion, and delivered himself in rapt, impassioned words. Looking out upon a sea of faces, everywhere expectant, he exclaimed, “You are behind every man’s movement; it is you who keep us serving the Highest.” Then, recapturing a thought which had already fallen from the Lord High Commissioner, who had just spoken, he told them of the days when, if women had brains, it was not considered becoming to mention them, especially before men. To the rare delight of that vast assemblage of women, he recalled his student days, when women were first entering the university. It was the Natural Philosophy class. “We thought nothing of them. We went our way.” But when they walked off with the medals “we had much ado to explain to ourselves why we let them.” Now all that is changed.

In passing, Dr MacLean Watt paid a generous tribute to the vision of Professor Charteris, who had seen the women of the Church united in a great consecrated sisterhood, and to whose genius the Women’s Guild owes its inception. But it was his closing words which will haunt the memory. Who that heard the Moderator on that Tuesday afternoon will ever forgive his telling of the story of St Bridget? Iona and Bethlehem met in that tale, told with all the love and passion and insight, and all the beauty of imagery and language of a Celtic seer. We cannot readily lose the inspiration of such an address.

The concluding address was on “Woman’s Vocation in the Church”. Maybe the title raised thoughts here and there, that now, in their own meeting, the women of the Church would find a platform to express their own views on the controversy that bulked so largely at this Assembly. But Mrs Forgan at the outset wisely eschewed controversy. Women in office in the Church, she said, was still an academic rather than a practical issue. It would come, no doubt, when God willed it. Meantime there was much to do, and much to which women were called.

She spoke of those women of the Bible to whom Christ revealed some of the highest truths of the Spirit – the women of Samaria, Martha and Mary. She spoke of the great contribution of consecrated women to the life of the Church through the Christian centuries, and of the opportunities of the present. Of quantity of service there has been no lack. But searchingly she asked, “What of the quality?” History tells of a king, who was surnamed the Unready, and of whom the chronicler writes that he was ‘deficient in counsel; of misplaced energy, he had more than enough.’ Misplaced energy! Let us pray the angelic prayer, that we may ‘devote ourselves to all good work, with all good sense.”

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