Committee, 1908; Edited the _Common Cause_ till 1914; wrote and spoke
chiefly on the economic, ethical, and religious aspects of the Women's
Movement; resigned executive, 1914.

[Illustration: MISS MAUDE ROYDEN]

CHAPTER VI

MISS MAUDE ROYDEN

. . . _their religion, too (i.e. the religion of women), has a mode
of expressing itself, though it seldom resorts to the ordinary
phrases of divinity.

Those "nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love," by
which their influence is felt through every part of society,
humanising and consoling wherever it travels, are their theology.
It is thus that they express the genuine religion of their minds;
and we trust that if ever they should study the ordinary dialect of
systematised religion they will never, while pronouncing its harsh
gutturals and stammering over its difficult shibboleths, forget
their elder and simpler and richer and sweeter language._--F.D.
MAURICE.

Pushkin said that Russia turned an Asian face towards Europe and a
European face towards Asia.

This acute saying may be applied to Miss Royden. To the prosperous and
timid Christian she appears as a dangerous evangelist of socialism, and
to the fiery socialist as a tame and sentimental apostle of
Christianity. As in the case of Russia, so in the case of this
interesting and courageous woman; one must go to neither extremity,
neither to the _bourgeoisie_ nor to the _apacherie_, if one would
discover the truth of her nature.

Nor need one fear to go direct to the lady herself, for she is the very
soul of candour. Moreover, she has that charming spirit of friendliness
and communication which distinguished La Bruyere, a philosopher "always
accessible, even in his deepest studies, who tells you to come in, for
you bring him something more precious than gold or silver, _if it is the
opportunity of obliging you_."

Certainly Miss Royden does not resemble, in her attitude towards either
God or the human race, that curious _religieuse_ Mdme. de Maintenon, who
having been told by her confessor in the floodtime of her beauty that
"God wished her to become the King's mistress," at the end of that
devout if somewhat painful experience, replied to a suggestion about
writing her memoirs, "Only saints would find pleasure in its perusal."

Miss Royden's memoirs, if they are ever written, would have, I think,
the rather unusual merit of pleasing bo