Frances Mary Buss and her Work for Education
9781465635648
200 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The record of the life of Frances Mary Buss includes within it, in brief, the story of the modern educational movement, in which she took so leading a part. It is not the less a story of perfect womanliness, in a career that is one of natural and steady growth, from seed to full fruitage. The woman simply fulfils the promise of the child. It is a life most remarkable in this completeness. To very few of the greatest even is it given to see their life-work crowned with complete success. Frances Mary Buss was one of the few who begin life with a fixed aim, and who live to see self-devotion end in triumph. And the end left her, as the beginning had found her, as humble as she was loving. In an age of incessant movement it is very restful to find a life of constant action which is yet so quiet and orderly, with continuity of place as marked as its continuity of purpose. All her work, widely as its influence extended beyond these limits, was carried on within the parish of St. Pancras—fifty years of ceaseless energy, from eighteen years of age to sixty-eight. In holiday-time she used her freedom for as much change as could be compressed within holiday limits, thus seeing much of Europe as well as of her native land. But, excepting for one term of absence from illness, she might always, in working time, have been found at her post. “Not for her name only, but because of her love and good works do I love to connect her with St. Francis!” writes an old pupil; and though at the first shock there may seem a touch of incongruity in thus linking the great ascetic saint of the past and this essentially modern worker, there is, nevertheless, much suggestiveness in the association. Are they not, after all, of the very same order? What is the greatest saint but that child of God who is most aware of his Divine sonship, and therefore most intent on doing his “Father’s business”? Fashions of service may change, but this fact remains changeless. The fashion of the past was to mortify the flesh, and to serve the world by prayer rather than by work. The fashion of the present sees that “laborare est orare,” and serves the world by self-devotion instead of self-denial. The past was ruled by negations, and the stern “Thou shalt not!” rose as a barrier between man and man. The “saint” was not merely, as the word signifies, one “set apart” to do the will of God “on earth as it is [done] in heaven,” but he became instead one cut off, or separated, from the life of ordinary humanity. In our day we have risen to the power of the affirmation, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,” and we go on to the inevitable sequence, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Not the denial or the evasion of human duties, but their fulfilment utterly, is our test of sainthood in the present. It may be less easy to trace our saints by the quiet fireside or in the busy street; in the senate house or on the market-place; but none the less saintly are these in their modern garb than those who went their way apart, as stately abbot or humble anchorite, as hooded friar or cloistered nun. The form may change, but the fact is the same. With the fact of a great love filling his soul, St. Francis, vowed to poverty, is still richer than the richest; and our modern saint, with all life’s gifts consecrated to service, may safely make the most of life, having thus the more to share. Having love, riches and poverty alike fall into their true place, as accidents, and not essentials of being.
