Page:The poor sisters of Nazareth, Meynell, 1889.djvu/32

26 every morning, for the perpetual renewal of the resolution that is to effect so much; harvest every night. The year does not vary, except that the winter increases the misery which is the daily sight before the Sisters' eyes.

The qualities developed by the active Orders of Nuns are those for which women have gained least credit in secular affairs—the abilities, moral and mental, that make for organisation and discipline on a large scale. The "criticism of life" which is supplied by literature has long ago and repeatedly asserted that woman is capable of subjection, and of administering and receiving orders, when it is a question of the special and personal relations of the family; but that the generalities, the abstractions, which are conditions of work on a large scale, are fatal to its undertaking or successful accomplishment by women. At most it is conceded that, kept in discipline by the strong influence of affectionate reverence, women would work in a body immediately under the personal direction of a clerical head—direction which each member should enjoy in its separate