Luke 1:38

WOMAN’S TRUE AVOCATION

‘The handmaid of the Lord.’

Luke 1:38

The glory of woman only abides while it remains true to the instincts which God implanted. What these instincts are, what woman’s true avocation is, the Blessed Virgin helps to remind us.

I. The turning-point in woman’s history.—In the thoughtful, loving, obedient woman whom ‘all nations shall call blessed,’ the Virgin Mary, God Himself raised womanhood to more than her first estate. What laws, and civilisation, and culture, and education had failed to do towards restoring woman to her right position, God, her Saviour, in the fullness of time wrought for her. And so the words: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord’ have ever been regarded as the turning-point in the history of womanhood, a true contrast to the fall of Eve.

II. Woman in the home.—If it be true that the history of marriage is the history of woman, then of what infinite importance must it be that the home-life of our England should be one of its most sacred traditions, that woman should be able to fulfil her distinctive mission as ‘the handmaid of the Lord,’ as the God-given helpmate for man, and as the mother of children, whom she shall teach to know their Lord and Saviour—for it must always be the mother who will have the larger share in the development of a child’s character. Blessed are the men, blessed above all man’s blessedness, are those who know what it is to have a good mother!

IV. Woman’s religious instinct.—It is just as the fall seems more terrible in the case of him who falls from the greatest height, so an irreligious woman is worse than a sceptical man, for either she is a ‘handmaid of the Lord’ or she is nothing, either she is beneath the Cross or she is nowhere. You have only to be true to your vocation. Do you notice how the Scripture enjoins love upon the husband very often, but never once upon the wife? And why? Because it relies upon her nature to supply that love. By your loving and sweet natures you will win the souls of your husbands for your Saviour, and so together, from age to age, your souls shall magnify the Lord, and your spirits shall rejoice in God your Saviour. Together you shall glorify Him Who created us in a time of love, and saved us in a day of grace.

Rev. T. R. Hine-Haycock.

Illustration

‘In Blessed Mary we have the outline of all that is best in woman’s nature—habitual modesty, reserve, quietness, thoughtfulness; yet, if need be, love strong in death, and ability to suffer things which sterner natures shrink from. Above all, you have that holiness of heart which brings angels down from heaven to be its companions; yea, with which God Himself is content to come down from heaven to dwell.’