one so wholesome in mind, so happy in spirit, so wisely moderate, no doubt, in self-guidance, must have kept that general health that she could not despise who speaks of God having "no disdain" to serve the body, for love of the soul, of how we are "soul and body clad in the Goodness of God," of how "God hath made waters plenteous in earth to our service and to our bodily ease,"[1] and of how Christ waiteth to minister to us His gifts of grace "unto the time that we be waxen and grown, our soul with our body and our body with our soul, either of them taking help of other, till we be brought unto stature, as nature worketh."[2]
Julian mentions neither her name not her state in life; she is "the soul," the "poor" or "simple" soul that the Revelation was shewed to—"a simple creature," in herself, a mere "wretch," frail and of no account.
Of her parentage and early home we know nothing: but perhaps her own exquisite picture of Motherhood—of its natural (its "kind") love and wisdom and knowledge—is taken partly from memory, with that of the kindly nurse, and the child, which by nature loveth the
- ↑ See the Ancren Riwle Part viii. Of Domestic Matters, for counsels to anchoresses as to judicious care of the body: diet, washing, needful rest, avoidance of idleness and gloom, reading, sewing for Church and Poor, making and mending and washing of clothes by the anchoress or her servant. "Ye may be well content with your clothes, be they white, be they black; only see that they be plain, and warm, and well made—skins well tanned; and have as many as you need. . . . Let your shoes be thick and warm."
- ↑ cf. Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra, xii.
