The Call of Duty

Written by Annie M. Knot, August 27, 1910

Art by Zari Harat, Germany, 2025  

The press of England and America has devoted many columns in the last week to giving heartfelt expressions of love and reverence for Florence Nightingale, the noble Englishwoman whose earthly career has so recently closed. In reading of what she had undertaken and accomplished, one could but recall Admiral Nelson's famous signal to the fleet, "England expects every man to do his duty." This call did not extend to women, whose duties were supposed to lie strictly within the sphere of the home, but a good many years after the "mighty seaman" had passed away, the brave woman, already named, stepped from the seclusion of a happy home to prove woman's fitness to serve the world, even on the battlefield, if need be; though never to hurt but to heal, to correct existing abuses, never in anywise to perpetuate them.

It is of course well known that Florence Nightingale had to encounter the fiercest opposition, and the most scathing ridicule, not only from men, but also from the many of her own sex who held narrow views respecting woman's duty, and possibilities, the majority insisting that women must fulfil their destinies by wifehood and motherhood, and that the one who failed to enter this sphere missed the greatest opportunity for the development of character. The melancholy tone of much of the literature of the earlier part of the last century, in dealing with this question, seems almost amusing today, as we think upon the wonderful achievements of the women who have stood alone with God and their own divinely-bestowed capabilities, in some of the many lines of reform work which are making for human progress. Longfellow has said,—

Love, that of every woman's heart
Will have the whole, and not a part,
That is to her, in nature's plan,
More than ambition is to man,
Her light, her life, her every breath,
With no alternative but death.

This surely does not mean that because marital affection does not come to a woman her life is doomed to failure! If it ever meant this to women, it does no longer, for the bravest and best of them prove for all others the truth of Mrs. Eddy's words, "Human affection is not poured forth vainly, even though it meet no return. Love enriches the nature, enlarging, purifying, and elevating it" (Science and Health, p. 57). It is the pouring forth of the love that comes from a divine source which works wonders for womanhood, and the one who gives divinely will receive in full measure till even the human heart is satisfied.

Today the call is sounded in all lands not only that every man shall do his duty, but every woman as well. This means that a great exaltation of humanity has begun, and that it must go on until Truth and Love shall rule in the home, the city, the state, and above all, in the lives of men. It means the enforcing of all just laws and the annulling of all unjust ones. It means equal rights for all mankind and no place for wrong, either in the home or the state. It also means that not only shall a few brave, strong women respond to the call of duty, but that every woman shall look up and see emblazoned aloft the flaming signal. The spirit of the age expects every woman to do her duty,—by absolute loyalty to Truth, to purity, to the righteousness which exalteth a nation. There is no time to waste in trivialities, no room for the pettinesses of self-seeking. The inexorable demand of the hour, as proclaimed by the revered Leader of Christian Science, is that women shall by true and fearless living show their brothers how grand is life and how glorious is duty, when these are spiritually understood.