thanked, even so, adding somewhat to the meaning of life, edifying when we least know it, teaching when we are wholly unaware; helpful, instructive, even in our blunders, profiting others by the often profitless lessons and fables of our lives; enlightening when we are most ignorant of so doing, and even when our own lives are darkened. In a word, guests; and what is of even sweeter import, all of us understood,

condoned, valued, pitied, loved by the Master of the House; welcomed by his world that has long looked for our coming; served by his servants; waited upon by wind and wave and those others who do his bidding; afforded the bread of life to eat, given the wine of life to drink; warmed by the shining welcoming sun; lighted by no less candles than the stars; and with rest and peace, and a bed at last for every one.

It is a thing somewhat surprising to find a gentleman listed in the front of the Atlantic as 'one of the chief spokesmen of the English feminists' devoting his time and his ink to a series of dissertations apparently designed to prove that woman's intellectual equipment is inferior in most important particulars to that of man. As a feminist one is curious to know what good Mr. W. L. George1 thinks can be accomplished by turning over the affairs of the race to what he deems the least capable portion of the community. Nor is it easily comprehensible how anyone in this age of scientific research dares publicly and openly to draw sweeping conclusions about the intelligence of a whole sex from observation of about sixty-five cases, with only twenty-six of whom he has what he terms as much as an 'adequate acquaintance.'

In an address recently made in our town by the quieter of our ex-presi

1 In the Atlantic for December, 1915, and January, 1916.

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dents, he said that whenever he heard a suffragist talk he felt impelled against suffrage, and vice versa. One feels a good bit that way about these articles of Mr. George's. If women are really as inane as he paints them, and if male feminists feminists possibly because of feminine associations(?) are as 'intuitive' and illogical as he himself seems to be, then let us revert as soon as possible to the 'cave-man' period. In these days of spies and plots, it is not difficult to imagine that this leading British feminist may be an ‘anti' in disguise.

One might feel inclined to ignore these articles, smiling uncertainly at them as possibly another instance of that very dry humor so common in Punch, that insular drollery so subtle as to be beyond most of us on this side the great water, were it not for their incidental references to religion. These are, at least to the present writer, cumulative as irritants.

'Most people practice religion be

cause they are too cowardly to face the idea of annihilation,' remarks Mr. George. Shakespeare knew better. He understood that what people really fear after death is existence, not the lack of it. Hamlet's wisdom is preferable to that of Mr. George. One thinks of the intellectual giants, the pioneers in thought in ancient and modern times, who have been fearless in facing truth and yet deeply religious, and one feels a little hurt at an ignorance which so unjustly contemns the blessed saints.

"These modern religions are no longer spiritual; they have an intellectual basis; they are not ideal religions, like Christianity,' says Mr. George. It is dusk. One must have read amiss. One lights the lamp. Now, once more. Confound it, that is what stands written! It sounds like the sage conclusion of the occupant of the cracker-barrel in the corner grocery, like the village atheist, or like the young collegiate undergraduate, scornful of Christianity and quite oblivious of the fact that most of his professors find it not incompatible with philosophy and science. Here is a presumably intelligent man who knows nothing, it would seem, of the science of theology.

"The Christian religion has done everything in its power to heap ignominy upon woman.' This statement shows that Mr. George knows about as much of Church history as his reference to the council which denied woman a soul would indicate. As a plain matter of fact, the Church has always encouraged Feminism up to the limit of her power to do so. No organization composed of human beings could ever be as far in advance of its age as Mr. George and his kind wish the medieval Church might have been. The mediæval social system was a composite of the remnants of Roman civilization and the semi-savage institutions of the Teutonic invaders. Christianity did all it could

to leaven this anti-Feminist lump of social ideas and ideals. In the first place the Church maintained to a remarkable degree her Master's teaching that marriage is a free contract and an indissoluble one. This may seem anti-Feminist to some people, possibly to Mr. George, but even they will admit it a step in advance when they remember that the freedom of dissolution of marriage which was replaced by Christian indissolubility was a freedom for the male only, except in the rarest instances, a freedom which made of woman a slave and an instrument of passion, to be discarded whenever she failed to satisfy. Nor was this all that the mediæval Church did. Through her feminine monasticism she provided the only alternate career to marriage that was possible in that day. By the competition of the nunnery the position of woman in marriage was lifted past belief. Moreover, the abbesses of the great houses had power and authority such as no feminist of to-day has even conceived. Of all this, and much besides, many people seem wholly ig

norant.

Finally, one comes to this marvelous observation of Mr. George regarding woman: 'She was seduced and held [to religion] only by cruelty and contempt. ... She clings [to the ancient faiths] more closely than man because she is more capable of making an act of faith, of believing that which she knows to be impossible.' One is dazed, stunned, prostrated. This definition of faith from a scientific realist? The writer of the letter to the Hebrews defined it somewhat differently and more accurately. 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.' Is Mr. George really under the impression that we Christians believe in things we know to be impossible? Hypocrites we all are, then, eh? And women are stronger in religion than

men because they are greater hypocrites? Is that it? And Mr. George is a feminist? Can this be because he admires people proportionately to their capacity for hypocrisy? One's brain reels!

But turning from these drolleries of Mr. George's, it is worth serious consideration, this fact, for it is a fact, — that women of to-day are very much more interested in religion than are men. In every congregation and every denomination this is true to a greater or less extent. It is a very conservative thing to say that there are four women to every man in the church membership of America. Many people are wont to lay the blame for this on the churches. Quite a number of people would like to lay it on the men. Some, notably Mr. George, fault the women for it. Is it not possible that the responsibility rests upon our social structure?

It is not at all true, as thoughtless people sometimes assume, that woman has a spiritual sensitiveness which man does not possess, that she is by nature more fitted for religion than he is. If that were true we should find that the present state of things had always been. The most superficial study of comparative religion, however, will convince anyone that in all early cults the practice of religion was preeminently a male duty and a male pleasure. One finds this in more complex religious developments of former times as well. Except in the sex-cults, woman had almost no place or function at all; and it will be found that most even of these exceptions were directed by men while women performed only the necessary subsidiary duties. The practice of the Hebrews of excluding women from their more intimate and holy religious ceremonies was the rule, rather than the exception, among ancient peoples. And when one reaches Christianity, although from the

beginning women were given the privilege of participation in the deepest mysteries and sacraments, still religion was long looked upon as a thing primarily to be attended to by men. For instance, in the monastic organizations which saved religion and European civilization in the Middle Ages, there were manifold more men than women. Until quite lately, indeed, men went to Church as much as women did, or more, and their interest in things religious was just as much, or more, evident.

Nor, despite Mr. George's confident belief, is it because women are less intelligent than men, that they have not waked up, as have men, to the essential falsity and foolishness of religion. One does not know just what the facts may be in England, but in this country it is certainly true that the average woman is very much better equipped mentally than is the average man. This is so for various reasons. In the first place the girls of the family usually go further in school, with us on this side the ocean, than do their brothers. It is not uncommon to find in high schools three girls enrolled to every boy. It is the girls who are introduced to physical science. It is they who are enabled to study history and at least to dabble a bit in philosophy. Furthermore, in our college population, the standard of intellectual achievement is usually far higher among women than among men. One has, to see this, only to look upon the elections to Phi Beta Kappa in our coeducational institutions. Again, the Woman's Club movement, having survived the ridicule of our men, has brought and is bringing large numbers of our women closely into touch with many modern problems of which their husbands and brothers are apt to have only the vaguest notion. In the United States the best books are read by women. It is they who as a sex support art and music. It is they, preponderat

ingly, who patronize our public libraries. It is they who are first to insist upon the betterment of our public schools. If intelligence and education make people irreligious, we ought to have fewer women in our churches than we have men. As has been said, one does not know about England. Mr. George's statement may possibly be to some extent true over there. It will not do among us.

Equally unsatisfactory is the theory that women are more religious than men because they are morally better than men. Leaving aside the interesting speculation as to whether, after all, religion is a thing which appeals to good people more than to bad, passing by for the moment the interesting assertion of Jesus Christ that he 'came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance,' ignoring the possible falsity of the assumption of modern liberalism' that being good and being religious are but two ways of saying the same thing, it is certainly safe to say that hardly any one who has had much experience in intimate knowledge of bared souls-hardly any priest, hardly any physician - would agree that would agree that women are better morally than men. There are some kinds of sin which men commit more readily than women. Such are the sins of lust, and possibly of anger. But there are others where men and women seem to offend about equally, the sins of gluttony, sloth, and covetousness. And of the sins of pride and envy, one might say that they are preeminently feminine sins.

The real reason why women are more religious than men to-day is because they are more human than men. It is not by nature that they are so. Social conditions have made them so. As we have divided the labor of the world between the sexes, the work of men is almost entirely concerned with the production and distribution of things; the

work of women almost entirely with the production and sustenance of persons. We all of us at times notice the great throngs of men who go, at the call of the whistle, in and out of our great factories. To the average man's mind, these hundreds of men are 'hands,' and the purpose of the factories where they are employed is to produce 'goods'; but to the average woman's mind, these hundreds of laborers are human beings, and the purpose of the factories is to furnish sustenance, through pay envelopes, to men and women and boys and girls and babies yet unborn. In most of our homes the man leaves human interests early in the morning, devotes the best hours of his day to the welfare of things, and returns to persons again only for the evening's relaxation. His wife, meanwhile, has hardly done an act of labor all the day, has hardly made a plan or had a thought, which is not with considerable intimacy related to human beings — her husband, her children, her neighbors.

Years, even generations, of this help to make a male sex which thinks predominantly in terms of property, a female sex which thinks most largely in terms of persons. They tend to make men estimate success in terms of bankaccounts, the while they assist woman to count achievement in terms of human happiness. They make society, to the male, an arrangement for the protection of the interests of production; to the female, an organism for the insurance of proper and adequate consumption. They make men interested, with a fervor no woman can understand, in their business firms and commercial associations. They make women absorbed to a degree that is past the comprehension of most men including Mr. George in their religion and their church.

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For religion is, in essence, the translation into the supernatural realm of

the personal values learned in earthly life. This has always been true. The deities of savage peoples are always connected with the social activities of their worshipers. They are always perfections of those qualities most admired and valued in the lives of those worshipers. No deity can ever be long revered by a people whose life-values differ from those that deity expresses. Christ offers, for the worship of the world, as God Himself, the perfectly self-sacrificing Person, the Being who gladly renounces the pursuit of things for the sake of fulfilling the happiness of people. He says to those who would worship Him, 'Man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth,' and 'He who would be the greatest among you, let him be the servant of all.' The only person who can ever freely and easily worship Christ as God is a person whose natural ideals and longings are shaped that way, who really looks on life as a thing of personal rather than property values. Woman, nine-tenths of whose life is lived on these terms, is naturally drawn to Christ, understands Him, honors Him, believes in Him, worships Him. Man, in order so to regard Him, must carry on a continual fight with his environment, a warfare almost impossible for most men. Therefore are the churches full of women and empty

of men. It is hard to see how it can ever be otherwise, unless in some way we are able to emancipate men from enforced absorption in the making of things and to restore to them something of their ancient privileges in the cultivation of persons.1

And that, more or less clearly expressed, is impelling large numbers of people into the Feminist camp, people who are but little concerned with the emancipation of woman. They see with much greater clearness the need for the emancipation of man. They see, far more than the urgency for getting woman into commercial and industrial pursuits, the necessity for restoring man to the home and the personal interests revolving about the family. At present man is doing most of the soul-killing, spirit-deadening work of the world, and woman is getting all the employment, or nearly all, which makes for real humanity. These people see the need of Feminism for the liberation of males from their present intellectual and spiritual limitations.