The subsidence of Socialism was especially fortunate on account of the frankness with which matrimony was repudiated by the system most in vogue, that of Fourier. He had followed the spontaneous and instinctive impulses of man with the utmost consistency. Other Socialists have been more cautious; but the problem of reconciling family ties with communal life has not been solved. Some of the English Transcendentalists published a pamphlet recommending systematic encouragement of licentiousness; and an American philosopher, who turned Roman Catholic in 1844, declared that free love was "Transcendentalism in full bloom." The term "higher law" was used to support the pretence of some obligation more binding than marriage. A free-love convention was held in New York about 1857; and very lax ideas had been already announced by active apostles of spontaneity known as Spiritualists.
No writer has done more to encourage purity of thought than Emerson. His life was stainless; but perhaps the best proof of this is his saying, "Our moral nature is vitiated by any interference of our will"; and again, "If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him." No man ever wrote thus who was not either notoriously corrupt or singularly innocent. Policemen and jailers exist largely for the purpose of preventing people from planting themselves on their instincts--for instance, those which lead to theft, drunkenness, and murder. Socialism would perhaps be practicable if industry were as natural as laziness.
Almost all moralists have thought it necessary to insist on constant interference with the instincts. So earnest and able a Transcendentalist as Miss Cobbe gives these definitions in her elaborate treatise on _Intuitive Morals_: "Happiness is the gratification of all the desires of our nature." "Virtue is the renunciation of such of them as are forbidden by the moral law." Theodore Parker insisted on the duty of subordinating "the low qualities to the higher," but Emerson held, as already mentioned, that "Virtue is the spontaneity of the will."
Such language was largely due to his perception that all activity, however innocent, of thought and feeling had been too much repressed by the Puritanical churches, in whose shadow he was brought up. The same mistake was made in the Dark Ages; and the reaction from that asceticism was notorious during the Renaissance. The early Unitarians overrated human nature in their hostility to the Trinitarians, who underrated it; and Emerson went beyond his original a.s.sociates in the Unitarian ministry because he was more Transcendental. The elevation of his own character encouraged him to hope that our higher qualities are so strong as to need only freedom to be enabled to keep all impure desire in subjection. It was a marked change of tone when in 1876 he allowed these words to be printed in one of his books: "Self-control is the rule. You have in you there a noisy, sensual savage which you are to keep down, and turn all his strength to beauty." Similar pa.s.sages, especially a censure of the pruriency of Fourierism, occur in essays which were probably written some years earlier, but were not published until after his death. Most of the Transcendentalists have fortunately acknowledged the duty of self-control much more plainly and readily. It is a fair question whether they were more consistent. How does anyone know which of his instincts and impulses to control and which to cultivate? What better light has he than is given either by his own experience or by that of his parents and other teachers? I acknowledge the power of conscience; but its dictates differ so much in different individuals as to be plainly due to early education. Thus even a Transcendentalist has to submit himself to experience; as he would not do if it were really transcended by his philosophy.
Emerson himself was singularly fortunate in his "involuntary perceptions." Those of most men are dark with superst.i.tion and prejudice. It is what we have heard earliest and oftenest that recurs most spontaneously. If all mankind had continued satisfied to "trust the instinct to the end though it can render no reason," we should still believe in the divine right of kings, and the supremacy of evil spirits.
There would have been very little persecution if men could have known truth when they saw it. Parker believed devoutly in the intuitions, but he said that Emerson exaggerated their accuracy to such an extent that he "discourages hard and continuous thought." "Some of his followers will be more faithful than he to the false principles which he lays down, and will think themselves wise because they do not study, and inspired because they say what outrages common sense." The danger of following instinctive impressions in regard to the currency has been shown in recent American politics. Anyone who is familiar with scientific methods will see where Emerson"s failed. It is true that he prized highly many of the results of science, especially the theory of evolution as it was taught by Lamarck and other forerunners of Darwin.
His inability to see the value of investigation and verification is disclosed plainly; and he preferred to have people try to "build science on ideas." He acknowledged that too much time was given to Latin and Greek in college; but his wishes in regard to study of the sciences were so old-fashioned as to call out a remonstrance from Aga.s.siz.
IV. How little scientific culture there was before 1860 may be judged from the rapid growth of Spiritualism. Transcendentalism had shown tremendous strength in helping people escape from the old churches; but it was of little use in building new ones. Churches exist for the express purpose of enabling believers in a common faith to unite in public worship. No society could be so holy as solitude to a sincere Transcendentalist; and the beliefs of his neighbours seemed much less sacred than his own peculiar intuitions. Exceptional eloquence might make him pastor of a large society; but it began to decline when he ceased to speak. Transcendentalism was excellent material for weatherc.o.c.ks, but it had to be toughened by adulteration with baser metal before it supplied any solid foundation for a new temple.
Most of the people who had lost faith in the old churches were longing after some better way of receiving knowledge about the heavenly world.
Millions of Americans and Europeans rejoiced to hear that spirits had begun to communicate by mysterious raps at Rochester, N. Y., on the last day of March, 1848. Messages from the departed were soon received in many places; but the one thing needful was that the room be filled with believers; and a crowded hall was peculiarly likely to be favoured with strange sounds and sights. Here was the social element necessary for founding a new religion. It appealed as confidently as its rivals to miracles and prophecies, while it had the peculiar attraction of being preached mainly by young women. Instinctive impulses were regarded as revelations from the spirit-land, but not considered infallible except by the very superst.i.tious. The highest authority of an intelligent Spiritualist has usually been his own individual intuition. Some of the earliest lectures on that platform had little faith in anything but science, and put their main strength into announcing those revelations of geology which have dethroned Genesis. One of the first teachers of evolution in America was a Spiritualist named Denton, who held a public debate in Ohio, in 1858, when he defended the theory of man"s gradual development from lower animals against a preacher named Garfield, who became President of the United States. Some eminent scientists have become converts to Spiritualism; but its general literature has shown little influence from scientific methods of thought.
The advocates of the new religion have owed much of their success to impa.s.sioned eloquence. Opposition to Christianity has been expressed boldly and frequently. Girls of seventeen have declared, before large audiences, that all the creeds and ceremonies of the churches are mere idolatry. Among the earliest communications which were published as dictated by angels in the new dispensation were denials of the miracles of Jesus, and denunciations of the clergy as "the deadliest foes of progress." An eminent Unitarian divine declared in 1856, that "the doctrines professedly revealed by a majority of the spirits, whose words we have seen quoted, are at open war with the New Testament."
Some moderate Spiritualists have kept in friendly relations with liberal churches; but many others have been in active co-operation with the most aggressive of unbelievers in religion. The speakers at the Spiritualist anniversary in 1897 said to one another, "You and I are Christs, just as Jesus was," and claimed plainly that "our religion" was distinct from every "Christian denomination." Spiritualists have all, I think, been in favour of woman suffrage; and the majority were abolitionists. Some of Garrison"s companions, however, deserted in the heat of the battle, saying that there was nothing more to do, for the spirits would free the slaves. Anti-slavery lecturers in the North-west found themselves crowded out of halls and school-houses by trance-speakers and mediums.
One of the most eminent of converts made by the latter, Judge Edmonds, was prominent among the defenders of slavery in the free States.
Freedom from any definite creed or rigid code of morality joined with the constant supply of ever-varying miracles in attracting converts.
Those in the United States were soon estimated in millions. Spiritualism swept over Great Britain so rapidly that it was declared by the _Westminster Review_ to give quite as much promise as Christianity had done, at the same age, of becoming a universal religion. No impartial observer expects that now. Believers are still to be found in all parts of Europe and South America, and they are especially numerous in the United States. Proselytes do not seem to be coming in anywhere very thickly; and the number of intelligent men and women who have renounced Spiritualism, after a brief trial, is known to be large. The new religion has followed the old ones into the policy of standing on the defensive.
One instance of this is the opposition to investigation. A Mediums"
National Defence a.s.sociation was in open operation before 1890. A leading Spiritualist paper suggested in 1876, that the would-be inquirer should be "tied securely hand and foot, and placed in a strong iron cage, with a rope or small chain put tightly about his neck, and fastened to an iron ring in the wall." Early in 1897, some young men who claimed to have exposed an impostor, before a large audience in the Spiritualist Temple in Boston, were prosecuted by his admirers on the charge of having disturbed public worship.
V. During the last quarter of the century, free love has been much less prominent than before in Spiritualistic teachings; but the only Americans who were able to proclaim liberty without encouraging self-indulgence, prior to 1870, were the logical and scholarly Transcendentalists. Theodore Parker, for instance, is to be reckoned among the followers of Hegel rather than of Sch.e.l.ling; for he tried by hard study and deep thought to build up a consistent system of religion and morality by making deductions from a few central principles which he revered as great primary intuitions, held always and everywhere sacred.
His faith in his ideas of G.o.d, duty, and immortality was very firm; and he did his best to live and think accordingly. He began to preach in 1836, the year of the publication of Emerson"s first book, but soon found his work hindered by an idolatry of the Bible, then prevalent even among Unitarians. Familiarity with German scholarship enabled him to teach his people to think rationally.
His brethren in the Unitarian ministry were alarmed; and a sermon which he preached in Boston against the mediatorship of Jesus made it impossible for him to occupy an influential pulpit. The lectures which he delivered that year in a hall in the city, and published in 1842, won the support of many seekers for a new religion. They voted that he should "have a chance to be heard in Boston"; and on February 16, 1845, he preached in a large hall to what soon became a permanent and famous congregation.
Thither, as Parker said, he "came to build up piety and morality; to pull down only what c.u.mbered the ground." His main purpose to the last was to teach "the naturalness of religion," "the adequacy of man for his functions" without priestly aid, and, most important of all, that superiority of the real Deity to the pictures drawn in the orthodox creeds, which Parker called "the infinite perfection of G.o.d." He was singularly successful in awakening the spirit of religion in men who were living without it, but the plainness with which he stated his faith, in sermons which had a large circulation, called out many attacks. Prayers were publicly offered up in Boston, asking that the Lord would "put a hook in this man"s jaws, so that he may not be able to preach, or else remove him out of the way and let his influence die with him." No controversy hindered his labouring systematically for the moral improvement of his hearers, who sometimes amounted to three thousand.
His sermons are full of definite appeals for self-control and self-culture; and his personal interest in every individual who could be helped was so active that he soon had seven thousand names on his pastoral visiting list. Appeals for advice came from strangers at a distance, and were never neglected.
Not one of the great national sins, however popular, escaped his severe rebuke; and he became prominent as early as 1845 among the preachers against slavery. He was active in many ways as an abolitionist, but was not a disunionist. He seldom quitted his pulpit without speaking for the slave; and every phase of the anti-slavery movement is ill.u.s.trated in his published works. Pro-slavery politicians were as bitter as orthodox clergymen against him; and he describes himself as "continually fired upon for many years from the barroom and pulpit." His resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law caused him to be arrested and prosecuted, in company with Wendell Phillips, by the officials of the national Government.
Desire to awaken the people to the danger that lay in the growth of the national sin made him begin to lecture in 1844. Invitations flowed in freely; and he said, after he had broken down under the joint burden of overwork and of exposure in travelling: "Since 1848, I have lectured eighty or a hundred times each year, in every Northern State east of the Mississippi,--once also in a slave State and on slavery itself."
This was his favourite subject, but he never missed an opportunity of encouraging intellectual independence; and he found he could say what he pleased. The total number of hearers exceeded half a million; among them were the most influential men in the North; and he never failed to make himself understood. No one else did so much to develop that love of the people for Union and Liberty which secured emanc.i.p.ation. His works have no such brilliancy as Emerson"s; but they burned at the time of need with a much more warm and steady light. No words did more to melt the chains of millions of slaves. No excess of individualism made him shrink back, like Emerson, from joining the abolitionists; or discredit them, as Th.o.r.eau did, by publicly renouncing his allegiance to Ma.s.sachusetts in 1854, when that State stood foremost on the side of freedom.
The account of a solitary life in the woods, which Th.o.r.eau published that year, has done much to encourage independence of public opinion; and Americans of that generation needed sadly to be told that they took too little amus.e.m.e.nt, especially out of doors, and made too great haste to get rich. Their history, however, like that of the Swiss, Scotch, and ancient Athenians, proves that it is the industrious, enterprising, money-making nations that are best fitted for maintaining free inst.i.tutions. As for individual independence of thought and action, the average man will enjoy much more of it, while he keeps himself in comfortable circ.u.mstances by regular but not excessive work, than he could if he were to follow the advice of an author who prided himself on not working more than "about six weeks in a year," and on enduring privations which apparently shortened his days.
Th.o.r.eau"s self-denial was heroic; but he sometimes failed to see the right of his neighbours to indulge more expensive tastes than his own.
The necessary conditions of health and comfort for different individuals vary much more than he realised. Many a would-be reformer still complains of the "luxury" of people who find physical rest or mental culture in innocent ways, not particularly to his own fancy. Such censures are really intolerant. They are survivals of that meddlesome disposition which has sadly restricted freedom of trade, amus.e.m.e.nt, and worship.
We have had only one Emerson; but many scholarly Transcendentalists have laboured to construct the new morality needed in the nineteenth century. Parker"s work has peculiar interest, because done in a terrible emergency; but others have toiled as profitably though less famously.
The search after fundamental intuitions has led to a curious variety of statements which agree only in the a.s.sumption of infallibility; but the result has been the general agreement of liberal preachers in teaching a system of ethics at once free from superst.i.tion, bigotry, or asceticism, and at the same time vigorous enough to repress impure desire and encourage active philanthropy. Theology has improved in liberality, as well as in claiming less prominence. Thus the clergy have come into much more friendly relations with the philosophers than in the middle of the century. Our popular preachers quote Emerson; but really they follow, though often unconsciously, the methods of Hegel and Kant. This increases their sympathy with Parker, who has the advantage over Emerson of having believed strongly in personal immortality. His works are circulated by the very denomination which cast him out. The most popular preachers in many sects openly accept him and Emerson among their highest authorities. Transcendentalism has become the foundation of liberal Christianity.
This agreement is not, however, necessary and may not be permanent.
Hegel"s great success was in bringing forward the old dogmas with new claims to infallibility. When some of his disciples showed that his methods were equally well adapted for the destruction of orthodoxy, Sch.e.l.ling gave his last lectures in its defence. The singular fitness of traditions for acceptance as intuitions has been proved, late in the century, by the Rev. Joseph Cook in Boston as well as by many speakers at the Concord School of Philosophy. The reactionary tendency is already so strong that it may yet become predominant. We must not forget that Sh.e.l.ley called himself an atheist, or that among Hegel"s most famous followers were Strauss and Renan. Who can say whether unbelief, orthodoxy, or liberal Christianity is the legitimate outcome of this ubiquitous philosophy?
Transcendentalism has been the inspiration of the century. Its influence has been mighty in behalf of political liberty and social progress. But there was no inconsistency in Hegel"s opposing the education of women, and denying the possibility of a great republic, or in Carlyle"s defending absolute monarchy and chattel slavery, or in Parker"s successor in Boston trying to justify the Russian despotism.
Transcendentalism is a swivel-gun, which can be fired easily in any direction. Perhaps it can be used most easily against science. The difference in methods, of course, is irreconcilable, as is seen in Emerson; and the brilliant results attained by Herbert Spencer have been sadly disparaged by leading Transcendentalists in the conventions of the Free Religious a.s.sociation, as well as in sessions of the Concord School of Philosophy.
VI. The necessary tendency of Transcendentalism may be seen in the agitation against vivisection, which was begun in 1863 by Miss Cobbe.
She was aided by Carlyle, Browning, Ruskin, Lecky, Mar-tineau, and other Transcendentalists, one of whom, Rev. W. H. Channing, had been prominent in America about 1850. Most of the active anti-vivisectionists, however, belong to the s.e.x which has been peculiarly ready to adopt unscientific methods of thought. It is largely due to women with a taste for metaphysics or theology that the agitation still goes on in Great Britain and the United States.
Attempts ought certainly to be made to prevent torture of animals by inexperienced students, or by teachers who merely wish to ill.u.s.trate the working of well-known laws. There ought to be little difficulty in securing the universal adoption of such statutes as were pa.s.sed by Parliament in 1876. Vivisection was then forbidden, except when carried out for the purpose of important discoveries, by competent investigators duly licensed, and in regular laboratories. It was further required that complete protection against suffering pain be given by anaesthetics, though these last could be dispensed with in exceptional cases covered by a special license.
The animal must at all events be killed as soon as the experiment was over. This law actually put a stop to attempts to find some antidote to the poison of the cobra, which slays thousands of Hindoos annually.
Professor Ferrier, who was discovering the real functions of various parts of the brain, was prosecuted in 1881 by the Anti-Vivisection Society for operating without a license upon monkeys; but the charge turned out to be false.
The real question since 1876 has been as to whether vivisection should be tolerated as an aid to scientific and medical discovery. Darwin"s opinion on this point is all the more valuable, because he hated all cruelty to animals. In April, 1881, he wrote to _The Times_ as follows:
"I know that physiology cannot possibly progress except by means of experiments on living animals; and I feel the deepest conviction that he who r.e.t.a.r.ds the progress of physiology commits a crime against mankind.... No one, unless he is grossly ignorant of what science has done for mankind, can entertain any doubt of the incalculable benefits which will hereafter be derived from physiology, not only by man but by the lower animals. Look, for instance, at Pasteur"s results in modifying the germs of the most malignant diseases, from which, as it so happens, animals will in the first place receive more relief than man. Let it be remembered how many lives, and what a fearful amount of suffering, have been saved by the knowledge gained of parasitic worms, through the experiments of Virchow and others upon living animals."
Another high authority, Carpenter, says that vivisection has greatly aided physicians in curing heart disease, as well as in preventing blood-poisoning by taking antiseptic precautions. Much has been learned as to the value of hypodermic injections, and also of bromide of pota.s.sium, chloral, salicylic acid, cocaine, amyl, digitalis, and strychnia. Some of these drugs are so poisonous that they would never have been administered to human beings if they could not have been tried previously on the lower animals. The experiments in question have recently a.s.sisted in curing yellow fever, sunstroke, diabetes, epilepsy, erysipelas, cholera, consumption, and trichinosis. The German professors of medicine testified in a body that vivisection has regenerated the healing art. Similar testimony was given in 1881 by the three thousand members of the International Medical Congress; and the British Medical a.s.sociation has taken the same position.
The facts are so plain that an English judge, who was a vice-president of Miss Cobbe"s society, admitted that "vivisection enlarges knowledge"; but he condemned it as "displeasing to Almighty G.o.d." It was said to go "hand in hand with atheism"; and several of the Episcopalian bishops, together with Cardinal Manning, opposed it as irreligious.
Transcendentalists are compelled by their philosophy to decide on the morality of all actions solely by the inner light, and not permitted to pay any attention to consequences. Many of them in England and America agreed to demand the total suppression of vivisection, "even should it chance to prove useful." This ground was taken in 1877 by Miss Cobbe"s society; and she declared, five years later, in _The Fortnightly_, that she was determined "to stop the torture of animals, a grave moral offence, with the consequences of which--be they fortunate or the reverse--we are no more concerned than with those of any other evil deed." Later she said: "Into controversies concerning the utility of vivisection, I for one refuse to enter"; and she published a leaflet advising her sisters to follow her example. Ruskin took the same ground.
These hasty enthusiasts were equally indifferent to another fact, which ought not to have been overlooked, namely, that suffering was usually prevented by the use of anaesthetics, which are indispensable for the success of many experiments. The bill for prohibiting any vivisection was brought into the House of Lords in 1879; But was opposed by a n.o.bleman who presided over the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; and it was lost by 16 votes against 97. The House of Commons refused even to take action on the subject, despite four years of agitation. Thus the right of scientific research was finally secured.
Miss Cobbe was one of the n.o.blest of women; but even she was made blind by her philosophy to the right of people who prefer scientific methods to act up to their convictions. Garrison, too, was notoriously unable to do justice to anyone, even an abolitionist, who did not agree with him. There is nothing in Transcendentalism to prevent intolerance. This philosophy has done immense service to the philanthropy as well as the poetry of the nineteenth century; but human liberty will gain by the discovery that no such system of metaphysics can be anything better than a temporary bridge for pa.s.sing out of the swamps of superst.i.tion, across the deep and furious torrent of scepticism, into a land of healthy happiness and clear, steady light.
CHAPTER VI. PLATFORM VERSUS PULPIT
DURING the nineteenth century the authority of preachers and pastors has diminished plainly; and this is largely due to a fact of which Emerson spoke thus: "We should not forgive the clergy for taking on every issue the immoral side." This was true in England, where the great reforms were achieved for the benefit of the ma.s.ses, and against the interest of the cla.s.s to which most clergymen belonged. The American pastor seldom differed from his parishioners, unless he was more philanthropic. He was usually in favour of the agitation against drunkenness; and he had a right to say that the disunionism of Phillips and Garrison, together with their systematically repelling sympathy in the South, went far to offset their claim for his support. It was difficult, during many years, to see what ought to be done in the North. When a practical issue was made by the attack on Kansas, the clergy took the side of freedom almost unanimously in New England, and quite generally in rural districts throughout the free States. The indifference of the ministers to abolitionism, before 1854, was partly due, however, to their almost universal opposition to a kindred reform, which they might easily have helped.
I. It was before Garrison began his agitation that Frances Wright denounced the clergy for hindering the intellectual emanc.i.p.ation of her s.e.x; and her first ally was not _The Liberator_, but _The Investigatory_ though both began almost simultaneously. She pleaded powerfully for the rights of slaves, as well as of married women, before large audiences in the middle States as early as 1836, when these reforms were also advocated by Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, a liberal Jewess. These ladies spoke to men as well as women; and so next summer did Miss Angelina Grimke, whose zeal against slavery had lost her her home in South Carolina. Her first public lecture was in Ma.s.sachusetts; and the Congregationalist ministers of that State promptly issued a declaration that they had a right to say who should speak to their parishioners, and that the New Testament forbade any woman to become a "public reformer."
Their action called out the spirited poem in which Whittier said:
"What marvel if the people learn To claim the right of free opinion?
What marvel if at times they spurn The ancient yoke of your dominion?"
Garrison now came out in favour of "the rights of women," and thus lost much of the support which he was receiving from the country clergy generally in New England. The final breach was in May, 1840, at the meeting of the National a.s.sociation of Abolitionists in New York City.
There came Garrison with more than five hundred followers from New England. They gained by a close vote a place on the business committee for that n.o.ble woman, Abby Kelley. Ministers and church members seceded and started a new anti-slavery society, which carried away most of the members and even the officers of the old one. The quarrel was embittered by the vote of censure, pa.s.sed at this meeting upon those abolitionists who had dared to nominate a candidate of their own for the presidency without leave from Mr. Garrison; but the chief trouble came from the prejudice which, that same summer, caused most of the members of the World"s Anti-Slavery Convention in London, to refuse places to Harriet Martineau and other ladies as delegates. This exclusion was favoured by all the eight clergymen who spoke, and by no other speakers so earnestly. Among the rejected delegates were Mrs. Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton; and they resolved, that night, to hold a convention for the benefit of their s.e.x in America.
The volume of essays which Emerson published in 1844 praised "the new chivalry in behalf of woman"s rights"; and the other Transcendentalists in America came, one after another, to the same position. Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Mott called their convention in that year of revolutions, 1848, on July 19th. The place was the Methodist church at Seneca Falls, in central New York. The reformers found the door locked against them; and a little boy had to climb in at the window. The Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776, furnished a model for a protest against the exclusion of girls from high schools and colleges, the closing of almost every remunerative employment against the s.e.x, and the laws forbidding a married woman to own any property, whether earned or inherited by her, even her own clothing. This declaration was adopted unanimously; but a demand for the suffrage had only a small majority.
Not a single minister is known to have been present; but there were two at a second convention, that August, in Rochester, where the Unitarian church was full of men and women.
There were more than twenty-five thousand ministers in the United States; but only three are mentioned among the members of the national convention, held at Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts, in October, 1850, by delegates from eleven States. As Phillips was returning from this meeting, Theodore Parker said to him, "Wendell, why do you make a fool of yourself?" The great preacher came out a few years later in behalf of the rights of women; but it was long before a single religious newspaper caught up with _The Investigator_.
How the clergy generally felt was shown in 1851, at Akron, in northern Ohio. There Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Universalist ministers appealed to the Bible in justification of the subjugation of women. There was no reply until they began to boast of the intellectual superiority of their own s.e.x. Then an illiterate old woman who had been a slave arose and said: "What "s dat got to do with women"s rights, or n.i.g.g.e.rs" rights either? If my cup won"t hold but a pint, and yourn holds a quart, would n"t ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?" The convention was with her; but the Bible argument was not to be disposed of easily. The general tone of both Testaments is in harmony with the familiar texts attributed to Paul and Peter. These latter pa.s.sages were written, in all probability, when the position of women was changing for the better throughout the Roman Empire: and the original words, a.s.serting the authority of husbands, are the same as are used in regard to the power of masters over slaves. Such language had all the more weight, because the ministers had been brought up as members of the ruling s.e.x. They may have also been bia.s.sed by the fact that their profession depends, more than any other, for success upon the unpaid services in many ways of devoted women. Emanc.i.p.ation was by no means likely to promote work for the Church. There was an audience of two thousand at Syracuse, in 1852, when what was called the "Bloomer Convention," on account of the short dresses worn by some members, took up a resolution, declaring that the Bible recognises the rights of women. Mrs. Rose said that the reform had merits enough of its own, and needed no justification by any book. A letter was read from Mrs.
Stanton, saying that "among the clergy we find our most violent enemies, those most opposed to any change in woman"s position." The accuracy of this statement was readily admitted, after a reverend gentleman had denounced the infidelity of the movement, in a speech described as "indecent" and "coa.r.s.ely offensive" in the New York Herald; and the resolution was lost.
The lady who offered it was ordained soon after for the Congregationalist ministry; but she was obliged to confess, at the Woman"s Rights" Convention, in 1853, that "the Church has so far cast me off, that to a great extent I have been obliged to go to just such infidels as those around me for aid to preach my Christian views." It was at this meeting that a doctor of divinity, and pastor of a prominent society, denounced the reform so violently that Mr. Garrison called him a blackguard and a rowdy, with the result of having his nose pulled by the champion of the Church militant. There were many such unseemly manifestations of clerical wrath. The _History of Woman Suffrage_, which was edited by Mrs. Stanton and other leading reformers, said, in 1881: "The deadliest opponents to the recognition of the equal rights of women have ever been among the orthodox clergy." The Unitarians were more friendly; but I do not think that the reform was openly favoured, even as late as 1860, by one clergyman in a thousand out of the whole number in the United States. The proportion was even smaller in Europe.