Women who support the clergy with one hand, and hold out the other for the ballot; who one day express indignation at the refusal to them of human recognition, and the next day intone the creeds, will have to learn that there is nothing which has so successfully stood, and still so powerfully stands, in the way of the individual liberty, human rights, and dignity of wives, as the Church which they support.
Blackstone says: "In times of popery a great _variety_ of impediments to marriage were made, which impediments might, however, be _bought off with money_."
You could, for instance, buy a more distant relationship to your future wife for so much cash down to the Church. If your inamorata were your first cousin, you could remove her several degrees with five hundred dollars, and make her no relation at all for a little more. Such little sleight-of-hand performances are as nothing to a well-trained clergyman.
Slip a check into one hand, and a request to marry your aunt into the other, let a clergyman shake them up in the coffers of the Church, and when one comes out gold, the other will appear as a blushing bride not even related to her own father, and not more than third cousin to herself.
Of the claim made by the early Christian Fathers, that it was because of the mental inferiority and incapacity of women that the more unjust and binding laws were enacted for them, thus doing all they could to create and intensify by law the incapacity which they a.s.serted was imposed by G.o.d, Maine says: "But the proprietary disabilities of married females _stand on quite a different basis from personal incapacity_, and it is by the tendency of their doctrines to keep alive and consolidate the former, that the expositors of the _Canon Law have deeply injured civilization_."
He adds that there are many evidences of a struggle between _secular principles in favor of justice for wives_, and _ecclesiastical principles against it_, "but the Canon Law nearly everywhere prevailed.
The systems which are _least indulgent_ to married women are invariably those which have followed the _Canon Law exclusively_.... It enforced the complete legal subjection of wives."
Lecky says: "Fierce invectives against the s.e.x form a conspicuous and grotesque portion of the writings of the Fathers. Woman was represented as the door of h.e.l.l, as the mother of all human ills. She should be ashamed at the very thought that she is a woman.... Women were even forbidden, in the sixth century, on account of their impurity, to receive the Eucharist into their naked hands. Their essentially subordinate position was continually maintained. This teaching in part determined the principles of legislation concerning the s.e.x.* The Pagan laws during the empire had been continually _repealing the old disabilities_ of women, and the legislative movement in their favor continued with unabated force from Constantine to Justinian, and appeared also in some of the early laws of the barbarians. _But in the whole feudal [Christian] legislation women were placed in a much lower legal position than in the Pagan empire_."
* See Appendix J.
And he adds that the French revolutionists (the infidel party) established better laws for women, "and initiated a great reformation of both law and opinion, _which sooner or later must traverse the world_."
And these reformations, being in Christendom, will be calmly claimed in the future, as in the present, as due to the beneficent influence of the Church. The Church always belongs to the conservative party, but after a good thing is established in despite of her, she says: "Just see what I have done! "See what a good boy am I!""
Not many years ago a few great-souled men who were "heretics" got a glimpse of a principle which has electrified the world. They said that individual liberty is a universal right; they maintained that humanity is a unit, with interests and aims indivisible, and that liberty to use to the utmost advantage all natural abilities cannot be denied one-half of the race without crippling both. A few even went so far as to suggest that the a.s.sumption of the inferiority of women, and the imposition of disabilities upon them, under the claim of divine authority, is the greatest crime in the great calendar of crime for which the Church has yet to render a reckoning to humanity.
To one who reads the history of Canon Law, it is not strange that Christian Judges still decide that women are "incompetent to practice law," and that they should not be allowed to study it. A woman well versed in the history of ancient and modern law might easily be an uncomfortable advocate for such a judge to face. He would probably feel the need of an umbrella.
It is not strange that Columbia College, with its corps of clergymen, "fails to see the propriety" of opening its doors to women. The few clergymen who have for some little time past taken the side of fair-play in this and like matters have simply deserted their colors and come over to the side they are worldly-wise enough to see is to be the side of the future. When it comes to diplomacy the Church is always on deck in time to gather in the spoils; but she stays safely below during the engagement, and simply holds back and anchors firm until she sees which way it is likely to end.
The moment there is an understanding on the part of women of what they owe to Church Law, that moment will educational clerical monopolists, such as the champion anchor of Columbia, be compelled to earn an honest living in some honest business pertaining to this world. It will be a great day for women when they refuse to longer support these pretenders to divine knowledge, who are willing, at so much a head, to tell what they do not know at the expense of the pale, tired needlewoman, who is in want of almost every comfort that money can buy in this world, together with the surplus gold of the fashionable devotees who minister to the vanity of the clergy, and give to the coffers of the Church that which would save thousands of young girls from degradation and crime, and put the roses of health on the cheek of innocence.
Every dollar that is paid to support the Church is paid to degrade a woman. Every collection that is made to spread "revelation" is used to suppress enlightenment and r.e.t.a.r.d civilization. Every dollar that is invested in "another world" is a dollar diverted from useful purposes in this. Every hour that is spent mooning about "heaven" is that much time taken from needed labor here.
If our energies were wanted in another world we should most likely be in another world. Since we are in this one it is a pretty strong hint that we are expected to attend to business right here. We can"t do justice to two worlds at the same time; and since we are a.s.sured that we shall have the whole of eternity to arrange matters in the next one, it leaves very little time by comparison to devote to our duties in this.
There we are to have nothing to do but sing and be happy--tw.a.n.g a harp and smile.
Here we have pain to alleviate, ignorance to dispel, innocence to protect, disease to master, and crime to restrain and prevent. Here we have the helpless to shield and guard and protect. Here we have homes to make happy, the hearts of husbands and wives to make glad, the light of love and trust to kindle in the eyes of children. Here is old age to cheer and console. Here are orphans to educate and protect, widows to comfort, and oppression to uproot.
There--nothing to do but look after yourself and manage your harp; n.o.body to help--all will be perfect; nothing to learn--all will be wise; no hearts to cheer--all will be happy. All that a mother will have to do if she gets a little tired practicing on her lyre and feels gloomy will be to just take a good look over the wall, and photograph on her eyes the picture of her husband and children freshly dipped in oil and put on the griddle, and she will come back to business perfectly satisfied, take up her song where she left off, and praise the Lamb for his infinite mercy. All eternity to learn how to fly round in a robe and keep time with the orchestra! Why a deaf man could learn to do that in fifty or sixty years, and then have all the rest of the time to spare.
We are here such a little while, there is so much to learn, there is so much to do, there is so much to _undo_, that no man can afford to waste his time on an infinite future of time, s.p.a.ce, and leisure. Men cannot afford to lose your best energies. "G.o.d" can get on very well without them. Time is short, and needs are pressing; and this thing you know--you can keep busy doing good right here. If there is a hereafter, could there be a better preparation for it than that?
NOT WOMAN"S FRIEND.
After all that has preceded this page I need hardly do more with this count of the last claim of "Theological Fiction" than simply say, if the Bible is woman"s best friend, then the clergy, without authority and in violation of the precepts of their own guide, have been her worst enemy, either through malice or ignorance; in either of which cases they are and have always been unfit to dictate, to lead opinion, or to receive a following as reliable guides for this world or the next.
If they have been so ignorant or so malicious for nearly nineteen hundred years as to thus systematically misconstrue their own authority--their own "revelation"--to the constant disadvantage of women (and the consequent enfeeblement of the race), surely they can claim no respect for their opinions and no confidence in their divine calling.*
In trying to shield the Bible the clergy simply convict themselves.**
* See Appendix K.
** See Appendix L.
But I incline to the opinion that in the main this view of the case is unfair to the clergy, and that they have followed, in spirit if not literally, the dictates of the Bible as a whole. It is undoubtedly true that the Bible throughout holds woman as an inferior in both mental and moral characteristics; and upon this understanding of it the Fathers built the Church and crystallized the laws.
The Fathers of the Church were as a rule a bad lot themselves. All contemporaneous history and all internal evidence prove this fact: and when we remember that the "Prophets" were almost to a man polygamists; that their belief and practices in this regard were of the order and type of Mormondom to-day, _and for the same reasons_; that they were slave-holders and slave-stealers; that they believed in a G.o.d of infinite cruelty and revenge--of arbitrary will and reasonless barbarity; and that they were licentious and brutal beyond description; it will be easy to understand the position which such men--with these beliefs, practices, mentality, and moral degradation--would accord to women. Every Bible of every people; every history of every race showing like civilization, will show you like results.*
*See Appendix M.
In the New Testament we find an effort to readjust old clothes to a new body, some of whose members had grown better and some worse in dogma and belief. Where women are _especially_ dealt with we find them commanded to "be under obedience," and always to subject their wills to the ways and wills of men; while the general tone and treatment are always based upon the a.s.sumption that she is an inferior, a secondary creation, and a subject cla.s.s.*
That this is the understanding of the Bible always recognized by the Church (and to-day questioned by only a very small minority who are shrewd enough to see the necessity of revamping it to fit the new public morality and civilization), all history attests; but the vehemence with which the doctrine has been a.s.serted the foregoing pages can only faintly indicate. **
But certainly, if for thousands of years the clergy have, as a body, misconstrued or misunderstood the spirit of their own book (to which they have always claimed to possess the only key), they should not blame those who to-day take issue with them upon their information, their dictates, their _basis of morality_, or their interpretations of the rights of humanity.
If, as they claim to-day, the Bible is the friend of women and no respecter of persons, a conclusion which it took them hundreds of years to reach, it has taken them too long to discover the fact for their guidance to be either a desirable or a safe one for humanity; and the millions of women they have degraded and oppressed in the past are certainly not an argument in favor of their infallibility now. ***
* See Appendix N.
** See Appendix O.
*** See Appendix P.
Let them give way to men who, claiming no right to divine authority or superhuman wisdom, speak in the interest of all humanity the best they know (always acknowledged to be subject to revision for the better); who are not bound back and r.e.t.a.r.ded by the outgrown toggery of the Jewish civilization of David and his time or the Christian dictatorship of Paul.* Acknowledging themselves as false and oppressive interpreters of divine law for centuries past is but a poor recommendation of their ability or integrity for the future.
* See Appendix Q.
Whichever horn of the dilemma they accept, there is but one honorable course for the clergy to pursue, and that is to resign in favor of those who have all along been on the right track, without a pretence of divine guidance; who in despite of faith and f.a.got have made progress possible.
MORALS.*
* See Appendices T and V.
After my lecture on Men, Women, and G.o.ds, in Chicago, I was asked how it would be possible to train children to be good without a belief in the divinity of the Bible; how they could be made to know it is wrong to be and steal and kill.
The belief that the Bible is the originator of these and like moral ideas, or that Christ was their first teacher, is far from the truth; and it is only another evidence of the duplicity or ignorance of the Church that such a belief obtains or that such a falsehood is systematically taught.
It is too easily forgotten that morals are universal, that Christianity is local. Practical moral ideas grow up very early, and develop with the development of a race. They are the response to the needs of a people, and when formulated have in several cases taken the shape of "commandments" from some unseen power. These necessary practical laws are by degrees attached to those of imaginary value, and all alike are held in esteem as of equal moral worth. By this means a ficticious standard of right and wrong becomes established, and a weakening of confidence in the valueless part results in damage to that portion which was originally the result of wise and necessary legislation.*
When children (of whatever age) do this or that "because G.o.d said so,"
the precepts taught on this basis, even though they are good, will have no hold upon the man who discovers that their origin was purely human.
It is a dangerous experiment, and depends wholly upon ignorance for its success. A firm basis of reason in this world is the only solid foundation of moral training.
My Chicago questioner proceeded upon the hypothesis that what of valuable morals are contained in the Bible were a "revelation" to one people, and that their value was dependent upon this origin. For the benefit of those who have been similarly** imposed upon, I will cite a few facts in as short s.p.a.ce as possible.
* "Durable morality had been a.s.sociated with a transitory religious faith. The faith fell into intellectual discredit, and s.e.xual morality shared its decline for a short season.
This must always be the natural consequence of building sound ethics on the shifting sands and rotting foundations of theology. It is one of those enormous drawbacks that people seldom take into account when they are enumerating the blessings of superst.i.tion."