If you have this prayerful spirit you will surely avoid all female
scoffers at the Christian religion; and there are quite a number of
them in all communities. It must be told that, though the only
influence that keeps woman from being estimated and treated as a
slave--aye, as a brute and a beast of burden--is Christianity, since
where it is not dominant she is so treated, yet there are women who
will so far forget themselves and forget their God that they will go
and hear lecturers malign Christianity and scoff at the most sacred
things of the soul. A good woman, over-persuaded by her husband, may
go once to hear such a tirade against the Christian religion, not
fully knowing what she is going to hear; but she will not go twice.
A woman, not a Christian, but a respecter of religion, said to me: "I
was persuaded by my husband to go and hear an infidel lecturer once,
but going home, I said to him: 'My dear husband, I would not go again
though my declinature should result in our divorcement forever.'" And
the woman was right. If after all that Christ and Christianity have
done for a woman, she can go again and again to hear such assaults,
she is _an awful creature_, and you had better not come near such a
reeking lepress. She needs to be washed, and for three weeks to be
soaked in carbolic acid, and for a whole year, fumigated, before she
is fit for decent society. While it is not demanded that a woman be a
Christian before marriage, she must have regard for the Christian
religion or she is a bad woman and unworthy of being your companion in
a life charged with such stupendous solemnity and vicissitudes.