Christianity claims to be pre-eminently the religion of love, in the
widest sense of that term, including, especially, religious veneration
of a personal Deity and love of one’s enemy. It has been asserted by
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others that Christianity has done little
or nothing in aid of woman’s elevation; and it cannot be denied that
much good would have resulted if more emphasis had been placed by the
Apostles on certain phases of the domestic relations. That Romantic Love
is not alluded to in the New Testament need not cause any surprise, for
that sentiment cannot have existed in those days when Courtship and
Individual Choice were unknown. But there are passages in St. Paul’s
writings which were probably the seeds from which grew the mediæval
contempt for marriage and women. And although marriage is now zealously
guarded by the Church, Love of the romantic sort is no doubt looked upon
even to-day by many an austere clergyman as a harmless youthful
epidemic—a sort of emotional measles—rather than as a new
æsthetico-moral sentiment destined to become the strongest of all
agencies working for the improvement of the personal appearance, social
condition, and happiness of mankind.
On the other hand, even agnostics must admit on reflection that
Christianity contained elements which, despite the vicious fanaticism of
many of its early teachers, slowly helped to ameliorate woman’s lot. In
the first place, Protestantism, as embodied in Luther, performed an
invaluable service by restoring and enforcing universal respect for the
marriage-tie. He set a good example by not only defying the degrading
custom of obligatory celibacy, but by marrying a most sensible woman—a
nun who had escaped with eight others from a convent at Nimtsch.
Mariolatry, or the cult of the Virgin Mary, is the second avenue through
which Christianity influenced the development of the tender emotions.
The halo of sanctity which it spread at the same time over virginity and
motherhood has been of incalculable value in raising woman in the
estimation of the masses.
A third way in which Christianity influenced woman’s position is
suggested by the following remarks of Mr. Lecky, who has done valuable
service to philosophy, in showing how emotions as well as ideas change
with time: “In antiquity,” he says, “the virtues that were most admired
were almost exclusively those which were distinctively masculine.
Courage, self-assertion, magnanimity, and, above all, patriotism, were
the leading features of the ideal type; and chastity, modesty, and
charity, the gentler and the domestic virtues, which are especially
feminine, were greatly undervalued. With the single exception of
conjugal fidelity, none of the virtues that were highly prized were
virtues distinctively or pre-eminently feminine.” Now the “religion of
love,” by especially insisting on these “feminine virtues,” became a
powerful agent in undermining the coarse mediæval spirit with its
masculine, military “virtues,” _alias_ barbarisms.