But they say this is not a matter of reason. This is outside of reason,
it is all a matter of faith. But whenever a superstition claims to be
so holy that you must not use your reason about it, there is something
wrong some place. Truth is not afraid of reason, nor reason of truth.
I am going to say something to-night about why I do not believe in a
religion of faith. I am going to tell you some of the reasons why I do
not believe that the Bible is "inspired;" why I, as a woman, don't
want to think it is the word of God; why I think that women, above all
others, should not believe that it is. And since women are the bulwarks
of the churches to-day, it seems to me they have the right, and that it
is a part of their duty, to ask themselves why. Since about seven-tenths
of all church-members are women, surely the churches should not deny
them the right to use their reason (or whatever serves them in that
capacity) in regard to their own work.
I saw some ladies begging the other day for money to pay off the debt of
a $200,000 church, on the corner-stone of which were cut the words,
"My kingdom is not of this world;" and I wondered at the time what the
property would have been like if the kingdom had been of this world. It
seemed to me that a few hundred such untaxed houses would be a pretty
fair property almost anywhere.
One of our prominent bishops, when speaking recently of
church-membership, said, "The Church must recruit her ranks hereafter
almost entirely with children;" and he added, "the time has passed
when she can recruit her ranks with grown men." Good! And the New York
_Evangelist_ (one of the strongest church papers) says, "Four-fifths of
the earnest young men of this country are sceptics, distrust the clergy,
and are disgusted with evangelical Christianity." Good again.
The Congregational Club of Boston has recently been discussing the
question how to win young men to Christianity. The Rev. R. R. Meredith
said: "The churches to-day do not get the best and sharpest young
men. They get the goody-goody ones easily enough; but those who do the
thinking are not brought into the church in great numbers. You cannot
reach them by the Bible. How many did Moody touch in this city during
his revival days? You can count them on your fingers. The man who wants
them cannot get them with the Bible under his arm. He must be like them,
sharp. They cannot be gathered by sentimentality. If you say to them,
'Come to Jesus,' very likely they will reply, ''Go to thunder.' [In
Boston!] The thing to be done with such a man is to first get into his
heart, and then lead him into salvation before he knows it."
I don't know how good this recipe is, but I should infer that it is a
double-back-action affair of some sort that could get into a man's heart
and lead him into salvation before he knew it, and that if the Church
can just get a patent on that she is all right; otherwise I suspect that
the goody-goody ones are likely to be about all she will get in large
numbers.
Do I need any stronger, plainer evidence than this to show that the
thought of the world is against it, and that it is time for women to ask
themselves whether a faith that can hold its own only by its grasp
upon the ignorance and credulity of children, a faith that has
made four-fifths of the earnest men sceptics, a faith that has this
deplorable effect upon Boston manners, is one that does honor to the
intellect and judgment of the women of to-day?
We hear women express indignation that the law classes them with idiots
and children; but from these orthodox statements it would seem that in
the Church they voluntarily accept about this classification themselves.
If only these church-people go to heaven, what a queer kindergarten
it will be, to be sure, with only a few male voices to join in the
choruses--and most of those tenor.
This religion and the Bible require of woman everything, and give her
nothing. They ask her support and her love, and repay her with contempt
and oppression. No wonder that four-fifths of the earnest men are
against it, for it is not manly and it is not just; and such men are
willing to free women from the ecclesiastical bondage that makes her
responsible for all the ills of life, for all the pains of deed and
creed, while it allows her no choice in their formation, no property in
their fruition. Such men are outgrowing the petty jealousies and musty
superstitions of narrow-minded dogmatists sufficiently to look upon the
question not as one of personal preference, but as one of human justice.
They do not ask, "Would _I_ like to see woman do thus or thus?"
but, "Have _I_ a right to dictate the limit of her efforts or her
energy?"--not, "Am I benefited by her ecclesiastical bondage and
credulity? Does it give me unlimited power over her?" but, "Have I
a right to keep in ignorance, have I a right to degrade, any human
intellect?" And they have answered with equal dignity and impersonal
judgment that it is the birthright of no human being to dominate or
enslave another; that it is the just lot of no human being to be born
subject to the arbitrary will or dictates of any living soul; and that
it is, after all, as great an injustice to a _man_ to make him a tyrant
as it is to make him a slave.
Whenever a man rises high enough to leave his own personality out of
the question, he has gone beyond the stage of silly platitudes. His own
dignity is too secure, his title to respect too far beyond question,
for him to need such little subterfuges to guard his position, either
as husband, as household-king, or as public benefactor. His home life is
not founded upon compulsory obedience; but is filled with the perfume of
perfect trust, the fragrance of loving admiration and respect. It is the
domestic tyrant, the egotistic mediocre, and the superstitious Church
that are afraid for women to think, that fear to lose her as worshipper
and serf.
You need go only a very little way back in history to learn that the
Church decided that a woman who learned the alphabet overstepped all
bounds of propriety, and that she would be wholly lost to shame who
should so far forget her modesty as to become acquainted with the
multiplication table.
And to-day, if she offers her opinion and her logic for what they are
worth, the clergy preach doleful sermons about her losing her beautiful
home character, about her innocence being gone, about their idea of her
glorious exaltation as wife and mother being destroyed. Then they grow
florid and exclaim that "man is after all subject to her, that he is
born for the rugged path and she for the couch of flowers!"*
* "A pertinacious adversary, pushed to extremities, may say
that husbands indeed are willing to be reasonable, and to
make fair concessions to their partners without being
compelled to it, but that wives are not; that if allowed any
rights of their own, they will acknowledge no rights at all
in any one else, and never will yield in anything, unless
they can be compelled, by the man's mere authority, to yield
in everything. This would have been said by many persons
some generations ago, when satires on women were in vogue,
and men thought it a clever thing to insult women for being
what men made them. But it will be said by no one now who
is worth replying to. It is not the doctrine of the present
day that women are less susceptible of good feeling and
consideration for those with whom they are united by the
strongest ties, than men are. On the contrary, we are
perpetually told that women are better than men by those who
are totally opposed to treating them as if they were as
good; so that the saying has passed into a piece of tiresome
cant, intended to put a complimentary face upon an injury."
--John Stuart Mill.
You recognize it all, I see. You seem to have heard it somewhere before.
I recall one occasion when I heard it from a country clergyman, who knew
so much about heaven and hell that he hardly had time to know enough
about this world to enable him to keep out of the fire unless he was
tied to a chair. It was in the summer of 1876, and I remember the
conversation began by his asking a lady in the room about the Centennial
display, from which she had just returned. He asked her if she would
advise him to take his daughter. She said she thought it would be a very
nice thing for the girl, and she added, "It will be good for you. You
will see so much that is new and wonderful. It will be of use to you in
your work, I am sure." He said, "Well, I don't know about that. There
won't be anything much that is new to me. I've seen it all. _I was
in Philadelphia in 1840_." Then he gave us quite a talk on "woman's
sphere." He could tell you in five minutes just what it was; and the
amount of information that man possessed about the next world was simply
astonishing. He knew pretty nearly everything. I think he could tell
you, within a fraction or two, just how much material it took to make
wings for John the Baptist, and whether Paul sings bass or tenor. His
presbytery says he is a most remarkable theologian--and I don't doubt
it. According to the law of compensation, however, what he does not know
about this world would make a very comprehensive encyclopedia.
But seriously, did it ever occur to you to ask any of these divine
oracles why, if all these recent compliments are true about the superior
beauty and virtue and truth and power resting with women--why it is that
they always desire as heirs sons rather than daughters? You would think
their whole desire would be for girls, and that, like Oliver Twist,
their chief regret would be that they hadn't "more." But the Bible (and
the clergy, until quite recently) pronounces it twice as great a crime
to be the mother of a girl as to be the mother of a boy. A crime to be
the mother of a little child--a double crime if the child should be a
girl.*
* See Appendix K.
It is often urged that women are better off under the Christian than
under any other religion; that our Bible is more just to her than
other Bibles are. For the time we will grant this, and respectfully
inquire--what does it prove? If it proves anything it is this--that
all "divine revelations" are an indignity to women, and that they had
better stick to nature. Nature may be exacting, but she is not partial.
If it proves anything, it is that all religions have been made by men
for men and through men. I do not contend for the superiority of other
Bibles, I simply protest against the wrong in ours. One wrong cannot
excuse another. That murder is worse than arson does not make a hero of
the rascal who fires our homes. If Allah were more cruel than Jehovah,
that would be no palliation of the awful crimes of the Old Testament.
That slaves have better clothes than savages cannot make noble traffic
in human blood. A choice of evils is often necessary, but it does not
make either of them a good. But there is no book which tells of a more
infamous monster than the Old Testament, with its Jehovah of murder and
cruelty and revenge, unless it be the New Testament, which arms its God
with hell, and extends his outrages throughout all eternity!