Miss Blake elsewhere answers, it seems to me with reason and justice, the oft-repeated objection to co-education, founded upon the imaginary danger of a too early romance and a hasty attachment, followed by an unwise and to-be-repented-of marriage:
"There is something in the association of every-day life which appeals to the judgment rather than to the fancy, and weeks and months of steady labor over the same problems, or at the same sciences, will not be more likely to create romances than casual meetings at fêtes and balls."
But I turn from the secular and civil aspect of the subject to inquire what service woman may render the church, and here I am confronted by another question it would be difficult to answer: What service has she not rendered? Our churches, most of them, will not ordain her to the ministry, and yet do they not derive their spiritual life from her influence? Could they exist without her effort and faithful service? Who preached the first Christian sermon, and proclaimed to an unbelieving world, "He is risen from the dead!" if not the women who ran with great joy from the empty sepulcher, bearing with them a license to preach from the Christ himself, given through the Angel of the Resurrection, who said, "Go quickly and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead, and behold he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him?" That was a very short sermon and had no text, but no pulpit rhetoric and no Sunday oratory will ever eclipse its sublime eloquence. If priests received their commission to preach from the Apostles, the Apostles received theirs from the women who mourned at the sepulcher and found it empty. Women can better afford to remain out of the pulpit than the pulpit can afford to exclude them. When the Christ shall return and His kingdom be established forever, the nations shall hear once more the old Easter sermon first preached by a woman, "He is risen from the dead!" The most tender and faithful friendship our Saviour ever found in his weary and painful pilgrimage upon earth burned in the heart and shone in the life of a noble and consecrated woman.
"Not she with trait'rous kiss her Master stung,
Not she denied him with unfaithful tongue;
She, when Apostles fled, could danger brave—
Last at his cross, and earliest at his grave."
And if the church was cradled in the arms of Mary, have not the daughters of Mary been singing to the child Jesus all along the ages? It was Charlotte Elliott who wrote, "Just as I am without one plea," and Mrs. Adams who gave the church that immortal hymn, "Nearer, my God, to Thee." "Fade, fade, each earthly joy," "I need Thee every hour," "Lord, I hear of showers of blessing," "I think when I read that sweet story of old," "I love to tell the story," and "How blest the righteous when he dies"—all these were written by women. What sweet singers chant cradle hymns to the child Jesus—Felicia D. Hemans, Joanna Baillie, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Eliza Cook, Mrs. Baxter, Mrs. Codver, Mrs. Bonar, Mrs. Barbauld and the Cary sisters. If wise men came from the East with gold, frankincense and myrrh for the infant Redeemer, wise women are coming every day from all parts of the earth with gifts of heavenly song.
The success of every church depends in large measure upon the consecration of its women. I never knew a church in which there were not more women than men; they constitute the majority in every religious meeting; and it would seem as if fifty women go to heaven for every man who makes even a moderate effort to get there. It was the service of faithful and active women that saved Israel in the hour of national peril. "When the men of Israel," to employ the language of another, "bowed in helplessness before Pharaoh, two women spurned his edicts and refused his behests. A father made no effort to save the infant Moses, but a mother's care hid him while concealment was possible, and a sister watched over his preservation when exposed on the river's brink. To woman was intrusted the charge of providing for the perils and wants of the wilderness; and in the hour of triumph woman's voice was loudest in the acclaim of joy that ascended to heaven from an emancipated nation." The same womanly courage, patience, love, tact and wisdom must be the hope and strength of modern Israel.
The men who have accomplished most owe much to woman's influence. From her counsel the hero derived his courage, and in her approving smile received his reward. The great poems of the world are, many of them, from her inspiration. Blanche of Lancaster lives in the antique English of Chaucer, Laura in the sonnets of Petrarch, and Beatrice in the Divina Commedia of Dante; and who can look upon the marbles of Michel Angelo and not behold the influence of Vittoria Colonna? In all literature there is not a nobler sonnet addressed by man to woman than this which Michel Angelo laid with bowed heart and reverent hand at the feet of Vittoria Colonna: