"I've seen that, Allan. Nance undoubtedly has a vein of selfishness. Instead of striving to please her husband, she—well, she has practically intimated to me that a wife has the right to please herself. Of course, she didn't say it brutally in just those words, but——"
"It's the modern spirit, Aunt Bell—the spirit of unbelief. It has made what we call the 'new woman' —that noxious flower on the stalk of scientific materialism."
He turned and wrote this phrase rapidly on a pad at his elbow, while Aunt Bell waited expectantly for more.
"There's a sermon that writes itself, Aunt Bell. ' Woman's deterioration under Modern Infidelity to God.' As truly as you live, this thing called the 'new woman' has grown up side by side with the thing called the higher criticism. And it's natural. Take away God's word as revealed in the Scriptures and you make woman a law unto herself. Man's state is then wretched enough, but contemplate woman's! Having put aside Christ's authority, she naturally puts aside man's, hence we have the creature who mannishly desires the suffrage and attends club meetings and argues, and has views— views, Aunt Bell, on the questions of the day—the woman who, as you have just succinctly said of your niece, 'believes she has a right to please herself!' There is the keynote of the modern divorce evil, Aunt Bell— she has a right to please herself. Believing no longer in God, she no longer feels bound by His commandment: 'Wives be subject to your husbands!' Why, Aunt Bell, if you can imagine Christianity shorn of all its other glories, it would still be the greatest religion the world has ever known, because it holds woman sternly in her sphere and maintains the sanctity of the home. Now, I know nothing of the real state of Nancy's faith, but the fact that she believes she has a right to please herself is enough to convince me. I would stake my right arm this moment, upon just this evidence, that Nancy has become an unbeliever. When I let her know as plainly as English words can express it that she is not pleasing me, she looks either sullen or flippant—thus showing distinctly a loss of religious faith."
"You ought to make a stunning sermon of that, Allan. I think society needs it."
"It does, Aunt Bell, it does! And we are going from bad to worse. I foresee the time in this very age of ours when no woman will continue to be wife to a man except by the dictates of her own lawless and corrupt nature—when a wife will make so-called love her only rule—when she will brazenly disregard the law of God and the word of his only begotten crucified Son, unless she can continue to feel what she calls 'love and respect' for the husband who chose her. We prize liberty, Aunt Bell, but liberty with woman has become license since she lost faith in the word of God that holds her subject to man. We should be thankful that the mother Church still stands firm on that rock—the rock of woman's subjection to man. Our own Church has quibbled, Aunt Bell, but look at the fine consistency of the Church of Rome. As truly as you live, the Catholic Church will one day hold the only women who subject themselves to their husbands in all things because of God's command—regardless of their anarchistic desire to 'please themselves.' There is the only Christian Church left that knows woman is a creature to be ruled with an iron hand—and has the courage to send them to hell for 'pleasing themselves.'"
He glowed in meditation a moment, then, in a burst of confidence, continued:
"This is not to be repeated, Aunt Bell, but I have more than once questioned if I should always allow the Anglo-Catholic Church to modify my true Catholicism. I have talked freely with Father Riley of St. Clements at our weekly ministers' meetings—there's a bright chap for you—and really, Aunt Bell, as to mere universality, the Church of Rome has about the only claim worth considering. Mind you, this is not to be repeated, but I am often so much troubled that I have to fall back on my simple childish faith in the love of the Father earned of him for me by the Son's death on the cross. But what if I err in making my faith too simple? Even now I am almost persuaded that a priest ordained into the Episcopal Church cannot consecrate the elements of the Eucharist in a sacrificial sense. Doubts like these are tragedies to an honest man, Aunt Bell—they try his soul—they bring him each day to the foot of that cross whereon the Son of God suffers his agony in order to ransom our souls from God's wrath with us—and there are times, Aunt Bell, when I find myself gazing longingly, like a little tired child, at the open arms of the mother Church—on whose loving bosom of authority a man may lay all his doubts and be never again troubled in his mind."
Aunt Bell sighed cheerfully.
"After all," she said briskly, "isn't Christianity the most fascinating of all beliefs, if one comes into it from the higher unbelief? Isn't it fine, Allan—doesn't the very thought excite you—that not only the souls of thousands now living, but thousands yet unborn, will be affected through all eternity for good or bad, by the clearness with which you, here at this moment, perceive and reason out these spiritual values—and the honesty with which you act upon your conclusions. How truly God has made us responsible for the souls of one another!"