Woman under the ethnic religions

by Mrs. Moses Smith

Buddhism.

Much vaunted, “gentle Buddha,” gives to the women of China one only hope. Through its doctrine of transmigration of souls, it is possible that through obedience to her husband and his relatives, and the birth of a son, she may in some future aeon have the happiness of being returned to this world a man. If a man commits a crime he may be returned to earth a woman. The one fervent prayer of the women as they crowd the Buddhist temple is, that they may be returned to earth as men. When the women apply to the priests for instruction they are told “When you die your soul will pass into the land of spirits where it may remain ages before it is allowed to return to earth and inhabit the body of a man. You will need money to pay toll on the bridges, and you must fee the ferrymen, especially the lily boat to cross the lake of blood.”[9] (This fee is $30.) The priests claim to have opened communication with the spirit land and their drafts are honored there. In one part of the temple these drafts are sold, the priests placing the seal of the Temple on them. Of the $400,000,000 annually given for idol worship in China, at least seven-eighths is given by women and three-fourths of that by women too poor to obtain enough of even the coarsest food.

[9] China and the Chinese. Rev. J. L. Nevius.

Marriage.

The customs and principles of marriage among any people are the exponents of woman’s place in the social scale. Chinese women are bought and sold in marriage. The wife is forever subject to her husband and his parents; only when she becomes the mother of sons does she receive the respect of the family. Divorce is practically at the pleasure of the husband, or he may sell her to another man. Undesired at birth, liable to be sold while a child for prostitution, never educated, her low estate naturally leads to the crime of infanticide. Little wonder that they innocently ask, “Why save the life of a girl?”

What to-day is the place of this vast Empire among the nations? The combined forces of these three religions working for twenty-three centuries upon one-fourth of the human race has shed no light on the two great foci, the family into which every human being is born, and that immortality to which every mortal soul aspires. Nor has any single ray of light emanated for the enlightenment of the other three-fourths of mankind? Alas, a nation cannot rise higher than its mothers.

Religions of Japan.

Shintoism the primal cult of the Japanese, has no system of morals and takes little or no notice of woman’s existence.