Mr. Gladstone, in his Political Expostulation, makes use of the following expression in regard to the growth of the Catholic Church in England: “The conquests have been chiefly, as might have been expected, among women.” That the ex-premier intended this as a statement of fact rather than a sneer is very probable; for he evidently endeavors to employ the language of good manners in his controversies, unlike his predecessors in polemics during the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries. The debate between him and his distinguished antagonists in the English hierarchy bears, happily, little resemblance to that between John Milton and Salmasius concerning the royal rights of Charles I. But that, nevertheless, there is a sneer in the quoted expression is scarcely to be denied; and that this sneer had a lodgment in Mr. Gladstone’s mind, and escaped thence by a sort of mental wink, if not by his will, is beyond doubt. The pamphlet bears all the internal as well as external marks of haste; it is only a piece of clever “journalism”—written for a day, overturned in a day. “Mr. Gladstone lighted a fire on Saturday night which was put out on Monday morning,” said the London Tablet. But the sneer, whether wilful or not, stands, and cannot be erased or ignored; and it is worth more than a passing consideration. It is an indirect and ungraceful way of saying that the Catholic Church brings conviction more readily to weaker than to stronger intellects; and that because the “conquests” are “chiefly among women,” the progress of the church among the people is not substantial, general, or permanent. We presume that this is a reasonable construction of the expression.
Whether the first of these propositions be true or not is not pertinent to the practical question contained in the second. We will only remark, in passing it over, that there stands against its verity a formidable list of giant male intellects for which Protestantism and infidelity have failed to furnish a corresponding offset. Students of science and literature and lovers of art will not need to be reminded of the names. That Catholic doctrine is intellectual in the purest and best sense there are the records of nineteen centuries of civilization and letters to offer in evidence. But what Mr. Gladstone invites us to discuss is the power of women in propagating religion. In arriving at a correct estimate we must review, with what minuteness the limits of an article will permit, the part that women have had in the establishment of religion, the intensity, the earnestness, the zeal, the persistence—for these enter largely into the idea of propagation—with which women have accepted and followed the teaching of the church, and the ability they have exhibited and the success they have achieved in the impression of their convictions upon others. We must take into account the relative natural zealousness of the sexes; for zeal, next to grace, has most to do with the making of “conquests.” We must remember the almost invincible weapon which nature has placed in the hands of the weaker sex for approaching and controlling men; the beautiful weapon—affection—which mother, wife, sister, daughter, wield, and for which very few men know of any foil, or against which they would raise one if they did. If we admit, to conciliate Mr. Gladstone, that religion is an affair of the heart as well as of the head, he will be gracious enough in return, we apprehend, to concede that women must be potential agents in its propagation.
Surely, it is only thoughtlessness which enables well-read men to assign to women an insignificant place in the establishment of religion, or their reading must have been too much on their own side of the line. Even the pagans were wiser. They recognized the potency of women with an intelligence born of nothing less correct than instinct. Their mythological Titans were equally divided as to sex. A woman was their model of the austerest of virtues—perpetual celibacy. A woman was their goddess of wisdom, and, as opposed to man, the patroness of just and humane warfare. A woman presided over their grain and harvests. Every Grecian city maintained sacred fire on an altar dedicated to Vesta, the protectress of the dearest form of human happiness—the domestic. It was from Hebe the gods accepted their nectar. The nine tutelary deities of the æsthetic—the Muses—were women. So were the Fates—who held the distaff, and spun the thread of life, and cut the thread—
“Clotho and Lachesis, whose boundless sway,
With Atropos, both men and gods obey.”
Splendor, Joy, and Pleasure were the Graces. It was a woman who first set the example of parental devotion—Rhea concealing from their would-be destroyers the birth of Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto. It was a woman who first set the example of conjugal fidelity—Alcestis offering to die for Admetus. It was from a woman’s name, Alcyone, we have our “halcyon days”—Alcyone, who, overcome by grief for her husband, lost at sea, threw herself into the waves, and the gods, to reward their mutual love, transformed them into kingfishers; and when they built their nests, the sea is said to have been peaceful in order not to disturb their joys. It was a woman who dared to defy a king in order to perform funeral rites over the remains of her brother. It was a woman, Ariadne, who, to save her lover, Theseus, furnished him the clew out of the Cretan labyrinth, although she abolished thereby the tribute her father was wont to extort from the Athenians. In all that was good, beautiful, and tender, the pagans held women pre-eminent; and whether we agree with the earliest Greeks, who believed their mythology fact; or with the philosophers of the time of Euripides, who identified the legends with physical nature; or prefer to accept the still later theory that the deities and heroes were originally human, and the marvellous myths terrestrial occurrences idealized, the eminence of the position accorded to women is equally significant. Woman was supremely influential, especially in all that related to the heart. She had her place beside the priest. She was the most trusted oracle. She watched the altar-fires. She was worshipped in the temples, and homage was paid to her divinity in martial triumphs and the public games. Whatever was tender and beneficent in the mythical dispensation was associated with her sex. She was the goddess of every kind of love. Excess, luxury, brute-power, were typified by men alone. The pagans knew that love was the most potent influence to which man was subject; and love with them was but another name for woman. “It is in the heart,” says Lamartine, “that God has placed the genius of women, because the works of this genius are all works of love.” Plautus, the pagan satirist, offered his weight in gold for a man who could reason against woman’s influence. Emerson, a very good pagan in his way, appreciates the subtlety, the directness, and the impervious character of such an influence in the making of conquests. “We say love is blind,” he writes, “and the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage around his eyes—blind, because he does not see what he does not like; but the sharpest-sighted hunter in the universe is Love, for finding what he seeks, and only that.”
Woman holds a very prominent place in the religious history of the Jews. Two books of the Old Testament were written in her exaltation—the Book of Ruth and the Book of Esther—while in the others she is found constantly at the side of man, exercising in religious affairs a recognized power. Patriarchs acknowledge her influence; she is addressed by the prophets. It was Anna who departed not from the Temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. It was to a mother’s prayers that Samuel was granted. Sarah is honored by mention in the New Testament as a model spouse, and the church has enshrined her name and her virtues in the universal marriage service. Miriam directed the triumphant processions and inspired the hosannas of the women of Israel, and was their instructress and guide. As it was then, as now, the custom of the Israelites to separate the men from the women in public worship, Miriam was looked up to as the appointed prophetess of her time. Micah, the prophet, speaking in the name of God, says to the Jews: “I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and I sent before thee Moses and Aaron and Miriam.” That she had been appointed by the Lord, conjointly with her brothers, to rescue her people from servitude, appears from her own words in Numbers: “Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? Hath he not spoken also by us?” It is needless to allude to the esteem in which Naomi and Ruth were held. The widow of Sarepta fed the prophet Elijah when she had reason to believe that in so doing she would expose her son and herself to death by famine. The Second Epistle of S. John was written to a woman. The reverence and affection with which the writers in the New Testament speak of the Blessed Virgin Mary are too familiar for more than allusion. The women who followed Our Lord were singularly heroic, and the influence which they exerted upon their associates and upon all who came in contact with them must have been correspondingly strong. Woman never insulted, denied, or betrayed Christ:
“Not she with trait’rous kiss her Saviour stung,
Not she denied him with unholy tongue;
She, while apostles shrank, could danger brave—