Flowers of Freethought (First Series)Foote, G. W. (George William)
Religion
Flowers of Freethought (First Series)
Foote, G. W. (George William)
Free thought
Our Church of England marriage service follows the teaching of Paul.
While the husband promises to-love the wife, the wife promises to love,
honor and obey the husband. Many ladies say these words at the altar
with a mental reservation. When they are obliged to do this they tacitly
admit that Paul and the Church are wrong. But if so the Bible is wrong.
The fact is that the "blessed book," instead of being woman's best
friend, is her worst enemy. The Tenth Commandment makes her domestic
property, and Paul winds up by telling her that her sole duty is to play
second fiddle in a minor key.
MOTHER'S RELIGION.
Religion is the feminine element in human nature. Science is the
masculine. One accepts, the other inquires; one believes, the other
proves; one loves the old, the other the new; one submits, the other
dares; one is conservative, and the other progressive.
I say this with no disrespect to women. Evolution has made them what
they are, and evolution will remake them. Nor do I slight the noble band
of advanced women, the vanguard of their sex, who have shed a lustre on
our century. I merely take a convenient metaphor, which crystallises
a profound truth, though fully conscious of its shortcomings and
exclusions.
Woman is still the citadel of religion. Thither the priest flies from
the attacks of scepticism. There he finds an inviolable refuge. The
mother, the wife, the sister, shield him and his creed; and their white
arms and soft eyes are a better guard than all the weapons in the armory
of his faith. His are the coward's tactics, but all creatures--even
priests--plead the necessity of living, and have the artful instinct of
self-preservation.
Religious by inheritance and training, woman rears her children for the
Church. Spiritual as well as bodily perils shake her prophetic soul as
she peers into the future through the eyes of the child upon her knee.
She whispers of God with accents of awe, that fall solemnly on the
little one's mind. She trains the knee to bend, the hands to meet in
prayer, and the eyes to look upward. She wields the mighty spell of
love, and peoples the air of life with phantoms. Infantile logic knows
those dear lips cannot lie, and all is truth for all is love. Alas!
the lesson has to come that the logic is faulty, that goodness may be
leagued with lies, that a twisted brain may top the sweetest heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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