This is the language for which the ears of a woman thirst as parched flowers thirst for the summer rain. Instead of a great, blank universe with fixed laws, interesting to _savans_ but not to her, she is told of love and affection that she thoroughly understands. She is told of an affectionate Creator, of His beloved and loving Son, of the tender care of the maternal Church that He instituted; and finally all this chain of affectionate interest ends close to her in a living link,--a man with soft, engaging manners, with kind and gentle voice, who takes her hand, talks to her about all that she really cares for, and overflows with the readiest sympathy for all her anxieties. This man is so different from common men, so very much better and purer, and, above all, so much more accessible, communicative, and consolatory! He seems to have had so much spiritual experience, to know so well what trouble and sorrow are, to sympathize so completely with the troubles and sorrows of a woman! With him, the burden of life is ten times easier to bear; without his precious fellowship, that burden would be heavy indeed! It may be objected to this, that the clergy do not entirely teach a religion of love; that, in fact, they curse as well as bless, and foretell eternal punishment for the majority. All this, it may be thought, must be as painful to the feelings of women as Divine kindness and human felicity must be agreeable to them. Whoever made this objection would show that he had not quite understood the feminine nature. It is at the same time kinder and tenderer than the masculine nature, and more absolute in vindictiveness. Women do not generally like the infliction of pain that they believe to be undeserved;[14] they are not generally advocates for vivisection; but as their feelings of indignation against evil-doers are very easily aroused, and as they are very easily persuaded that severe punishments are just, they have often heartily assented to them even when most horrible. In these cases their satisfaction, though it seems to us ferocious, may arise from feeling themselves God's willing allies against the wicked. When heretics were burnt in Spain the great ladies gazed calmly from their windows and balconies on the grotesque procession of miserable _morituri_ with flames daubed on their tabards, so soon to be exchanged for the fiery reality. With the influence that women possess they could have stopped those horrors; but they countenanced them; and yet there is no reason to believe that they were not gentle, tender, affectionate. The most relentless persecutor who ever sat on the throne of England was a woman. Nor is it only in ages of fierce and cruel persecution that women readily believe God to be on the side of the oppressor. Other ages succeed in which human injustice is not so bold and bloodthirsty, not so candid and honest, but more stealthily pursues its end by hampering and paralyzing the victim that it dares not openly destroy.