Men, Women, and Gods; and Other LecturesGardener, Helen H. (Helen Hamilton)
Religion
Men, Women, and Gods; and Other Lectures
Gardener, Helen H. (Helen Hamilton)
Free thought
2. From this point Mrs. Gage calls attention to the various efforts to
throw off this degrading custom. The women held meetings at night, and
among other things travestied the celebration of Mass and other Church
customs; but the end and aim of these meetings being a protest and
rebellion against Marquette, the clergy called those who took part in
them "witches;"* and then and there began the persecution which the
Church carried on against women under this disguise (under Catholic and
Protestant rule alike), which extended down to the latter part of the
last century, with its list of horrors and indignities extending over
all Christian countries and blossoming in all their vigor in our
own eastern States, upheld by Luther, John Wesley, and Baxter, who
unfortunately had not at that time entered into the everlasting rest
of the Saints. And, true to these noble and wise leaders, the Churches
which they founded are to-day expressing the same sentiments (in
principle) in regard to the honor and dignity and position of woman.
The arguments of the Rev. Dr. Craven, the prosecutor in the famous
Presbyterian trial of 1876, which are given by Mrs. Gage, together with
numerous other similar ones, fully establish the fact that woman is to
the Church what she always was--_so far as secular law will permit._ And
numerous instances (such as the Buckley exhibition at the last Methodist
Conference, in which he was sustained by the Conference) prove that they
have learned nothing since 1876.
* "There are few superstitions which have been so universal
as a belief in witchcraft. The severe theology of paganism
despised the wretched superstition, which has been greedily
believed by millions of Christians."--Buckle.
3. I wish I might copy here the sermon to women which the Rev.
Knox-Little, the well-known High-Church clergyman of England, preached
when in this country in 1880, in which he said, "There is no crime which
a man can commit which justifies his wife in leaving him. It is her duty
to subject herself to him always, and no crime that he can commit can
justify her lack of obedience." Although a little balder in statement
than are most utterances of orthodox clergymen in this age, yet in
sentiment and in the reason given for it the echo of "Amen" comes from
every pulpit where a believer in original sin, vicarious atonement,
or the inspiration of the Bible has a representative and a voice. If
self-respect or honor is ever to be the lot of woman, it will not be
until her foot is on the neck of orthodoxy, and when the Bible ranks
where it belongs in the field of literature.
Appendix F.
1. "The French government, about the middle of the eighteenth century,
seems to have reached the maturity of its wickedness, allowing if not
instigating religious persecutions of so infamous a nature that they
would not be believed if they were not attested by documents of the
courts in which the sentences were passed."--Buckle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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