The Eighth Year: A Vital Problem of Married Life — John Shaqi
The Eighth Year: A Vital Problem of Married LifeGibbs, Philip
Science
The Eighth Year: A Vital Problem of Married Life
Gibbs, Philip
Domestic fiction; Married people -- Fiction
There is another way, and it has many doors. It is religion. Many of
these women “take to religion” as they take to the suffrage movement,
and find the same emotional excitement and adventure in it. They are
caught up in it as by a burning flame. It satisfies something of their
yearnings and desires. And it is a curious and lamentable thing that
although it has been proved conclusively by all masters of philosophy
and by all great thinkers, that some form of religion, is an essential
need in the heart of women, the whole tendency of the time is to rob
them of this spiritual guidance and comfort. Religion is not a part of
the social scheme of things in “intellectual mansions” and in the small
suburban houses of the professional classes. It is not entirely wiped
off the slate, but it is regarded with indifference and as of no vital
account in the sum of daily life. Occasionally a certain homage is paid
to it, as to a pleasant, old-fashioned ritual which belongs to the code
of “good form.” In their courting days the young man and woman went to
church now and then on a Sunday morning or a Sunday evening and held
the same hymn-book, and enjoyed a little spiritual sentiment. They
were married in church to the music of the Wedding March played by the
organist. Sometimes as the years pass they drop into a service
where there is good singing, a popular preacher, and a fashionable
congregation. They regard themselves as Christians, and condescend to
acknowledge the existence of God, in a vague, tolerant kind of way. But
they do not enter into any intimate relations with God. He is not down
on their visiting list. Many of them do not even go as far as those
people I have described who regard God as part of the social code of
“good form.” They become frankly agnostic and smile at their neighbors
who put on top-hats and silk dresses and stroll to church on a Sunday
morning. It seems to them absurdly “Early Victorian.” For they have read
a great number of little books by the latest writers, who publish their
philosophy in sevenpenny editions, and they have reached an intellectual
position when they have a smattering of knowledge on the subject of
evolution, anthropology, the origins of religion, literature and dogma,
and the higher criticism. They have also read extracts from the works of
Nietzsche, Kant, and the great free-thinkers, or reviews of their works
in the halfpenny newspapers. The ideas of the great thinkers and
great rebels have filtered down to them through the writings of little
thinkers and little rebels. They have been amused by the audacities of
Bernard Shaw and other intellectuals of their own age. They have read
the novels of H. G. Wells, which seem to put God in His right place.
They have imbibed unconsciously the atmosphere of free-thought and
religious indifference which comes through the open windows, through the
keyholes, through every nook and cranny. Occasionally the husband lays
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