Feeling a good deal of sympathy with such an alarm as this, having a terror (possibly exaggerated) of some day undergoing the frightful experience of listening, in a place of worship from which I could not decently escape, to the ignorant, shallow, dogmatic folly which it has been my occasional penance to hear from women elsewhere, and which has, undoubtedly, a character of its own still more ignorant, more shallow, and more dogmatic than any folly commonly to be heard from men, I here humbly confess that for many years such a possibility has with me almost outweighed the actual probability that women would in general fulfil the duties of the ministry exceptionally well. But longer reflection has tended much to remove my fears, while it has strengthened my hopes. In the first place, I look with extreme confidence to such a sifting process as a good theological college course would inevitably effect, to exclude from concurrence all the frivolous, the half-hearted, the weak-minded,--all those women, in short, who should not prove capable of strong and steady mental labor, and willing to undergo it for several consecutive years. From such as should pass triumphantly through an ordeal of this kind, nothing very outrageous in the way of folly or contemptible in the way of feminine “twaddle” would need to be apprehended. And, again, there is a second and very satisfactory ground for reassurance. Female ministers will certainly not (at all events for a very long time to come) be appointed to lecture us by any despotic authority. They cannot, indeed, be ministers at all, unless some of us distinctly desire them to minister for our particular benefit. By a happy decree of fate, it takes at least two or three persons at any time to form a congregation. There must be the hearers of the discourse as well as the speaker; and, as even the sternest sticklers for the rights of women are not likely to proceed so far as to demand compulsory attendance at female preachments, there will always remain open a door of hope and refuge whereby the oppressed may go free. The same argument applies in this case as to the everlastingly reproduced fallacy about the franchise; namely, that, if their political disabilities be removed, women will invade the benches of St. Stephen’s. As nobody can ever be elected an M.P., unless he or she find a majority of some constituency to choose him or her as the best candidate, so neither can anybody become a minister in one of the free churches, unless he or she find a congregation ready to “sit under” him or her, as a tolerable preacher. In either case, the woman who could so singularly impress the majority of electors[33] or of parishioners with the conviction of her supreme fitness as to induce them to choose her for the political or religious office would be, undoubtedly, so very remarkable a person that it would be ten thousand pities the world should be deprived of her services.