terrors of Satanic evil, and the punishments of hell; to the neglect of those large and tender mercies which Jesus himself had chiefly preached. Suffering was believed to be necessary, inevitable, sent by God for the chastening of the wicked human soul; poverty and sickness were ir remediable and "Providential." To all this the doctrine of Christian Science was flatly opposed. One of its basic propositions was declared to be true, whether read forward or backward: "Life, God, omnipotent good, deny death, evil, sin, disease-Disease, sin, evil, death, deny good omnipotent, God, Life."

Such a doctrine of cheerfulness came as a revelation of divine goodness to overburdened, neurasthenic, fearful, hyper-sensitive people; and whatever may be thought of the system of therapeutics taught by Mrs. Eddy, the insistence upon a humaner interpretation of the Scriptures has been an incalculable benefit to mankind.

In her own personality, Mary Baker Eddy illustrated in a high degree the very qualities in which the average woman of the past century was lacking: her indomitable will, her serene assurance and belief in her own message; her genius for large organization, and her power to hold the allegiance of men and women alike, were absolutely "unfeminine," judged by the standards of her time. Her career was, indeed, a

signal example of the sexlessness of great gifts. In no respect was she more exceptional than in the courage with which she endured ridicule and opposition:

"For more than half a century, the most powerful oppositions and antagonisms beat around her. For years ... she was the target for ridicule, abuse, slander, and calumny. Conventional religion and organized medicine vied with each other in attacking her theory, ridiculing her position, and impugning her motives. Foes arose within her own household. . . . This persistent, tireless, and many-sided opposition would have crushed any one not sustained by invincible living faith."

It is not the province of a non-adherent, nor the purpose of this sketch, to estimate the ultimate religious significance of Mrs. Eddy's teachings; but, from a purely worldly standpoint, she rises unchallenged an exception to all criteria of feminine capacity. Even if the cult of Christian Science should ultimately decline, as many others have done, the sheer indomitable dignity and power of the woman herself will remain to suggest what may be possible to any woman. While all the other sects were clinging to masculine interpretations, a woman of limited training, under the handicap of physical weakness, and quite without appeal to any personal charm, founded a new, prosperous, and humane denomination; and this not among the ignorant,

but among a highly intelligent class of people. While tradition was still reiterating the necessary inferiority of the female sex, women like Mrs. Eddy and Dorothea Dix, and many another whose name is scarcely remembered now, were attacking men's problems with a grasp of intellect, a fertility of resource, and an indomitable force of will such as go to make a great statesman or a great commander. But if they had done no more than prepare the world to follow the social leadership of Jane Addams; or even if they had been no more than moving illustrations of the need under which all women labored for lack of opportunity and training, they would have served their kind and time. By so much as they rose above their weakness and their limitations, finding courage for rare deeds, they helped to liberate all other women from paralyzing conventions.

CHAPTER XI

THE PHANTOM OF THE LEARNED LADY

"Women are free to adorn their persons, but if they seek to cultivate their minds, it is treason against the prerogative of man."-SARAH JOSEPHINE HALE, 1868.

"Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression."-Epistle of Paul to Timothy.

NOTHING is more unaccountable in the attitude. of Nineteenth-Century society toward women than its unreasoning fear of the effect of freedom and education upon their natures. As the diffusion of knowledge had been resisted in preceding centuries lest it should corrupt the common man and undermine the accepted forms of dogma, so in our own country there was set up a sort of straw-woman-the learned female-an unsexed, monstrous perversion of the traditional model of femininity. Women's rights and antislavery in the United States were, indeed, merely later phases of those class and race struggles which had agitated civilized Europe. One his

torian illustrates the modern apprehension by the tale of Saint Avila, who was said to have gained renown by a marvel of self-control. Once when frying fish in a convent she was seized with religious ecstasy, but she did not drop the gridiron, nor let the fish burn. At the beginning of the last century most men, even men of intelligence and generosity, were convinced that an educated woman would drop her gridiron.

In 1819, when Emma Willard petitioned the New York Legislature to endow institutions for girls equal to those already established for boys, her greatest fear was that "the phantom of the college-learned lady would rise up to destroy every good resolution in her favor." Some men thought women so inferior to men mentally as to be quite incapable of reasoning; others, though granting a degree of capacity, were sure that higher thinking was wholly incompatible with the domestic and family duties for which God and Nature had designed them. These two theories -really inconsistent with each other-which were traceable partly to a military society, in which women and non-combatants had always been held in contempt; and partly to the degeneracy and sentimentalism of Eighteenth-Century England, had become the ruling traditions of the American Colonies. Not until the political and social revolutions of the end of that period had