retains is mainly supported by female influence, and if that influence is perverted to the degradation of the sex to which it chiefly belongs, how can we wonder that many women who ought to know better hug their chains? Train up a girl in the way she ought not to go, and when she is old she will find it hard to turn into the right one. I do not deny that Christianity may be a trifle better than the other systems, for the reason that it upholds monogamy. But these old-world religions, one and all, are based upon the genuine original sin—that of deposing the female from her spiritual dignity and setting up the male in her place. Nothing but a radical change of front can cleanse Christianity or any other theological system from this congenital and inherent stain. There is one partial exception, I allow. The Roman Church has within her—more, however, in her practice than in her doctrine—the saving germ of Madonna-worship, which of course means practically woman-worship. Whether that germ will bud and blossom, and so the old hierarchy be saved from extinction along with the other creeds, remains yet to be seen. My uncle believes it will: for myself I cannot say. In any case, I see cause for satisfaction in the rapid spread of secularism both in England and on the Continent. Before you can build up the true, you must clear away the false; and though it may be painful to many good kind souls to have their early beliefs undermined, yet that is but a temporary trial, an indispensable condition of attaining finally that which Is really satisfying. It does not give pain to everyone, either. For instance, last Sunday I asked one of my Frogmore bicycling friends why he attended service at Dulham so often, as I knew he was not what is commonly called pious. ‘Because, Miss Newman,’ he replied, ‘the thwack of your uncle’s stick across the shoulders of fanatics who despised women is grateful and comforting to me as cool streams
