Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/47

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Woman's Sphere
31

casting aside the yoke of religious marriage, and for this reason lost her reputation for chastity. Indeed, of chastity at this time there was little, of unchaste women there were many; but it was a profligate age. It is a fact worthy of note that when, in days gone by, women have temporarily recovered their liberty, it seems to have been at the cost of their virtue, as in the case of the Roman women, domestic drudges before they became unmarried wives; and that when chastity has been restored, as Christianity restored it to the world, it has been as the result of taking away the liberty of the woman and putting her under the yoke of a husband.

It remains for Socialism to prove that woman can be both free and virtuous.

It is commonly claimed that the advance that the woman of the present has made upon the woman of the ante-Christian period is due to the civilising influence of Christianity. It is perfectly true that the entirely Christian principle of co-operation and brotherhood is to effect the complete salvation of woman in the time that is to come; but it is not true that the gospel of Christ as interpreted and practised by His