horizon and under his expectation of the
speedy return of Christ, was sensible and good; but when this advice,
with all its reasons, was made on oracle of eternal wisdom, it
generated the monkish notions concerning womanhood. If the desire of
a wife is a weakness, which the apostle would gladly have forbidden,
only that he feared worse consequences, an enthusiastic youth cannot
but infer that it is a higher state of perfection _not_ to desire a
wife, and therefore aspires to "the crown of virginity." Here at once
is full-grown monkery. Hence that debasement of the imagination, which
is directed perpetually to the lowest, instead of the highest side of
the female nature. Hence the disgusting admiration and invocation of
Mary's perpetual virginity. Hence the transcendental doctrine of her
immaculate conception from Anne, the "grandmother of God."

In the above my critics have represented me to say that Christianity
has done _nothing_ for women. I have not said so, but that what it has
done has been exaggerated. I say: If the _theory_ of Christianity is
to take credit from the _history_ of Christendom, it must also receive
discredit. Taking in the whole system of nuns and celibates, and the
doctrine which sustains it, the root of which is apostolic, I doubt
whether any balance of credit remains over from this side of Christian
history. I am well aware that the democratic doctrine of "the equality
of souls" has a _tendency_ to elevate women,--and the poorer orders
too; but this is not the whole of actual Christianity, which is a very
heterogeneous mass.

2. Again: the modern doctrine, by aid of which West Indian slavery has
been exterminated, is often put forward as Christian; but I had always
discerned that it was not Biblical, and that, in respect to this great
triumph, undue credit has been claimed for the fixed Biblical and
authoritative doctrine. As I have been greatly misunderstood in
my first edition, I am induced to expand this topic. Sir George
Stephen,[15] after describing the long struggle in England against the
West Indian interest and other obstacles, says, that, for some time,
"worst of all, we found the people, not actually against us, but
apathetic, lethargic, incredulous, indifferent. It was then, and _not
till then_, that we sounded the right note, and touched a chord that
never ceased to vibrate. _To uphold slavery was a crime against God!_
It was a NOVEL DOCTRINE, but it was a cry that was heard, for i