th which an early Christian may
have bent over the pages of his Scriptures; feeling that, it may be, she
fits herself by each increase of knowledge for she knows not what duties
towards the world, in the years to come. It is this consciousness of
great impersonal ends, to be brought, even if slowly and imperceptibly,
a little nearer by her action, which gives to many a woman strength
for renunciation, when she puts from her the lower type of sexual
relationship, even if bound up with all the external honour a legal bond
can confer, if it offers her only enervation and parasitism; and which
enables her often to accept poverty, toil, and sexual isolation (an
isolation even more terrible to the woman than to any male), and the
renunciation of motherhood, that crowning beatitude of the woman's
existence, which, and which alone, fully compensates her for the organic
sufferings of womanhood--in the conviction that, by so doing, she makes
more possible a fuller and higher attainment of motherhood and wifehood
to the women who will follow her. It is this consciousness which makes
of solemn importance the knock of the humblest woman at the closed
door which shuts off a new field of labour, physical or mental: is she
convinced that, not for herself, but in the service of the whole race,
she knocks.

It is this abiding consciousness of an end to be attained, reaching
beyond her personal life and individual interests, which constitutes the
religious element of the Woman's Movement of our day, and binds with the
common bond of an impersonal enthusiasm into one solid body the women
of whatsoever race, class, and nation who are struggling after the
readjustment of woman to life.

This it is also, which in spite of defects and failures on the part of
individuals, yet makes the body who these women compose, as a whole, one
of the most impressive and irresistible of modern forces. The private
soldier of the great victorious army is not always an imposing object as
he walks down the village street, cap on side of head and sword dangling
between his legs, nor is he always impressive even when he burnishes up
his accoutrements or cleans his pannikins; but it is of individuals
such as these that the great army is made, which tomorrow, when it is
gathered together, may shake the world with its tread.

Possibly not one woman in ten, or even one woman in twenty thousand
among those taking part in this struggle, could draw up a clear and
succ