this choice must be guided by her individual judgment. Celibacy ceased
to be a sign of righteousness; and the best men and women married. But
beliefs cannot be directly destroyed by revolution; they can only be
disturbed and modified. The teachings of Paul, Augustine, Tertullian and
St. Jerome were still authoritative, and Calvin and Knox reaffirmed
many of them. The family was still subordinate to the Church; and
marriage still remained a sacrament, with theological significances,
rather than the simple union of a man and woman who loved each other.
The choice of a mate once made was final, because theological, and it
could be broken only with infinite pain and disgrace.

The great political upheaval, which we call the French Revolution,
carried in its fundamental teachings freedom and opportunity for men and
for women; but like the corresponding revolution in religion, it
required time to make adjustments, and so we have been content to live
for more than a hundred years in the midst of verbal affirmations which
we denied in all our institutional life.

In America, conditions have always been favorable for women to work out
their freedom. Among the immigrants who came to our shores before 1840
there were, of course, a few traders, adventurers and servants who hoped
to improve their financial conditions; but the leaders, and most of the
rank and file, came that they might be free to think their own thoughts
and live their own lives. If this selection of colonists, through
religious and political persecution, sometimes gave us bigots with one
idea, it also gave us people who knew that ideas can change. Along with
Cotton Mather it gave us Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams and William
Penn.

Most of these who came in the early days belonged to extreme dissenting
sects believing in salvation through individual choice, based on
personal judgments. Preaching was exalted at the expense of ritual; and
by substituting new thinking for old habits in religion, the American
settlers made it less difficult for other adjustments to be made, even
in such a conservative matter as woman's position. It is through no
accident that Methodists, Friends, Unitarians and the Salvation Army
have been much more sympathetic to woman's progress than have the older
ritualistic faiths.

And these theological ideas had to be worked out under the material
conditions of the New World, which were also favorable to the
emancipation of women. Facing