same holds good to-day. Watch the congregations streaming
out of church, count ten bonnets to one hat, and you might fancy
Christianity played out because the men stay at home and neglect its
ministrations. Nothing of the sort. Men may desert the churches as they
like, but while the women go the clergy are safe. Examine the church
and chapel organisations closely, and you will see how nine-tenths of
everything is designed for women and children. Yes, the bonnet is the
priest's talisman. Like Constantine's legendary cross, it bears the sign
_By this Conquer_.

On the other hand, the clergy never fail to remind women that religion
is their best friend. Without our doctrines and our holy Church, they
say, there would be social chaos; the wild passions of men would spurn
control, marriage would be despised, wives would become mistresses,
homes would disappear, and children would be treated as encumbrances.
There is not a grain of truth in this, for religion has fomented,
countenanced, or cloaked, more sensuality and selfishness than it has
ever repressed. But it is a powerful appeal to woman's healthy domestic
sentiment. She feels, if she does not know, that marriage is her
sheet-anchor, and the home an ark on a weltering flood. When the priest
tells her that religion is the surety of both, he plucks at her heart,
which vibrates to its depths, and she regards him as her savior.

Historically, the Christian religion, at least, has never been woman's
real friend. It claims credit for everything; but what has it achieved?
Monogamy was practised by the rude Teutons before Christianity
"converted" them by fraud and force, and it was the law in pagan Greece
and Rome before the Christian era. Yet in the Bible there is not a
word against polygamy. God's favorites had as many wives as they could
manage, and Solomon had enough to manage _him_. In the New Testament
there is only one man who is told to be "the husband of one wife," and
that is a bishop. Even in _his_ case, a facetious sceptic hints, and the
Mormons argue, that the command only means that he must have _one wife
at least_.

There are two supreme figures in the New Testament, Paul and Jesus.
What Paul says about women I will deal with presently. For the moment
I confine myself to Jesus. Let the reader remember that Christianity
cannot transcend the Bible, any more than a stream can rise above its
source.

Like most revivalists and popular preachers, Jesus had a numbe