is with communities, we may take it, as with individuals. There are
moments when, as it has been said, "every one is an atheist, from
archbishops downwards," when a sense of the purposelessness and
futility of perpetual combat seizes the most ardent. These are the
dark hours when attacks are planned and delivered against the most
sacred institutions, when people are not at their best, but are
restless, rebellious and impatient of restraint; for nations like
individuals can go mad. Then it is that the wide-awake novelist and
playwright see their opportunity, and the temporary success of the
sex-play or the breezy romance is the reflection of the thoughts--none
of the best--that are for the moment flitting through men's feverish
minds. But we soon return to saner moments; our moral sense resumes
its normal sway, and sex-plays and romances fade away into oblivion.

Now, it need not be said that the contention on behalf of the rights of
woman is heartily espoused by a movement which bases itself on the
conception of reason and justice as the root facts of existence. There
was no justice in the "subjection of woman," and we hold that those
opportunities of learning which a cultured age opens up to man should
likewise be at the disposal of his sister; that that freedom, which is
the birthright of the man, to expand the energies, mental and moral, of
his being to their fullest extent and in whatever calling, should also
be acknowledged to be the right of woman. The constitutional agitation
for the recognition of her rights has met with notable success, and it
has the fullest support of the ethical Church; but we believe that that
agitation has been pushed too far by a very small and insignificant
minority, and made to cover an attack on the institution of matrimony,
which her wisest friends see could only end in the ultimate downfall of
woman herself. Such an agitation, such an attack, must encounter the
most resolute opposition from a body which derives all its idealism and
inspiration from a life motived, not by the sense, but by reason. Its
leaders in America have pronounced decisively against any tampering
with the natural sacrament of marriage, and where they detect
tendencies--as unfortunately they do in many of the States of their
Union--to further loosen its bonds, they, with all the influence at
their command, endeavour to strengthen them.

Let me now proceed to justify this attitude of the ethical communion.