WOMAN SUFFJiAGA' AIVB EDUCATION. 223 



The State in which these sentiments were uttered abounded in 

 fine schools for girls, among which were Mount Holyoke and 

 Wheaton Seminaries, 



A rapid survey of some of the educational conditions that led 

 to the state of things existing when suffrage associations were 

 formed will be in place. Learning seemed incompatible with 

 worship early in the Christian era. The faith that worked by 

 love was " to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks fool- 

 ishness." That great battle between the felt and the compre- 

 hended, which in this era we have named the conflict between 

 science and religion, was decided in the mind of the apostle to the 

 Gentiles when he wrote : " We know in part, and we prophesy in 

 part ; when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part 

 shall be done awaj''." He recalled the accusation, " Thou art 

 beside thyself, much learning hath made thee mad," and he has- 

 tened to assure the unlettered fishermen and the simple and de- 

 vout women who were followers of Christ, that " all knowledge " 

 was naught if they had not love ; that even faith was vain if it 

 led to the rejection of the diviner wisdom that a little child could 

 understand. 



The great learning of Augustine and the Fathers brought into 

 the Church pagan speculations of God and morality, as well as 

 pagan knowledge in art, science, and literature. The Church be- 

 came corrupted, and a great outcry was made against the learning 

 itself, which was falsely supposed to be the cause of the degenera- 

 tion of faith. Symonds says that during the dark ages that 

 followed upon this first battle between faith and sight, the mean- 

 ing of Latin words derived from the Greek was lost; that Homer 

 and Virgil were believed to be contemporaries, and " Orestes 

 Tragedia" was supposed to be the name of an author. Milman 

 says that "at the Council of Florence in 1438, the Pope of Rome 

 and the Patriarch of Constantinople being ignorant, the one of 

 Greek and the other of Latin, discoursed through an interpreter." 

 It was near the time of the Reformation that a German monk 

 announced in his convent that " a new language, called Greek, 

 had been invented, and a book had been written in it called the 

 New Testament." " Beware of it," he added, " it is full of daggers 

 and poison." 



But the tradition of the love that book revealed had crept into 

 the heart of the world, and now awoke. Through what struggles 

 the "spirit of all truth" promised by Christ was leading, and 

 would lead the world, the history of civilization can tell. Women 

 shared in some degree the outward benefits of the revival of 

 learning. They became in not a few instances doctors of law 

 and professors of the great universities that sprang up, as well as 

 teachers, transcribers, and illuminators in the great nunneries. 



