282 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 



three steps, we shall get the true message which this 

 book holds for us to-day. 



When Paul in his first burning letter told the Cor- 

 inthian congregation that their women should be 

 silent in their churches, he is not, it seems to me, giv- 

 ing a message which in those terms applies to the 

 world to-day. If a woman has anything that is 

 worth saying she has a perfect right to say it in 

 church. In any denomination in which religious ob- 

 servance is not ecclesiastically formal she will be al- 

 lowed that privilege. By an interesting peculiarity 

 of mind on our part she may be permitted to do so 

 upon Wednesday evenings, when our early prejudice 

 still prevents her speaking on Sunday. What is the 

 truth of the teaching of Paul in this matter? The 

 Christians of Corinthian times had already begun to 

 suffer from persecution. They were already despised 

 and distrusted. Men had come to speak ill of them. 

 Paul's injunction concerning the silence of women in 

 churches was simply an injunction against their doing 

 those things which in the thought and habit of those 

 times were associated generally with looseness of 

 character. Fine Corinthian women did not speak in 

 public. A woman who would consent to speak before 

 a group of men of Corinth of that day would by that 

 fact have proclaimed herself a woman of loose mor- 

 als. Paul's injunction is that, in this desperate strug- 



