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 seers 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- 
