INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY THE POSITION OF WOMEN, 33 



both his great gifts — force and skill — bow down at her feet and 

 become the willing, grateful and laborious servants of her one 

 superiority — love. Man creates toy after toy and glories in 

 them, but there is a side of his nature that is not satisfied even 

 by aeroplanes and wireless telegraphy, and then he comes to the 

 Woman to help him toward the ideal, and to supply the wants 

 of the starving heart of loneliness which lives on amid the fair 

 circle of creation. Might of all crude and obvious kinds yields 

 to the Right of altruism, with its two great executives — Justice 

 and Love. Might is a means, but Right is an end. 



I have been a long while in reaching the course of history in 

 this subject, which is, I understand, the theme allotted to me ; 

 but as the lines of the Nursery and of Geographical distribution 

 run closely parallel to those of Historical development, I hope 

 the time given to them has not been wasted. 



When the light of History dawns in written records and 

 carvings, we find certain nations already in possession of the 

 world. There are Nineveh and Babylon, dreadful old tyrannies 

 of brute force ; there is Phenicia, the nation of commerce, and 

 Egypt, the land of buildings and agriculture, where the huge 

 works of the drainage of the Delta of the Nile can be traced 

 back to 4000 B.C. Then springs up Greece, beautiful Greece, 

 the mother of art and of thought ; and later again Rome, the 

 executive of the world ; and, running through them all like a 

 thread of gold, the story of Israel, the one channel of true 

 religion. There are many more lesser nations, but, like Ass}Tia, 

 they are all military, spreading destruction around them. Of 

 their inner life, of their women, we know nothing, as they thought 

 nothing was worth record'ing but battles and thefts. The Man- 

 spirit is seen at its crudest and worst, and as all merely military 

 nations are doomed by the hand of God to perish, so w^e have 

 nothing but mounds of ruin, and their life is gone from us for 

 ever. 



The first two nations of which we know the domestic fife, are 

 quiet and constructive Egypt and Phenicia the mother of 

 barter and commerce. Now commerce is good and is highly 

 civifising, for it brings in its train shipbuilding, navigation, 

 coinage and even (so they tell us) the construction of the alphabet, 

 and the general improvement of life, lifting it above i^he barren 

 existence of the savage. Phenicia had ports and colonies all 

 round the Mediterranean, and was likely to be the agent of 

 much good, but one black blot ruined everything, and that was 



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