INFLUENCE OF CHKISTIANITY ON THE POSITION OF WOMEN. 41 



the world, and, therefore, it is only when the two draw together 

 and the man becomes pure and the woman brave that a very 

 beautiful society is formed, and at last friendship is possible 

 between the sexes, without the intrusion of that excitement which 

 indicates the approach of love. The Society of Friends has 

 set us a noble example in these directions. 



Education is an immense force in the world, second to 

 Christianity, but second to nothing else whatever. The share 

 that we women have had of late in this splendid field has raised 

 us to our right position at last. We need balance, courage, 

 judgment, accuracy, discrimination ; we need a spice of peril 

 and a choice in our repudiation of the false and misleading, and 

 all these good things are given by education. I have been able 

 to watch the progress of this movement from the very first, 

 because, leaving a thoroughly Conservative home, I became 

 one of the earUest students at Girton College, Cambridge. I 

 entered in 1872, when the whole cause was a subject of amused 

 contempt, if not even of strong aversion and hostihty. I have 

 watched the movement carefully and can tell you of a hundred 

 beneficial effects that have flowed from the one effort. It is a 

 revolution in the world of thought of immense value, it is 

 strong and wide, yet it was accomphshed very quietly. Never 

 was there a fire lighted with less smoke. Point after point has 

 been won till at last we are true citizens of the State. 



AVhen the vote was first proposed, rather over forty years ago, 

 I was easily convinced it was an act of justice, and yet I held 

 back strongly. " We are not fit for it ; we should do harm ; 

 give us first a whole generation of education and good hard work 

 in national directions." The generation has passed. We are 

 barely ready, but our work during the war has proved that we 

 do deserve it, and the six milHon votes are added to the electorate. 



Here, then, we stand to-day and our position is noble. We were • 

 created by God to be the exponent of all love and patience and 

 fidehty ; enfranchised by Christ to take our due share in His 

 work, gifted with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost (for 

 that fact is especially noted), and now we are socially set free 

 that all the work we can do, w^e may do. We are one with men 

 in the world of the soul, and yet we so differ in mental structure 

 that we are the complement the one of the other, hke the two 

 halves of a bivalve shell, and they look to us to lead towards the 

 ideal. Our cause is not two, but one, for in the sight of our 

 Maker we stand and fall together. 



