I would give her
all she asks, and add a great deal more, which she will not be the
party to demand, but which men, if they were generous and wise, would
grant of their own free motion. For instance, I should love
dearly--for the next thousand years, at least--to have all government
devolve into the hands of women. I hate to be ruled by my own sex;
it excites my jealousy, and wounds my pride. It is the iron sway of
bodily force which abases us, in our compelled submission. But how
sweet the free, generous courtesy with which I would kneel before a
woman-ruler!"
"Yes, if she were young and beautiful," said Zenobia, laughing. "But
how if she were sixty, and a fright?"
"Ah! it is you that rate womanhood low," said I. "But let me go on.
I have never found it possible to suffer a bearded priest so near my
heart and conscience as to do me any spiritual good. I blush at the
very thought! Oh, in the better order of things, Heaven grant that
the ministry of souls may be left in charge of women! The gates of
the Blessed City will be thronged with the multitude that enter in,
when that day comes! The task belongs to woman. God meant it for
her. He has endowed her with the religious sentiment in its utmost
depth and purity, refined from that gross, intellectual alloy with
which every masculine theologist--save only One, who merely veiled
himself in mortal and masculine shape, but was, in truth, divine--has
been prone to mingle it. I have always envied the Catholics their
faith in that sweet, sacred Virgin Mother, who stands between them
and the Deity, intercepting somewhat of his awful splendor, but
permitting his love to stream upon the worshipper more intelligibly
to human comprehension through the medium of a woman's tenderness.
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