Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/127

 to the hunted hart, or as Epps’s cocoa for breakfast to the person who hunts him.’ And I believe, Lettie, that is really the secret of Uncles Spines’ popularity as a preacher. He treats Christianity impartially,—-always ready to do justice to the golden grain, but equally ready to burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. The chaff, however, which I desire to see burnt—whether it exists in the Bible, the Koran, or elsewhere—is the usurpation by man of woman’s place in spiritual interests. That, to my mind, is the only theology worth discussing; all else is rubbish. This would be rubbish too, were it not that the relations of women to men and to each other in this world are falsified and spoilt by the false religious position. You, Lettie, lay all the blame on man’s arrogance; I, for my part, hold that we are at least equally to blame, because if women generally were to insist upon a reversal of the relations of the sexes in religion, men, even those most opposed to the change, would have no alternative but to submit. Any religion in the world, deprived of the countenance of its women, would fall to pieces like a house of cards. The game, therefore, is really in our own hands.’