Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/12

6 Victor Hugo predicted that the nineteenth century would be known as "woman's century," and the remarkable advance surely justifies that prediction. It has been an advance along every line of woman's capacities.

In the cathedral at Durham in northern England a cross is fitted into the stone floor, only a short distance from the door. To-day when a woman visits the cathedral the verger will point out the cross and tell her that once it was the boundary beyond which no woman worshipper could pass. She must remain at a distance from the chancel and the altar; she was not worthy to worship with her husband or son. Pathetic, indeed, that the religious fervor that built that massive cathedral and entombed the venerable Bede within its sacred crypt, yet shut out from woman the solace of higher spiritual communion! The monks of Durham, like many teachers and preachers of long centuries after, held what Lyman Abbott calls the "priestly account" of the creation of the human race. The "prophetic account" has through the last century come more and more into recognition. It holds that both were created for themselves and for God, that they are coequals. Tennyson's lofty interpretation of the destiny of man will endure as truth when Milton's harmonious and wonderful interpretation of the creation of the world will be read only as a poem of magnificent conception.

The spiritual equality of man and woman is no longer a question except in those benighted countries where woman has not yet been permitted to rise into her own estate. Throughout Christendom now there are women working soul to soul and spirit to spirit with consecrated men. In the temples of philanthropy and humanity no cross is set to bar woman from the chancel. In our day if woman has a spiritual message to give and can give it well, who shall set before her a boundary? The