Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/220

 Higher Thought. In the great Ethical Movement women speakers are recognised as of equal value with their men speakers when they have a message to deliver; Swedenborgianism gives a high place to the woman prophet. There are thousands of women preachers in the Salvation Army and women missioners in every part of the country.

Thus the argument that women should keep silent in the Churches is no longer of any potency, seeing that women are constantly speaking there, except in those sections of the Universal Church already named, the Anglican, the Roman Catholic, and the Presbyterian.

A rigid interpretation of the letter of Christian teaching is here made to exclude gifted women from the high offices of the Church. Even the Nonconformists, who in practice are less official, generally decline to ordain women to the ministry and to provide them with opportunities of studying for this important office.

One would almost rather believe that prejudice and not professional jealousy was the chief cause of this behaviour. It is not a pleasant thought that, for the sake of incomes to be drawn, and by the competition of women to be endangered, clergy and ministers oppose the pulpit for women. It surely cannot be that Paul, the strict upholder of the customs, good and bad, of his