Bring yourselves then boldly into contact with these classes, and
especially into contact with the women--with the wives and mothers. For
it is through the women, through them mainly, if not altogether, that
civilization and religion can be introduced among any degraded class. It
was so in the Middle Age. The legends which tell us how woman was then
the civilizer, the softener, the purifier, the perpetual witness to
fierce and coarse men, that there were nobler aims in life than pleasure,
and power, and the gratification of revenge; that not self-assertion, but
self-sacrifice was the Divine ideal, toward which all must aspire. These
old legends are immortal; for they speak of facts and laws which will
endure as long as there are women upon earth. Through the woman, the
civilizer and the Christianizer must reach the man. Through the wife, he
must reach the husband. Through the mother, he must reach the children.
I say he must. It is easy to complain that the clergy in every age and
country have tried to obtain influence over women. They have been forced
to do so, because otherwise they could obtain no influence at all.
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