of suave
and ingratiating habit, and the great majority of them, from Henry Ward
Beecher up and down, have been taken, soon or late, in transactions
far more suitable to the boudoir than to the footstool of the Almighty.
Their famous killings have always been made among the silliest sort of
women--the sort, in brief, who fall so short of the normal acumen of
their sex that they are bemused by mere beauty in men.

Such women are in a minority, and so the sex shows a good deal fewer
religious enthusiasts per mille than the sex of sentiment and belief.
Attending, several years ago, the gladiatorial shows of the Rev. Dr.
Billy Sunday, the celebrated American pulpit-clown, I was constantly
struck by the great preponderance of males in the pen devoted to the
saved. Men of all ages and in enormous numbers came swarming to the
altar, loudly bawling for help against their sins, but the women were
anything but numerous, and the few who appeared were chiefly either
chlorotic adolescents or pathetic old Saufschwestern. For six nights
running I sat directly beneath the gifted exhorter without seeing a
single female convert of what statisticians call the child-bearing
age--that is, the age of maximum intelligence and charm. Among the male
simpletons bagged by his yells during this time were the president of
a railroad, half a dozen rich bankers and merchants, and the former
governor of an American state. But not a woman of comparable position
or dignity. Not a woman that any self-respecting bachelor would care to
chuck under the chin.

This cynical view of religious emotionalism, and with it of the whole
stock of ecclesiastical balderdash, is probably responsible, at least in
part, for the reluctance of women to enter upon the sacerdotal career.
In those Christian sects which still bar them from the pulpit--usually
on the imperfectly concealed ground that they are not equal to its
alleged demands upon the morals and the intellect--one never hears of
them protesting against the prohibition; they are quite content to leave
the degrading imposture to men, who are better fitted for it by talent
and conscience. And in those baroque sects, chiefly American, which
admit them they show no eagerness to put on the stole and chasuble. When
the first clergywoman appeared in the United States, it was predicted
by alarmists that men would be driven out of the pulpit by the new
competition. Nothing of the sort has occurred, nor is it in prospe