one. If it suited
the ministering angels to make a legal splash, he found himself landed
in the law courts. If they took it into their heads to seek another
field, every one assumed it a matter of course that their pastor would
go too." It is because of this influence that in certain quarters the
ecclesiastical hierarchy are taking, year by year, a more feminine
position. It is not impossible that a church who worships Mary as the
Mother of God may be brought to recognize woman as the proper head of
the church. True, as the writer quoted above adds, "she must stoop
to conquer heights like these." Yet the question has been seriously
asked, "Is not the Episcopal office admirably adapted to woman?"
Between a priest and a nun there is only the difference of a bonnet
in their dress, and we know how easily woman can be persuaded to go
without a bonnet, or to exchange it for a hat such as is worn by men.
In England, the curate is sometimes called the first lady of the
parish; and what he now is in theory, a century hence may find him in
fact. "It would be difficult, even now, to detect any difference
of sex in the triviality of purpose, the love of gossip, the petty
interests, the feeble talk, the ignorance, the vanity, the love of
personal display, the white hand dangled over the pulpit, the becoming
vestment, and the embroidered stole, which we are learning gradually
to look upon as attributes of the British curate. So perfect, indeed,
is the imitation, that the excellence of her work may, perhaps, defeat
its own purpose, and the lacquered imitation of woman may satisfy the
world, and for long ages prevent any anxious inquiry after the real
feminine Brummagem."

The tendency thus truthfully described furnished the seedling out of
which grew the Monasticism of the past, and in which the Ritualism of
the present finds its underlying cause. The Church of Rome harnesses
woman to her system, and compels her to contribute greatly to its
prosperity. In Europe the people tire of those great establishments
and endowments, which rest like an incubus on the national life.
In America we are so blind that we foster them by grants from our
legislatures, by giving up the care of hospitals to their use, where
the weak are subjected to the influences of superstition, and the
thoughtless are led astray. Another avenue to power is opened by the
ballot. Grant this to that church, which, through a fatherhood of
priests and a sisterhood of nuns,