a little of that frank courage and determination in spiritual things, which men are usually so ready to practise towards their wives in temporal things.  It must be a keen delight to a cynic to see a man who owns that he cannot bear to pain his wife by not going to church and saying prayers, yet insisting on having his own way, fearlessly thwarting her wishes, and contradicting her opinions, in every other detail, small and great, of the domestic economy.

The truth of the matter is that the painful element in companionship is not difference of opinion, but discord of temperament.  The important thing is not that two people should be inspired by the same convictions, but rather that each of them should hold his and her own convictions in a high and worthy spirit.  Harmony of aim, not identity of conclusion, is the secret of the sympathetic life; to stand on the same moral plane, and that, if possible, a high one; to find satisfaction in different explanations of the purpose and significance of life and the universe, and yet the same satisfaction.  It is certainly not less possible to disbelieve religiously than to believe religiously.  This accord of mind, this emulation in freedom and loftiness of soul, this kindred sense of the awful depth of the enigma which the one believes to be answered, and the other suspects to be for ever unanswerable—­here, and not in a degrading and hypocritical conformity, is the true gratification of those spiritual sensibilities which are alleged to be so much higher in women than in men.  Where such an accord exists, there may still be solicitude left in the mind of either at the superstition or the incredulity of the other, but it will be solicitude of that magnanimous sort which is in some shape or other the inevitable and not unfruitful portion of every better nature.

If there are women who petulantly or sourly insist on more than this kind of harmony, it is probable that their system of divinity is little better than a special manifestation of shrewishness.  The man is as much bound to resist that, as he is bound to resist extravagance in spending money, or any other vice of character.  If he does not resist it, if he suppresses his opinions, and practices a hypocritical conformity, it must be from weakness of will and principle.  Against this we have nothing to say.  A considerable proportion of people, men no less than women, are born invertebrate, and they must got on as they best can.  But let us at least bargain that they shall not erect the maxims of their own feebleness into a rule for those who are braver and of stronger principle than themselves.  And do not let the accidental exigencies of a personal mistake be made the foundation of a general doctrine.  It is a poor saying, that the world is to become void of spiritual sincerity, because Xanthippe has a turn for respectable theology.