being and woman as a female human being....  What the early Christians did was to strike the ‘male’ out of the definition of man, and ‘human being’ out of the definition of woman.”  Religion generally appears to be a powerfully depressing influence on the position of woman notwithstanding the appeal which it makes to woman.  Westermarck considers, indeed (Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. i, p. 669), that religion “has probably been the most persistent cause of the wife’s subjection to her husband’s rule.”

It is sometimes said that the Christian tendency to place women in an inferior spiritual position went so far that a church council formally denied that women have souls.  This foolish story has indeed been repeated in a parrot-like fashion by a number of writers.  The source of the story is probably to be found in the fact, recorded by Gregory of Tours, in his history (lib. viii, cap.  XX), that at the Council of Macon, in 585, a bishop was in doubt as to whether the term “man” included woman, but was convinced by the other members of the Council that it did.  The same difficulty has presented itself to lawyers in more modern times, and has not always been resolved so favorably to woman as by the Christian Council of Macon.

The low estimate of women that prevailed even in the early Church is admitted by Christian scholars.  “We cannot but notice,” writes Meyrick (art.  “Marriage,” Smith and Cheetham, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities), “even in the greatest of the Christian fathers a lamentably low estimate of woman, and consequently of the marriage relationship.  Even St. Augustine can see no justification for marriage, except in a grave desire deliberately adopted of having children; and in accordance with this view, all married intercourse, except for this single purpose, is harshly condemned.  If marriage is sought after for the sake of children, it is justifiable; if entered into as a remedium to avoid worse evils, it is pardonable; the idea of the mutual society, help, and comfort that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity, hardly existed, and could hardly yet exist.”

From the woman’s point of view, Lily Braun, in her important work on the woman question (Die Frauenfrage, 1901, pp. 28 et seq.) concludes that, in so far as Christianity was favorable to women, we must see that favorable influence in the placing of women on the same moral level as men, as illustrated in the saying of Jesus, “Let him who is without sin amongst you cast the first stone,” implying that each sex owes the same fidelity.  It reached, she adds, no further than this.  “Christianity, which women accepted as a deliverance with so much enthusiasm, and died for as martyrs, has not fulfilled their hopes.”

Even as regards the moral equality of the sexes in marriage, the position of Christian authorities was sometimes equivocal.  One of the