nothing new. In the house of the Most High they escape from that
vexing routine. Here they may brush shoulders with a crowd.
Here, so to speak, they may crane their mental necks and stretch
their spiritual legs. Here, above all, they may come into some sort of
contact with men relatively more affable, cultured and charming
than their husbands and fathers--to wit, with the rev. clergy.


Elsewhere in Christendom, though women are not quite so
relentlessly watched and penned up, they feel much the same need
of variety and excitement, and both are likewise on tap in the
temples of the Lord. No one, I am sure, need be told that the
average missionary society or church sewing circle is not primarily a
religious organization. Its actual purpose is precisely that of the
absurd clubs and secret orders to which the lower and least
resourceful classes of men belong: it offers a means of refreshment,
of self-expression, of personal display, of political manipulation and
boasting, and, if the pastor happens to be interesting, of
discreet and almost lawful intrigue. In the course of a life largely
devoted to the study of pietistic phenomena, I have never met a
single woman who cared an authentic damn for the actual heathen.
The attraction in their salvation is always almost purely social.
Women go to church for the same reason that farmers and convicts
go to church.


Finally, there is the aesthetic lure. Religion, in most parts of
Christendom, holds out the only bait of beauty that the inhabitants
are ever cognizant of. It offers music, dim lights, relatively
ambitious architecture, eloquence, formality and mystery, the