THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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exceedingly impatient under moral wrong. At first thought this may seem a virtue rather than otherwise, for so long as the bad can be made good, and the good made better, no one has a right to be passively indifferent.

The difficulty lies in women failing to perceive that the process of the universe can not be violently hastened; that the moral world as well as the physical has its laws which must be regarded if success is to be attained. It is not easy for women to see that what ought to be may be practically impossible at present, and, indeed, in many cases can be reached only by the slowest processes, but this impatient haste on the part of women will brook no delay. They have a restless, feverish desire for activity, and inability to stay quiet, an irritable impatience to accomplish something and to see immediate returns for the amount of energy expended. Increased oppor­tunities for philanthropic and reformatory effort have added to the intensity of this impatience. Seeing, as they believe, the Kingdom of Heaven to be within reach, they are ready to take it by violence, and so defeat the object in view. It should be said, how­ever, that within the last few years there is evidence of decided change in this respect. Already the disciplinary power of systematic thought and study is making itself felt among women who have availed themselves of it, and instead of bending their energies exclusively in trying to alleviate poverty, squalor and degradation, we find many of them making earnest inquiries as to the cause of all this poverty and vice—trying to find out the underlying causes which bring about the need of charity and almsgiving, for that there should be continued poverty among men and women sound in mind and body proves a radical injustice somewhere. And women as well as men should make it their duty, if not pleasure, to know where the evil lies, and apply the remedy there instead of resting content with the system so long in vogue of almsgiving out of ignorant pity and useless sympathy. It is a question much discussed at the present time what effect the increase of thought and study will have upon the health of women. Doctors disagree upon the subject, but meanwhile women are going right along solving the problem in a practical way. Whether the answer will be in the nega­tive or affirmative is not yet apparent, but this much is certain, as Professor Mor­ris has so aptly put it, “ Patient thought and study are not half so perilous to one’s nerves and brains as are the fret and worry incident to the strife for the possession of the thousand and one now alleged necessaries of decent living. Genuinely patient thought and study are as much a sedative as an excitant, for they bring the repose of strength.” So far as my own observation goes, it is not the stimulus of thought and study which works the ills of which physicians complain today as it is the irrational life which women are disposed to live, simply because material productions have increased so rapidly that it is comparatively easy for nearly every home to have an excess of luxuries, which, instead of adding to the well-being of those who possess them, are often an increased perplexity and aggravation.

Until our homes are simpler and less an object of care and anxiety, until our dress is determined by beauty, health and utility rather than by fashion or caprice, and until our tables are ordered with regard to physical well-being, we do wrong to lay the various forms of nervous prostration to the account of thought and study. Even in cases where household luxuries are not an occasion of fret and worry there is danger of pernicious influence from them, since they lead one to rest content with the lower forms of happiness rather than to seek the higher. The sense of vision is the most tyrannical of all our senses, and few women have it under wise control. I would not wish to advocate stoicism and puritanism in the home, but this love of luxury, this gratification of the senses tends to enervate and make us satisfied with ourselves and our surroundings, forgetful of the facts that it is in the activity of our powers rather than in the passive gratification of them that we eventually come to that real satisfac­tion which alone is the object of highest desire.

In reflecting upon the broader opportunities open to women, the question arises as to what effect they will have upon religion and the church. Hitherto women have been the conservative element in the church and its chief support. Evidently' a change

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