Читать книгу Woman's Life in Colonial Days - Carl Holliday - Страница 13

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Little gentleness and surely little of the overwhelming love that was Christ's are apparent in a creed so stern and uncompromising. But the age in which it flourished was not in itself a gentle and tolerant era. It had not been so many years since men and women had been tortured and executed for their faith. The Spanish Inquisition had scarcely ceased its labor of barbarism; and days were to follow both in England and on the continent when acts almost as savage would be allowed for the sake of religion. In spite, moreover, of all that has been said above, in spite of the literalness, the belief in a personal devil, the fear of an arbitrary God, the religion of Puritanism was not without comfort to the New England woman. Many are the references to the Creator's comforting presence and help. Note these lines from a letter written by Margaret Winthrop to her husband in 1637: "Sure I am, that all shall work to the best to them that love God, or rather are loved of him. I know he will bring light out of obscurity, and make his righteousness shine forth as clear as noonday. Yet I find in myself an adverse spirit, and a trembling heart, not so willing to submit to the will of God as I desire. There is a time to plant, and a time to pull up that which is planted, which I could desire might not be yet. But the Lord knoweth what is best, and his will be done … "

Though woman might not speak or hold office in the Church, yet she was not by any means denied the ordinary privileges and comforts of religious worship, but rather was encouraged to gather with her sisters in informal seasons of prayer and meditation. The good wives are commended in many of the writings of the day for general charity work connected with the church, and are mentioned frequently as being present at the evening assemblies similar to our modern prayer meetings. Cotton Mather makes this notation in his Essays to do Good, published in 1710: "It is proposed, That about twelve families agree to meet (the men and their wives) at each other's houses, in rotation, once in a fortnight or a month, as shall be thought most proper, and spend a suitable time together in religious exercises." Even when women ventured to hold formal religious meetings there was at first little or no protest. According to Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, when Anne Hutchinson, that creator of religious strife and thorn in the side of the Elders, conducted assemblies for women only, there was even praise for the innovation. It was only when this leader criticised the clergy that silence was demanded. "Mrs. Hutchinson thought fit to set up a meeting for the sisters, also, where she repeated the sermons preached the Lord's day before, adding her remarks and expositions. Her lectures made much noise, and fifty or eighty principal women attended them. At first they were generally approved of."

Only when the decency and the decorum of the colony was threatened did the stern laws of the church descend upon Mistress Hutchinson and her followers. It was doubtless the riotous conduct of these radicals that caused the resolution to be passed by the assembly in 1637, which stated, according to Winthrop: "That though women might meet (some few together) to pray and edify one another; yet such a set assembly, (as was then in practice at Boston), where sixty or more did meet every week, and one woman (in a prophetical way, by resolving questions of doctrine, and expounding scripture) took upon her the whole exercise, was agreed to be disorderly, and without rule."

Among the Quakers women's meetings were common; for equality of the sexes was one of their teachings. In the Journal of George Fox (1672) we come across this statement: "We had a Mens-Meeting and a Womens-Meeting. … On the First of these Days the Men and Women had their Meetings for Business, wherein the Affairs of the Church of God were taken care of." Moreover, what must have seemed an abomination to the Puritan Fathers, these Quakers allowed their wives and mothers to serve in official capacities in the church, and permitted them to take part in the quarterly business sessions. Thus, John Woolman in his Diary says: "We attended the Quarterly meeting with Ann Gaunt and Mercy Redman." "After the quarterly meeting of worship ended I felt drawings to go to the Women's meeting of business which was very full." What was especially shocking to their Puritan neighbors was the fact that these Quakers allowed their women to go forth as missionary speakers, and, as in the case of Mary Dyer, to invade the sacred precincts of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to proselyte to Quakerism.