The Rev. J. Wordsworth, speaking on Thursday in the Church
Congress of the wide division now opening between the Church and the Universities, complains that wealthy mothers now fail to teach their children the elementary truths of religion. "A Bible class for mothers of the wealthier class would be about the best expenditure of time possible to a parochial clergyman." That, as it is put, sounds whimsical, or even nonsensical, but there is a gleam of truth in it. While female education is improving rapidly, and "girl graduates" are becoming wranglers, the means for teaching "divinity," in its large sense, to women are not expanding. The subject is not so carefully taught to girls as it is to boys, and is very much less compulsory. Every- thing effective in the educational machinery for women is modern, and the modern tone is to leave theology for home reading. The mere fact that while at least half the higher teachers of men are clergymen, no female teacher can have gone through that training, makes a decided difference, as does also the declining influence of the Clergy over women. The highly- educated woman of to-day cannot absorb a sermon or a lecture without mental criticism, sometimes very destructive.
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