"The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink Together, dwarfed or God-like, bond or free."
Miss Sophia Jex Blake, whose opinion in all questions connected with the education of women is of great weight, has thus expressed herself touching the subject of co-education: "That society is most happy which conforms most strictly to the order of nature as indicated in the family relation, where brother and sister mutually elevate and sustain each other.... A school for young men becomes a community in itself, with its own standard of morality and its laws of honor; but in a college for both sexes the student will find a public sentiment not so lenient as that of a community of associates needing the same indulgence."
Miss Blake elsewhere answers, it seems to me with reason and justice, the oft-repeated objection to co-education, founded upon the imaginary danger of a too early romance and a hasty attachment, followed by an unwise and to-be-repented-of marriage:
"There is something in the association of every-day life which appeals to the judgment rather than to the fancy, and weeks and months of steady labor over the same problems, or at the same sciences, will not be more likely to create romances than casual meetings at fêtes and balls."
But I turn from the secular and civil aspect of the subject to inquire what service woman may render the church, and here I am confronted by another question it would be difficult to answer: What service has she not rendered? Our churches, most of them, will not ordain her to the ministry, and yet do they not derive their spiritual life from her influence? Could they exist without her effort and faithful service? Who preached the first Christian sermon, and proclaimed to an unbelieving world, "He is risen from the dead!" if not the women who ran with great joy from the empty sepulcher, bearing with them a license to preach from the Christ himself, given through the Angel of the Resurrection, who said, "Go quickly and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead, and behold he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him?" That was a very short sermon and had no text, but no pulpit rhetoric and no Sunday oratory will ever eclipse its sublime eloquence. If priests received their commission to preach from the Apostles, the Apostles received theirs from the women who mourned at the sepulcher and found it empty. Women can better afford to remain out of the pulpit than the pulpit can afford to exclude them. When the Christ shall return and His kingdom be established forever, the nations shall hear once more the old Easter sermon first preached by a woman, "He is risen from the dead!" The most tender and faithful friendship our Saviour ever found in his weary and painful pilgrimage upon earth burned in the heart and shone in the life of a noble and consecrated woman.