IN refusing to admit the women into the Young Men's Christian Association, Brother Moody has thrown aside the strongest element in religious matters which he could have used. Women are peculiarly receptive. Their nature is intensely emotional. They see instinctively where the man has to grope and reason his way up. A thousand sympathetic tendrils stretch out from their hearts, like the arms of the cuttle fish, which seize upon, wind around and draw to the centre, in strong affinity, if not assimilation, every object to which they are attracted. If it be good, it transforms them to angels; if evil, to fiends. No man can be such a saint as a woman; no man such a sinner. It is this intense emotion and natural instinct which admirably qualify them for religious purposes. And it proves, moreover, why, without them, there isn't a church in this city that could live six months. The church membership as every one knows is largely feminine. The influence which the Church exerts is feminine. The sympathy which the minister gets is feminine. His smoking-cap, dressing-robe, slippers, book-marks, donation-parties and other pleasant perquisites are feminine. And all the grumbling, fault-finding, hard work and hard knocks which the minister has to encounter, are purely masculine. The man, naturally lacking in reverence as well as religion, is inclined to regard the minister from a commercial point of view, and to treat him as an equal, while the woman looks up with admiring reverence.

Any woman who has been to church, unless her nearest neighbor has just come out in a new hat, can tell you what text the minister preached from, and give you a syllabus of his discourse. There isn't one man in ten who can do that. The man carries his business into church with him. The woman, unless there is an harassing doubt concerning the integrity of the beans, which might have been placed in the oven a little too soon, leaves her business at home. She can shed her cares as an umbrella sheds rain. The man, be he a dentist, allows dental reflections to insinuate themselves among the threads of the discourse, and wonders how he can get sister this or that into his chair of torture, and mentally determines to try it on at the next sewing-circle. The doctor is rather quietly rejoiced to see a large number of sisters absent, because this argues sickness. Women don't stay away from church unless they are sick, or some one is coming to dinner. The lawyer wonders if a certain statement the minister has made, has any legal bearing, and this leads him to think of the case of Boggs vs. Noggs, which is pending in the courts. The merchant who has just seen two of his clerks driving down the avenue at a very rapid rate, with cigars in their mouths, and in a style which seems to indicate they are not going to a Sunday School, wonders where they are going, where they got their money to go with, and what they are going to do when they get there. And so on with each class. It is all very well to talk of the quiet of the Sabbath, and the propriety of forgetting the things of this world. It is a pretty theory, but men don't observe it. A man, in course of time, gets his nature so soaked and saturated with the cares, foibles, and follies of this world, that the moment it is squeezed in the slightest degree, some of these things will ooze out. So he thinks of the things of this world, and the words of the minister hum through his thoughts as the buzz of the bees comes to your ears in a hot summer day, when you are lying in the shade of the trees; and, as the architect was in league with the devil when he built the church, the ventilation is slightly bad. All these things militate against watchfulness, and the man, having confidence that the minister is on the right doctrinal track, quietly goes to sleep, and makes no sign thereafter, except to brush a fly from his nose, or nod vigorous assents to the parson's heads with his own.

I have noticed that women do not sleep in church. When Mrs. Blobbs accompanies old Blobbs to church, that good woman's attention is sadly distracted from the sermon, by the constant necessity of punching Old Blobbs in the ribs to keep him from snoring, whereat Old Blobbs opens both eyes wide open, fixes them upon the minister, as if he had never slept a wink in his life, gives his individual and serious attention to the sermon for the space of one minute, gradually closes one eye, as if winking at somebody, then quietly shuts the other, as if he did not want to disturb any one, and in another moment his nose sounds the whistle that he has arrived at the station of Morpheus, which necessitates another punch from Mrs. Blobbs. Thus Old Blobbs is kept between a snore and a swear the whole blessed morning, and goes home to his dinner without a single coherent idea about the sermon, while Mrs. Blobbs can go from firstly to tenthly, and throw in significant remarks about the young fellow who was fool enough to go to sleep on a window sill, while Paul was preaching, resulting in a broken neck, or something of that sort, you know.

Woman gives herself up without a question or a doubt to the inspiration of the hour, with the whole intensity of her emotional nature, very much as I think I should give myself up to the beats and pulsations of the organ-heart of some old cathedral, while the "dim, religious light" streamed in through the stained windows, and saints and martyrs looked down upon me from their niches.

And then a man in a sewing circle, or church sociable, or maternal meeting, or aid society meeting, or anything else of that harmless sort, is as much out of place, and as essentially useless as a coal-heaver would be at a classical concert. And yet these are great aids. They must be in the hands of the women. The major part of the machinery of the church must be engineered by the women. For all these reasons do I think that Brother Moody was unwise to refuse admission to the women.

May 22, 1869.