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LETTERS. 133
It was excellent, thought the Bishop. We argued the
point for a little while, when he allowed that Wallin, in one
cessity of the following qualities: “ Pure and sincere piety; unassuming
and unaffected modesty; wise and gentle meekness; tender and delicate
attention; all-sacrificing and all-submissive love.”” In accordance herewith
it was argued, “that the domestic sphere was woman’s proper world; ’’ it
was further said, “that what especially belonged to her mission was, that
she ought humbly to step back when sudden angry passions vent them-
selves upon her; that there is no circumstance in life where a contrary con-
duct could be excused; that, in order to triumph, she ought carefully to
watch her own temper and submit unconstrainedly to that of others; have
respect for the opinion of others, without any prepossession in favor of her
own; and that even where her own opinion should in reality be the right
one, she ought patiently to wait her time to make it valid. Without pure
and sincere piety, woman’s virtue was nothing but vanity; her liberal edn-
cation nothing but surface; her life nothing but a volatile play, and her
whole existence nothing else but an endless contradiction. But a man, even
if he does not always see the heayenly truths with the same quickness, or
if he appears sometimes to doubt them, or think less of, or live less in them,
would still, provided his words or actions do not otherwise stamp him as
blasphemous or godless, in most cases merit only pity, and his unfortunate
state of mind could be, if not exactly excused, still often accounted for,
by saying that no pious mother had formerly given his mind a better tend-
ency, or that in later years no pious wife had turned his dim and confused
thoughts from earthly to heavenly,matters. But a woman who does not
feel that religion is the soul of her soul, is an inexplicable and odious devia-
tion from the celestial order of things,’’ etc., etc.
The incongruities which Fredrika Bremer imagined with sorrow that she
had found in the social position of woman, appeared to her to have been, as
it were, systematized and advocated in this sermon. It made a most pain-
ful impression upon her; and on coming home from church, she gave vent
to’her feelings in an essay, held in a satirical tone, on the superiority of man
and the inferiority of woman, finishing with this dialogue :—Man, with head
erect, striking his breast proudly with his hand: “J/’? Woman : “ Thou!”
Man: “J will! Woman: “Qh, very well!** Man: “Go.” Woman
goes. Man: “ Comeback.’ She comes back. Man: “ Be merry.’ Woman
dies. After her death heaven was opened to receive her; but when after-
wards the man also tried to get admittance, it was denied to him by the
porter at heaven’s gates, who referred him to Bishop Wallin, under whose
surplice he hastened to conceal himself.
On the following day, Fredrika Bremer wrote and sent an anonymous
letter to the Bishop, in which she requested that woman, to her noble and
peaceful missicn, might have a counterpart in a delineation of the man,
such as he ought to be in his domestic relations, and drawn with the same
severity and power, in order that the first picture might have a companion,
and in order, also, that men may in the former sermon not find an excuse
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