THE INFIDEL WOMAN by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 27, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 13.

THE INFIDEL WOMAN.

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

[By Ella Wheeler Wilcox, in San Francisco Examiner]

A widower with four little girls thinks of marrying. He says: “What I want is a true, virtuous woman, if I should remarry; and I do not care whether she is an infidel or a Christian; for my four girls would at least be taught that virtue was the price of their inheritance.”

To me the most repellent object on earth is a woman infidel. She is as unnatural as a flower which breathes poison instead of perfume; as a child which curses instead of prattles.

Were I a man, I could contemplate any existence, however lonely or desolate, in calmness, rather than accept life-companionship with a woman devoid of religious belief. I do not understand how any human being faces life without faith.

It is easy enough to face death, if you believe it ends existence; but to face the vicissitudes of life and the death of those who make earth beautiful to you, with no strong divine arm on which to lean—it is an awful thought.

The woman who is to assume the care of four step-daughters will need the most devout faith in God and His guardian angels to sustain her. She will need to believe in the efficacy of prayer, and to send her troubled spirit to God on the wings of prayer every hour of every day, if she would meet the demands upon her patience, judgment, and good nature.

The woman who does not know the wonderful healing and helping influence of prayer, has not yet entered the anteroom of joy.

We do not always get that for which we pray. But we get much more than we pray for in the long run. We get inexpressible comfort and untold strength and fortitude, besides clearer vision and increased patience and wisdom.

Every woman needs all these in her relations to the ordinary events of life. She needs them to impart to men, who are dependent upon her for their best strength and highest attainments.

To be chaste is only one of the feminine virtues.

I have encountered chaste women whom I wanted to flee from as from a bed of snow. To remain meant to be chilled to death.

It is only where chastity is the white flame from the divine fire of the soul that it is beautiful.

The infidel woman must lack warmth and sympathy—that highest form of sympathy which is not pity, but love and understanding.

To understand our fellow-beings we must love them, and love the Source from which we all sprang. It was not chance or accident. One who studies even the rudiments of the marvelous construction of the universe must feel the magnitude of the great Intelligence which conceived it, and must thrill with reverence for something we call God. Not the petty, spiteful little being many churches worship as God—but the great All-soul of love. No, no, my mistaken friend, do not marry an infidel woman. Marry a wife whose heart is full of divine love.