o
derive all the benefits, can, like a malignant parasite, suck the
life-blood of its victims while their still living prey submits without
a struggle! The worker, inebriated with his religious delusion, calmly
allows his very substance to be the means through which his parasitic
employer grows fat.

"That was the net result of Christianity, and of the activity of the
Christian Church in spreading abroad a spirit of kindliness, humanity
and brotherhood! The coquetry of Christianity with Labor within the last
generation or two is only what one would expect. But it is clear that
the one constant function of Christianity has been to encourage loyalty
to existing institutions, no matter what their character so long as they
were not unfriendly to the Church. Slavery and the oppression of labor
continued while Christianity was at its strongest and wealthiest; its
own wealth derived from the oppression it encouraged. Slavery died out
when social and economic conditions rendered its continuance more and
more difficult. And the conditions of labor improved when men ceased to
talk of a 'Providential Order,' of 'God's Decree,' and dismissed the
evangelical narcotic served out by the Church, and began to realize that
social conditions were the products of understandable and modifiable
natural forces." (_C. Cohen: "Christianity, Slavery and Labor."_)

CHAPTER XVII

RELIGION AND WOMAN

_She was the first in the transgression therefore keep her in
subjection._

* * * * *

_Fierce is the dragon and cunning the asp; but woman has the malice
of both._

ST. GREGORY OF NAZIANZUM.

_Thou art the devil's gate, the betrayer of the tree, the first
deserter of the Divine Law._

TERTULLIAN.

_What does it matter whether it be in the person of mother or
sister; we have to beware Eve in every woman._

_How much better two men could live and converse together than a man
and a woman._

ST. AUGUSTINE.

_No gown worse becomes a woman than the desire to be wise._

LUTHER.

_The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in
the way of women's emancipation._

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

It is noticed in most calculations of churchgoers that women have
remained attached to the churches in a far higher proportion than men.
The proportion of women in the churches is vastly greater than their
proportion in t