I claim, however, that if she honestly
thinks there is anything wrong about them, she has a right to say so. I
claim that I have a right to offer my objections to the Bible from the
standpoint of a woman. I think that it is fair, at least, to put the
case before you as it looks to me, using the Bible itself as my chief
witness. That Book I think degrades and belittles women, and I claim
the right to say why I think so. The opposite opinion has been stated by
hundreds of people, hundreds of times, for hundreds of years, so that it
is only fair that I be allowed to bring in a minority report.

Women have for a long time been asking for the right to an education,
for the right to live on an equal footing with their brothers, and
for the right to earn money honestly; while at the same time they have
supported a book and a religion which hold them as the inferiors of
their sons and as objects of contempt and degradation with Jehovah. They
have sustained a so-called "revelation" which holds them as inferior
and unclean things. Now it has always seemed to me that these women are
trying to stand on both sides of the fence at the same time--and that
neither foot touches.

I think they are making a mistake. I think they are making a mistake to
sustain any religion which is based upon faith. Even though a religion
claim a superhuman origin--and I believe they all claim that--it must
be tested by human reason, and if our highest moral sentiments revolt at
any of its dictates, its dictates must go. For the only good thing about
any religion is its morality, and morality has nothing to do with faith.
The one has to do with right actions in this world; the other with
unknown quantities in the next. The one is a necessity of Time; the
other a dream of Eternity. Morality depends upon universal evolution;
Faith upon special "revelation;" and no woman can afford to accept any
"revelation" that has yet been offered to this world.

That Moses or Confucius, Mohammed or Paul, Abraham or Brigham Young
asserts that his particular dogma came directly from God, and that
it was a personal communication to either or all of these favored
individuals, is a fact that can have no power over us unless their
teachings are in harmony with our highest thought, our noblest purpose,
and our purest conception of life. Which of them can bear the test?
Not one "revelation" known to man to-day can look in the face of
the nineteenth century and say, "I am paral