n and secured the greatest advancement.

Compare the position of woman in Christian Spain with her position in
Infidel France. Compare her condition in Russia, with the flag of the
Church and the seal of the Cross for her protection, with that of her
sister under the stars and stripes of America, with a constitution
written by the infidels Jefferson and Paine.

Compare them and decide whether it is to the Church and the Cross, with
their wars and persecutions, or to Liberty and Scepticism that women owe
their loyal love and their earnest support. Compare them and determine
then whether it is to Christianity or to Science that she should fly for
protection, and where it is that she will be most certain of justice.
Compare them and answer whether it is to the Fathers of the Church or
to the Founders of Republics that women should be most grateful. Compare
them, and be thankful, oh women of America, that the Church never had
her hand on the throat of the Constitution of the United States, and
that she is losing her grip on the Supreme Bench! *

In our pride of race we forget that it is less than three hundred short
years since Christianity by both legal and spiritual power enforced the
most degrading and vile conditions upon woman, compelling her to live
solely by the sale of her virtue.**

Only within the past three hundred years of growing scepticism and loss
of power by the Church has either purity or dignity become possible for
women; and it is well for us to remember that for over 1500 years
of Christianity, when the Church had almost absolute power, it never
dreamed of elevating woman, or recognizing her as other than an inferior
being created solely to minister to the lowest nature of man, and
possessing neither a right to her own person nor a voice in her own
defence.

I wish that every woman who upholds the Church to-day might read the
array of facts on this subject so ably presented by Matilda Joslyn Gage
in her work on "Woman, Church, and State," a digest of which is printed
in the last chapter of vol. 1. of the "History of Woman Suffrage," of
which she is one of the editors. It is so ably written, and the facts
collected are so damning, that I need add no word of mine to such
passages as I can give from it, in the accompanying appendix to this
work. ***

* On the status of women there is much of interest in Mr.
Herbert Spencer's "Principles of Sociology," vol 1. Mr.
Spencer deals with the