grant this, and respectfully
inquire--what does it prove? If it proves anything it is this--that
all "divine revelations" are an indignity to women, and that they had
better stick to nature. Nature may be exacting, but she is not partial.
If it proves anything, it is that all religions have been made by men
for men and through men. I do not contend for the superiority of other
Bibles, I simply protest against the wrong in ours. One wrong cannot
excuse another. That murder is worse than arson does not make a hero of
the rascal who fires our homes. If Allah were more cruel than Jehovah,
that would be no palliation of the awful crimes of the Old Testament.
That slaves have better clothes than savages cannot make noble traffic
in human blood. A choice of evils is often necessary, but it does not
make either of them a good. But there is no book which tells of a more
infamous monster than the Old Testament, with its Jehovah of murder and
cruelty and revenge, unless it be the New Testament, which arms its God
with hell, and extends his outrages throughout all eternity!

WHY WOMEN SUPPORT IT.

Another argument is that if orthodox Christianity were not good for
women they would not support and cling to it; if it did not comfort them
they would discard it. In reply to that I need only recall to you the
fact that it is the same in all religions. Women have ever been the
stanchest defenders of the faith, the most bitter haters of an infidel,
the most certain that their form of faith is the only truth.* Yet I do
not hear this fact advanced to prove the divinity of the Koran or the
book of Mormon. If it is a valid argument in the one case it is valid in
the others. The trouble with it is it proves too much. It takes in the
whole field. It does not leave a weed, from the first incantation of the
first aborigine to the last shout of the last convert to Mormonism, out
of its range; and it does, and always has done, just as good service
for any one of the other religions as it does for ours. It is a
free-for-all, go-as-you-please argument; but it is the sort of chaff
they feed theological students on--and they sift it over for women. It
is pretty light diet when it gets to them--but it is filling.

* See Appendix G.

Recently I heard a clergyman give the following as his reason for
opposing medical, or scientific training of any sort, for women: "Now
her whole energy and force of action (outside of the family) must be
exp