human purpose and for her special feminine purpose. that man has to control them for his general human purpose and his special masculine purpose. All that is as undeniable as anything in metaphysics or mathematics.
If woman had been consulted, it seems to me theology would have been in a vastly better state than it is now. I do not think that any woman would ever have preached the damnation of babies new-born; and 'hell, paved with the skulls of infants not a span long," would be a region yet to be discovered in theology. A celibate monk — with God's curse writ on his face, which knew no child, no wife, no sister, and blushed that he had a mother — might well dream of such a thing. He had been through the preliminary studies. Consider the ghastly attributes which are commonly put upon God in the popular theology; the idea of infinite wrath, of infinite damnation, and total depravity, and all that. Why, you could not get a woman, that had intellect enough to open her mouth, to preach these things anywhere. Women think they think that they believe them; but they do not. Celibate priests, who never knew marriage, or what paternity was, who thought woman was a "pollution" — they invented these ghastly doctrines; and when I have heard the Athanasian Creed and the Dies Ire chanted by monks, with the necks of bulls and the lips of donkeys — why, I have understood where the doctrine came from, and have felt the appropriateness of their braying out the damnation hymns; woman could not do it. We shut her out of the choir, out of the priest's house, out of the pulpit; and then the priest, with unnatural vows, came in, and taught these doctrines of devils." Could you find a woman who would read to a congregation, as words of truth, Jonathan Edwards' sermon on a Future State — "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," "The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners," "Wrath upon the Wicked to the Uttermost," "The Future Punishment of the Wicked," and other things of that sort? Nay, can you find a worthy woman, of any considerable culture, who will read the fourteenth chapter of Numbers, and declare that a true picture of the God she worships? Only a she-dragon could do it in our day.
The popular theology leaves us nothing feminine in the character of God How could it be otherwise, when so much of the popular theology is the work of men who thought woman was a "pollution," and barred her out of all the high places of the church? If women had had their place in ecclesiastical teaching, I doubt that the "Athanasian Creed" would ever have been thought. a "symbol" of Christianity. The pictures and hymns which describe the last judgment are a protest against the exclusion of woman from teaching in the church. I suffer not a woman to teach, but to be in silence," said a writer in the New Testament. The sentence has brought manifold evil in its train. So much for the employments of women.
By nature, woman has the same political rights that man has — to vote, to hold office, to make and administer laws. These she has as a matter of right. The strong hand and the great head of man keep her down; nothing more. In America,in Christendom, woman has no political rights, is not a citizen in full; she has no voice in making or administering the Jaws, none in electing the rulers or administrators thereof. She can hold no office — can not be committee of a primary school, overseer of the poor, or guardian to a public lamp-post. But any man, with conscience enough to keep out of jail, mind enough to es-