how woman's position under the Christian Church for the last 1,500
years.

If in so doing we shall help to show man's unwarranted usurpation over
woman's religious and civil rights, and the very great difference
between true religion and theology, this chapter will not have been
written in vain, as it will prove that the most grievous wound ever
inflicted upon woman has been in the teaching that she was not created
equal with man, and the consequent denial of her rightful place and
position in Church and State.

Woman had acquired great liberty under the old civilizations. In Rome
she had not only secured remarkable personal and property rights,[178]
but she officiated as priestess in the most holy offices of religion.
Not only as Vestal Virgin did she guard the Sacred Fire, upon whose
preservation the welfare of Rome was held to depend, but at the end of
every consular period women officiated in private worship and
sacrifice to the _Bono Dea_, with mystic ceremonies which no man's
presence was suffered to profane. The Eleusinian mysteries were
attributed to Ceres herself, and but few men had the courage to dare
initiation into their most secret rites. In ancient Egypt, woman
bought and sold in the markets, was physician, colleges for her
instruction in medicine existing 1,200 years before Christ; she
founded its literature, the "Sacred Songs" of Isis being deemed by
Plato literally 10,000 years old; as priestess she performed the most
holy offices of religion, holding the Sacred Sistrum and offering
sacrifices to the gods; she sat upon its throne and directed the
civilization of this country at the most brilliant period of its
history; while in the marriage relation she held more than equality;
the husband at the ceremony promising obedience to the wife in all
things, a rule which according to Wilkinson, wrought no harm, but, on
the contrary, was productive of lasting fidelity and regard, the
husband and wife sitting together upon the same double chair in life,
and lying together in the same tomb after death. Crimes against women
were rare in olden Egypt, and were punished in the most severe manner.
In Persia, woman was one of the founders of the ancient Parsee
religion, which taught the existence of but a single God, thus
introducing monotheism into that rare old kingdom. The Germans endowed
their wives upon marriage with a horse, bridle, and spear, emblematic
of equality, and they held themselves bound to chastity