unoccupied woman of fashion thrown
wholly upon herself.... Does not the abuse of the religious element in
woman demand our earnest attention and investigation?

Priestcraft did not end with the beginning of the reign of
Protestantism. Woman has always been the greatest dupe, because the
sentiments act blindly, and they alone have been educated in her. Her
veneration, not guided by an enlightened intellect, leads her as
readily to the worship of saints, pictures, holy days, and inspired
men and books, as of the living God and the everlasting principles of
Justice, Mercy, and Truth.

There is the Education Society, in which women who can barely read and
write and speak their own language correctly, form sewing societies,
and beg funds to educate a class of lazy, inefficient young men for
the ministry, who, starting in life on the false principle that it is
a blessing to escape physical labor, begin at once to live on their
piety. What is the result? Why, after going through college,
theological seminaries, and a brief struggle at fitting up skeleton
sermons, got up by older heads for the benefit of beginners, and after
preaching them for a season to those who hunger and thirst for light
and truth, they sink down into utter insignificance, too inefficient
to keep a place, and too lazy to earn the salt to their porridge,
whilst the women work on to educate more for the same destiny. Look at
the long line of benevolent societies, all filled with these male
agents, living, like so many leeches, on the religious element in our
natures, most of them from the ranks of the clergy, who, unable to
build up or keep a church, have taken refuge in some of these
theological asylums for the intellectually maimed, halt, and blind of
this profession.

Woman really thinks she is doing God service when she casts her mite
into their treasury, when in fact not one-tenth of all the funds
raised ever reach the ultimate object. Among the clergy we find our
most violent enemies--those most opposed to any change in woman's
position; yet no sooner does one of these find himself out of place
and pocket, than, if all the places in the various benevolent
societies chance to be occupied, he takes a kind of philanthropic
survey of the whole habitable globe, and forthwith forms a Female
Benevolent Society for the conversion of the Jews, perhaps, or for
sending the Gospel to the Feejee Islands, and he is, in himself, the
law for one and the gospel fo