alled on for further remarks, spoke in the most
earnest manner:

You may go over the world and you will find that every form of
religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman.
There is not one which has not made her subject to man. Men may
rejoice in them because they make man the head of the woman. I
have been traveling over the old world during the last few years
and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes
the Hindoo woman burn herself on the funeral pyre of her husband?
Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her
religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of
polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this;
but when he declares, "Thus saith the Lord," of course he can do
it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us that as Christ is
the head of the church, so is man the head of the woman, how are
we to break the chains which have held women down through the
ages? You Christian women can look at the Hindoo, the Turkish,
the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such
bondage. Observe to-day the work women are doing for the
churches. _The church rests on the shoulders of women._ Have we
ever yet heard a man preach a sermon from Genesis i:27-28, which
declares the full equality of the feminine and masculine element
in the Godhead? They invariably shy at that first chapter. They
always get up in their pulpits and read the second chapter.

Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It
teaches us that abominable idea of the sixth century--Augustine's
idea--that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of
sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense
of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the
mouths of the priesthood?... The canon laws are infamous--so
infamous that a council of the Christian church was swamped by
them. In republican America, and in the light of the nineteenth
century, we must demand that our religion shall teach a higher
idea in regard to woman. People seem to think we have reached the
very end of theology; but let me say that the future is to be as
much purer than the past as our immediate past has been better
than the dark ages. We want to help roll off from the soul of