still
allowed some interest in religion, and some common expectations with the
other sex, concerning the future state. But in Mohammedan countries,
even this is nearly or quite denied her. "It is a popular tradition
among the Mohammedans, which obtains to this day, that woman shall not
enter Paradise;" and it requires some effort of the imagination to
conceive how debased and wretched must be the condition of the female
sex, to originate and sustain such a horrible and blasphemous tradition.

Even in the refined and shining ages of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, where
the cultivation of letters, the graces of finished style, the charms of
poetry and eloquence, the elegances of architecture, sculpture,
painting, and embroidery, the glory of conquest, and the pride of
national distinction, were unsurpassed by any people before or
since--even then and there, what was the woman but the abject slave of
man? the object of his ambition, or his avarice, or his lust, or his
power? the alternate victim of his pleasures, his disgust, or his
cruelty? the creature of his caprice? and, what is worse, the menial
slave of her own mental darkness, moral debasement, and vicious
indulgences? If history is not false, the answer is decisive. This, and
only this, was she!

But how entirely has our religion reversed all this, and rendered her
life a blessing to herself and to society. And as Christianity has done
so much for woman, she ought in return to do much for Christianity.
Every thing that can render life desirable, she owes to Christ. Think
for one moment of the hole of the pit from which Christ has taken you!
Think of what would be your present condition, had it not been for the
Christian religion! You might have been with the debased and wretched
victims of pagan oppression, cruelty, and lust; burning alive upon the
funeral pile; or sacrificed by hands of violence or pollution; or cast
out, and neglected, to pine in solitary and hopeless grief. Or, with the
female followers of the false prophet, or, in more refined but
unchristian nations, you might have been little else than the slave or
the convenience of man, and left to doubt whether any inheritance awaits
you beyond the grave.

From these depths of debasement and wretchedness, Christianity has taken
you, and placed you on high, to move, and shine, and rejoice, in the
sphere for which the Creator designed you. Not only has it made your
condition as good as that of man, but, in a mo