r of such an attempt at
intimidation ever heard of Joan of Arc or Margaret of Anjou.

It is claimed that women are unfit for public life because--another
unproved assertion--they are incapable of reasoning logically or
speaking fluently. Women have had but little opportunity afforded them
for public speaking; yet, even with the slight advantages which they
have possessed, they have proved themselves quite as capable of
arriving at a high standard of reasoning or oratory as the majority of
the opposite sex. Anna Dickinson will draw a full house in any city in
the United States; and disinterested listeners (men) have pronounced her
lectures unsurpassed, in close reasoning and power of fervid eloquence,
by any male lecturer in the Union. But, say some, all women are not
equally gifted; there are few endowed with the talents or voice of Miss
Dickinson. Just so; and but few men are endowed with the talents of
Theodore Cuyler, or gifted with the versatile wit of J.B. Gough; yet
other men speak in public, and in their humbler sphere render the State
good service.

The various Churches have not done what they might in drawing out this
talent in women, and using it for the good of the world. Indeed, while
quoting and straining the writings of the apostles to suit their own
narrow views, those who have given tone to the various branches of the
Christian Church, and virtually fixed the position of women therein,
have wandered far, very far, from the practice of the Pauline days with
regard to the employment of women in the public workings of the Church,
as is shown by a comparison of the present working of the several
Christian Churches with the sacred records, as given in Acts and the
Epistles themselves.

The Society of Friends, upon examination, becoming convinced of the
falsity of the reasoning, assumed to be predicated upon the Word of God,
that there was inferiority between the sexes, and not believing that the
assumption was borne out by a careful perusal of the Scriptures, granted
perfect equality to men and women in the exercise of religious services.
Having been the foremost religious body of modern times in granting
liberty of speech to Christian women, they have been more highly honored
than most other denominations in the number of gifted speakers among
their women.

In the early days of Methodism, too, women were allowed to exercise the
talent for public speaking, with which God had endowed them; and Dinah
Evans