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tered to his necessities, followed in his train, and wept at his crucifixion, wait in vain? No! No! Did the cloven tongues of fire descend upon the heads of _women_ as well as men? Yes, my friends, "it sat upon _each one of them_;" Acts ii, 3. _Women_ as well as men were to be living stones in the temple of grace, and therefore _their_ heads were consecrated by the descent of the Holy Ghost as well as those of men. Were _women_ recognized as fellow laborers in the gospel field? They were! Paul says in his epistle to the Philippians, "help those _women_ who labored with me, in the gospel;" Phil. iv, 3. But this is not all. Roman _women_ were burnt at the stake, _their_ delicate limbs were torn joint from joint by the ferocious beasts of the Ampitheatre, and tossed by the wild bull in his fury, for the diversion of that idolatrous, warlike, and slaveholding people. Yes, _women_ suffered under the ten persecutions of heathen Rome, with the most unshrinking constancy and fortitude; not all the entreaties of friends, nor the claims of new born infancy, nor the cruel threats of enemies could make _them_ sprinkle one grain of incense upon the altars of Roman idols. Come now with me to the beautiful valleys of Piedmont. Whose blood stains the green sward, and decks the wild flowers with colors not their own, and smokes on the sword of persecuting France? It is _woman's_, as well as man's? Yes, _women_ were accounted as sheep for the slaughter, and were cut down as the tender saplings of the wood. But time would fail me, to tell of all those hundreds and thousands of _women_, who perished in the Low countries of Holland, when Alva's sword of vengeance was unsheathed against the Protestants, when the Catholic Inquisitions of Europe became the merciless executioners of vindictive wrath, upon those who dared to worship God, instead of bowing down in unholy adoration before "my Lord God the _Pope_," and when England, too, burnt her Ann Ascoes at the stake of martyrdom. Suffice it to say, that the Church, after having been driven from Judea to Rome, and from Rome to Piedmont, and from Piedmont to England, and from England to Holland, at last stretched her fainting wings over the dark bosom of the Atlantic, and found on the shores of a great wilderness, a refuge from tyranny and oppression--as she thought, but _even here_, (the warm blush of shame mantles my cheek as I write it,) _even here, woman_ was beaten and banished, imprison
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