reality do not debase woman but rather expose the egoism, vanity, and degradation of man-on turning to the teachings of Christ as told in the Gospels we get into an entirely different atmosphere. Of husband and wife He said, "And they twain shall be one flesh, wherefore, they are no more twain but one flesh." Christ not only stated their equality but He reiterated it, that there might be no mistake about it. Let us set Blackstone's legal decree in apposition with Christ's, and see how the one bears out the other. "The husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband." Like Paul he was able to improve on the Christ statement. Man always is.

On another point of the gravest importance to the human family was Christ's teaching in diametrical opposition to man's, namely, the equality of both before the law. As we have seen, the laws of every land condemn woman to bear the burden of man's ungoverned appetite. But in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of St. John we read: "Jesus went into the Mount of Olives. And early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came unto Him; and He sat down and taught them. And the Scribes and Pharisees brought unto Him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst they say unto Him: Master this woman was taken in adultery; in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such be stoned; but what

sayest Thou? This they said tempting Him that they might have to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground as though He heard them not. So when they continued asking Him, He lifted up Himself and said unto them; He that is without sin among you let him first cast a stone at her. And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last; and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. And when Jesus had lifted up Himself and saw none but the woman He said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee, go, and sin no more."

Nothing could be more unmistakably clear than this legal decision of the Christ, that man should not condemn woman for a wrong that he was not held equally accountable for. Did those social cowards bring the man to judgment, who, to say the least, was equally guilty with her? No. But when confronted with their own guilt by the Divine Seer, they slunk away, old and young, one and all. Has the church, with one accord raised its voice and maintained it, till the secular law had to take cognisance of the protest against the travesty of the divine teachings? No. The church as an institution has,

and is to-day, subordinating the clear teaching of Christ to the secular law. It inculcates Paul's obey and submission and Christ's when they do not clash with man's usurped authority. Its preachers too often enter their pulpits with stones to fling at women wholesale, and then use the daily papers lest all should not hear them.

To those who are unfamiliar with the laws of the remote or even immediate past, or for that matter of the present, it will be a surprise to learn how man, the lord of creation, the superior being, the muscular sex, has felt called upon to protect himself by law from all conceivable contingencies against the weaker, the fundamentally inferior sex. We see now that all his protection of woman was, and is in reality, protection of himself. What does this argue? There is no effect without a cause. On the face of it there is It is a no apparent reason for this exceeding care. contradiction of all his claims to superiority and of woman's inferiority. Whence comes it? It is the fact of his biological inferiority proclaimed by himself through his laws. It is an acknowledgement by him of woman's superiority. It is the voice of the Divine, using man to his own undoing for He said, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," and ever since man has been able to leave a record he has been compelled to write himself down in emblazoned letters: Social Coward.

VI

WOMAN AS MAN HAS MADE HER

WE HAVE seen what the nature of the female was as she came from the hands of the Great First Cause endowed for the work of sub-creator. We have seen that those endowments were simple but all-sufficient for the mighty task of bringing the race upwards and onwards through the various stages of evolution,— a love of the beautiful, not for her own adornment, but for that of others; the right of selection, which was a manifestation of the love of the beautiful; indefatigable industry as the sole provider of the family and a pacific temperament which held rigidly the balance of power between the fighting males.

We have seen her organising the new-born species, bringing order out of chaos, forming the horde into gens and laying the foundation of a state of society which was sufficient for its needs till the historical period was reached though long before that time she had lost her right of rulership. During all that time woman's development went on uninterruptedly as well as man's for the legends of Amazonism reveal her as capable in the realm of the moral and physical to dare and to do anything that the exigencies of life might call for. The Amazons and the women of the early Homeric legends represent a type who were

almost the physical equals of men-the type of the Venus de Milo, tall, large, and well-proportioned— for though by continual selection the male had become over developed and man, by his mode of life had maintained his advantage, yet woman could not have fallen far behind for all the work that is now largely done by man was then done by her.

We have read, too, between the lines and noted the characteristic difference between woman and man, her greater generosity in her days of power than his, when he usurped her place. So long and wherever descent was in the female line woman was the ruler, yet, though this was the case among the majority of the Indian tribes when America was discovered, we see men appointed sachems and chiefs, but by her suffrance and through her nomination, with the reserved right, if their conduct fell below her standard of what was just and proper, to "knock off their horns" and send them back to the ranks. The natural woman had no lust of power; that is one of the distinguishing features of usurpation. The individual who is born to power accepts it as a natural birthright, and is not conscious of the personal element, but acquired power needs a long period of training before it can attain the natural and easy grace of biological endowment and wield it with firmness and moderation and without egotism.