We are told that women owe honorable marriage to Christianity;* that the more beautiful and tender relations of husband and wife find their root there; that Christianity protects and elevates the mother as no other law or religion ever has. Let us see.

On this subject I find in Maine's "Ancient Law" these facts:

Thus it will be seen that from the first, and extending down to the present, the Church did all she could to cast woman back into the night of the race from which in a great measure she had been rescued through the ages when Natural Law and not "revelation" was the guide of man. The laws which the Church found liberal and just toward women it discarded, and it searched back in the ages of night for such as it saw fit to re-enact for her. Of this Maine says: "The husband now draws to himself the power which formerly belonged to his wife's male relatives, the only difference being that he no longer pays anything for the privilege."

As Christians grew economical wives came cheaper than formerly, and it became a dogma that wives were not worth much anyhow, and then, too, it enabled persons of limited means to have more of them. Of a somewhat later date Maine says: "At this point heavy disabilities begin to be imposed upon wives."

That was to make marriage honorable and attractive, no doubt, and, says Maine: "It was very long before the subordination entailed on women by marriage was sensibly diminished." And what diminution it received came from men who fought against Church law.*

It was only the crumbs of liberty, honor, and justice extorted by men who fought the Church on behalf of wives, that lightened their most oppressive burdens. It was true then, and it is true to-day, that women owe what justice and freedom and power they possess to the fact that the best and clearest-headed men are more honorable than our religion, and that they have invited Moses and St. Paul to take a back seat Moses has complied, and St. Paul is half-way down the aisle.

Some of the clergy now explain that although Paul may have written certain things inimical to women, he did not mean them, so it is all right. Such passages as 1 Cor. xi. 3-9; xiv. 34-35; and Eph. v. 22-24, are now explained to be intended in a purely Pickwickian sense; and a Rev. Mr. Boyd, of St. Louis, has even gone so far as to produce the doughty apostle before a woman-suffrage society, as on their side of that argument. This second conversion of St. Paul impresses one as even more remarkable than his first. It took an "angel of God" to show him the error of his ways in Ephesus, but one little Baptist preacher did it this time—all by himself. Truly St. Paul is getting easier to deal with than he used to be.

But to resume, Maine, in tracing the amalgamation of the later Roman (Pagan) law with the archaic laws of a lower civilization (the result of which was Christian law), shows that the Church, while it chose the Roman laws, which had arrived at so high a state, for others, retained for women, and particularly for wives, the least favorable of the Roman, eked out with the archaic Patria Potestas and the more degrading provisions of the earlier civilizations. Maine reluctantly says that the jurisconsults of the day contended for better laws for wives, but that the Church prevailed in most instances, and established the more oppressive ones.

With certain of these laws—the worst ones—I cannot deal here for obvious reasons; but a few of them I may be permitted to give without offence to the modesty of any one.

Blackstone says: "By marriage the husband and wife are one person in law; that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband. The husband becomes her baron or lord—she his servant. Upon this principle of the union of person in husband and wife depend almost all the legal rights, duties, and disabilities they acquire by marriage."

That is to say the husband acquires all the rights, and the wife all the disabilities; and the Church wishing to be fair has made the latter as many as possible.

"And therefore," continues Blackstone, "it is also generally true, that all compacts made between husband and wife, when single, are voided by the intermarriage." The working of this principle has been so often illustrated as to render comment unnecessary. A wife retains no rights which her husband is bound to respect, no matter how solemn the compact before marriage, nor what her belief in its strength might have been.

Fortunately for women, happily for wives, men are more decent than their religion; and the law of custom and public opinion has largely outgrown this enactment of the Church, made when she had the power to thus degrade women and brutalize men.

"If the wife be injured in her person or her property she can bring no action for redress without her husband's concurrence and in his name," and on the basis of loss of her services to him as a servant. "But in criminal prosecutions, it is true, the wife may be indicted and punished separately." *

In the case of punishment the Church was entirely willing to give the devil his due. It had no ambition to deprive women of any indictments and punishments that were to be had. In this case, although the husband and wife were one, she was that one. Where privileges or property-rights were to be considered, he was the "one." Such grand reversible doctrines were always on tap with the clergy, and their barrel was always full. Truly, wives do owe much to the Church.

Some of the provisions of these laws have, of late years, been modified by the efforts of men who were pronounced "infidels, destroyers of the Bible, the home, and the dignity of women," aided by women whom the orthodox deride as "strong—minded, ill-balanced, coarse, impious," etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam. A strong mind, whether in man or woman, has always been to the clergy as a red rag to a bull.

"A woman may make a will, with the assent of her husband, by way of appointment of her personal property. She cannot even with his consent devise lands.... Although our law in general considers a man and wife as one person, yet there are some instances where she is considered separately as his inferior," and for that trip only.

As I remarked before when it comes to penalties she is welcome to the whole lot.

"She may not make a deed."

"A man may administer moderate correction to his wife."

"These are the chief legal effects of marriage. Even the disabilities of the wife," Blackstone naively remarks, "are for the most part intended for her protection; so great a favorite is the female sex of the laws of England!"

I should think that if this latter point were not quite clear to a woman, "moderate correction" might convince her that she was quite an unreasonable favorite—beyond her most eager desires. Where the Pagan law recognized her as the equal of her husband, the Church discarded that law, and based the Canon Law upon an archaic invention.

Where Maine speaks of the later growth of Pagan law and of Christian influence upon it, he says: "But the chapter of law relating to married women was for the most part read by the light, not of Roman [or Pagan] but of Canon [or Church] Law, which in no one particular departs so widely from the [improved] spirit of the secular jurisprudence as in the view it takes of the relations created by marriage. This was in part inevitable, since no society which possesses any tincture of Christian institutions is likely to restore to married women the personal liberty conferred on them by the middle Roman law."

Women who support the clergy with one hand, and hold out the other for the ballot; who one day express indignation at the refusal to them of human recognition, and the next day intone the creeds, will have to learn that there is nothing which has so successfully stood, and still so powerfully stands, in the way of the individual liberty, human rights, and dignity of wives, as the Church which they support.

Blackstone says: "In times of popery a great variety of impediments to marriage were made, which impediments might, however, be bought off with money."

You could, for instance, buy a more distant relationship to your future wife for so much cash down to the Church. If your inamorata were your first cousin, you could remove her several degrees with five hundred dollars, and make her no relation at all for a little more. Such little sleight-of-hand performances are as nothing to a well-trained clergyman. Slip a check into one hand, and a request to marry your aunt into the other, let a clergyman shake them up in the coffers of the Church, and when one comes out gold, the other will appear as a blushing bride not even related to her own father, and not more than third cousin to herself.

Of the claim made by the early Christian Fathers, that it was because of the mental inferiority and incapacity of women that the more unjust and binding laws were enacted for them, thus doing all they could to create and intensify by law the incapacity which they asserted was imposed by God, Maine says: "But the proprietary disabilities of married females stand on quite a different basis from personal incapacity, and it is by the tendency of their doctrines to keep alive and consolidate the former, that the expositors of the Canon Law have deeply injured civilization."

He adds that there are many evidences of a struggle between secular principles in favor of justice for wives, and ecclesiastical principles against it, "but the Canon Law nearly everywhere prevailed. The systems which are least indulgent to married women are invariably those which have followed the Canon Law exclusively.... It enforced the complete legal subjection of wives."

Lecky says: "Fierce invectives against the sex form a conspicuous and grotesque portion of the writings of the Fathers. Woman was represented as the door of hell, as the mother of all human ills. She should be ashamed at the very thought that she is a woman.... Women were even forbidden, in the sixth century, on account of their impurity, to receive the Eucharist into their naked hands. Their essentially subordinate position was continually maintained. This teaching in part determined the principles of legislation concerning the sex.* The Pagan laws during the empire had been continually repealing the old disabilities of women, and the legislative movement in their favor continued with unabated force from Constantine to Justinian, and appeared also in some of the early laws of the barbarians. But in the whole feudal [Christian] legislation women were placed in a much lower legal position than in the Pagan empire."

And he adds that the French revolutionists (the infidel party) established better laws for women, "and initiated a great reformation of both law and opinion, which sooner or later must traverse the world." And these reformations, being in Christendom, will be calmly claimed in the future, as in the present, as due to the beneficent influence of the Church. The Church always belongs to the conservative party, but after a good thing is established in despite of her, she says: "Just see what I have done! 'See what a good boy am I!"'

Not many years ago a few great-souled men who were "heretics" got a glimpse of a principle which has electrified the world. They said that individual liberty is a universal right; they maintained that humanity is a unit, with interests and aims indivisible, and that liberty to use to the utmost advantage all natural abilities cannot be denied one-half of the race without crippling both. A few even went so far as to suggest that the assumption of the inferiority of women, and the imposition of disabilities upon them, under the claim of divine authority, is the greatest crime in the great calendar of crime for which the Church has yet to render a reckoning to humanity.

To one who reads the history of Canon Law, it is not strange that Christian Judges still decide that women are "incompetent to practice law," and that they should not be allowed to study it. A woman well versed in the history of ancient and modern law might easily be an uncomfortable advocate for such a judge to face. He would probably feel the need of an umbrella.

It is not strange that Columbia College, with its corps of clergymen, "fails to see the propriety" of opening its doors to women. The few clergymen who have for some little time past taken the side of fair-play in this and like matters have simply deserted their colors and come over to the side they are worldly-wise enough to see is to be the side of the future. When it comes to diplomacy the Church is always on deck in time to gather in the spoils; but she stays safely below during the engagement, and simply holds back and anchors firm until she sees which way it is likely to end.

The moment there is an understanding on the part of women of what they owe to Church Law, that moment will educational clerical monopolists, such as the champion anchor of Columbia, be compelled to earn an honest living in some honest business pertaining to this world. It will be a great day for women when they refuse to longer support these pretenders to divine knowledge, who are willing, at so much a head, to tell what they do not know at the expense of the pale, tired needlewoman, who is in want of almost every comfort that money can buy in this world, together with the surplus gold of the fashionable devotees who minister to the vanity of the clergy, and give to the coffers of the Church that which would save thousands of young girls from degradation and crime, and put the roses of health on the cheek of innocence.

Every dollar that is paid to support the Church is paid to degrade a woman. Every collection that is made to spread "revelation" is used to suppress enlightenment and retard civilization. Every dollar that is invested in "another world" is a dollar diverted from useful purposes in this. Every hour that is spent mooning about "heaven" is that much time taken from needed labor here.

If our energies were wanted in another world we should most likely be in another world. Since we are in this one it is a pretty strong hint that we are expected to attend to business right here. We can't do justice to two worlds at the same time; and since we are assured that we shall have the whole of eternity to arrange matters in the next one, it leaves very little time by comparison to devote to our duties in this.

There we are to have nothing to do but sing and be happy—twang a harp and smile.

Here we have pain to alleviate, ignorance to dispel, innocence to protect, disease to master, and crime to restrain and prevent. Here we have the helpless to shield and guard and protect. Here we have homes to make happy, the hearts of husbands and wives to make glad, the light of love and trust to kindle in the eyes of children. Here is old age to cheer and console. Here are orphans to educate and protect, widows to comfort, and oppression to uproot.

There—nothing to do but look after yourself and manage your harp; nobody to help—all will be perfect; nothing to learn—all will be wise; no hearts to cheer—all will be happy. All that a mother will have to do if she gets a little tired practicing on her lyre and feels gloomy will be to just take a good look over the wall, and photograph on her eyes the picture of her husband and children freshly dipped in oil and put on the griddle, and she will come back to business perfectly satisfied, take up her song where she left off, and praise the Lamb for his infinite mercy. All eternity to learn how to fly round in a robe and keep time with the orchestra! Why a deaf man could learn to do that in fifty or sixty years, and then have all the rest of the time to spare.

We are here such a little while, there is so much to learn, there is so much to do, there is so much to undo, that no man can afford to waste his time on an infinite future of time, space, and leisure. Men cannot afford to lose your best energies. "God" can get on very well without them. Time is short, and needs are pressing; and this thing you know—you can keep busy doing good right here. If there is a hereafter, could there be a better preparation for it than that?