“Now take your note-book and pencil and let us take a little look out over the world and see things as they are,” The Man said. “You will then better understand what I will say later.

“The struggling march of Progress is marked on the map of human history by a deep continuous stain of red, but to-day we hear King William apologizing for his vast army by saying it is maintained not for war, but to preserve the peace of Europe.

“In twenty years the population of the United States has increased from forty to sixty-five millions, and our standing army has decreased in like proportion.

“We are no longer able to sleep soundly after a man is hanged, and the dreams have been so hateful that several states have done away entirely with capital punishment, and the balance are searching restlessly for a more humane (?) method of killing. We have tried electrocution, because some one said that the man who killed and the man who got killed would never know anything about it; and here in New York they passed a law declaring that the people should not know anything about the killing either, and that any newspaper publisher who described this killing should be adjudged guilty of felony. Now, we are not satisfied with the death-dealing work of the subtle fluid; but if put to a popular vote with the aid of a secret ballot, we should say emphatically to judge and jury, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’

“This increased sensitiveness which we see manifest on the question thus referred to, finds vent in a thousand varied forms. Prisons are no longer places of punishment but of discipline; the birch is no longer the chief factor in imparting ideas to the young—we make the application not to the anatomy, but to the understanding, and if we still believe the child is totally depraved, we are a little ashamed of the belief and say nothing about it. The woman who lolls in her carriage is not quite comfortable, for her mind is alive to the fact that others are trudging, footsore and weary, carrying heavy burdens. Benevolence has become the fashion, and ‘Fresh Air Funds’ are actually talked of on ’Change. On every hand we hear of Societies of Christian Endeavor, the Chautauqua Idea, Ethical Culture, Kindergartens, not for uppertendom, but for the infected district where violence, disease, strife and discord have before reigned. Every preacher of every denomination indulges the larger hope (possibly there are obscure exceptions), and quotes as corroborating his argument the seers, prophets and poets who were before denounced from the very pulpit in which he now preaches.

“We are hearing much of heresy just now, but the ‘guilty’ man is not disgraced; on the contrary, his crime places him before a larger audience at double salary; and, if one may be allowed to say it, there is a general belief abroad that some heretics have courted their persecution. Certainly we do not try them for what they said, but the way they said it. A man who was a heretic twenty years ago, now finds himself orthodox, for there is faith plus in both pulpit and pew, and the heretic is generally a man of limitless faith. We believe not only that Jesus Christ was the son of God, but all men are or can be if they claim their heritage; not one day in seven is holy, but all are; not that certain places are consecrated, but all is consecrated ground, and that evil is only perverted good, or absence of good, just as darkness is absence of light. These things we hear from every pulpit without surprise.

“Prize fighters use six-ounce gloves, and women endowed with police powers act in behalf of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals and children. Matrons are to be found in jails and station houses, and the maxim that ‘Might makes right’ has been reversed. Never was the tear of pity so near the surface, and the change of which I speak has been brought about largely since 1870. In these twenty-one years the flinty heart of man has been softened more than in the three hundred years preceding.

“Now we are approaching the vital question, for I propose to tell you why this change has come; why our faces are now turned toward Zion. The answer I give is not given out off-hand, but after most careful thought and study for many, many years. The spirit of the time has changed by and through the influence of woman.

“The real essence of sex is spiritual; and as behind every physical fact there is a spiritual truth, so above and beyond this sexual instinct is the most sacred and divinest gift given to man. In the encyclopedias we read that this inclination ‘has its purpose in reproduction of the species.’ And is Nature after all but a trickster? a practical joker? Is this fair dream of holy peace and joy of being at last understood by a some one, loving, gentle, tender, true, in whose presence one may think aloud and be at rest? Is this after all but a scheme for the reproduction of our kind? When we consider what the kind is, is reproduction of the kind the highest good? Even good men have thought so; and for the misuse of God’s more sacred gift man was put out of Eden and has wandered far. The return will be slow, and it must be by the way he came. There is no other way. The monastery is as bad a failure as the house of Camille. Only by a knowledge of the right relation of men and women can we gain Heaven.

“You see me, the possessor of all knowledge, and Heaven is mine—for Heaven is not a place, but a condition of mind. Seemingly I am alone, for your physical eye sees no one near; but she is ever by me—I feel her hand now as it rests lightly on my head. Friend, I am what I am through the love of woman. Love is life.

“There is a class of women who especially have my sincere and profound respect, these are the ‘old maids.’ They form to-day in this country a genuine sisterhood of mercy. They do the work no one else will do nor can do. In every village there are aged parents, orphan children, widowed brothers, helpless invalids, people homeless and friendless who owe a debt of gratitude which time can never repay to the unselfish devotion of some old maid. They are women who will not fling their womanhood away for the sake of a ‘provider,’ or to escape the supposed ignominy of maidenhood. If a woman once decides she must have a man, by just spreading her net, and not being over-choice about quality, she can always secure some sort of game, for no matter how foolish, frivolous and vain a woman is, there is a man near at hand who will out-match her. I am glad to know that the number of old maids is increasing, for a woman had a thousand times over better travel through life alone than to accept any alliance short of her genuine mental and spiritual mate. This may give you a clue to the reason for the well known fact that the average old maid excels in intelligence and culture her married sister. When a man marries the wrong woman it is a mistake, for the woman it is a blunder.”