ances under which she had suffered, says, that as the last age was notable for the effort to gain Men's Rights, so the present generation would aim to create a revolution in public sentiment which should gain the independence of woman.

Now these steps are beginning to be followed out everywhere.-The Westminister Review, one of the cleverest journals in England, gave a very fair and interesting notice of the first National Woman's Convention in Worcester, and that article has been republished in this country in pamphlet form. There have been repeated notices also in the best of our own periodicals, encouraging women to go on and advocate their claims.

But, we are told sometimes that we are satisfied; that it is not woman who is urging this movement, and that she really does not wish any change in society. Has the slave been oppressed so long that he cannot appreciate the blessings of Liberty? and has woman been so long crushed, enervated, paralysed, prostrated by the influences by which she has been surrounded, that she too is ready to say she would not have any more rights if she could? Why she does not know her position, and whereof she affirms. A clergyman in Auburn, N. Y., soon after the Syracuse Convention, delivered a sermon pronouncing it an infidel convention,-for you know that is the usual weapon of defence against whatever appears to conflict with accepted creeds. He said the ladies of his congregation, he was happy to state, were not sensible of any chains binding them, not sensible of any liberties taken from them. Now this is the comwho stated on being

mon boast there are persons in your own city invited to come to this convention, that they had other engagements, they had to sew at the Home Missionary Society; and if they had not other engagements, they had all the rights they wanted, and did

not care to come.

I heard not long since of some one who had several hundred acres of land left him by his father; a friend was speaking to him about the profitableness of his estate; he replied, the profits were not so great as might be supposed; the expenses of the family were large, for he had to keep his mother a good many years, and she lived to be ninety years old! He was asked if she were an active industrious

woman in her early days. O yes! in those days she was a very industrious woman. His Father and she commenced life poor, but gathered together this great estate by their united industry. How is it then that you can say that your expenses have been increased by having to keep your mother? He felt the rebuke much afterwards, and such was the impression it produced, and so great was the change in his views that in his will he recognized no difference between his sons and daughters. He saw the injustice of his past position, and was disposed to make some redress for the wrong done his own mother in making her, in her old age, dependent upon him.

Now, in this particular, there has been a great change in our country. The doing away the laws of primogentiure has opened the eyes of the people, to much evil on all sides, for we cannot begin to look at and redress any one of the wrongs done to mankind in the past, without being carried farther than we imagine, in our first attempt. It was a true philosophy that Jesus uttered, when he said "He that has been faithful over a little, shall be ruler over more."

It is for the following generation to go on and make yet other advance steps. Such advances are beautiful when we come to look at them. Those of the past have given some Theologians noble ideas; they have come to have more expanded views and to rejoice in the belief of the continued advance of humanity. How much better the Theology which has resulted from these great movements. They have led us to read our Bibles better. Many cannot so read Christ, that progress is going to break up the foundations of society. Why, our own society which has been supposed to make greater strides than others, especially for the rights of man-and they have upon the questions of the ministry and the marriage covenant-has been affected by these advances. As regards the ministry, they did not see so clearly, that it must embrace women also. They took only the ground that ordination must not take the form of a human ceremony; that it was God alone who could appoint to the ministry. Well, they found that this God-ordination was manifest in their women also. They began to look at their Bibles, and found there that women were sent forth to minister to the people, as in ancient times. When Deborah was Judge in Israel, when the Captain would not lead the

army, and a woman had the glory of the conquests made.

Again, when they were in exigency, they went to Huldah, and she counselled them.

It is not christianity but priestcraft that has subjected woman as we find her. The Church and State have been united, and it is well for us to see it so. We have had to bear the denunciations of these reverend (irreverend) clergymen, as in New York, of late. But if we look to their authority to see how they expound the text, quite likely we shall find a new reading. Why, when John Chambers returned to Philadelphia, from the World's Temperance Convention, at New York, he gave notice that he would give an address, and state the rights of woman as defined by the Bible. Great allowance has been made by some of the speakers in this Convention, on account of his ignorance, and certainly this was charitable. But I heard this discourse. I heard him bring up what is called the Apostolic prohibition, and the old Eastern idea of the subjection of wives; but he kept out of view some of the best ideas in the scriptures.

Blame is often attached to the position in which woman is found. I blame her not so much as I pity her. So circumscribed have been her limits, that she does not realize the misery of her condition. Such dupes are men to custom, that even servitude, the worst of ills comes to be thought a good, till down from sire to son it is kept and guarded as a sacred thing. Woman's existence is maintained by sufferance. The veneration of man has been misdirected, the pulpit has been prostituted, the Bible has been ill-used. It has been turned over and over as in every reform. The temperance people have had to feel its supposed denunciations. Then the anti-slavery, and now this reform has met, and still continues to meet, passage after passage of the Bible, never intended to be so used. Instead of taking the truths of the Bible in corroberation of the right, the practice has been, to turn over its pages to find example and authority for the wrong, for the existing abuses of society. For the usage of drinking wine, the example of the sensualist Solomon, is always appealed to. In referance to our reform, even admitting that Paul did mean preach, when he used that term, he did not say that the recommendation of that time, was to be applicable to the churches of all after time. We

have here, I had liked to have said, the Reverend Antionette Brown. She is familiar enough with these passages to present some of them to you; for it is important when the Bible is thus appealed to, and thus perverted, that it should be read with another pair of spectacles. We have been so long pinning our faith on other peoples' sleeves that we ought to begin examining these things daily, ourselves, to see whether they are so; and we should find on comparing text with text, that a very different construction might be put upon them. Some of our early Quakers not seeing how far they were to be carried, became Greek and Hebrew scholars, and they found that the text would bear, other translations as well as other constructions. All Bible commentators agree that the Church of Corinth, when the Apostle wrote, was in a state of great confusion. They fell into discussion and controversy; and in order to quiet this state of things, and bring the Church to greater propriety, the command was given out that women should keep silence, and it was not permitted them to speak, except by asking questions at home. In the same epistle to the same Church, Paul gave express directions how women shall prophesy, which he defines to be preaching, "speaking to men" for "exhortation and comfort." He recognized them in prophesying and praying. The word translated servant, is applied to a man in one part of the scripture, and in another it is translated minister. Now that same word you will find might be applied to Phebe, a Deaconess. That text was quoted in the sermon of John Chambers, and he interlarded it with a good deal of his ideas, that woman should not be goers abroad, and read among other things "that their wives were to be teachers." But the "wives" properly translated would be 66 Deaconesses."

It is not so Apostolic to make the wife subject to the husband as many have supposed. It has been done by Law, and public opinion since that time. There has been a great deal said about sending Missionaries over to the East to convert women who are immolating themselves on the funeral pile of their husbands. I know this may be a very good work, but I would ask you to look at it. How many women are there now immolated upon the shrine of superstition and priestcraft, in our very midst, in

the assumption that man only has a right to the pulpit, and that if a woman enters it she disobeys God; making woman believe in the misdirection of her vocation, and that it is of Divine authority that she should be thus bound. Believe it not, my sisters.-In this same epistle the word "prophesying" should be "preaching "—" preaching Godliness, &c." On the occasion of the very first miracle which it is said Christ wrought, a woman went before him and said, "whatsover he biddeth you do, that do." The woman of Samaria said, "come and see the man who told me all the things that ever I did."

These things are worthy of note. I do not want to dwell too much upon scripture authority. We too often bind ourselves by authorities rather than by the truth. We are infidel to truth, in seeking examples to overthrow it. The very first act of note that is mentioned when the disciples and apostles went forth after Jesus was removed from them, was the bringing up of an ancient prophesy, to prove that they were right in the position they then assumed. On the occasion when men and women were gathered together on the holy day of Pentacost, when every man heard and saw those wonderful works which are recorded. Then Peter stood forth-some one has said that Peter made a great mistake in quoting the prophet Joel-but, he stated that "the time is come, this day is fulfilled the prophesy, when it is said I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy" &c- the language of the Bible is beautiful in its repetition "upon my servants and my hand-maidens I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy."Now can anything be clearer than that?

It has sometimes been said that if women were associated with men in their efforts, there would not be as much immorality as now exists, in Congress, for instance, and other places. But we ought, I think, to claim no more for woman than for man; we ought to put woman on a par with man, not invest her with power, or claim for her superiority over her brother. If we do, she is just as likely to become a tyrant as man is; as with Catherine the Second. It is always unsafe to invest man with power over his fellow being, Call no man master"-that is the true doctrine. But, be sure there would