^yoman under the 
 
 gtl^nic ^ligions. 
 
 MRS MOSES SMITH 
 
 CHICAGO, ILL . 
 
 Woman’s Board ok Missions of the Interior. 
 
 1898 . 
 
\yoman under tl^e 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. MOSES SMITH. 
 
 CHICAGO, ILL. 
 
 Woman’s Board of Missions of the Interior. 
 
 1898. 
 
https://archive.org/details/womanunderethnicOOsmit 
 
VVoniaq Uiider the Ethqic Religioqs. 
 
 BY MRS. MOSES SMITH. 
 
 (A paper read before the World’s Congress of Missions, in Art Institute, 
 Chicago, October 4, 1893. 
 
 f OR two weeks we have been listening to the presentation 
 of religions. We have heard philosophies of religion 
 profound and subtile, to some minds fascinating in their 
 grace and mysticism. It may be wholesome, if not so 
 agreeable to have our attention now called to the practical 
 workings of some of these religions and their effect on 
 the life and destiny of man. Moreover, as missionary 
 workers, it is wise for us to know not only the present 
 needs of the people, but the religious forces which long 
 centuries have wrought into every tissue of their thought, 
 feeling and action. 
 
 Without question religion is the supreme force in history. 
 Religion creates the ideals and aspirations, and so chisels 
 the character of mankind. In the order of nature the wor- 
 shiper becomes like the being worshiped. ‘‘As a man 
 thinketh in his heart, so is he.” 
 
4 
 
 The world has known many religions, some of them em- 
 inent for the tremendous power with which they have held 
 millions in their sway over centuries of time; eminent also 
 for profound philosophy, lofty ideals, and sometimes a high 
 morality. Our Lord Jesus Christ gave us the test for Him- 
 self and His teaching; “By their fruits ye shall know 
 them.” The conditions of society, temporal and spiritual, 
 are the fruits by which any religious system may be known. 
 
 In the nature of things the factor that most universally 
 moulds society is woman. The boy is father of the man, 
 but the woman is mother of the boy, hence the study of 
 the teaching of any religion concerning woman, and of her 
 character and place in society as the result of that religion, 
 is vital both to the correct understanding of the system 
 and of what it has wrought for the world. 
 
 The most venerable and possibly the most powerful 
 Ethnic religion is Brahmanism. Kising in India when 
 that was the land of literature and art, the home of the 
 cultured Aryans, for fifteen centuries this religion wrought 
 unhindered on the people. At first a simple nature wor- 
 ship, it degenerated into a pantheon in which all the 
 powers of nature Avere gods. On this Avas built a sacer- 
 dotalism with caste and idol Avorship. It became an op- 
 pressive tyranny. At this juncture, 500 years before 
 
Christ, a new and forcible factor entered the life of the 
 people in the birth of a king’s son, Gautama Buddha, 
 known in history as the great Reformer of Brahmanism. 
 I have not time to speak of the fierce theological war that 
 ensued (400 years), or of the bright coup d’etat of the Brah- 
 mans in finally accepting Buddha as the ninth incarnation 
 of Vishnu. 
 
 Each of these s3'stems evinces profound thought and lofty 
 ideals. Buddhism a high morality. Each contains ele- 
 ments of truth, and each has been a tremendous power in 
 the history of the race. Striving for supremacy on the same 
 field, the result was a coalition. Together they enter the 
 stream of history under the name of Hinduism. The 
 time has been long enough, the field favorable and broad 
 enough for the completest results, and the present condi- 
 tion of society in India affords an opportunity to see the 
 results. 
 
 Sir Monier Williams, the distinguished Sanscrit scholar 
 of Oxford, says: “Although India in the early periods of 
 
 Brahmanism was a land of literature and science, the pres- 
 ent characteristics are poverty, ignorance and superstition. 
 Whatever profound thoughts lay about the roots of Hindu- 
 ism, it held and still holds the 280,000,000 of India in the 
 bondage of degradation, cruelty and immorality.” “The 
 
6 
 
 average income per individual is less than that of any other 
 civilized country, barely $13.50 per year, against $20 even 
 for the Turks, $165 for every Englishman, and $200 for 
 every man, woman and child in the IJnited States.”* Dr. 
 John Short, Surgeon General of India, long resident 
 among the people says: “Wherever the Hindu religion 
 
 predominates, there immorality and debauchery run riot.” 
 The Code of Manu is the highest religions 
 authority among the Hindus. You ask a 
 Hindu about the date and age of his great law-giver and 
 he quickly replies, “He was son of the self-existent 
 Brahm.” Mann’s whole teaching about woman is based 
 on the assumption of her impurity. For instance, a Brah- 
 man is enjoined “to suspend reading the Veda if a woman 
 comes in sight.” Her ear is not pure enough to hear what 
 the vilest man may read. “Though unobservant of ap- 
 proved usage, or enamoured of another woman, or devoid 
 of good qualities, yet a husband must constantly be revered 
 as a god by a virtuous wife.”f 
 
 “Let the wife who wishes to perform sacred oblation 
 wash the feet of her husband and drink the water, for the 
 husband is to the wife greater than Vishnu.” Again, 
 “Women have no business with the text of a sacred book, 
 
 ♦Rev. N. G. Clark, D. D, tDbanna Sastra, chap. 5, page 154. 
 
7 
 
 and having no evidence of law, and no knowledge of ex- 
 piatory texts, sinful women must be foul as falsehood it- 
 self, and this is a fixed rule/^* And it has remained fixed 
 for forty-three centuries. 
 
 Seclusion modem Brahmans like to claim that 
 
 the present custom of immuring their wives 
 in prison-like rooms had its origin in Mohammedan in- 
 vasion. This is certainly not the whole truth, for in the 
 unalterable law of Manu, written 900 years before Christ, 
 we read, “A. woman is not allowed to go out of the house 
 without the consent of her husband, she may not laugh 
 without a veil over her face or look out of a door or a win- 
 dow.” “It may be that when the Mohammedans came, 
 some fifteen centuries after these laws had been in force, 
 they put the crown on the arch already waiting for them. 
 They may have tightened the chains by which woman was 
 already enslaved,"f but the teachings of Manu are suffi- 
 cient to account for all we see in India to-day. 
 
 The people of the Western World 
 Child Marriage. long wondered why the Hindus 
 
 were so tenacious of their, to us, revolting customs of 
 child marriage. It is only when we learn that it is not 
 
 *Dharma Sastra, chap. 5, page 155, 156. 
 tWilhins’ Modern Hinduism, page 326. 
 
8 
 
 simply a custom but a part of their religion that we ap- 
 prehend the reason. The sacred laws of the Hindu de- 
 clare: “If a daughter is married at the age of six, the 
 
 father is certain to ascend to the highest heaven. If the 
 daughter is not married before seven, the father will only 
 reach the second heaven. If a daughter is not married 
 until the age of ten, the father can only attain the lowest 
 place assigned the blest. If a girl is not married until she 
 is eleven years of age, all her progenitors for six genera- 
 tions will suffer pain and penalties.”* When recently an 
 effort was made to induce the Government to raise the 
 legal age of marriage to twelve years, great excitement 
 prevailed. The Brahmans set apart days of fasting and 
 prayer. Multitudes came in processions to the temples, 
 in some cases beating their breasts and calling aloud to the 
 gods to spare them from such calamity. 
 
 The worst feature of the system of child marriage is seen 
 among the Kulin Brahmans, the highest of all. Girls in 
 these families must not marry into a lower caste, and the 
 supply of Kulins is limited, so fathers who have not money 
 to induce some young men to marry their daughters, are 
 compelled to give their little girls to those who make a 
 living by being husbands. Thus a child of twelve may be 
 
 ♦Women of the Orient, page 135. 
 
9 
 
 given as the fortieth or fiftieth wife of some old man. Al- 
 though it is certain she will soon be a widow, even that is 
 preferable to allowing her to remain unmarried. 
 
 Infanticide “The code of Manu forbids a woman to 
 read the scripture or ofler prayer by her- 
 self. She is to have no individuality. She exists only in 
 her father or her husband; without a husband she is soul- 
 less.” This doctrine bears its legitimate fruit in the cus- 
 tom of murdering infant girls. It is easy reasoning, that 
 it is better to murder a soulless child than not to be able to 
 betroth her and so bring disgrace on the whole family. 
 
 “The Hindu sacred books reach their 
 
 Widows* 
 
 climax of cruelty in the requirements con- 
 cerning the widow. She may have only been a betrothed 
 infant or a child of a few years. It makes no difference.” 
 The Shasters teach that if the widow burns herself alive on 
 the funeral pile of her husband, even though he had killed 
 a Brahman, that most heinous of deeds, she expiates the 
 crime. For long centuries widows have been a literal burnt 
 offering for the redemption of husbands. The English 
 Government has prohibited the suttee, but being consid- 
 ered by the family as one rejected of the gods, the widow’s 
 life is such a degradation, such a sorrow, it would seem 
 merciful to let her die. Manu wrote, “Let not a widow 
 
10 
 
 eyer pronounce the name of another man, for by remar- 
 riage she brings disgrace on herself here below, and shall be 
 excluded from the seat of her Lord.” To-day in India un- 
 der the Hindu religion the widow may not take food more 
 than once in the day. She must go without food and 
 water for forty-eight hours twice in the month. At a 
 meeting of the highest religious court a few years ago it 
 was gravely decreed that, if acting on medical advice, a 
 widow did sometimes take a little water on fast day, the 
 offense might be condoned. 0, the burning pathos of the 
 Hindu widow’s prayer: “0 God, let no more women be 
 born in this land.” India has now 21,000,000 of widows, 
 nearly 100,000 of them under nine years. 
 
 Hinduism touches its lowest depths in 
 
 The Nautch Girl. ,, , , , . , , ,, 
 
 the degradation of woman in what the en- 
 lightened Hindu, Mr. Mozoomdar, called in the Parlia- 
 ment of Religions '‘consecrated prostitution” of the Nautch 
 or dancing girls in the temples. The subject is too deli- 
 cate and too horrible for me to speak of in detail, but as it 
 is a much honored part of this religion it cannot be omit- 
 ted. The Brahmans claim that it is a most sacred service, 
 having its origin in prehistoric ages in a promise made by 
 Vishnu himself. In a few words the reason and method 
 is this: Parents who have a son very ill will vow to some 
 
11 
 
 god that if the son’s life is spared they will consecrate a 
 little girl to the temple; or the parents believing that honor 
 or wealth will be the result, consecrate a girl to the god; or 
 the Brahmans select the most beautiful little girls, the 
 parents rejoicing in the religious honor. 
 
 From the hour of consecration the little thing is treated 
 with peculiar respect. She alone of the girls of the family 
 is taught to read. When she becomes ten or twelve years 
 old, her father, mother and nearest relatives take her to 
 the great temple. They go with the priest into the inner 
 shrine. The girl places her hand into the god’s hand, the 
 priest repeats certain prayers and charms. He then hangs 
 a string of cowrie shells around the girl’s neck and the poor 
 little thing repeats after him her marriage vow, which vow 
 is to prostitute herself to any pilgrim to the shrine who 
 demands it.* The position of these religious prostitutes 
 in Hindu society is so highly respectable that no festival 
 or wedding is celebrated without their presence. They 
 are asked to tie the wifely ornaments on the neck of the 
 bride. They being married to a god can never be widowed 
 and their touch is lucky. In elegant attire with costly 
 jewels and perfumes, charmingly graceful, they lead their 
 wretched lives, bring great sums into the treasury of the 
 
 *Prof. T, M. Lindsay, University of Glasgow. 
 
12 
 
 temple, and, as they are religiously taught, accumulate a 
 store of blessing for themselves in a future state. John 
 Short, M. D., Surgeon General of India, Member of 
 Anthropological Society, London, says : “The Nautch 
 
 girl is recognized and patronized by the Hindu religion.” 
 There was a time in this fair eastern land when women 
 were in a position of respect similar to that among the an- 
 cient Hebrews. Husband and wife were equal in all do- 
 mestic, social and religious life. “The Brahmans have 
 themselves preserved the record of women engaging in 
 philosophical discussions, and disconcerting their most 
 celebrated doctors by the depths of their objections.”* 
 Some of the Vedic hymns were composed by women. By 
 degrees the condition of woman has deteriorated until by 
 the law of their religion she is “now consigned to a degrada- 
 tion probably without a parallel in the history of the race.” 
 It is true, Buddha, in the sixth century before Christ, 
 taught that men and women were equal, but even his in- 
 fluence has never been strong enough to reform the Brah- 
 manical laws about women. The Hindus have a saying: 
 “Education is good, as milk is good, but milk given to a 
 snake becomes venom, and education given to a woman 
 becomes poison.” 
 
 *J. Murray Mitchell, LL. D. 
 
l: 
 
 A quotation from the personal experience of Prof. T. 
 M. Lindsay, D. D., so pertinently sums up the Hindu 
 creed about women that I quote it. “I remember asking 
 a learned Vedantist, who had spent two days in teaching 
 me something about his belief — a man who had read 
 Spinoza, Berkeley and Hegel — whether he could give me 
 any definite proposition which all the people who were 
 Hindus could accept. He very readily said, ‘That woman 
 is a wicked animal. That the cow is a holy animal.'” No 
 brilliant presentation of Vedic learning, no poetic picture 
 of Brahman or Buddhist philosophy so recently heard in 
 the Parliament of Religions, will prevent the world from 
 arraigning Hinduism for cherishing, in the sacred name of 
 religion, the grossest vices, and basely degrading woman 
 and all society. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” 
 Religions of In the Empire of China, under a gov- 
 China. ernment distinguished for its stability and 
 justness, among a people spoken of before Christ as “Those 
 who dwell apart,” and known from the time of Ptolemy 
 as just, mild, frugal and industrious, comprising one-fourth 
 the human race; three religions of confessed power, not as 
 rivals, but as co-ordinate and supplemental, have for many 
 centuries sought to solve the problem of life, death and 
 immortality. The time has been long enough, the condi- 
 
14 
 
 tions favorable for a perfect experimemt. Confacianism, 
 the oldest of the three, gave what is probably the best code 
 of morals man ever gave to men. Confucius was himself 
 an earnest reformer. The late Dr. Legge, professor of 
 Chinese in the University of Oxford, says: “Confucius 
 
 saw the terrible wretchedness of his people and set himself 
 to find a remedy. Yet to the one principal cause of the 
 misery of the masses, polygamy and the low social condition 
 of women, he gave no thought.” In his treatise on human 
 relations, in that of husband and wife, he regards the 
 wife as the servant of the husband and enjoins absolute 
 obedience. During all these forty-three centuries, while 
 Confucius has done much for good government and has 
 set some high moral standards for men, women have 
 reaped no benefit from the teachings of the sage. 
 
 Lao-tsze, the founder of Taoism, a religion 
 of no little power in China, made no effort to 
 elevate the people, and his religious system does not recog- 
 nize the existence of woman. In the beginning, the work 
 of Taoism, was to repress the passions. 
 
 “Not to act is the source of all power,” * was an ever 
 present thesis. To-day Taoism is a system of magic and 
 spiritism. 
 
 ♦Ten Great Religions. James Freeman Ciark. 
 
15 
 
 Much vaunted, “srentle Buddha,” gives 
 
 BuddWsm. , ,, f nv.- i if 
 
 to the women of China one only hope. 
 Through its doctrine of transmigration of souls, it is possi- 
 ble that through obedience to her husband and his rela- 
 tives, and the birth of a son, she may in some future aeon 
 have the happiness of being returned to this world a man. 
 If a man commits a crime he may be returned to earth a 
 woman. The one fervent prayer of the women as they 
 crowd the Buddhist temple is, that they may be returned 
 to earth as men. When the women apply to the priests 
 for instruction they are told “When you die your soul 
 will pass into the land of spirits where it may remain ages 
 before it is allowed to return to earth and inhabit the body 
 of a man. You will need money to pay toll on the bridges, 
 and you must fee the ferrymen, especially the lily boat to 
 cross the lake of blood.”* (This fee is $30.) The priests 
 claim to have opened communication with the spirit land 
 and their drafts are honored there. In one part of the 
 temple these drafts are sold, the priests placing the seal of 
 the Temple on them. Of the $400,000,000 annually 
 given for idol worship in China, at least seven-eighths 
 is given by women and three-fourths of that by women too 
 poor to obtain enough of even the coarsest food. 
 
 ♦China and the Chinese. Kev. J. L. Nevius. 
 
16 
 
 The customs and principles of marriage 
 
 Marriage. . ,, ^ ° 
 
 among any people are the exponents of wo- 
 man’s place in the social scale. Chinese women are 
 bought and sold in marriage. The wife is forever subject 
 to her husband and his parents; only when she becomes 
 the mother of sons does she receive the respect of the 
 family. Divorce is practically at the pleasure of the hus- 
 band, or he may sell her to another man. Undesired at 
 birth, liable to be sold while a child for prostitution, 
 never educated, her low estate naturally leads to the crime 
 of infanticide. Little wonder that they innocently ask, 
 ^‘Why save the life of a girl?” 
 
 What to-day is the place of this vast Empire among the 
 nations? The combined forces of these three religions 
 working for twenty-three centuries upon one-fourth of the 
 human race has shed no light on the two great foci, the 
 family into which every human being is born, and that 
 immortality to which every mortal soul aspires. Nor has 
 any single ray of light emanated for the enlightenment of 
 the other three-fourths of mankind? Alas, a nation can- 
 not rise higher than its mothers. 
 
 Religions of Shintoism the primal cult of the Jap- 
 Jaijan. anese, has no system of morals and takes lit- 
 tle or no notice of woman’s existence. 
 
17 
 
 About the year 552 of the Christian era, Buddhism en- 
 tered the Mikado’s empire, and after a thousand years of 
 struggle with Shintoism, gained supremacy. 
 
 “While Japanese women are not so pitiably degraded as 
 in India or China, we read in their book of “Instruction 
 for Woman,” “Woman is the creature of man.” “A wo- 
 man’s husband is her God.” Concubinage, “divorce if 
 the wife is not obedient to her husband’s parents” or is un- 
 kind to a concubine, and the selling of young daughters 
 for prostitution, tell the story. 
 
 The Japanese Buddhist Bible teaches that “the sins of 
 three thousand of the worst men all together do not equal 
 the sins of one woman.” Even in “Buddhism’s best Gos- 
 pel” among the articles given by Buddha himself we find 
 only this negative hope. “Although a woman may not 
 be born into My Country, yet the woman who hears the 
 name of Amida Buddha, and is excited thereby to the 
 hatred of the condition of woman, and an earnest longing 
 for the salvation of others, shall not be re-born as a wo- 
 man.”* 
 
 For this crumb of comfort Japanese women are devoted 
 to the worship of Buddha. The timbers of the great 
 Buddhist temple building in Kyoto said to cost three mill- 
 
 *Muripapiu Byo. Luhbavatl Sutrasl 
 
18 
 
 ion dollars, are all hauled to the ground and raised into 
 the structure by ropes made of hair which devoted women 
 have cut off and sent for this purpose. 
 
 Among the Ainu, the aboriginal inhabitants of the is- 
 land of Yesso, the women do not worship the gods, even 
 separately. “The reason commonly given among them is, 
 that the men fear the prayers of the women in general, 
 and of their wives in particular.”* 
 
 Mohammed- There are few more pathetic scenes in 
 anism. history than the casting out of Hagar and 
 Ishmael from the polygamous home of Abraham. “Abra- 
 ham rose up early in the morning and took bread and a 
 bottle of water” and gave it unto Hagar and her child “and 
 sent them away.” The picture is realistic; that erect, well 
 poised figure, with the bottle on her shoulder, that dark 
 Egyptian face with chiseled lines of sorrow, illuminated 
 now with righteous anger, as she gives one last haughty 
 look toward Sarah’s tent and turns toward the wilderness 
 of Beersheba. Very soon the curtain lifts upon the desert 
 scene. The water is spent. Hagar places the child under 
 the scant shade of a shrub and lifting up her voice, weep- 
 ing cries out, “Let me not see the death of the child.” At 
 this crisis a voice is heard from heaven: “Lift up the lad, 
 *Rev, John Bachelor, Church Missionary Society. 
 
19 
 
 I will make of him a great nation.” And they dwelt in 
 the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took him a wife 
 out of the land of the Egyptians. 
 
 The years go by and centuries are numbered. We find 
 the fulfilled promise of a “great nation” in a people in 
 whose veins on the one side is filtering the blood of the 
 great Abraham, mingling with the larger proportion of the 
 idolatrous Egyptian, nomadic in habit, with a genius for 
 conquest, with a language distinguished for softness and 
 copiousness, with a literature of great antiquity and high 
 poetical merit, dwelling in the Peninsula of Arabia. Of 
 these people, in the fifth century of the Christian era, 
 Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was born. A youth of 
 great sincerity and purity, his domestic life with his wife, 
 Khadija, is as beautiful as could be found among a non- 
 Christian people. But when at the age of fifty-two besets 
 himself up as a prophet, and becomes the husband of 
 eleven wives, we find him guilty of the grossest crimes, 
 robbery, murder, and butchery which rival the Emperor 
 Nero. 
 
 “Judged by the smallness of the means at his disposal, 
 and the extent and permanence of his work, his name is 
 illustrious. By his will he abolished a cherished idolatry 
 and bowed to himself the hearts of his countrymen, and 
 
20 
 
 gave to the world a creed which has been a tremendous 
 force on the destinies of the nations. To the impulse he 
 gave, numberless dynasties owe their existence. Fair 
 cities, stately palaces and temples have arisen. At a 
 thousand shrines the voice of the faithful invokes blessings 
 on him.”* “He saw with a correct spiritual vision the 
 elemental truth of all religion. There is only one God.”f 
 For twelve centuries the teachings of Mohammed have 
 borne fruit in human lives. Not only in the land of its 
 birth, but in many lands. 
 
 We turn the pages of the Koran with eager 
 hope that we may find in the writings of this 
 man some teaching that shall lead to the uplifting of wo- 
 man. The most hopeful word the Koran has for woman 
 is in the second chapter; “Whoso doeth good works and is 
 a believer, whether male or female, shall be admitted to 
 Paradise.” The practical exegesis of a woman’s “good 
 works” is, obedience to the husband. Without that good 
 work she can not enter Paradise. Again in the fourth 
 chapter, entitled “Women,” we read, “Men shall have pre- 
 eminence above women, because of those advantages 
 wherein God hath caused the one to excel the other, and 
 for that which they expend of their substance in mainiain- 
 
 *Marcus Dodd. tDean Milman. 
 
21 
 
 ing their wives. The honest women are obedient, careful 
 in the absence of their husbands, for that God preseryeth 
 them by covimitting them to the care and protection of the 
 men. But those, whose perverseness ye shall be apprehen- 
 sive of, rebuke and remove them into separate apartments 
 and chastise them/^ The degraded and degrading prac- 
 tice of scourging and beating wives, having the sanction 
 of the Koran, will be, in the words of Dr. Jessup, “indulged 
 in so long as Islam as a faith prevails.” 
 
 Polygamy Note the polygamous teaching of the 
 Koran. “Every Moslem is allowed four free 
 wives and as many concubines as his right hand possess;” 
 and the faithful are positively promised that in Paradise 
 they shall have seventy-two honris for wives, besides the 
 wives they have here. 
 
 D'vorce According to the Koran, the husband may 
 divorce a wife without warning or assigning a 
 reason. The husband has only to say, “Thou art divor- 
 ced.” Even life may be taken at the will of the husband. 
 Woman is practically a chattel. A Mohammedan being 
 asked, “What is the price you pay for a good wife,” re- 
 plied; “About the same as for a mule, twelve or fourteen 
 pounds.” 
 
22 
 
 A polite Mohammedan would not speak of 
 
 Test’ll nfi ^ ^ 
 
 his wife without using the same apologetic 
 formula he would use if he were speaking of a donkey or a 
 hog. Indeed so degrading is the orthodox Mohamme- 
 dan’s idea of womanhood, we cannot mention it here. 
 The Koran says nothing about a woman’s praying, there- 
 fore she is excluded from the Mosques at the hours of 
 prayer. Behold a religion that practically excludes one- 
 half the human race! It was not until Mohammed was 
 fifty-eight years of age, and the husband of many wives, 
 and had under his own roof experienced what the Moslem 
 women of to-day declare, when there is more than one wife 
 “there is fire in the house,” that he wrote in the Koran 
 the “ordinance of veil,” that badge of jealous subjugation, 
 which marks an era in the degradation of women in all the 
 Orient. The regulation costume shrouds the women from 
 the head to the ankle in a cotton or silk sheet of black or 
 white. Around the head is tied a yard long linen or cot- 
 ton veil in which before the eyes is a piece of open work 
 about the size of a finger which is the only look out and 
 ventilator. No part, not even a hand or an eye, can be 
 seen. 
 
 See the picture; with fearful foot-steps, with no hope in 
 man, with little knowledge of the “All Father,” no knowl- 
 
23 
 
 edge of Him who said, “Come onto me all ye that labor 
 and are heavy laden,” for twelve cycling centuries, an un- 
 ceasing ghostly procession has marched from birth to 
 death. 
 
 Theckla, a Christian martyr of the first century, stand- 
 ing in the arena at Antioch, bemoans in her prayer the 
 shame of all women in her unclothing. The clothing of 
 woman in the veil of the false prophet is a shame to all 
 womanhood. “The whole life of a Mohammedan woman 
 is mirrored in that pathetic Arabic proverb ‘The threshold 
 weeps for forty days whenever a girl is born.’” The 
 spider’s web which once saved the life of Mohammed has, 
 as by the hand of a Vulcan, been forged into a chain which 
 in this nineteenth century in the name of religion dares 
 hold woman, and through her, 200,000,000 of mankind in 
 a singularly hopeless degradation. 
 
 The sacred books of Zoroaster give women a 
 
 Persia. ° 
 
 higher place than any other Ethnic religion. 
 
 Women are given the same religious rites as men, yet even 
 
 here “woman’s first duty is obedience to her husband, and 
 
 disobedience is a crime so heinous as to receive punishment 
 
 after death.”* 
 
 On the death of a chief in Central Africa hundreds of 
 ♦The Vendldas. 
 
24 
 
 his wives are buried alive,* a sacrifice for his convenience 
 in the spirit land. 
 
 Miss Mary C. Collins, who has lived many years among 
 the North American Indians, says, “The Indian is a relig- 
 ious man, and it is his religion that makes him cruel.” 
 
 The story becomes monotonous. All non-Christian re- 
 ligions degrade women, and as woman is, so is all society. 
 
 To-day the all-sufficient Christian evidence, is the im- 
 measurable contrast between heathen and Christian society. 
 
 “The works that I do bear avitness of Me, that 
 THE Father hath sent Me.” — John 5:S6. 
 
 ♦Cameron.