The Society of Friends, upon examination, becoming convinced of the falsity of the reasoning, assumed to be predicated upon the Word of God, that there was inferiority between the sexes, and not believing that the assumption was borne out by a careful perusal of the Scriptures, granted perfect equality to men and women in the exercise of religious services.  Having been the foremost religious body of modern times in granting liberty of speech to Christian women, they have been more highly honored than most other denominations in the number of gifted speakers among their women.

In the early days of Methodism, too, women were allowed to exercise the talent for public speaking, with which God had endowed them; and Dinah Evans and Mrs. Fletcher—­the one in the humbler walks of life, the other a lady of position, education, and refinement—­stand forth conspicuously upon the pages of history, giving evidence that the ministry of Christian women was honored by God in leading the wicked to forsake their unrighteous ways.  As Methodism became older, like the primitive Church, it departed from the first usage, and as a consequence, like it, it lost for the time a powerful agency for doing good.  Latterly, however, women, especially in the United States, are breaking through the fetters—­ecclesiastical as well as civil—­which have so long bound them.  In a measure, at least, their day of civil and religious slavery is drawing to a close.  They now very frequently preside and speak at public religious meetings, and are admitted by candid, well-informed men to be quite as competent to discharge the duties of a presiding officer, or to present the ideas they wish to convey in a clear and logical manner, as any of the learned clergymen or clear-headed laymen in the same meeting.  Some of the most eloquent public advocates of the missionary enterprise in the United States are earnest Christian women.

In the halcyon days of Queen Victoria, before the sad bereavement came upon her which has darkened her latter years and caused her to retire as much as possible from public view—­at the time when she read her own speeches from the throne—­she was pronounced, by competent critics, to be unsurpassed, as a reader, by any elocutionist in Europe.

A thoroughly liberal education, and the practice of conversing with persons of intelligence, renders material assistance to both men and women, by enabling them to express their thoughts in the clearest and most forcible language possible; and the same thing may be remarked of declamation.  In social circles, where men and women of average mental culture meet together, there is no perceptible difference between the conversational powers of the sexes.  Let the facilities for the education of men and women once be made equal throughout the civilized world, and the hackneyed cry of her mental inferiority will be heard of no more, excepting when mentioned among the other exploded theories of the Dark Ages and of barbaric