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The priests endowed the gods with vices which they knew to be popular among their rich and powerful patrons.

THE NEEDS OF WOMAN.

Women need any and all disciplines which teach them self-justice.  There are many noble and good women who allow their whole lives to be picked away from them by demands upon their time and strength which come to them under the guise of duties.  Viewed from a higher standpoint, they are not duties, in that they conflict with the great underlying principle of self-justice.  This is the pivotal idea of a true religion; for it is impossible to be true, to be just to others save as we are so to ourselves, and while no character can be perfected, except through the fiery ordeal of an entire self-abnegation, there is a higher, and a holier life in store for those who have the strength, and the courage to plant their feet upon this God-given and eternal law of justice to self.

It is comparatively easy to gird one’s self for the conflict which is apparent, nearly all women souls are equal to that heroism; but it is in the daily round of the household, in relation to the church, and to society, or to the professions where women need to watch most jealously the weakness of self-sacrifice.  Women have had the beauty of “unselfishness,” and “amiability” dinned into their ears for so long that there is no depth of degradation, or of abnegation of true womanhood to which they will not descend for the sake of being so considered by those whose interest it is to keep them where they virtually endorse the vices of others by their own lack of self-justice.  While we must grope along until we understand the wickedness of this, and until we outgrow that weakness, let us be ready for, and equal to the hour which shall give us the laurels of the victor.  And why not laurels?  Has it not been uttered by the mouth of inspired prophecy that the “last shall be first,” and that “the stone rejected by the builders shall yet be the head of the corner?” It rests with us, individually, to represent that truthfulness, and faithful adherence to the justice due to womanhood which shall yet crown her with rejoicing.

To this end women must begin to gather in those pearls of unselfish devotion and self-abnegation which they have been so recklessly casting under the feet of ignorance and beastliness.

It is blessed for lovely and loving woman to bestow bountifully from the richness of her nature.  But every grace has its complement, and the complement of this, for the present, is the greater blessing of conserving herself until she knows her power as an individual, and thoroughly comprehends what is due to her dignity and worth.

MAN VERSUS WOMAN.