* The above discourse was delivered on Easter Sunday, April 1st. Let the hope of the season animate us. Let it fill our souls with confidence in our greater destinies; let it teach us to trust in them and to labor for them, that a new Ideal may vivify the palsied hearts and a new spring tide come, and a new Easter dawn arise over all mankind. VI. THE RELIGIOUS CONSERVATISM OF WOMEN. No thoughtful person can fail to appreciate the enormous influence which women are constantly exercising for good and evil upon the destinies of the world. The charms and graces of existence, whatever ennobles and embellishes life, we owe mainly to them. They are the natural guardians of morality, and from age to age the mothers of households have preserved the sacred fire on the domestic hearth, whereat every virtue is kindled. But they have also been the most formidable enemies of progress. Their conservatism is usually of the most unreasoning kind, and the tenacity with which they cling to favorite prejudices is rarely overcome either by argument or appeal. They have been from time immemorial the dupes, the tools, and the most effective allies of priestcraft. Their hostility to the cause of Reform has been so fatal, not only because of the direct influence of their actions, but because of that subtle power which they exert so skilfully over the minds of husbands, brothers and friends, by the arts of remonstrance, entreaty and the contagion of their feeble alarms. The question whether their hostility can be turned into friendship, is one of momentous importance for the leaders of the Liberal movement to consider. In the following we shall endeavor to make plain that the subordinate position hitherto assigned to women, is the principal cause that has impelled them to take sides against religious progress.