But, whatever were the original equalities or inequalities of the human race, this, at least, is certain, that the influence of depraved passions since the fall, is sufficiently conspicuous in rendering the claims and duties of both sexes more and more ambiguous, and disarranging the harmonies of the first creation. In proportion to the degree in which society is corrupt, power will assume an authority over weakness, and they who ought to be help meets will become competitors. Opposition generates dislike, and dislike, when associated with power, will produce oppression. It is in vain to plead the principle of right, to solicit attention to the voice of reason, or to attempt to define the boundaries of influence, when no means exist of enforcing the attention of him who can command obedience. There is no alternative but submission or punishment. Upon this principle, the female sex may be expected to become the sport of human caprice, folly, and guilt. But Christianity tends to rectify the disorders which sin has introduced into the universe, and both in a natural and moral sense, to restore a lost paradise. Like that mighty Spirit, which in the beginning moved upon the surface of the waters, when the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, it corrects the confusion of the moral system, pervades and reorganizes the formless mass of depraved society, and pacifies the turbulence of human passions. With a majesty that overawes, a voice that will be heard, an influence that cannot be resisted, it renews the world, and will eventually diffuse its unsetting glory through every part of the habitual globe. The subject before us presents a large field of research, and it would well repay the labour to walk with a deliberate step around its spacious borders and throughout its ample extent; but we must content ourselves with tracing out some of its principal varieties, and collecting comparatively a few of its productions. Our plan will require the induction _of facts_, as the necessary basis of argument or illustration; and these refer to the state of women, in countries and during periods in which the religion of the Bible was wholly unknown, as in the nations of Pagan antiquity, in Greece and Rome; in savage, superstitious, and Mahometan regions; and their condition previously to the establishment of Christianity, in patriarchal time and places, or during the Jewish theocracy. I. The Pagan Nations of Antiquity demand the first consideration.