The vows of _poverty_, _chastity_ and _obedience_, lead practically to self-destruction. Poverty is helplessness, or nothingness; chastity is self-mortification; obedience, by which is meant, absolute surrender of the will to another, is the stamping out of the mind. Goodness! It is not only the world that Christianity wishes to destroy, but also man. Annihilation--the Buddhist Nirvana, seems to be its goal. How to make a man a mere _zero_--poor, emasculated, and a mental slave, seems to be the ideal of this Asiatic cult. After two thousand years of modern education, such is the hold of Jesus upon the Christian world, that in our churches is still sung the hymn: "O, to be nothing, nothing!" With this doctrine of celibacy in view, the indifference of Jesus to the rights of women as human beings is not a surprise. It has been well said that "those who trample upon manhood can have no real respect for woman." Jesus never spoke of God except as a father. If the highest principle or being in the universe is a "he," of course woman can never hope to be on an equality with man. Motherhood will always occupy a secondary place as long as the father is a god. If God is a father, what mother can be on an equality with him? He must rule; she must obey. Women do not stop to think that religion--Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism--is the most stubborn obstacle in the path of their advancement. Jesus ignored women in all the essentials of life. He did not love any one of them sufficiently to share his life with her. He had no place for the love of woman in his heart. He kept twelve men as his constant companions. Suppose Jesus had invited some gentle and devoted woman to the honor of apostleship,--what an example that would have been! But he was not great enough to rise above the bigotry of his age. Surely, there were women in his circle of acquaintance better than Judas Iscariot, who sold him for a paltry sum of money. Women may wait upon Jesus at the table, they may give birth to him, and nurse him; they may fall at his feet to bathe them with their tears and wipe them with their tresses--but to be his apostles--not that. Had Jesus been really a great genius he would have understood that in the work of saving people, the co-operation of woman is indispensable. There are no better saviors than women. How many a husband has been saved from drink--from the gutter even, by his wife. How many sons have been shielded from a prodigal's fate by a mother's all-conquering devotion. Yet for this splendid force or agency of reform, Jesus had no appreciation whatever. If I were hanged on the highest hill Mother o' mine; I know whose love would follow me still Mother o' mine. Jesus failed to see in woman that which inspires the poet, the painter, the hero, to do their best. He took the Asiatic view of woman. "Can man be free," sang Shelley, "if woman be a slave?" Suppose Jesus had said that!