With such a belief it is hardly strange that the education of girls was looked upon as a crime; and with such a record it is almost incredible effrontery that enables the Church to-day to claim credit for the education of women,** If she were to educate every woman living, free of charge, in every branch of known knowledge, she could not repay woman for what she has deprived her of in the past, or efface the indignity she has already offered.*** * See Morley's "Diderot," p. 76; Lea's "Sacerdotal Celibacy;" Lecky's "European Morals." ** See Appendix H, 1 to 4. *** Lecky, "European Morals," p. 310. A prominent clergyman of the Church of England, who was recently much honored in this country, lately said, in a sermon to women: "There are those who think a woman can be taught logic. This is a mistake. Men are logical, women are not." He was too modest to give his proofs. It seemed to me strange that he did not mention the doctrines of the trinity and vicarious atonement, or a few of the miracles, as the result of logic in the masculine mind. And I could not help thinking at the time that a man whose mental furniture was chiefly composed of the thirty-nine articles and the Westminster Catechism would naturally be a profound authority on logic. An orthodox preacher talking about logic is a sight to arouse the compassion of a demon. Next to the natural sciences, logic can give the Church the colic quicker than any other kind of a green apple. And so it is not strange that the clergy should be afraid that it would disagree with the more delicate constitution of a woman. They always did maintain that any diet that was a trifle too heavy for them couldn't be digested by anybody else; and they would be perfectly right in their supposition if intellectual dyspepsia or softening of the brain were contagious. The "sphere" of no other creature is wholly determined and bounded by _one physical_ characteristic or capacity. To every other creature is conceded without question the right to use more than one talent. But the Fathers decided in holy and solemn council that it would be "unbecoming" for a woman to learn the alphabet, and that she could have no possible use for such information. They said that she would be a better mother without distracting her dear little brain with the a, b, c's, and that therefore she should not learn them. They also decided that she who was so far lost to modesty as to become acquainted with the multiplication table "was an unfit associate for our wives and mothers." There was something wrong with such a woman. She was either a "witch" or else she was "married to the devil."