Now, it need not be said that the contention on behalf of the rights of woman is heartily espoused by a movement which bases itself on the conception of reason and justice as the root facts of existence. There was no justice in the "subjection of woman," and we hold that those opportunities of learning which a cultured age opens up to man should likewise be at the disposal of his sister; that that freedom, which is the birthright of the man, to expand the energies, mental and moral, of his being to their fullest extent and in whatever calling, should also be acknowledged to be the right of woman. The constitutional agitation for the recognition of her rights has met with notable success, and it has the fullest support of the ethical Church; but we believe that that agitation has been pushed too far by a very small and insignificant minority, and made to cover an attack on the institution of matrimony, which her wisest friends see could only end in the ultimate downfall of woman herself. Such an agitation, such an attack, must encounter the most resolute opposition from a body which derives all its idealism and inspiration from a life motived, not by the sense, but by reason. Its leaders in America have pronounced decisively against any tampering with the natural sacrament of marriage, and where they detect tendencies--as unfortunately they do in many of the States of their Union--to further loosen its bonds, they, with all the influence at their command, endeavour to strengthen them. Let me now proceed to justify this attitude of the ethical communion. We do not base our action on considerations of authority such as move the Churches of Christendom. It is not because Jesus assisted at a wedding breakfast and performed an alleged wonder; not because the Apostle Paul calls marriage "a great mystery in Christ and the Church," but because both Jesus and Paul and the Churches express a truth of nature itself, that the union of man and woman is not, and cannot be, the herding of animals; that the bestowal of the body cannot but be the outward symbol of an invisible bond which is the very soul and life of the contract. We thus go behind all Churches and apostles and ascend to the very roots of Nature herself, and discern in the golden glory wherewith she surrounds the ideal marriage the significance of her intentions in its regard--that it is her true and real Sacrament, that her sons and daughters are themselves its ministers, for they alone are kindled with the heavenly fire; that not the Church, not the priest nor ritual celebrates it, but these twain made one by that same Love which moves the earth and heavens and all the stars.