The Levitical law makes motherhood a sin that can be expiated only by offering a sin offering at the birth of every child. The degree of sinfulness depends upon the sex of the child; giving birth to a daughter being esteemed a greater sin than giving birth to a son (Lev. xii). The laws of the Bible in regard to divorce are most unjust. A husband is permitted to divorce his wife if she displease him, while a wife is not allowed to obtain a divorce for any cause whatever. "When a man hath taken a wife, and marries her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, ... then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house" (Deut. xxiv, 1). "When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, and seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldst have her to thy wife; then thou shalt bring her home to thine house.... And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will" (Deut. xxi, 10-14). Wives were compelled to suffer outrage for the sins of their husbands. "Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun" (2 Sam. xii, 11). "Their houses shall be spoiled and their wives ravished" (Is. xiii, 16). "I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished" (Zech. xiv, 2). "Let their wives be bereaved of their children and be widows" (Jer. xviii, 21). The teachings of the Bible have been used by the church to keep woman in a subordinate position. "There is not a more cruel chapter in history," says Dr. Moncure D. Conway, "than that which records the arrest by Christianity of the natural growth of European civilization regarding woman. In Germany it found woman participating in the legislative assembly, and sharing the interests and counsels of man, and drove her out and away.... Even more fatal was the overthrow of woman's position in Rome. Read the terrible facts as stated by Gibbon, by Milman, and Sir Henry Maine; read and ponder them, and you will see the tremendous wrong that Christianity did to woman." Even the priceless virtue of chastity, in the name of law and in the name of the Bible, was trampled under foot. Mrs. Gage, in "Woman, Church, and State," says: