And, heroic as this statement may seem to you, it is a simple statement of fact. Can man demand of woman a higher purity, a more ideal Christian grace, than the letter of the Scripture, than the spirit of Christ, demands of man himself?--"Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is also perfect." That was the clear command laid upon the simple fishermen, upon Luke the physician and Matthew the publican, as well as upon Mary and Martha. The world's eyes are slowly opening to the need of a pure life in men; and it helps to show men what they ought to be, when women knock at the doors of their workshops, and insist on entering. "What!" says the soldier, "must my sister follow me to the field to take this blood-stained hand; to see me decked in the spoils of fallen men; or hunting unprotected women like a brute beast, till they fall senseless on the bodies of those they loved?" "Shut her out!" cries the minister of state. "Shall my _sister_ see these hands, dripping with blood-money, bribed by a slave power or a party interest, signing papers that condemn children yet unborn to the miseries of hopeless war?" "Shut her out!" cries the advocate. "I am preparing to defend this man for luring helpless innocence to the brink of hell, for building up a fortune on dollars wrung from starving women, for putting a bullet through his brother because he did not live a life purer than his own." "Turn her out!" cries the judge. "She will see that my scales are loaded. She heard that railroad company offer me a bribe. She caught a whisper just now from the husband of yonder outraged woman. She will hear the liquor dealer's counsel, and see the golden lure that South Carolina offers when the fugitive stands at the bar. Turn her out!" "Turn her out!" says the physician. "Shall she hear me jeer at what she deems holy? Would you have her grow shameless also?" "Shut her out," says the trader, "while I mark my goods! This spool of cotton is short fifty yards: mark it two hundred. This yard of muslin was made at Manchester: sew on the Paris tack. This shawl was woven in France: label it Cashmere. Color that cheese with annatto, weigh down that butter with salt, dilute that rose-water from the spring, grate up turnip to mix with that horseradish; but turn that woman out!" "Turn her out!" cries the priest, last of all. "Polemics and theology have no charms for her. She will ask me why I do not do justly and love mercy. Turn her out!" "Turn her out!" and, in the shudder which creeps over him while he speaks, man sees not only how tender and strong is his love for the sister that hung on the same maternal bosom; but he sees also what the gospel without and the gospel within demand of the son no less than the daughter of God. Farewell to war, to statecraft, to legal tricks, to shifts of trade; farewell to bribery, to desecration, to idle controversy,--when woman enters in to man's labor!