Religion, supernaturalism, ecclesiastical control of human affairs, have done more harm than the good they have ever effected. For several thousand years they have been doing the worst of mischief--in spite of their conceited belief to the contrary--to actual enlightenment, to the advancement and prosperity of the masses, to the progress of nations generally. They have been a persistent barrier to every step forward, and have persecuted every idea that threatened in any way to interfere with their organized system. The sacred or Hebraic nationality, steeped in barbarism, washed in cruelty, and bathed in the blood of humanity, was succeeded by another organized system, the Roman Catholic church, which was by no means an improvement upon the Bible methods. They added savagery and cruelty of a more refined character. They associated with it a tyranny and a persecution that fairly blackens the pages of history. All was done, however, for the sacred cause, with the cant, sanctimoniousness, greed, and selfishness that only the church and its saintly priests could be capable of. These self-styled divine organizations ever have been, and are even now, inimical to the best social interests of humanity. Their own aggrandizement was of greater importance to them than the welfare of the oppressed. They are the real promoters of class distinction. They are the promulgators of sectarian hate. They lessen the dignity of woman. They are the fomentors of prejudice and superstition. They are the supporters and sustainers of the opulent, the powerful, the wealthy and influential, to the detriment and debasement of the poor and more unfortunate classes. They are the actual enemies of virtue and simplicity of life--by their expensive church trappings, their gorgeous adornments, their costly decorations, their glaring exhibition, their glittering finery, their pompous display of church dress, their gilded magnificence, their showy grandeur, their ostentation and boastful ceremonies, overawing the senses, and subduing the humble, the ignorant, making them mentally more stupid, the slaves to a pernicious system of doctrine. In ancient times, in the days of antiquity, the males were the chief worshipers. They were the privileged portion of the community, who assumed the duties to come in direct contact with all that was considered sacred, holy, or divine. Woman was considered as a defiled or polluted creature, unworthy or unfit to come within the sacred precincts of their temples or participate in any church affairs, or to minister in any of their ecclesiastical rites or ceremonies. Women had nothing to say. They have nothing to say to this day, in the Roman Catholic church especially, and in the orthodox Protestant denominations very little, because Paul lays down the law in Cor. xiv, 34: "Let your women keep silence in your churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law."