and which is apt to conduct to madness or to sin. In such case the holy kiss of love owes its warmth to the sexual impulse which inspires it, consciously or unconsciously, and the mystical religious union of the sexes is fitted to issue in a less spiritual union. Without doubt, an excessive development of the emotional life in any other direction would be equally pernicious. All that the unwise religious teacher can be blamed for is his disposition to foster the egotistic development of emotion, without considering its real origin, by the overwhelming importance which he teaches the individual to attach to himself and his destiny. Instead of urging him to lessen the gap between himself and nature until he loses self in a sympathetic oneness with nature, he stimulates him to widen it more and more until he rises to the insane conceit of himself as something entirely distinct from nature--an unrelated, spiritual essence, for whose benefit the universe and all that there is has been specially created. Assuredly were not man now, as he always has been, instinctively wiser than his creeds, were he not moved by a deeper impulse than consciousness can give account of, he would make no progress in civilization." The church has lost its grip on the male portion of society. They have considerably outgrown the ecclesiastical swaddling of scriptural doctrine of the ancient and modern theology. The woman is the stronghold as worshiper, and sustainer of the sacred masculine prerogative whom they can easily influence. By reason, as the holy book claims, of their intellectual feebleness, women are the submissive tools of cunning priests, sentimental and emotional appeals, and yield readily to their extravagant dictum. The priests exhort them, with their conventional religious phraseology, to be partakers of some mysterious glory to be found somewhere in infinite space. Keeping ever in sight the same stupefying refrain of the orthodox prayer and blessing: "Blessed and glorious trinity, trinity in unity, three--one, three persons in one God, tri-personal, triune, coeternal, coequal, God-man, O Lord God! who art one God, one Lord! not one only person, but three persons in one substance! O Lord God! Lamb of God! Son of the father! O God the son, Redeemer of the world! O God the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the father and the son! The blessing of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, be among you. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, bless, preserve, and keep you. Glory be to the father, and to the son, and to the Holy Ghost. Now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be all honor and glory. Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth ever, one God, world without end," etc.