The author expects to be criticised, and perhaps charged with obscenity, for introducing this subject. But it has been well said: “Prudery and pruriency are frequently companions, equally impure and cowardly; and in all scientific investigations they should be disregarded rather than conciliated.” The ancients saw no impurity in the symbolism of parentage to indicate the work of creation. What is divine and natural to be and to do cannot be immodest and obscene. No person can with decency and propriety impugn the operation of Nature’s laws to which he owes his existence; and he is degraded and corrupt above all others who regards that law as essentially sensual. Phallicism meant no wrong until sensuality and impurity of life suggested that to mention it was indecorous. No clean and chaste mind can be shocked by the most obvious laws of nature. Lydia Maria Child and other grand women have written brave words on this subject which silly prudes would do well to study, if, indeed, they ever read anything beyond a lascivious French novel. Women only expose their ignorance when they are reddened with blushes at the mention of phallic worship, and at the same time wear the mystic horse-shoe or the crescent upon their immaculate bosoms, eat hot cross-buns, dance around the Maypole, and worship beneath the church steeple. Even the vestments of priests are ornamented with phallic emblems; and one can hardly go abroad without beholding things which show how innocently and unconsciously “the records of the past” are preserved in church architecture, ecclesiastical rites, and many other things daily before our eyes—well understood by really learned men, but to the true origin and significance of which the masses are totally blind. There are churches in Philadelphia, and elsewhere, even among those who call themselves _liberal_, which are ornamented with all the emblems of the ancient Nature-worship, especially sun-worship and phallus-worship. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union held a great meeting recently at Ocean Grove, N. J., and innocently used a programme decorated with the horseshoe and many other phallic emblems. They had the cat seated on the crescent, which, according to Egyptian mythology, said, “We are virgins, but nevertheless desire that commerce which eventuates in offspring.” They had the emblematic _hare_ also, which always denotes _fecundity_, and many other emblems not to be mentioned in polite society. Even our ordinary playing-cards, over which so much precious time is wasted, are distinguished by phallic symbols! Passing by the symbolism of fire-worship prevalent in nearly all ancient lands, and omitting to notice ancestor-worship, the _worship of the sun_, which embraces nearly all the forms of Nature-worship, now claims our attention. It should be kept in mind what has already been intimated, that the use of natural objects in worship is not necessarily idolatrous.