THROWS A LITTLE LIGHT ON A SUBJECT SOMETIMES UNCTUOUSLY CONDESCENDED UPON BY PREACHERS OF "WORDS." I wonder where Christians find authority for our modern treatment of illegitimacy? Preachers of all sects are never tired of telling us that they preach peace and goodwill among men. Their religion is to redeem all wrongs, to make mankind better, to lift the fallen, and cheer the broken-hearted. So at least they say, but when we look for deeds, we do not find many in this lower world. The fulfilment of the Christian ideal is prudently (?) adjourned to the next, above or below. Wherever one turns in contemplation of modern Christianity, one finds a ghastly divergence between its professions and its practice, and at no point is this more visible than in the behaviour of the Churches towards women who have sinned. Taking their tone from a corrupt society, which desires to enjoy its vices, and to prey upon its women without taking upon itself responsibilities which the poor besotted Turk even never dreams of shirking, the dispensers of the gospel of peace lead the chorus of reprobation which is heaped upon the woman, who, like the virgin mother so many of them profess to worship, bears the burden of maternity in shame and loneliness. No distinction is drawn between woman and woman--rarely or ever is the guilt of the man considered; the duties of fatherhood can be neglected by the seducer with tacit, nay, often with the full approbation of society and the Churches. But on the woman a penalty falls that is worse than death. She has yielded to the seducer, and henceforth she must be pressed down and cast out, unless--and the distinction is important--she be a sinner of the highest caste in society, when the sin may be covered with lies as with an embroidered garment; or, unless she belong to the lowest, where the difference between morality and immorality is too often nearly indistinguishable--thirteen centuries of more or less well-paid-for priestly instruction notwithstanding. Speaking broadly, however, the law of social life condemns the "unattached" woman and her offspring to obloquy and degradation, and it does this not merely without the protest of the Churches, but by their full sanction. For ages priests of all hues have arrogated to themselves the power of regulating the union of the sexes; without their rites and blessings no two human beings could become man and wife. When two were thus united the universal cry was "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder." The priest, in fact, arrogated to himself the power of the Deity. His "joining" was God's, and none but his held on Earth or in Heaven. Greater blasphemy has hardly ever been committed even by priests. By this abominable fraud--this false assumption of authority--deeper social wrongs have come upon the world than from any other priestly assumption whatsoever. The priest has habituated society to disregard all ties formed in what is called an illegitimate manner.