"But reserve for yourselves all the young girls who are still virgins." Moses spoke "in the name of God," as does his Holiness at Rome to-day. Comment is hardly necessary. A few more quotations from the Vedas: "A virtuous woman needs no purification, for she is never defiled, even by contact with impurity. "Women should be shielded by fostering solicitude by their fathers, their brothers, their husbands, and the brothers of their husbands, if they hope for great prosperity. "When women are honored, the divinities are content, but where they are not honored, all undertakings fail." The sacerdotal caste in Egypt followed the inspiration of the Brahmans, and took care to make no change in that situation. And Moses followed the example of the priests of Egypt, where woman was a slave or a prostitute in the temples as out. The degeneracy of a people, the decay of religion, and the degradation of woman are inseparable, and it is so-called "religion" that institutes the change, and sets the pace, "down the steep descent." The Brahmans "forgot God" and instituted the worship of saints and holy men, and mythological characters, just as Rome does to-day. The women of America to-day by a consensus of public opinion should make auricular confession _disreputable_. Excommunication, which is such a power in the hands of Rome, is merely a subterfuge and substitute for the degradation of "outcasts," and pariahs, instituted by the Brahman priests to terrify the disobedient and retain their power. If the reader cares to know the danger and the degradation to woman fostered and protected through the Confessional by the Celibate Roman priesthood, he should read "The History of Auricular Confession," by De Lasteyrie, translated into English and printed in London in 1848. Now and then a Pope or a council undertook to institute reform, but found, as in Spain, prostitution of women by priests through the confessional so widespread and universal that they more often gave up the attempt through fear of scandal and contempt for the Church itself. Lecky, in his "History of European Morals," records the case of "the abbot-elect of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, who in 1171 was found on investigation to have _seventeen illegitimate children in a single village_; or, an abbot of St. Pelayo, in Spain, who in 1130 was proved to have kept no less than seventy concubines; or Henry III, Bishop of Liege, who was deposed in 1274 for having sixty-five illegitimate children." (History of European Morals. P. 350.) If the reader remarks that "this is ancient history," he should remember that a celibate priesthood to-day have the same opportunity, through the secrecy and power of the Confessional, as ever. I have barely touched on this disgusting but all-important question on the general thesis of Jacolliot, viz.: "The first result of the baneful domination of priests in India was the abasement and moral degradation of woman."