refuse to grant liquor licenses; and this, too, in many cases where ninety, or ninety-five per cent. of all the women of a village or township had united in signing a remonstrance! Think you so little respect for the wishes of these women would have been shown if they had been voters? if these Commissioners had held their position by the permission of those they so politely bowed out of their council room, and laughed at for their helplessness when gone?

Now I ask in reason and conscience, if Woman is to assume the responsibility of this work, and much more like it, shall she be left so powerless? the laughingstock of every pimp and bar-room loafer and rum seller in the land, who is free to go to the polls and elect Commissioners and law-makers to his liking? What monstrous injustice and folly! Either take all such affairs entirely out of her hands, or else give her the means necessary to accomplish these missions!

I have thus particularized some part of the work which will be first to receive Woman's attention when emancipated and called to exercise Legislative functions preparatory to that general re-organization of our institutions necessary to the building up of a true Christian civilization. No special mention has been made of her relation to other reforms and interests of a kindred character, which doubtless suggest themselves to the reader's mind, as the object was only to illustrate a principle; and if I have been successful in doing this, then have we the key to the solution of all the great moral and social problems that have plagued the ages.

The change contemplated in the condition of Woman, civilly and politically, it is to be admitted, is not without its grave difficulties and transitory ills. Lifted from a subject condition, where the ages have held her in mental and spiritual bondage, to one of independence and responsibility, where she is not merely the equal of man as his co-worker, but in a certain sense must take the lead, and go ahead as the designer and builder of a new order of society and government, after the model of the spirit, it would be strange indeed if many perplexities, miscarriages, failures, not to say follies, did not attend the first, initial steps of reconstruction.

The New Era, like the Old, must have its formative. stage, wherein experiments, mistakes, blunders and failures are the trying incidents of early growth. But such seems to be nature's plan of development, and it were wise in us to accept it with patience.

Many of Woman's efforts and institutions would, at first, perhaps, compare unfavorably with systems which masculine wisdom had been ages in perfecting, though it is hardly possible te see how she could make many things worse. But gradual improvement will mark her efforts, and at last crown them with the perfections of the spirit. Fear not to set her free. She is called to assume the great responsibility, and a heavenly divinity will be in her heart both to will and to do better than we know.

Emancipated, enlightened Womanhood, is the hope of the world; the medium through which the eternal energies of Divine Love will be manifested for the temporal salvation of the race. No movement was ever launched upon the tide of popular agitation that promised so much for humanity, as the one being

made to secure the civil and political enfranchisement of the feminine sex. To liberate Woman from the further subordination of the masculine mind, is equivalent to liberating the spiritual life of the world from the bondage of the material; and I am persuaded, that the most extravagant expectation one might indulge in, respecting the result of such a change in the controlling forces of civilization, would fall almost infinitely below the actual benefit to be realized by

our race.

9*

CHAPTER VIII.

CONCLUSION-MILLENNIAL ERA.

We have now reached the conclusion of our inquiry. The new type of civilization, or DIVINE REPUBLIC, which has been suggested from the first, is found to be no mere conception of fancy, contrary to reason and nature, and contingent upon some miraculous development to bring it to pass, but it is the natural outgrowth of our spiritual being, the ripened fruit of the Christian Dispensation. It is that ultimate condition of maturity and perfection in Man, compared with which all previous states of human existence have been but vegetal and preparatory.

And yet, while perusing these pages, the idea must often have forced itself upon the reader's mind, that however natural all this may be, the triumph of the principles set forth would prove no less than the dawning of what we have always supposed to be the Millennial Era, and the beginning of Christ's reign on earth. And so it would. If Jesus should not be here in person, his spirit, which is Love, would reign in the regenerate heart, and rule the world. And who shall say that this is not what is meant by the "Second Coming of Christ?"

Be that as it may, I am fully persuaded that this promised day will dawn much sooner than most of us apprehend; and the present universal movement for

the elevation of Woman, who is the natural representative of Christ and the spirit, is both a sign of its coming, and the chief instrumentality, under God, to usher it in.

The Bible, Old Testament and New, is burdened with predictions of a Millennial advent, an era of peace and brotherhood; but as to the exact date of its coming, it is doubtful if it intended to give us explicit information, leaving us to study the signs of the times, and those shadows which coming events cast before. When we see the trees putting forth their tender leaves, we may know that summer is nigh. We have seen the great tree of humanity put forth its tender leaves; aye, more, we have seen its higher life blossom in the dawning of the Christian era, and two thousand years have been given it to mature and ripen, and now the golden fruit of the ages is about ready to drop into the lap of civilization.

It is a noticable fact, that a very deep conviction pervades the religious mind of the world that we are on the eve of a great spiritual awakening, a moral revolution of some kind such as has never been wit nessed; and were it not for the vagaries of Millerism, and the irrational and materialistic views of Second Adventists, in regard to the nature and character of Christ's Second Coming, thousands of clergymen and others would avow their belief in the nearness of the Millennium. Many are doing so as it is, notwithstanding the taint of fanaticism that attaches to a person in proclaiming aloud what everybody believes, or professes to believe, will sometime come. Bishop Simpson, one of the most spiritually intuitive men of the Methodist Episcopal Church of America, declared