Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/154

142 connection with the human soul. God is the Father of those beings, and of those only, whom He has created in His own image, whom He has gifted with a spirit like His own, whom He has framed for the end that they may approach Him in His highest attributes. To be a parent is to communicate a kindred nature, and to watch over, educate, and guide this nature to perfect development.

The rights of woman are discussed on important grounds. Law establishes very unfair differences between the rights of the two sexes. Science furnishes no precedent for such injustice, and civilization induces, in some measure, its mitigation; therefore it is a marvel that usage should accord woman less honor than either Science or civilization.

Our laws are not impartial, to say the least, in their discrimination as to the person, property, and parental claims of the two sexes. If the elective franchise for women will remedy the evil, without encouraging difficulties of greater magnitude, let us hope it will be granted. A very rational means of improvement, at present, is the improvement of society in general, and the achievement of a nobler race for legislation.

If a dissolute husband deserts his wife, it should not follow that the wronged and, perchance, impoverished woman cannot collect her own wages, enter into business agreements, hold real estate, deposit funds, and hold her children free from his right of interference.

Want of social reciprocity is a crying evil, occasioned by the selfishness of the world. Our forefathers exercised their faith in the direction taught by the Apostle James, when he said, “Pure religion is to visit the fatherless and widows, and keep one's self unspotted from