down-trodden state may have exceptionally effected, but her natural
equality, and in fact superiority, in all but the physical strength
which has imposed an unjust bondage on the higher nature."

"I hardly know where to meet you if you reject all arguments from
proved facts," said Julius.

"And the Bible. Why don't you say the Bible?" exclaimed his wife in
an undertone; but Mrs. Tallboys took it up and said, "The precepts
of Scripture are founded on a state of society passed away. You may
find arguments for slavery there."

"I doubt that," said Julius. "There are practical directions for an
existing state of things, which have been distorted into sanction
for its continuance. The actual precepts are broad principles,
which are for all times, and apply to the hired servant as well as
to the slave. So again with the relations of man and wife; I can
nowhere find a command so adapted to the seclusion and depression of
the Eastern woman as to be inapplicable to the Christian matron.
And the typical virtuous woman, the valiant woman, is one of the
noblest figures anywhere depicted."

"I know," said Mrs. Tallboys, who had evidently been waiting
impatiently again to declaim, "that men, even ministers of religion,
from Paul if you like downwards, have been willing enough to exalt
woman so long as they claim to sit above her. The higher the
oppressed, so much higher the self-exaltation of the oppressor.
Paul and Peter exalt their virtuous woman, but only as their own
appendage, adorning themselves; and while society with religious
ministers at the head of it call on woman to submit, and degrade the