The Star in the West

THE VIRGIN 71 eternal symbol of love and life , and the purest of human joys, " and which act being attributed to supernatural powers came under the authority of religion , and fell into the hands of an interested priesthood , giving them an immense power over women , and through women over men ; an influence that has been exercised in every land , and every age , by these spiritual leaders : an influence by which they have in so many cases ruled the minds of men , and by which for so many centuries they have blighted the happiest prospects of many a human heart . But surely now that we have reached the twentieth century , thousands and thousands of years since these primi tive times , should we not shake off these trammels of infant thought , and , assuming our manhood , decry an ideal that is not only brutal but absurd ; instead of reverencing it because of its great antiquity , or because of our conservative sympathies with the past days of our fathers . Woman is as clean as man , and a wife married or unmarried as pure as any virgin . Genera tion is no more filthy than alimentation ; both are necessary , both are accompanied by natural appetites ; the one maintains the individual , the other the race ; both may be carried to extremes , both may become lusts . The world is ever progressing onward , and we must progress with it, or else stagnation and retrogression will set in ; and in these competitive times the latter two spell social and moral death . What was good yesterday may be bad to - day , and what is good to - day may be evil to - morrow . What the ultimate end will be , none can tell , for it lies “ behind the veil ”; but what we must do is very certain , very definite , very sure . We must ameliorate our lot , not by the ephemeral