Jewess, Mrs. J. H. Lazarus of New York; a Jewess of London, May Abrams, has become the first female factory inspector there; and the latest projected movement in New York City, to empower trained female nurses to become inspectors of tenement districts, has been started by a Jewess.

I feel that I have been called to-day, insignificant as I am, not only to speak for my Hebrew sisters, but also to speak to my Christian ones; to say that we Hebrew women, with all our pride in our origin, our prophets, our poets, our warriors, our statesmen, our artists, our scholars, our philanthropists, our Moses, our Isaiah, yea, our Jesus, know that we belong to the roll of the world's worthies; and we dare claim the just recognition due us. In culture, in labor, in charity, in every virtuous walk, we are in step with younay, our shoes were already worn when you began the march; and am I too bold when I say that in martyrdom to us belongs the palm?

It is the history of a religion, its inspiration, its motive, its strength, its efficacy, that must decide for or against it. We no longer live in a mist of superstition, in which natural phenomena are accepted as miracles. The necessity to find. a new country; the judgment to select a fruitful one; the courage to conquer and hold it; the ability to govern it, making it a light unto mankind, under the faith that there is a guiding, ruling power-in all this, Hebrew history is a prototype of American history. Shall the Jews and their descendants be hated for it? Shall they be ostracized as aliens instead of welcomed as heirs?

We ask you, our Christian sisters, to study our history; and let enlightened reason aid you to perceive and obliterate the misconceptions of the Christian mind; even as today you are obliterating that other misconception, through which your just recognition as co-workers in the world's advancement has been so long withheld.

WOMAN AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER - ADDRESS BY URSULA N. GESTEFELD OF NEW YORK.

Of all the departments of activity now open to woman, none is more important than the office of religious teacher. The requisites for this office, and what it entails upon the one who fills it, should be considered.

Woman at present. more perhaps than man, leads by example. Her influence, like the greatest forces in nature, is silent and subtle. What she is within makes itself felt without. Grand as are her achievements in art, in science, in literature, in all lines on which humanity climbs, a noble, exalted womanhood outstrips them all. All education and experience, therefore, which tends to enlarge her nature, develop her latent powers, bring to her recognition the best of herself, are valuable. The education which comes from study and the education which comes from life are equally important in the training of woman as a religious teacher. While the education of the schools may make woman a preacher, it must be coupled with the education which comes from living, to make her a religious teacher.

Woman needs to grow and ripen through experience to minister to souls. She must be able to say to the suffering and sorrowing, "I know"; to the wearied and wandering, "I see "; to the hopeless and despairing, "I feel with you." She must be able to stand on all levels, to descend to all depths, to show the way. For her there must be no high and no low. She must see in every soul only the child of God, only a member of the one body, even as she is. She must have this religion of the heart as well as a religion of the head, that she may not give to the hungry ones who clamor for food, a stone, instead of the living bread which alone can satisfy.

It is the essentially feminine, the motherly, element which makes the religious teacher, as it is the masculine that makes the theologian; and souls need instruction far more

than they need theology. Where theology ends, religion begins; where the theologian fails, the teacher succeeds: where the arbitrary and unyielding decisions of theological creeds repel, the feminine intuitions invite; where dogma drives through fear, the teaching which is the impulse of the feminine soul wins through love.

Woman can not be a religious teacher and a dogmatist. Her instincts are naturally above her creeds. They lead her to serve her God by serving her fellow-men. How she can best do this is the kaleidoscopic problem continually confronting her; and she sees a clearer road and larger possibilities before her when she elects to be the teacher rather than the preacher.

As this teacher she will perceive the truth in science as well as in religion. Recognizing the injustice of the divorce which has existed between these so long, she will bring them together, uniting them in the marriage which shall beget an offspring-the science of divinity. The world has waited long for its ecclesiastics to perform this marriage ceremony, and the time has come when woman assumes the rôle of officiating priest.

Instead of" Believe, only believe," she cries, "Understand and prove, and you may know."

It is no disparagement to the masculine nature to affirm that the feminine is nearer to the Infinite, and more closely in touch with it. That is the most successful clergyman to-day in whom the feminine quality is well developed, although he is the one most likely to be tried for heresy. He has his own revelation, which often stands opposed to his doctrine, that Zacharias revelation, from the right side of the altar, which strikes him dumb; for, filled with the God-knowledge which floods his being, he can no longer expound mere man-made creeds.

Doctrinal theology is the formulation of the masculine intellect, and is hard, rigid, and unyielding in its limitations. God-knowledge is direct from the Oversoul, and woman is its receiver and transmitter. One of her first

requisites as a religious teacher is to keep herself receptive, to seek more in the within than in the without. Then, instead of wrath, judgment, and retribution-the masculine view of God- she will proclaim love, charity, and peace.

The coming religious teachers of the world will be the feminine souls, whether these be found in men or in women. The divine descends into the world only through them, and of them only can the Christ be born. For the masculine souls, developing only on the plane of the intellect, the divine remains the unknowable.

Another requisite for woman as a religious teacher is fearlessness. She must not be afraid to teach what her whole being recognizes as truth. If she makes the purest and noblest womanhood her standard, the ideal to which she bends every energy, she will not lead her people astray.

If, with all her heart, mind, and soul, she desires only truth for the sake of truth; desires it that she may impart it; desires it that she may point the way for seeking feet to follow; she will not err.

Courage is a most essential requisite for a religious. teacher; the courage of conviction and self-abnegation. No one is fit to hold that office, man or woman, who can not put his cause before himself, content to be veiled by it. Woman, more than man, can be self-sacrificing. She can lay all upon the altar, keeping nothing back, asking no reward for herself, though demanding all respect for her work; content if mankind be helped forward through her efforts; if the cause she represents be uplifted and honored. To-day woman is able to pursue power, in large measure, along the same lines with man, competing with him as an individual, asking no special consideration, only equal opportunities and privileges. As yet, enjoyment of political power is largely in anticipation, but she is tasting the delights of the intellectual sufficiently to have a vigorous appetite for more. Through intellectual development she has become comparatively independent, where before she was helpless; and she enjoys, as only centuries of repres

sion can enable her to enjoy, the larger freedom which is now hers. Financial independence is possible to-day for the young woman who has brain and determination enough to secure it. It enables her to cultivate and develop her intellectual faculties, and makes her less inclined to enter any relation which does not give her scope for their exercise.

We have brilliant women to whom men pay intellectual homage, and whom other women regard with admiration. And yet the religious teachers can not come from these, if moral and intellectual ability is all they offer. Intellectuality without spirituality is a flower without perfume, to be admired but not enjoyed. Intellectuality without spirituality first blunts, then covers, then smothers woman's intuitions; and only the intuitive woman can be the greatest religious teacher. Intuitions are God's method of speaking to the soul. They contain the highest wisdom. But the purely intellectual woman, for whom everything must be objectively demonstrated, is first deaf and then dead to them. Her city of refuge is not "the secret place of the Most High," but, at the best, a liberal agnosticism.

Neither can the religious teacher come from the ranks of the mere religionists, those who are ruled by their emotions and make no demand upon their thinking facul ties; for to live in the feeling only, is also to deaden the intuitions. From these come exhorters, and their work, as far as it goes, is good, a part of the whole; but they are not religious teachers.

The ideal religious teacher will be the woman who can unite the ideal and the practical; who can find the essence in every aspect of truth offered by the scientific, the philosophic, and the religious world, and, inspecting it in the light of the never-dying flame upon the altar of her own soul, bring it forth again with the divine seal upon it. She will teach principles more than personal views, insist upon deeds rather than theories, proclaim right-thinking the basis for God-like living. She will be the woman whose