A LEOTURE
- ON - -
RELIGIOUs, POLITICAL
-- AND - -
Social Freedom.
JULIET H. SEVERANCE, M. D.
MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN
-- - -
MILWAUK - E -
GOD FREY & CRANDALL, PRINTERS
11 Michigan Sºrººn.
1881.






A LEOTURE
*-a-ON-->
RELIGIOUs, PoliticAL
*-a-ANDs-->
Social Freedom.
JULIET H. SEVERANCE, M. D.
MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN,
--
MILWAUKEE:
GoDFREY & CRANDALL, PRINTERS,
114 Michigan Street.
1881.

*º- -
LECTURE.
GENTLEMEN AND Ladies:
thirst in the soul for liberty, that prompts the oppressed
and down-trodden of every nation and clime to hasten to
- our free America, this boasted land of liberty, where they
fondly believe there is to be found no tyranny and oppression, and
that the rights of every citizen are most sacredly guarded.
I shall divide my subject into three heads, and treat of Religious
Freedom, Political Freedom, and Social Freedom. Religious
freedom was guaranteed to every citizen by the founders of our
government. They, having tasted of the bitter fruits of union of
Church and State, and the limitation of thought, bethought them to
forever guarantee to future generations in this country Religious
freedom with its concomitants, freedom of speech, and of the press.
These patriots, among whom we find the names of Washington,
Jefferson, Franklin, Pitt, Henry, and last to be appreciated, but first
in importance, the name which has been most maligned, scorned
and libelled by the churches and people in the past, but at the
present most highly appreciated by all honest, unprejudiced thinkers,
Thomas Paine. He it was, who, when in counsel with Washington
and others, first declared “this is not rebellion, it is revolution.”
These men were infidel to the doctrines of the churches, were
Free-thinkers, men who required evidence to satisfy them of the truth
of any theory, and they it was who settled the question in this
country, so far as constitutional rights were concerned, for Religious
freedom.
These wise men after incorporating this principle in the Constitu-


—4–
tion believed this question forever settled, but the masses had not
developed to the comprehension of its true interpretation. So while
all direct taxation for the support of sectarian institutions is prohib-
ited, we are compelled to what amounts to the same thing, by having
our taxes increased over what they otherwise would be, by the ex-
emption of all church property, which in this country amounts to
about four hundred millions dollars valuation. By having to pay for
the support of Chaplaincies in our Army, Navy, State Prisons, and
Legislative Halls, by the enactments of Sabbatarian laws, whereby
it is made obligatory upon us to observe certain religious forms. By
making grants of our lands or money to sectarian schools and author-
izing Bible reading and other ceremonies of a Theological nature in
our Public Schools, by the appointment of certain days for fasts and
religious observances by our government officials, and other equally
unsecular and and anti-American laws and customs. All are infringe-
ments of our natural and constitutional rights, which will of necessity
be outgrown and rectified in the near future.
Religious freedom is the right of every individual to live religiously,
according to the dictates of his own conscience, government protect-
ing him in that right. A person may believe in any special form of
religion. He may be Pagan, Jew, Methodist, Baptist, Spiritualist or
Materialist, yet, if he is willing to accord to others the same rights
he would claim for himself, he is a believer in Religious freedom.
The man who believes “my views, my belief, my church is the only
right one,” that all others are wrong, that all persons holding different
views should be persecuted by subjecting them to fines, imprison-
ment, ostracism from society, or an eternal hell, is not a believer in
religious freedom. He is a tyrant, claiming the right to exercise a
power over others that he would not be willing they should exercise
over him. It is this lack of the belief of Religious freedom that cru-
cified Jesus, burned Servitus, hung the Quakers, drowned the witches,
and has flooded the earth with the blood of martyrs, and strewn the
highway of progress with the bones of slaughtered heroes.
It is from a recognition of this principle of freedom and equality,
that at present the different forms of worship are tolerated in the
land, and the spires of a score of churches, holding different faiths,

–5–
point skyward from every country village, and in our large cities they
are counted by hundreds.
Why do we find this diversity of opinion and belief, this variety in
doctrines and opposition in creeds? Why find people changing from
one form of worship to another, or refusing to be bound to any form?
It comes from the eternal laws of progress and diversity in nature,
and all the persecutions of the past, and intolerance of the present
is the result of a failure in humanity to recognize these universal laws.
Each sect, believing they had received the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, believed every other doctrine was endangering
the true faith, and instead of comparing ideas to see which was the
best, every new idea was regarded as an enemy to their well-being,
a disturber of the peace and quiet of their religious life, as something
that would bring discord in the church and factions among the people.
They could not realize that the human race was like a child, subject
to growth; and that garments made to fit the child in early boyhood
could not be expected to be adapted to him in after years. So relig-
ious ideas that were the outgrowth of the intellectual condition of
the people in one degree of unfoldment could not be adapted to a
more advanced state. While we allow all sizes of clothing to suit
the different growths of our children, so we must see the necessity
of all kinds of religious institutions for the different grades of human-
ity, and recognize the right of each to select that which is suited to
his condition, retaining for ourselves the right of choosing that which
is in accord with our growth; recognizing, meantime, that humanity
will still progress, and if we are not able to keep pace with the
march of progress, we should at least, learn from past experience
not to denounce any new idea without a careful hearing, and then
condemn no one for embracing it.
It is the duty of the government to protect every individual in his
own religious life, from all interference from others. For instance,
with the great diversity of religious opinions we have among us, it is
legitimate that every one should keep within his just jurisdiction.
The Catholic has no right to go into the Methodist Church uninvited,
and set up his mode of worship. That would be infringing upon the
rights of others, and the law must step in to protect the rights of the

–6–
Methodist. But one Catholic Church has a right to unite with its
own faith and commune together, or has the right to go with any
other church if so invited.
I think I have clearly defined Religious freedom, and shown that
believing in Religious freedom does not commit one to any special
form of faith, but does mean the right of every one to live religiously
as his reason and conscience shall decide. A person believing in
Religious freedom will be ready to maintain the rights of any other
person to his own views, no matter how much they may conflict with
his own, or how wrong those views may appear to him, for if he claim
the right to dictate to another, or refuse to that other the right to
live his own life in his own way, then may some one claim the right
to dictate to him.
When I say I am a believer in Religious freedom, that I believe in
freedom only can the soul expand its powers until it shall grow be-
yond the petty discords, bickerings, intolerance and narrow sectarian-
ism that abounds everywhere in society, you have no right to say I
am a Catholic, a Jew or an Infidel, you have only the right to say I
believe in Religious freedom, I may be either or neither of these.
I am not only abeliever in Religious freedom, but I am a Spiritualist.
This at once takes me out of all Christian denominations. I believe
in neither their God, Devil nor Hell, not yet in the atonement of Jesus.
I am neither Mahommedan, Jew nor Christian. The Christian at
once exclaims, with your belief the world would run riot. With no
fear of Hell, men would murder, steal, commit all sorts of crime, and
the world become a pandemonium. The conclusion is legitimate
from their stand-point, believing in the innate depravity of mankind,
and not understanding the great law of retributive justice, making it
an impossibility for any person to transgress a natural law without
suffering the penalty. A person believing in the vicarious atonement
may afford to run his chance of escaping all, by a death-bed repent-
ance after a life of crime, but a Spiritualist has no such hope, and he,
of all others, cannot afford to do wrong for he knows he has to foot
the bill, he is making his own Hell and cannot escape it. Now I
fully admit that the fear of the Devil is necessary to the ignorant,
who have no moral power developed, as a sort of police force to hold

–7–
them in check. It does not make them moral, virtuous people, but
restrains them from atrocities to some extent, and it would be a mis-
fortune, were that fear removed from them in their present condition.
Is there not danger then in preaching Spiritualism, that such persons
may be converted to its doctrines, and thus be let loose as vampires
upon society? Not at all. They cannot believe the doctrines of
the Spiritual philosophy until they have grown to comprehendit, and
then it would bless them. Understanding this then as I have ex-
plained it, I have no war with the churches, recognizing them as
stepping stones in the great ladder of progress, and the only way I
wish to do away with them is by so educating the people and helping
them to a greater growth by the agitation of thought, that they shall
advance beyond the necessity of any such institutions, they will then
cease to exist, because they are no longer of use. A man cannot
remain within the confines of church creeds after he has outgrown
them, any more than a chicken can remain in the shell after it is
hatched.
I believe that every man and woman will become so developed
spiritually, that they will recognize the right of every other soul to
live its own true life whether on a high plane or a low one in the
scale of being, without any feeling of intolerance or bitterness, each
striving to attain more light and more of truth. The efforts of hu-
manity towards perfection is true religion, and through this all per-
vading law of evolution we shall rise to ever increasing heights.
I will now invite your attention for a short time to the question of
Political freedom. Our republic was founded upon the grand old
declaration “that all men are created equal, with certain inalienable
rights; among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
The people of this nation, knowing as they did what fearful struggles
our revolutionary fathers passed through to secure these rights, were,
however, not far enough advanced to make this principle universal
in its application. They could not comprehend the grand idea in
its broad significance, and even beneath the floating stars and stripes,
emblems of liberty and a free country, the clanking of chains could
be heard, the driver's whip sunk deep in the quivering flesh of human

–8–
beings, and the auctioneer's hammer struck off the sale of human
souls to the highest bidders.
When some who were farther advanced in the recognition of the
law of justice plead for the black man's rights, they were denounced
as enemies to the welfare of the nation, and Lovejoy was mobbed,
his press destroyed, and himself murdered by people honestly believ-
ing they were doing a service to their country. When Garrison, with
the spirit of a hero, spoke these memorable words: “I will not re-
tract, I will not equivocate, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will
be heard,” they knew a live spirit was abroad in the land, and he
must be suppressed, and to escape the mob that had dragged him
through the streets of puritanic Boston with a halter around his neck,
he was compelled to take refuge in a jail as his only place of safety.
Thoreau going to the jail and seeing his old friend through the iron
bars, exclaimed: “Garrison, what are you in there for?” “What are
you out there for?” replied Garrison, “had you done your duty you
would be here too.” Lucretia Mott, that saintly Quakeress, with
her soul all aflame with love and justice, wended her way through
the Southern States pleading with the slave owners for justice to the
blacks, while scores of other women were fighting with voice and
pen for liberty, against the most fearful opposition. The people in
their ignorance believed that were the slaves set free, every white
man's home would be invaded, his wife ravished, his daughters would
marry negroes, and terrible would be the consequences to society.
I have been asked time and again, when pleading for the liberation
of the blacks, “would you marry a nigger?” and amalgamation was
the great bugbear held up everywhere to frighten the ignorant, and
yet that very condition existed in slavery, forced upon the blacks by
their masters, and they had no power to protect themselves; and
fathers sold their own offspring upon the auction block, and yet
amalgamation was urged against emancipation.
Under the most fearful persecutions, the old anti-slavery heroes
toiled on, the work progressed slowly but surely, until finally old John
Brown recognized those in chains as bound with them, and with his
nineteen men struck for freedom for the slaves, and although they
sent his soul to Heaven from a Virginia gallows, it still went march-

–9-
ing on, and the fact was sung in every city, town and hamlet in the
nation.
The time came when our nation's sin must be wiped out with
blood, and our best and bravest were sacrificed until a vacant chair
was to be found by almost every fireside, and mothers all over the
land vainly tried to hush the heart-wails that went out for the loved
and lost.
The blacks are free to-day, and we yet live. Our wives are not
molested and we find to our amazement that black men seem to
prefer their own kind for wives, and our society moves on as before.
There is less amalgamation, for no one can now coerce parties into
such relations, and we recognize a universal law operating here as in
other departments of nature, “like attracts like.”
That vexed question is now settled, and instead of the negro's
freedom upturning our government, I think but few to-day wishes
for the olden times of slavery. We have found in this, as in religious
freedom, that progress is the legitimate child of freedom.
And now another question comes looming up which must be
settled. Woman's voice is heard in the land, sometimes with the
clasping of hands, sometimes with clenching of fists, but everywhere
with earnestness, and it seems as though, with our past experiences,
we need hardly argue the question of woman's enfranchisement.
We believe “all just governments derive their powers from the
consent of the governed.” That “taxation without representation
is tyranny.” That “a true republic is a government of the people,
by the people, for the people.” Are these declarations wrong?
Although our government has been professedly republican, it has
never been such in fact. It was first a white man's government, is
now a man's government. If it stands long among the nations of
the earth it must become what it professes to be, a true republic,
and be done with all class legislation, the most unjust of which is
that of sex, conferring upon all people equal rights as citizens,
There is no argument against Woman suffrage, except such a one
as always used by tyrants against any extension of liberty. Some
object on account of its increasing the ignorant vote of the country.
Are we women not as intelligent as the unwashed, unlettered

-I-O-
negroes? If a certain amount of intelligence is required to consti-
tute a voter, erect your standard and then measure all by it, whether
men or women, instead of allowing every grade of masculinity the
right, to the exclusion of the intelligent, cultured women of the
country. But from whence comes such powers of intellectual great-
ness in man born of woman? A stream cannot rise higher than its
fountain.
I have no patience at this stage of the discussion of Woman suf-
frage to stop to listen to the stale platitudes and senseless objections
raised against a movement so evidently just, while thousands of my
sisters are starving in our large cities, because every avenue to profit-
able and lucrative employment is closed against them, or they are
driven to sell themselves as prostitutes to keep soul and body to-
gether. Talk of regulating the social evil, or purifying society in
such conditions, it is utter nonsense. If the ballot means bread in
the hands of the working man, it means no less in the hands of the
laboring woman, and with this guarantee of liberty and equality,
every college door in the land would open to receive us, and every
useful and honorable employment, with its just remuneration, would
be ours, and we would forever abolish the infamous practice of
licensing houses where our sons and husbands may become drunk-
ards and libertines. Women will then be self-sustaining as men are,
and would not be forced to depend upon her sex for support, as she
now does, either in marriage or out. We would then have just and
equal laws because all would take part in framing them.
This leads us to consider the question of all questions that now
agitates the public mind, and which will not down at our bidding,
which is being “cussed and discussed.” I mean the Social freedom
question, which impinges upon the Political freedom question, and
cannot exist without it.
The fear of the discussion of this subject manifested by many
Spiritualists does not speak well for their confidence that Truth will
always in free combat with Error come off conqueror, but rather
shows the cropping out of the old sectarian fear of any new or
unpopular truth.
Chas. Bradlaugh, that grand champion of Freedom in the old

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world, has truly said, “Without free speech no search for truth is
possible; without free speech no discovery of truth is useful; with-
out free speech progress is checked and the nation no longer marches
forward toward the nobler life which the future holds for man. Bet-
ter a thousand fold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech;
the abuse of it dies in a day; but the denial of it slays the life of the
people and entombs the hope of the race.” Then let this and all
other subjects receive careful, thorough and impartial discussion and
analysis. In this way we will show ourselves scientific investigators
instead of bigoted ignoramuses,
Social freedom declares every person has a right to live in his
social relations according to the dictates of his own conscience and
reason, the same as he has religiously; and government should pro-
tect him in that right from all interference from others, the same as
it now does religiously. People must differ in their ideas of social
life the same as they do on religious matters from the same reasons,
their different degrees of growth, and the man who would try to
force another to his views and practices in this respect, is as truly a
tyrant as the one who would try to force another to his religious
views.
There are a great variety of opinions extant as to what is the
highest life between the sexes. We find as we go among the least
advanced in civilization, woman treated as slaves, beasts of burden,
or articles of merchandise; parents selling their daughters for wives
without regard to their wish or choice. We have progressed from
one step to another in recognizing her humanity, until we have some
among us who believe woman should reign as queen in the realms of
the affections. Social freedom recognizes the right of the Shaker to
believe in celibacy and practice the same, but does not seem to be
very fearful that all men will of course become celibates if they are
accorded that right. If they did, it would be worse for the world
than promiscuity, of which some are so fearful. It recognizes the
right of the Catholic to marry according to the rituals of their
church, but knows all will not choose that method. It recognizes
the right of persons to live in polygamy if they choose or in complex
marriage as the Oneida community does, or the right of the varietist

to live his life with those of his kind, or the monogamist to live in a
dual relation.
A person may be a believer in Social freedom, and be either of
these, or neither, and yet, if he recognizes the right of others to
choose for themselves as best they may, as he would wish to do for
himself, he is a believer in Social freedom. To assume that a person
is a Shaker, a Methodist or a Free-lover because he advocates Social
freedom is just as unjust as it would be to assume a man to be a
Materialist, or a Jew, because he believed in religious freedom. We
have not Social freedom guaranteed to us by law, as we have Religious
freedom, hence we find people more frequently interfering with our
rights by passing laws trying to force all kinds of people to one mode
of life in this respect, just as some people would force others to their
religious views if they had the power.
We hear the same outcry against the terrible overturning of society
if Social freedom should obtain, that we once heard of Religious
freedom, and have so very recently heard against freedom for the
blacks.
“Let agitation come, who fears,
We need a flood; the filth of years
Has gathered round us; roll them on,
What cannot stand had best be gone.”
We are told wives would desert their husbands, husbands wives,
our daughters would be debauched, and general promiscuousness
and prostitution would result. This, my friends, is only a picture of
what actually does exist now, under our most stringent monogamic
marriage laws. It is the same old cry that was set up against the
liberation of the blacks, the wail of the ignorant tyrant. Do our
laws prevent these evils? We can hardly take up a newspaper with-
out seeing a list of elopements, desertions, debaucheries, child-murder
and atrocities against decency and order; enough to make the “very
stones cry out in judgment against us;” and yet our opponents say
these things will come of Social freedom. They have come, good
friends, without it. We have all these conditions now, and have
never had Social freedom. We have laws now which make woman
man's slave, owned by him, soul and body, and “wives submit your-

-13-
selves unto your husbands in all things” has been dinned into the
ears of woman until she has failed to learn the diviner lesson, “obey
the principles of your own soul.” Laws have been enacted by men
with no voice of woman's, making him the owner of her property
and her person, and he can recover damages from any other man, if
she, of her own accord, have sexual relations with him, she being
his property.
if we had no guarantee of religious freedom it would not hinder
people differing in religious views, but with penalties annexed to all
differences it would hinder honesty of expression; so in social life
our laws prohibiting all sexual relations, except in monogamic mar-
riage, have not prevented people from different views on this subject,
and giving expression to them in acts, on the sly; but I will tell you
what it has done; it has converted what might have been an honest
promiscuous man into a promiscuous hypocrite, thus doubling the
crime, if it be one, instead of preventing it; it has licensed men to
debauch women in the marriage bed until the most fearful conse-
quences have resulted, and diseases the most appalling, often result-
ing in life-long misery, or premature death. I could relate cases
coming under my professional observation, that would equal in sick-
ening details and horrors the debaucheries of Southern slaves, and
yet people object to hearing this subject discussed. With such per-
sons, I think their ears are the nicest part of them,
We can hardly talk understandingly of monogamy, we know so
little about it. If it is the highest condition of love—and / believe
it is—there are evidently few people grown to that plane. Our mar-
riage system from the time of wise old Solomon and God-like David
down to our modern saints like Beecher and Tilton, has been a
strange mixture of polygamy on the one hand and monogamy on
the other, and it will remain so until we recognize the equality of
man and woman in marriage, and the sovereignty of the individual
over all institutions.
Can we talk very loudly of monogamy when we have a quarter of
a million of prostitutes in the country, supported largely by men
living in this professedly holy marriage relation the sanctity of whose
portals they fear will be invaded? They fear, rather, the grinning,

-14-
ghastly skeletons will be brought to light which are behind the cur-
tains of respectable homes, sepulchres of buried hearts.
What changes would Social freedom produce in society if guar-
anteed to the people? It would help to harmonize the world by
recognizing individual rights. It would not alter the belief of people,
only as it gave them better chance for growth, by comparing ideas
in free discussion. The Shaker would still believe in and practice his
celibate life until he had learned the grand lesson of the higher uses
of sexuality. The Polygamist would live in accord with his faith
until the growth of his understanding would make him demand a
different life, in which he would recognize woman's equality in all
relations, and instead of making her his slave place her by his side
as an equal with equality of rights in every department of life. The
Catholic would marry according to the doctrines of his church, and
believing in no divorce, would “fight it out on that line;” and every
sect would live as they believed to be right. The only persons that
would be specially affected by this, would be the most advanced,
who have become a law unto themselves, the same as free Religionists;
and there is the same necessity for different views and different forms
in social life as there is in religious life, and I only hope to inaugurate
a better condition in social life by education and growth, the same as
in any other department of being.
There would be no overturning of society as is predicted by the
conservative croaker, and as was predicted of the liberation of the
Southern slaves, but the recognition of the right of human souls to
be protected against all encroachments from others, would give
greater facilities for growth and happiness, and would do away with
this everlasting prying into and meddling with other people's busi-
ness, recognizing the ability of each to look after his own.
It is by education and by experience, which is the greatest of all
educators, that we can expect to reach greater heights of knowledge
in any department of life, and how can we educate ourselves and
others except by free discussion, each uttering our most advanced
thoughts with freedom. We should insist that virtue is not necessa-
rily feminine, but that men as well as women should be expected to
be pure in their lives, and that virtue consists in living true to organic

-15-
law in every department of being; that a person may be “not vir-
tuous” just as truly by unnatural repression as by excessive indul-
gence, that both should be avoided. That we cannot legislate
morality into people any more than we can intellectuality; both are
conditions dependent upon organization and culture. I think I have
made myself clearly understood in my definition of Social freedom;
that it does not mean any special form, but says live your highest
life and allow others to live theirs.
I am not only a believer in Social freedom, but I am a believer in
Free love, and that word Free-love signifies to me the most exalted
condition ever reached by mortal or angel. Freedom the very soil
of growth and progress, and love the highest attribute of the Gods.
The two grand principles combined forming a name that in the
coming future will be honored more than any other name, and its
martyrs will receive a brighter crown of glory.
There is really but one question in this matter, which is this:
“shall mutual love (as is proposed by Free-lovers) or selfish lust (as
it exists to-day in and out of legal marriage) be the basis of the rela-
tions of the sexes?” If you reply mutual love should be the basis.
then yon are a Free-lover. If you reply it should be lust, you are in
sympathy with the present laws and customs of society in which
purity of life for woman becomes an impossibility.
I claim the only law that should, or will hold together persons of
an advanced humanity will be the mutual law of attraction. That
love, and love alone, will decide when the sexes shall mingle; that
when two persons are drawn together by reciprocal love and mutual
desire, that is a true union, and all the laws men can frame cannot
make it unholy or immoral. But, cries the objector, if every one
believed that doctrine, every man would at once become promiscu-
ous, and prostitution would become general. You are now presuming
again upon the old, worn-out idea of total depravity, you are libeling
your own wives, sisters and mothers; besides there could not be any
such thing in Free-love as prostitution, because prostitution is enter-
ing into the sexual relation for a consideration.
Now, when a woman sells herself to a man for his gratification for
five dollars a night, or for a position and a home for a lifetime, or

—16–
for any consideration except love, she at once becomes a prostitute.
In the one case unfit to associate with respectable women, but suit-
able to consort with their husbands, in the other case, a legal, re-
spectable prostitute moving in the first circles in society, but morally
speaking there is no difference in the two, and every time a man
forces an unwilling wife to his sexual embrace, he debauches that
wife, and the consequences of such debauchery is everywhere to be
seen in our sickly, passion-killed wives, and still-born and half made
up children.
A Free-lover raises the sexual act on which is based all of physical
and spiritual life, from the mud and filth with which the ignorance
of the past has slimed it over, and elevates it to the very highest
pinnacle of the temple, recognizing the sacredness of its mission, as
not alone the generator of all physical life, but of spirit life also. As
a wrong sexuality is the most debasing of all conditions, sapping the
very foundations of life physically and morally, so a rightly adjusted
and harmonized sexuality is the most health-giving and spiritualizing
of all the relations people are capable of entering. -
What would be the effect of Free-love upon the people? In the
first place a promiscuous person could not be a Free-lover, for no
promiscuous person will pretend that he basis his sexual relations
upon reciprocal love and mutual desire, but for self-gratification.
Such persons are incapable of understanding Free-love in its true sig-
nification. They may believe in Social freedom, but not in Free-love,
as they have not grown to comprehend it. Free-love would have the
same effect upon people socially as Spiritualism has religiously. We
could not afford to wrong ourselves and others in this relation, be-
cause we know the consequences are sure to follow ; that if we sin
we must surely suffer.
Look at a man and woman living on the beautiful plane of Free-
love. Knowing as they do that love is the only bond that holds
them together, how careful they would be to draw out, by every
power within them, the love of their companion by making them-
selves the most noble, loveable and grand beings they are capable of

—17–
becoming. They would see that no excess or abuse should cause
repulsion, that every demand in their natures was supplied, that per-
fect justice was accorded to each, and that kindness and tenderness
was the spirit ever pervading the household. -
From such homes of peace and love would be evolved angels here
on earth, beings as much in advance of those born in our present un-
loved relations, as those of to-day are above savage life. Is it not
then a part, a very important part of Spiritualism, to so enlighten
and develop the people that they will beget better children, a higher
grade of humanity, as well as to help reform those who are now be-
gotten in our unequal, inharmonious relations, which we callmarriage?
Who are the opposers of Free-love? There is a class of persons
who from misrepresentations of others, and never having heard it ex-
plained, honestly think that it means licentiousness; but a far greater
number are those who are living lives that they are anxious to cover
from public gaze, so they cry out “stop thief” to turn attention from
themselves. The opposers are either ignorant or are hypocrites.
As there are persons who are converted to Spiritualism who have
not fully outgrown their old notions, and bring many of the absurd-
ities of their past belief with them, making an incongruous mixture
of folly and wisdom, who are pointed at by cavillers as specimens of
Spiritualists, so we have those that are just growing into a compre-
hension of freedom, who bring with them the selfishness and love
of conquest that belongs to the old conditions, and are pointed at as
objectional in their lives. They are striving for the light and will
surely reach it.
We are in earnest in this work of reform, and will never cease our
pleadings until every woman in the land shall stand side by side with
man, his peer in every relation of life. Until all are purified from
sensuality and lust, with every faculty and passion fully developed
and attuned to divinest harmony; until sickness, want and crime
shall be banished from the earth; until undesired maternity shall
forever cease; until marriage becomes the most exalted sacrament,
within whose sphere no impurity can come; until home shall be to

—18–
every heart what the poet has painted it, a haven of peace and love,
and motherhood be recognized as the divinest mission of humanity.
Then what though bigotry frowns and ignorance sneers; what
though prison walls loom up before us, or even death stares us in
the face, we will with the strength of the angel hosts who are helping
us in this grand work, press steadily onward until victory shall crown
our efforts, and the glad song of freedom shall echo the grand earth
round. Finally, as Fenelon said to Louis XIV, “The truth must be
spoken. Woe to those who comprehend and speak it not, and woe
to you if you are not worthy of hearing.”
-Tºgº- -
+H== *—ft-
++TO THE-Hº-
|BERAL PUBLIC
- - -
Having been a Student of the problems involved in Human Life
for many years, and a practicing Physician for over a quarter of a
century, I have been called upon to write and lecture upon most of
the practical questions of the day. The following Lectures were
prepared with care and have been delivered in many parts of the
Country, and I have consented to put them in pamphlet form in
order that they may reach those who cannot hear them.
---
The Evolution of Life in Earth and Spirit
Conditions.
The Industrial and Financial Problems.
Life and Health, or How to Live a Century.
Philosophy of Disease and How to Cure the Sick
Without Drugs.
Religious, Political and Social Freedom.
I will send them post paid, the five for 60 cents. Single, 15 cents
apiece.
Address, Dr. JULIET H. SEVERANCE,
219 Grand Ave., Milwaukee, Wis.