bugbear to all religious people. The day has already gone by when such a declaration was apparently to declare oneself on the side of all immorality and wickedness. But it was not so in the days when she first avowed Atheism to be the conscientious conclusion of her intellect. In those days no one may know how much of scorn, contempt, and superciliousness she had to endure for her honesty.
Yet steadily, unrestingly, with calm undismay, Mrs. Rose has bravely faced all this coldness, this contempt, this contumely. Freedom, equality—for white and black, for native and foreigner, for king and subject, for priest and devotee, for male and female —that is the broad basis of her creed—a creed too all-embracing to be hampered or pandered to by the prejudices of others. To enlighten and to free all slaves—that has been the object of Mrs. Rose’s life and labors. Slaves of race, slaves of faith, slaves of sex—it mattered not—to each she preached from the same text, ‘Knowledge—Liberty.”
