The True Woman
by
Justin D. Fulton
Part 2 out of 3
It is not alone by an excess of passion or of beauty that woman
becomes a tempter. The absence of love, and of beauty, sins of
omission as well as sins of commission, are sources of temptation. Man
desires an educated woman. Intellectually and spiritually she must be
able to meet his wants, and render help, or she is a failure. He tires
of a useless toy or plaything, and cries out for a helpmeet. Another
has said, "The bad housekeeping, and the neglect of domestic duties,
on the part of many wives, is, no doubt, attributable to the slovenly
tenements, and inadequate providings, and careless neglect of the
husbands. But more husbands, we fear, are driven to shiftlessness
and discouragement--driven to the saloon and gambling-room--by the
extravagance or inefficiency, the disorderly arrangements or badly
prepared food, the irritating complaints or exacting demands of those
who preside in the home. None but a man of low instinct, of base
passion, of weak character, will turn away from and neglect a home
where order reigns, where a cheerful smile, well-prepared food, neatly
arranged table await him; where a word of cheer greets him, and where
patient forbearance is exercised, even with his irregularities and
faults. It is the part of woman to win; and her winning arts should
not be laid aside when she grasps what she has considered a prize. She
should seek in every way to win, beyond the possibility of loss, the
abiding love, the unwavering confidence, the undoubting respect of
her husband. If woman would be man's equal, she must challenge the
equality by proving herself mistress of those arts that minister the
highest comfort to his physical nature, as well as to his affections,
that further his interests as well as his happiness."
Alas! how many fail here because they know not how to make a home
pleasant. Such are the slaves of servants and the creatures of
circumstances. In some cases the fault is man's, in others it is
woman's. Perhaps in all cases both are somewhat at fault; yet the
responsibility rests on woman to make home a delight. When she fails
she must take the consequences. Failure with her is often a mistake.
She knows no better. Ignorance, in some, is wilful, but in more it
is educational. Their mothers, through ill-judged kindness, mistaken
notions of life, or careless neglect, suffered them to grow up without
the necessary practical training; or else they failed before them; and
inefficiency and slatternliness, bad cooking, and worse manners, are
the patrimony bequeathed in perpetuity to the daughters. Happy is the
man who has a wife capable of getting a better meal than the hired
help, and whose smile is the light of his dwelling! Sometimes a girl
knows how to win, but cares not to keep. She gives place in her heart,
and a welcome in her home, to others more readily than to the one she
has given her plighted troth. This is criminal. A woman who does it is
a suicide. She is bent on ruin, and will find the pit ere long.
_Consider her wiles of speech_. Mystery here brings ruin to man as it
brought ruin to woman. Young ladies of culture and of refinement are
not ashamed to employ the language of the Parisian to lead astray the
companion of her life. God curse the language and the forms of speech
whose words drop with the very gall of death, which revel in elegant
dress as near the edge of indecency as is possible without treading
over the boundary! Her wiles of speech are bad, but her wiles of love
are the most perilous of all. Man needs love. He is fond of it. It is
his joy, come from whence it may. Love is the mind's light and heat. A
mind of the greatest stature, without love, is like a huge pyramid of
Egypt--chill and cheerless in all its dark halls and passages. A mind
with love, is as a king's palace lighted for a royal festival. Shame
that the sweetest of all the mind's attributes should be suborned to
sin. Think of it! each wile, rightly used, is a power given to woman
to make her man's helpmeet, and wrongly used will make her man's
destroyer.
Some one asked a minister for his conception of the personal
appearance of the devil. His reply was, "A false-hearted and
well-dressed gentleman, or a vain and fashionable woman." Woman was
Satan's first ally, though he worked in ambush, and approached man
in concealment. In the wisdom of his choice we discover the peril of
woman. It may be well briefly to review the public manner in which
Satan employs her talent for the ruin of man and in opposing the rule
of Christ.
1. Passing over her social power, and without referring to her wiles
of speech, of dress, of flattery, and of love, think of her in the
arena of politics, joining her forces to infidelity, and with the
disbelievers of the Bible, to obtain for woman a place for which she
is not fitted, and which will destroy her peace, injure and undermine
her influence in the home, and cause her to neglect wifehood and
motherhood, to turn from the interior world of a quiet home, to the
outside world of conflict and strife. It is the boast of a writer in
favor of "Woman's Rights," that "among the disbelievers of revealed
religion, I have not found, during a life of half a century, a single
opponent to the doctrine of equal rights for males and females." The
correctness of this statement is to a wonderful extent true. The
believers of the Bible claim that the teachings and commands of the
Word of God are in opposition to the doctrine. When woman joins the
ranks of the infidel, she turns from God, and loses her power in her
former sphere.
2. If there is one foe more than another, that threatens us as a
nation, nearly all agree in pronouncing that foe to be Romanism. Take
this fact in connection with the obvious truth, that it is fashionable
to pander to Rome. Because of this tendency ripening into results, the
State of New York, politically, is lost to Protestantism, and is as
much Roman Catholic as is Italy or Rome. Whence comes this influence,
or producing cause? Can we trace it to woman? It will be admitted that
the influence of Roman Catholic servants in our homes has never been
measured. The nurse teaches the child the use of the beads, and
familiarizes the child, committed to her keeping, to the cross, as
an emblem of worship. Imagine the alarm of a Christian mother, when,
because of the absence of the nurse it became a necessity to see the
child to bed, when, to her surprise, the little girl of five years
pulled out from beneath the pillow her beads and cross, and began
going through the Papal forms of worship! The mother wisely forbore a
rebuke, changed her nurse, and led her child back to Christ, and so
rescued her. How many children are finding in their nurses, rather
than in their mothers, their religious teachers? The influence of
Romish servants in our homes is felt in still another way. Because
of them there is a barrier to discussion, or even to conversation,
concerning this monstrous error, which, like the frogs of Egypt,
invades our very bread-troughs. No man dare express his mind
concerning Romanism at his table if the servant is a Romanist, lest
he lose the services so much in demand, or lest he be reported to
the priest, and so be placed under the ban or the displeasure of the
Church of Rome, which is used as an engine of political and social
power against the truth as it is in Jesus.
3. The influence of education deserves consideration. Fashionable
women send their daughters to Roman Catholic institutions of learning,
where the Sister or Mother Superior carries her to the chapel, bows
reverently before the altar, and kissing the cross, exclaims, "How can
Protestants be so blind as to reject the cross on the ground that it
savors of Popery, when they know that all their own hopes of salvation
must hang upon it?" or where the morning service concludes with a
prayer to the "Mother of God," in these words: "Most holy Virgin, I
believe and confess thy most holy and immaculate care of man, pure and
without stain. O most pure Virgin, through thy virginal purity, thy
immaculate conception, thy glorious quality of Mother of God, obtain
for me of thy dear Son, humility, charity, great purity of heart, of
body and of mind, holy perseverance in my cherished relations, the
gift of prayer, a holy life and a happy death."[A] Thus is the dogma
of the Immaculate Conception thrust upon the memory, and the gate is
opened to a denial and rejection of Christ as the Saviour, and to an
acceptance of Mary as the Intercessor. The result manifests itself in
two ways. The fashionable boarding-school girl comes to think kindly
of Rome, and rebukes all opposition to the church as bigotry or
ignorance on the part of those with whom she associates. The influence
is noticeable. It is fashionable to attend the Papal Church,
fashionable to contribute to its prosperity, fashionable for men to
smother their opinions, fashionable for the politician to seek the
favor of that power that furnishes, in its subtlety and in its power
to work in darkness, a perfect mechanism for Satan.
[Footnote A: Miss Bunkley's Book, pp. 22 and 68.]
4. Our wealthy women, by their patronage of Roman Catholic fairs, and
by their gifts to the so-called charitable fund, enable the enemies
of the cross of Christ to build these magnificent cathedrals and
religious establishments, while the churches of Christ languish for
support.
Give to woman the ballot, let these girls in our kitchens become
voters, and it will not be difficult to understand how "a man's foes
shall be those of his own household."
_The Remedy_. Induce Protestant girls to work, by treating them as
sisters rather than as servants. Talk free in the house and at the
table against Romanism, let the consequences be what they may. Educate
children so that they shall know the characteristics of this lifelong
foe of the church of Christ; and, lastly, resist this movement to
change the order of God's government in the home and in the state.
Ignore it as we may, the beguiling serpent is busy with our Eve in
America, this Eden of liberty, and God only knows the result. It is
a question which cannot be trifled with. That the drift to-day is
against the teachings of the Bible, none can doubt. Victory for Satan
is a terrible calamity for humanity. Let us then, as an antidote,
preach Christ, and strive to make woman the helpmeet of man and the
ally of our Divine Master, and then she becomes the deadliest foe of
Satan, and the most aggressive champion of the truth.
"Her rash hand, in evil hour,
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate!
Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat,
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe
That all was lost."
MILTON.
THE GLORY OF MOTHERHOOD.
To understand the tragedies of the present, it is essential that we
re-read the tragedies of the past. Too many, in forming their opinions
of what should be, ignore in their calculations what has been, and
what must be. Those who are dissatisfied with the position assigned to
woman, must recall the fact that God's decrees are unchangeable. We
may resist them, but we cannot destroy them. They were in existence,
before our birth; they will survive our dissolution. It is for us to
recognize God as Ruler as well as Creator, and adjust our views, our
lives, and our labors in accordance with an infinitely wise system,
formed in the counsels of an eternity past, and running on to the
eternity of the future.
If we speak of Woman as God Made Her, of Woman as a Helpmeet, we find
a warrant for it in the Word of God. In Eden she was God's ally. When
she fell, she became, in sin, the ally of Satan. The truth may be
unpalatable, but it is the truth.
In considering woman as a mother, we stand on the hill-top of the
past. Before us lies a valley, stretching on from the ruin wrought in
Eden by sin, to the restoration wrought in the world by Christ. During
these ages of wickedness, of sorrow, and of crime, woman felt the
curse heavy upon her. She was made to feel that the _woe_ pronounced
upon her was a fact; and yet, during all these ages of trial, there
was a gleam of hope shining into her soul, because God said, "And I
will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and
her seed; he shall bruise thee on the head, and thou shalt bruise him
on the heel." Thus there came to woman, who had the first encounter
with the wily enemy of the race, the hope of a triumph over, and a
subjugation of this enemy, through her offspring. It is an instinct of
a boy to crush the head of a snake; but you cannot readily get a girl
to do so: she will run from the beast so identified with her sorrow.
The reason for this is explained in the prophecy of Eden. In a
mystical sense, Christ, the deliverer foretold in Genesis, the eminent
seed of the woman, was to bruise the head of the "old serpent, the
devil," that is, destroy him, and all his principalities and powers,
break and confound all his schemes and ruin all his works, crush his
whole empire, strip him of his sovereignty and authority, of his power
over death, and his tyranny over the bodies and souls of men. Here,
then, was a purpose worth living for and suffering for. True, Satan,
or the serpent, is to bruise his heel, or wound his human nature; but
there is no promise of his triumph.
It is not difficult to discover how this hope must have thrilled the
heart of Eve with joy. Her life was not to be a failure. Though clouds
might rest upon her, it was impossible to shut out the fact that the
star of hope was soon to rise, and to usher in the dawn of a glorious
day.
Much has been written against the fact that a daughter is not prized
in a home as much as is a son. We can understand it, when we go back
to Eden and see that the seed of the woman, called "_a he_," a male
child, was to be the instrument of working out the disinthralment
of the race. The feminine gender is sometimes used in declaring the
glories of the future. Zion is called a bride, but her glory is
all reflected from the bridegroom. Woman is a helpmeet, but the
king-bearer is the man Christ Jesus. The world turned from Christ
because he had the appearance of a man. It was a great mistake. It is
not a popular saying,--women say it is not complimentary to them to
declare it,--yet it remains true, that "God draws by the cords of a
man." All along the past men have been recognized as the gift of God.
Women rejoice when a man is born into the world; not that women are
disliked, but because there is something involved in life more than
mere existence. There are faint foreshadowings of the tasks laid on
the race. Work is to be done for God and man. Principalities and
powers are to be fought and overcome. An invisible world is in league
against the race, and an invisible God, once robed in flesh, and
living among men, is Our Advocate with God, our Redeemer and Saviour.
There is significance in the language, "I have gotten a man from the
Lord." The language of Eve, as a mother, furnishes the key-note to
that maternal song which yet floats through the world, which makes
women in China, in India, in Africa, and in South America, among the
inhabitants of Russia, and of Paraguay, anywhere and everywhere,
rejoice with the same old joy, when a man is born into the world,
because then she feels that somehow she has given birth to a hero and
a champion who shall be identified with that song of world-triumph
which is yet to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea; and the
only exception to this is found among the Hebrews, where a virgin was
revered as the possible mother of the Messiah, and so received her
dignity as a reflection from the man. To understand this problem of
human nature, we must go back to God, and study his word. Those who
reject the Word, of God are surrounded by mysteries which they cannot
solve. They behold tendencies, and instincts, and dispositions, which
are explained in Genesis, and which are parts of God's prophesies yet
to be fulfilled in this world. Ignoring the prophecy, they cannot
comprehend the facts of existence, which must exist and will exist,
whether men will hear or forbear.
Says a writer of some note, "The severe Nation which taught that the
happiness of the race was forfeited through the fault of a woman,
showed its thought of what sort of regard man viewed her, by making
him accuse her in the first question to his God,--who gave her to
the patriarch as a handmaid, and by the Mosaical law bound her to
allegiance like a serf,--even they greeted, with a solemn rapture, all
great and holy-women as heroines, prophetesses, judges in Israel; and
if they made Eve listen to the serpent, gave Mary as a bride to the
Holy Spirit. In other nations it has been the same down to our day."
In this extract, the Jewish nation and the Bible are referred to in
the same tone that we refer to Mahommedans and to the Koran. Is not
this tendency perceptible elsewhere? In looking at woman, we ignore
the Bible, and God, and history, and talk of her as though the past
had no influence with the present and future. The Bible, God, and
history have to do with the present and the future, and whoever
studies history has been compelled to recognize the truth. This same
writer was compelled to declare, "It is the destiny of man, in the
course of the ages, to ascertain and fulfil the law of his being, so
that his life shall be seen, as a whole, to be that of an angel or
messenger." This is his destiny, because it is God-given. Hence man
was the bearer of good tidings all along the past. Prophets were
generally men. Christ was a man. The apostles, Christ's chosen
standard-bearers, were men. The powers in the moral and spiritual
world are men. All that is great in history, all that thrones one
nation upon a mountain height and buries another in the fathomless
grave of infamy, comes from man. The ages were dark, because of the
lack of a man. Christ came, and the apostolic age became the noontime
of the world, not because of what the race did for themselves, but
because of what was done for the race. If a nation sinks, because the
man who has the brain, the wisdom, the power from God, is wanting, who
shall build up a people in hope, inspire them with grand resolves?
It will rise and prosper when the man comes. Christ was a necessity,
because infinite work was to be performed. Is he not a necessity now?
Is it not a man in Christ, and with Christ, who is ever the worker
on the earth? Christ speaks through the gospel, and "the key" of the
moral universe is still upon his shoulders. This hope and dream came
to Eve way back there in the confines of the wilderness, and so
incidentally as well as actually, she became identified with it, and
rejoiced when she could declare, "I have gotten a man from the Lord,"
whom she believed to be the "_promised seed_."
Notice, to Eve, as to woman now, a baby was more than a little child;
she saw in him all the possibilities of a man, who was to become a foe
worthy to meet the enemy of her soul. Her faith in this child to be
born was similar to our faith in the Child that was born in Bethlehem.
Hence her joy when she exclaimed, "I have gotten a man from the Lord."
It will seem to many as singular that there should be no mention of
the daughters born of Eve. The generations or names of men are given,
but not of the daughters. Even there and then the custom now prevalent
in the East found its origin. No account is made of the birth of a
daughter in that land. Congratulate a man upon the accession to
the family of a daughter, and the father will hide his shame with
difficulty, and exclaim, "O, that God had given me a son!"
Again, in reading this story some will be surprised to find no mention
made of the mother's grief when her youngest child was slain, and that
no mention is made of the mother's death. We know that after Seth was
born, Adam lived eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters;
but woman's curse bore fruit. Men ruled over her, and her
individuality was lost in the headship of Adam. Do not blame me for
saying it; I simply declare the fact. This state of things continued
until Christ came. When Mary gave birth to Jesus, woman resumed her
place. The curse was met by its antidote. From God came the wave of
influence which met the wave that flowed out from Eden, the conflict
began, higher and higher rose the flood, until the ark of hope by it
was placed on the mountain peak of human history, in sight of all
races, and tribes, and peoples of the whole world. Calvary is set over
against Ararat, as Mary is set over against Eve. After the birth-song
of Eden came the tragedy, in which Abel lost his life and Cain his
character. After the birth-song of Bethlehem came the tragedy of
Calvary, in which Christ gave up his life, that he might open to man,
enveloped in the ruins of the fall, a way back to the Eden in reserve
for the redeemed.
In speaking of Eve as a mother, there is little that can be said
founded on fact. Eve passes from sight, though the prophecy, "And I
will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and
her seed; he shall bruise thee on the head, and thou shall bruise him
on the heel," worked on, and lived on, and found its fulfilment in the
triumph won by Christ. It is certainly significant, that Eve, through
whom sin came, should pass out of the world's mind, and Mary, through
whom Christ came, should vault to a seat in the affections of a world?
Is it not also significant that Mary should become an object of
worship to many millions of people in this and in other lands, and
that Satan, through Mariolatry, should strive to do in the New
Dispensation what he wrought by Idolatry in the Old? The opposition of
Satan runs on. The purposes of God run on. The prophesies of the Word
of God abide, and are sure of fulfilment, in spite of Satan. Against
prophecy combinations of men and nations have united; but the truths
sweep on resistlessly, and reach the destination for which God
ordained them.
The curse that came to woman in the hour of her fall rested on her
until Christ came. "Unto thy husband shall be thy desire,"--an
expression of subordination and dependence. "He shall rule over thee,"
expresses the general effect of the apostasy on woman's relations in
the married state. The stronger party in this relation, instead of
being the guardian and protector of the weaker, did use his superior
power to oppress and debase her. Such has always been the case, except
so far as the influence of revelation has counteracted the evils of
the fall, such is the case to-day. Woman owes her recognition to
Christ, and she is indebted for her position in the civilized portions
of the world wholly to the gospel. Wherever Christ is not worshipped
woman is despised.
Woman as a mother, under the Old Dispensation, differs in many
important respects from woman as a mother under the New. The history
of woman is divided into three portions: 1. Woman as God made her; 2.
Woman as Sin made her; 3. Woman as Christ made her.
1. The position of woman, between her humiliation in Eden and her
restoration in Bethlehem, was in many respects sad to contemplate.
She was more of a slave than an equal. Eve passes, unrecognized and
unnamed, to her grave. Sarah, the wife of Abram, finds mention, and is
described in such a manner that you behold her sharing her husband's
love, though the picture of her in the home is not a pleasant one. We
can hardly understand how Abram could have suffered her to enter the
house of Abimelech, nor how she could have taken Hagar to her husband,
and thus again have led man astray--the man whom God called to be the
Father of the Faithful. Eve, the mother of the race, tempted Adam, and
Sarah, the mother of the patriarchs, tempted Abram; and lack of faith
in God was the cause of their ruin, and consequent humiliation. There
is something sad about the manner of her life. Her home was a simple
tent, surrounded by flocks and herds, and crowded with rubbish of
every description. Woman in the East is very much to-day what Adam
saw her on his first entrance into the wilderness. The effects of sin
followed her from generation to generation. The gloom of the night is
still over her as she spends her days in out-door labor. She weeds the
cotton, and assists in pruning the vine and gathering the grapes.
She goes forth in the morning, bearing not only her implements of
husbandry, but also her babes in the cradle; and returning in the
evening, she prepares her husband's supper and sets it before him, but
never thinks of eating of it until after he is done. One of the early
objections the Nestorians made to the Female Seminary was, that it
would disqualify their daughters for their accustomed toil. In after
years woman might be seen carrying her Spelling-book to the field
along with her Persian hoe, little dreaming that she was thus taking
the first step towards the substitution of the new implement for the
old.
Nestorian parents used to consider the birth of a daughter a great
calamity. When asked the number of their children, they would count up
their sons, and make no mention of their daughters. The birth of a son
was an occasion for great joy and giving of gifts. Neighbors hastened
to congratulate the happy father, but days might elapse before the
neighborhood knew of the birth of a daughter. It was deemed highly
improper to inquire after the health of a wife, and the nearest
approach to it was to ask after the house or household. Formerly a man
never called his wife by name, but in speaking of her would say the
mother of "so and so," giving the name of the child; or the daughter
of "so and so," giving the name of her father; or simply that woman
did this or that. Nor did the wife presume to call her husband's name,
or to address him in the presence of his parents, who, it will be
borne in mind, lived in the same apartment. They were married very
young, often at the age of fourteen, and without any consultation of
their own preference, either as to time or person.
There was hardly a man among the Nestorians who did not beat his wife
when the missionaries commenced their labors. The women expected to be
beaten, and took it as a matter of course. When the men wished to talk
together of anything important, they usually sent the women out
of doors or to the stable, as unable to understand or unfit to be
trusted. In some cases, says the author of "Woman and Her Saviour,"
this might be a necessary precaution; for the absence of true
affection, and the frequency of domestic broils, rendered the wife an
unsafe depositary of any important family affair.[A]
[Footnote A: Woman and her Saviour, pp. 18 and 19.]
In Paraguay a female child is described by Southey as lamenting, in
heart-breaking tones, that her mother did not kill her when she was
born; and Sir A. Mackenzie declares that there is a class of women
in the north who performed this pious duty towards female infants,
whenever they had an opportunity. But wherever Christ is known and
loved, the daughter is a gift of God as well as a son. Woman owes to
her Saviour all she has of joy in time, as well as all she has of
hope in eternity. Though she does not obtain the headship, though her
sorrow and her pain are not removed, though her desire continues to be
to her husband, and though the rule of the husband continues in every
well-regulated home, yet woman is elevated to become a shareholder of
the pleasures of the home, of the honors and emoluments of life,
of the riches obtained by toil, and of the enjoyments derived from
culture. Woman in the Christian home is the soul, the pride, the
ornament, and the helper. Through Christ she obtains a recognition, so
that when we speak of man we mean the race, men and women, for these
become the two halves of one thought, so that no especial stress is
laid on the welfare of either, but the development of one is
secured by the development of the other. To such an extent have the
disabilities been removed from the sex, that a leading writer has
been compelled to admit, that "in our own country, women are, in many
respects, better situated than the men. Good books are allowed, with
more time to read them. They are not so early forced into the bustle
of life, nor so weighed down by demands for outward success. They
have time to think, and no traditions chain them, and few
conventionalities, compared with what must be met in other nations.
Doors swing open to them, and they are invited to walk the fields of
literary and artistic success, and whatever tends to the development
of their higher nature is freely placed within their reach."
2. _The trials of motherhood deserve notice_. We have seen the hopes
that came to Eve, and beheld their realization in and through Christ.
The trials were born of sin. Eve's eldest child, Cain, possessed a
narrow, selfish nature. He was a tiller of the ground. Abel was a
keeper of the sheep. The first born met this curse in the soil. The
second born looked forward to the restoration. In process of time Cain
brought of the fruit of the ground. Tradition has it that he brought
what was left of his food, of light and tempting things, flax or hemp
seed.
Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock, which was a proper type
of Christ. His offering pleased God, Cain's niggardly gift displeased
God. The selfish man wreaked his vengeance in the usual way. He slew
his brother, who was better than himself. The heavens are black with
gathering gloom. Murder is in the air. The shock is felt everywhere.
God comes, and sternly asks, "_Where is thy brother?_" Cain impudently
replies, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Then comes the curse. It is a
self-invited curse, for the gift he gave to God is the harvest in
future for himself. Ah, what a lesson. How early it is taught. If you
hate God, if you regret what you give, if you make it small, if you
see to it that you give the leavings rather than the firstlings, then
beware. Cain said his punishment was greater than he could bear. He is
getting back what he gave. The command is, Give, and it shall be given
back. The converse is true--Keep, and it shall be kept back.
The hopes of Eve were centred in the victory to be achieved over the
enemy of her life, by means of the triumph to be won by her children.
Her trials really began when she saw that sin was not an accident. It
was rebellion which bore fruit. Her treachery to God came back to her
in this treachery of her first born to her second child, whom she
loved with maternal tenderness. Thus the gates of evil were thrown
open, and they filled the land with violence, and the flood became a
necessity.
What was true of Eve was more or less true of woman until Christ
came. She inherited sorrow, and was born to a life of humiliation and
wretchedness. The history of woman in the olden time and at this hour,
wherever Christ is not known, is full of sorrow. In Christ she finds
an emancipator from sorrow.
There is another strange fact. In the Old Dispensation, the first born
son is the child of promise. But wherever the influence of Christ's
gospel rules, there the rule of the first born disappears, and all,
both sons and daughters, share in the patrimony of the house and in
the honors of the household. Despite this, it is natural for a father
to love his first born son the best, and for the mother to find her
heart clinging involuntarily to the younger and weaker. From the
unfortunate the father may turn, but the mother never. She will bind
her love tightest about the birdling that, from some misfortune, is
unable to leave the maternal nest.
Turn we to the Old Testament, we find that whenever man was brought
near to God, as was Abram, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and others, woman was
held in respect, and was permitted to exercise an elevating influence
in the home; and yet it remains true, that in nearly every instance
she failed to prove herself a helpmeet.
Sarah introduced Abraham to polygamy, Rebekah was a pattern of lying,
and Rachel of deception. The three celebrated women of history are
destitute of those characteristics which make of a wife a companion,
counsellor, and friend.
Do we study the history of Miriam, of Deborah, and Esther? we behold
women rising up in the name of God to help their people to save their
kindred. They were the introduction to a noble succession. Woman then,
as now, is loved for bringing _help_ to those on whom God devolves
responsibility.
The picture best loved and most praised in the Old Testament is that
of Hannah, the mother of Samuel, as she fits him for his post of duty
in the service of the Lord. In Hannah the world finds their beau ideal
of a mother, actuated by principle and ruled by love, recognizing her
allegiance to God, and her obligations to her child and husband, and
there is hardly a child in this Christian land who does not dwell with
delight upon this fact, that each year the mother made for her boy a
little coat. It was a motherly deed, and links her to the history of
the race by the blessed tie which finds its origin in maternal care.
Ruth comes next, because of her fidelity to her mother, and her love
of virtue. It is by her life we are introduced afresh to the golden
vein of prophecy that runs through the Old Testament, and which ever
pointed towards the coming of Christ as the hope of woman and the
hope of the world. Esther's love of her race, and her noble daring
of Eastern despotism for the good of her people, lifts her to a high
place, though as a wife and mother we know nothing more than that she
was hedged round by the iron regulations of a paganized court. The
revelations made concerning the daughter of Jacob, or of Bathsheba,
the loved wife of David, and in fact of nearly all of the women of the
Bible, prove that the women of the olden time left as well as received
an inheritance of shame. The names we have mentioned are among the
brightest and the best. We will draw a veil over the characters of
women such as the wife of Lot, or of Potiphar, the would-be seducer
of Joseph, or of Job, the betrayer of her husband in misfortune, of
Jezebel, the fury, or of Delilah, the traitress to her husband, and of
a score of others, that make the age in which they lived seem like the
night of humanity.
3. _Woman obtains her recognition in Christ._ From the moment God
pronounced sentence upon Eve to the moment when the angel appeared
to Mary, man was recognized as the head. Even Miriam wrought through
Moses, and Deborah, the judge and prophetess, lays no claim to
personal communication with God, but quotes his promises, and
stimulates Barak to action, So also when the angel came from the court
of heaven to foretell the joy that was to come to the world in the
birth of John, the forerunner of Christ, he came to Zacharias instead
of to Elisabeth. But when the message related to Christ, _then the
angel passed by man, and approached woman direct_. God never forgets.
A thousand years are but as a day to Him. Yesterday, in Eden, he
foretold the coming of Christ to Eve. To-day, in Nazareth, the angel
comes to Mary, and makes her heart glad with the fact, that she
was chosen to become the mother of our Lord. Eve lost by sin God's
companionship. Mary obtained, through Christ, favor with God and man.
The valley is spanned with this arch of hope. The night of woman's
humiliation is passing away. And the angel came in unto her, and said,
"Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee; blessed
art thou among women."
Strange words these, as we can readily perceive, from the position
held by woman previously. No wonder that when she saw him, she was
troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation
this should be. And the angel said unto her, "Fear not, Mary, for thou
hast found favor with God. And behold, thou shall conceive in thy
womb, and bring forth a son, and shall call his name Jesus. He shall
be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God
shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign
over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be
no end." No wonder that the air seemed full of music. Woman, made so
beautiful, woman, so beloved of God, and so prized by Adam, before sin
blighted the bud of hope and spoiled the flower of beauty, was now to
come forth from the darkness and gloom of her life of shame to the
light of an unclouded day, henceforth to be made glorious by her
ministrations of love. The glory of motherhood "is the man gotten from
the Lord," and raised to work for God in this sinful world. The glory
of woman is to share this man's home as a helpmeet, and contribute by
her love, and sympathy, and efforts to his happiness and usefulness
here, that she may wear the crown of joy in heaven.
MARIOLATRY NOT OF CHRIST.
If ever woman had reason to sing, "My spirit hath rejoiced in God my
Saviour," it was Mary, the Virgin Mother of Christ. God recognized her
as a helper in restoring man from the ruins of sin. To her the angel
spake, saying, "Hail, thou that art highly favored. The Lord is with
thee. Blessed art thou among women." And in pondering in her heart the
strange coincidences, she exclaimed, "God hath regarded the low estate
of his handmaiden; for behold from henceforth all generations shall
call me blessed."
From these words it is evident that Mary appreciated the honor
conferred upon her by her Creator and rightful Ruler. It is a singular
fact, that Eve, betrayed by Satan, betrayed the race. Mary held
steadfast to God and to truth; and yet Satan has the second time taken
woman and used her as an ally, and so has brought an influence to bear
upon the minds of men which has led millions astray, and covers vast
portions of the world with the gloom of a moral night. Mary, the
"Mother of Jesus," is made to take the place of "Christ, the Son of
God," and is declared to be the Mother of God. In this land we can
form no conception of the extent to which this worship of Mary is
carried in Roman Catholic countries. To the Italians Mary is God, and
worship is simply the adoration of the Virgin. Viewing Romanism in the
light of the Bible, this is its crowning sin; viewing it as a system
combined to seduce and enslave, this is its masterpiece. To understand
how it is so, let us think how deep in man's nature is placed the
feeling of the need of a being like unto himself, to mediate between
him and God. The Bible completely meets this want in the God-man. But
Popery blots out the God-man as mediator, and in his stead presents us
with Mary, who is to the devotee the "one living and true God;" for,
though the Father and Son are known, they are accessible only through
Mary, and they stand so far behind and beyond her, that to the
Romanist they are vague, shadowy, and unknown. Mary is the first name
to be lisped in childhood, the last to be uttered by the quivering
lips before they are closed in death. Around the neck of the infant is
suspended a small image of the Virgin; when the babe seeks the breast
it must kiss the image, and thus literally does it draw in the
adoration of Mary with its mother's milk. "Were the New Testament to
be written at this hour, Rome would blot out the name of Christ and
substitute that of Mary. Take a proof: The church close by the Vatican
has upon its marble pediment, graven in large letters, 'Let us come to
the throne of the Virgin Mary, that we may find grace to help us in
our time of need.' The Roman sees Heb. iv. 16 quoted, but cannot
verify it if he would, seeing the Bible is forbidden to him." Pius
IX., at the foot of the column of the Immaculate Conception, erected
to perpetuate the fact that he was permitted to decree the dogma, has
Moses, David, Isaiah, and Jeremiah casting crowns before the Virgin,
saying, "Thou art worthy; for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to
God by thy blood." When it was announced that the French occupation of
Rome should cease, the Pope published a decree calling on all Rome
to go with him to the feet of Mary, if haply by cries and tears they
might prevail with her to avert from the throne of God's vicar the
dangers that threaten it; and in that act the Pope led the way.[A]
[Footnote A: Minister _versus_ Priest, page 7.]
For this worship of the Virgin Mary there is a reason. Satan could
not successfully lead astray so many millions of people, despite a
preached gospel and a printed Bible, unless there was some truth lying
at the root of this ineradicable Virgin worship. This root we shall
discover when we recall woman's position prior to the advent of
Christ, the place she was called upon to fill in the scheme of
redemption, and the influences set in motion by the life of Christ
upon the earth.
1. _Let us notice woman's position previous to the advent_. Before
Christ came, woman was regarded as inferior to man. She had lost
her equality. She was excluded from general intercourse, and her
confinement to her own home and apartments, without education,
without social recognition, left her without strength of character,
self-reliance, or resources with herself. "Woman's safety in society
lies in two elements: her own virtue and intelligence, and the
consequent respect for her which such a character inspires. Where
these two things are found, she may participate in general society,
mingling freely with men as their equals, and regarded, it may be,
even as their superiors. Here, it may be worthy of note, that no such
estimate or honor is ever put upon woman except when Christianity has
given her this elevation."
Before Christ appeared, the qualities honored as divine were
peculiarly the virtues of the man--courage, wisdom, truth, strength.
Womanly virtues were regarded as puerile and contemptible, and woman
herself was little better than a slave.
2. _Notice the place woman filled in the scheme of redemption_. It is
admitted by those who recognize the Word of God as authority, that
the Atonement required the sacrifice of one whose nature represents
equally the dignity of the Law-maker and the humanity of the
transgressor. In him Deity and humanity must be united: Deity, that
he may give value to the offering; humanity, that he may obey the
positive precepts and endure the penal sanction of the law human
nature has violated. It was therefore essential that the prophecy
of Isaiah, uttered six hundred years before the advent, should be
fulfilled, viz., "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bring forth a
son, and they shall call his name Immanuel--God with us." This work
had been accomplished, and Mary was honored with the privilege of
taking the words of Eve, "I have gotten a man with Jehovah," and
making it no longer a prophecy, but a fact. So we sing,--
"Thou wast born of woman; them didst come,
O, Holiest! to this world of sin and gloom,
Not in thy dread omnipotent array;
And not by thunder strewed
Was thy tempestuous road,--
Nor indignation burned before thee on thy way;
But thou, a soft and naked child,
Thy mother undefiled,
In the rude manger laid to rest,
From off her virgin breast."
Then, for the first time, the mother resumed her place. When the
wise men came into the house they saw the young child, with Mary his
mother, and fell down and worshipped him; and when they had opened
their treasures they presented unto him gifts, gold, and frankincense,
and myrrh. The old Eastern custom, which placed the child before the
mother, was now understood. God guarded against making Mary first, and
at the same time provided for her a place. When God appeared to Joseph
in a dream, he did not say, Take the mother and child, but the "young
child and his mother, and flee into Egypt." This brings us naturally
to consider--
3. _The influences set in motion by the life of Christ upon the
earth_. First, let us review the history of Christ's personal
relations to Mary. Up to twelve years of age, his home was in
Nazareth; and Luke declares (second chapter, fortieth verse), "The
child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the
grace of God was upon him. And when he was twelve years old, his
parents went up to Jerusalem, after the custom of the feast. And when
they had fulfilled the days, as they returned the child Jesus tarried
behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. For
three days he was away from them. When they found him he was in the
temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and
asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his
understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed:
and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?
Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing."
It is noticeable that Luke mentions Joseph before he mentions the
mother; and when Mary speaks, she ignores the miraculous conception,
and calls him the son of Joseph. But Jesus _does not forget_ his
origin, nor does he recognize Joseph as father, but says, How is
it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's
business? And they understood not the saying he spake unto them. And
he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto
them; but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. "And Jesus
increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man."--Luke
ii. 42.
Again, at Cana of Galilee, there was a marriage, and the mother of
Jesus was there. Eighteen years have passed since we last saw him in
the temple, when Mary ignored his miraculous conception, and when
Jesus rebuked her, by asserting his Sonship and by claiming God as
Father. At Cana both Jesus and his disciples are invited to the
wedding. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto
him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, "Woman, what have I to
do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come." Plainly, and in the most
emphatic manner, Christ refuses to recognize Mary as intercessor or
director. A third instance is still more marked. Jesus is talking
to an immense multitude, and is making a hand-to-hand fight with
Pharisees and Scribes. "While he yet talked to the people, behold, his
mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him."
Evidently Mary had no idea of the character or the mission of the Man
Christ Jesus, but feeling that he was popular, she was glad to exhibit
her relationship in a public manner, and so through the throng sent in
word, saying, "Tell Jesus his mother and his brethren stand without,
desiring to speak with him." But he answered, and said unto him that
told him, "Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?" It is not
difficult to picture the God-man shaking off the trammels of the
flesh and rising to the height of his great work. What a contrast
is presented between the second and the first Adam! The first Adam
yielded without remonstrance to Eve, who had worshipped the creature
rather than the Creator, and thus paved the way for the introduction
of idolatry; while the second Adam--the Lord of Glory--withstood the
influences of Mary, rebuked her intermeddling and dictation, and stood
forth to his work in the declaration as he Stretched out his hand
towards his disciples, and said, "Behold my mother and my brethren.
For whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, the
same is MY BROTHER, AND SISTER, AND MOTHER."
Again, while Christ was conversing with his disciples, a certain woman
of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, "Blessed is
the womb that bore thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked." Thus
suddenly flamed up this passion for Mariolatry. It was instantly
rebuked by the words, "Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the
Word of God and keep it." Thus he tore the crown from the brow of Mary
woven by the irreligious, and intimated that, as Mary was greater than
Eve, because of her identification with Himself, so whosoever should
believe in Christ, and serve him, should be the equal of Mary. The
purpose of God in forming Eve, should be realized in the womanly
character resulting from a reception of the truth as it is in Jesus,
and by doing the will of God on the earth.
Thus he severed the tie binding him to family, and proclaimed himself
the Son of Man, and the Son of God, the Brother of the Faithful. From
this declaration came the brotherhood and sisterhood of the church
of Christ, so that no matter what be the rank or position of the
worldling redeemed by the blood of Christ, he becomes an equal
shareholder in love, and is recognized as a partaker in the fellowship
of the church.
At the cross we find Mary standing with others. When Jesus therefore
saw his mother and the disciple standing by whom he loved, he saith
unto his mother, "Woman, behold thy son." Then saith he to the
disciple, "Behold thy mother." And from that hour the disciple took
her unto his own house. Once more she appeal's as worshipper, and not
as the worshipped. Her name is mentioned, with others, in Acts i. 14,
as being with the disciples in the Pentecostal chamber waiting for the
descent of the Holy Spirit.
From this scriptural testimony, it is apparent that the Saviour, by
his conduct towards his mother, shielded the church from the curse of
Mariolatry. Had he yielded in one instance, reasons for supporting the
claims of Romanism had been furnished. Mary was only a woman. She was
honored of God just as far as she served God, and when she turned
aside she was no more than any other person. Her perceptions of
Christ's work were not as distinct or comprehensive as were those of
Mary the sister of Lazarus, or of Mary Magdalene. In this Mary was not
peculiar. Very frequently women associated with great workers fail to
appreciate the character of the work committed to them to do. To the
world a worker may seem to be a wonder. To the one most intimately
associated with him he is a very ordinary individual. It is said a man
is never a hero to his servant. Is it not almost as true of his wife?
A living great man is ordinary in so many things in his daily life,
that the wife forgets his greatness. The wife of John Milton saw but a
blind man in the bard, dwelling upon his immortal thought and evolving
his world-renowned poem. As the eagle stirs up her nest, compelling
her broodlings to exert themselves, so God sometimes suffers a good
man to link his fortunes with a woman who is ill-mated with him in
every way. In the light of the fact that Jesus found little or
no appreciation in the society of Mary, and sought the home-joys
elsewhere, woman ought to learn a lesson. Is it not possible that you
mistake your mission, and strike the rock of stumbling in your home,
rather than avoid it by ignoring that which is grand and admirable in
the life of him with whom you are associated? Doubtless in a busy man,
now full of joy, and now morose; now engrossed by a thought or scheme
to such an extent that he forgets himself and his family, and now idle
and listless as a boy,--it may be hard, yet it is none the less a duty
for woman to love him for what he is, and to see to it that he be
ministered unto in his efforts. O, how dear to the heart of a working
man--no matter whether he toil with brain or hand--who feels that his
wife understands him, defends and protects him, and keeps the home
bright with love, though tempests may sweep across the path that leads
him into the world! There is a lesson here which belongs to men.
Mary's lack of appreciation did not turn Jesus from his work. It
permitted his true character to appear to better advantage. It tore
down the scaffolding of Mariolatry, and permitted the God-man to
stand forth in his grand proportions. "Wist ye not I must be about
my Father's business?" said Jesus. Many men make trouble at home an
excuse for going to the bad. It is not an excuse. The design of home
trouble may be to send a man to Jesus; to make the tendrils of love
twine about the heavenly rather than the earthly. It surely is not to
induce a man to twine his affections about the devilish and earthly.
It is not manly thus to do.
_Man moves in three circles_. The first is that of Self; the second
that of Family; the third that of Country. A man who properly performs
duties that pertain to himself, we shall not call noble. By neglecting
family he becomes less than a man. By performing them never so well
he comes not to merit applause. Distinctive nobleness begins with the
third class. It is when he rises above self and family, when he looks
abroad on the family of mankind, that he takes the altitude which in
a man is distinctively great; when he feels no longer the little
necessities which compel, or the little pleasures which allure, and
yet is able to contemplate men as a great brotherhood of immortals,
with a gaze analogous to Him in whose image he is made; when he can
look on the world through the light of eternity, and is willing to
suffer all things, and to endure all things, that by him and through
him blessings may reach others,--then it is he does that which it is
the high privilege of man on this earth to do, and becomes a power to
which under God humanity owes all it has achieved in time. "I serve"
is the law of the living forces of mankind. Each man and woman has
a place. If they fill it, they furnish a channel along which God's
beneficent purposes find their way to a lost world. If they do not
fill it, they are set aside, and the verdict of the world is, Served
them right.
It if surprising that, after Mary had been rebuked at Cana of Galilee,
that she should have presumed to have interrupted Jesus in the
presence of the multitude. It is instructive that Christ taught us
that the tie binding us to God and to humanity, is the most sacred
of all; for while it made the God-man a brother to us, it makes us
co-workers with God in carrying forward the enterprises with which men
are identified on the earth. When a man is true to self, to humanity,
and to God, and so girds himself with the strength arising from
confidence, he deserves the support, if not the admiration, of those
with whom he is associated. It was unworthy of Mary to ignore the
Divine origin of Jesus, and call Joseph his father before the elders.
She thought to raise herself by lowering him. He would not be lowered.
By his mother and by the world he knew that he had a right to be
recognized as the Son of God. This tendency to belittle greatness
lives yet. Men are seldom known until they die. We praise the dead and
ignore the living, as a rule. There is too little respect shown to men
occupying positions of public trust. There is too little respect shown
in the household. The father and mother are not honored in the home as
they deserve to be, and in the state the same principle rules. "Thou
shall not speak evil of the ruler of thy people," is an apostolic
precept, and the command, "Honor thy father and thy mother," was
repeatedly reiterated by Christ.
It is a significant fact, that Eve was led astray by Satan in the
same direction that was Mary. Mariolatry is only the outgrowth of the
seedling that lay dormant in Mary's heart, and is indigenous. It is
not natural for us to be contented with being used as an instrument
for glorifying God. We desire to be honored, as something more than an
instrument. In fact, it is true, that all are, no matter what their
powers or capacities, instrumentalities employed of God for distinct
purposes. Against this power we revolt and are thrust aside. The
_really_ great delight to recognize this truth, and their prayer is,
"Use me for thy glory" and for the world's advantage.
Another truth incidentally appears, and furnishes the root of
Mariolatry. We come to appear to the world what we really are. Mary
was tempted to place herself above Christ, and so we are not surprised
that those who have turned against Christ should join the tempter in
placing Mary above her Son. The refutation is the life of Christ,
who died for man, and the life of Mary, who never forgot herself in
thinking of others. The triumph of Mary was won by submission. Had she
revolted against Christ, she had lost all. In the First Epistle of
Paul to the Corinthians, the apostle speaks of the glory of the women
as of a thing distinct from the glory of the men. They are the two
opposite poles of the sphere of humanity. "Their provinces are not
the same, but different. The qualities which are beautiful when
predominant in one are not beautiful when predominant in the other.
That which is the glory of the one is not the glory of the other." The
glory of true womanhood is a combination of various qualities, many
of which were illustrated by the life of Mary. She was considerate of
others. She was submissive. As has been said, "In the very outset of
the Bible, submission is revealed as her peculiar lot and destiny.
If you were merely to look at the words as they stand declaring the
results of the fall, you would be inclined to call that vocation of
obedience a curse but in the spirit of Christ it is transformed, like
labor, into a blessing." The origin or root of Mariolatry has been
accounted for in the following manner: "In all Christian ages the
especial glory ascribed to the Virgin Mother is purity of heart
and life. Gradually in the history of the Christian church, the
recognition of this became idolatry. The works of early Christian
art commonly exhibit the progress of this perversion. They show how
Mariolatry grew up. The first pictures of the early Christians simply
represent the woman. By and by we find outlines of the mother and the
child. In an after age, the Son is seen sitting on a throne, with the
mother crowned, but sitting, as yet, below him. In an age still later,
the crowned mother is on a level with the Son. Later still, the mother
is on a throne above the Son. And, lastly, a Romish artist represents
the Eternal Son, in wrath, about to destroy the earth, and the Virgin
Intercessor interposing, pleading by significant attitudes her
maternal rights, and redeeming the world from his vengeance. Such was,
in fact, the progress of virgin worship."
First, the woman reverenced for the Son's sake, then the woman
reverenced above the Son and adored. This is the history. To account
for it, various theories have been advocated. One, assuming it as
a principle that no error has ever spread widely that was not the
exaggeration or perversion of a truth, finds in the influence exerted
by Christ the germ out of which Mariolatry springs. But surely nothing
could be farther from what Christ taught. By word, by look, and by
action, Christ opposed the debasing and degrading thought. Mariolatry,
like idolatry, is the outgrowth of the religion of nature. The carnal
heart is at enmity with God. It prefers to worship something besides
God, and so in the old dispensation it found its idol in the hero.
As the heathen counted for divine the legislative wisdom of the
man,--manly strength, manly truth, manly justice, manly courage,
Hercules with his club, Jupiter with his thunderbolt, so Baal,
representing the primeval power of nature, became the object of
idolatrous worship. After Christ, partly because of the new spirit
which pervaded the world, and largely because the carnal heart, ruled
by Satan, is glad of any pretext to neglect Christ, Mary, the mother,
became preferable to Christ the Son. Salvation depends upon faith in
Christ. Whosoever believeth in the Son hath everlasting life. For God
so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. This
being true, a belief in Mary as an intercessor is as sinful in God's
sight, and is as directly opposed to a faith in Christ, as was a
belief in Baal or Jupiter. By whatever means Satan induces men to
reject Christ, he ruins them, and destroys their hope of salvation.
Satan induced Eve to reject God, to believe in him, and to serve him.
There is no evidence that Mary would have consented to occupy the
place to which an idolatrous world has raised her, but Satan cares not
for that, so that "he may work with all power, and signs, and lying
wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that
perish."
The peril arising from the perversion's of biblical truth is
illustrated by the history of the diaconate as well as by the history
of the motherhood of Jesus. The influences set in motion by the life
of Christ deserve to be carefully pondered. Perverted, they have
helped on error. Used and employed as Christ designed them, they are
subservient of the highest interests of society. Truly has it been
said, The life and the cross of Christ shed a splendor from heaven
upon a new and till then unheard of order of heroism--that which may
be called the feminine order--meekness, endurance, long-suffering, the
passive strength of martyrdom. For Christianity does not say, "Honor
to the wise," but, "Blessed are the meek." Not "Glory to the strong,"
but "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Not the
Lord is a man of war; Jehovah is his name, but God is love. In Christ,
not intellect, but love, is glorified. In Christ is magnified, not
force of will, but the glory of a Divine humility. He was obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross; wherefore God hath also
exalted Him. Therefore it was, that from that time forward, woman
assumed a new place in the world. It is not to mere civilization, but
to the spirit of life in Christ, that woman owes all she has and all
she has yet to gain. In Christ, manly and womanly characteristics were
united, and were in equipoise. He was not the Son of the Man, but the
Son of Man. It was not manhood, but humanity, that was made divine
in him. Humanity has its two sides: one side in the strength and
intellect of manhood; the other in the tenderness and faith and
submission of womanhood; man and woman, the two halves of one thought,
make up human nature. In Christ, not one alone, but both were
glorified. Strength and Grace, Wisdom and Love, Courage and
Purity,--Divine Manliness, Divine Womanliness. In all noble
characters, the two are blended; in Him--the noblest--blended into
one entire and perfect humanity. The spirit which pervades the world
because of Christ's coming, and of the influence exerted by his
Gospel, opens to woman a faith which has been growing clearer and
brighter for eighteen centuries. By this we do not affirm or imply
that the coming of Christ restored woman to the equality she enjoyed
in the morning of creation, or that his coming removed the curse then
pronounced upon her. If Christ's coming removed a part of the curse,
then it must have removed all, which we know is false; woman still has
sorrow in child-bearing, and man earns his daily bread by the sweat
of his brow. Christ's coming removed the disabilities from woman. He
turned the attention of the world to feminine characteristics, and
shed over them the halo of a divine light. He brought the woman up
as he lowered the glory hitherto attached to characteristics
distinctively manly. Where Christ is loved, the gladiator and
prize-fighter are despised, and a meek and quiet spirit is honored.
The heart is the seat of power more than the intellect. Blessed are
the pure in heart, rather than the great in intellect. Pureness rather
than strength is the ideal of the human heart, since Christ was slain.
While, then, it is true that the worship of Mary is idolatry, and that
the worship given to her is so much taken from Christ, we must not
forget that the only glory of the Virgin was the glory of true
womanhood. "The glory of true womanhood consists in being herself; not
in striving to be something else. It is the false paradox and heresy
of this present age to claim for her as a glory, the right to leave
her sphere. Her glory lies in her sphere, and God has given her a
sphere distinct; as in the Epistle to the Church of Corinth, when, in
that wise chapter, St. Paul rendered unto womanhood the things which
were woman's, and unto manhood the things which were man's."
Mary's glory was not immaculate origin, nor immaculate life, nor
exaltation to Divine honors. She has none of these things. Hers was
the glory of simple womanhood. The glory of being true to the nature
assigned her by her Maker, the glory of Motherhood; the glory of a
meek and quiet spirit, which is, in the sight of God, of great price.
For all women there is something nobler than to be recognized as the
queen of heaven. Let woman be content to be what God made her, to fill
the sphere God appointed for her, in unselfishness, and humbleness,
and purity, rejoicing in God her Saviour, content that He had regarded
the lowliness of His handmaiden, and rejoicing that God has honored
the characteristics regarded as feminine, which she possesses, and
which she may use for the glory of God and the good of the race.
Now, as in the olden time, it is her privilege to minister unto the
necessities of Jesus, by cheerfully contributing of her substance
to the support of His cause, and by lavishing her love, upon those
qualities of the head and heart, which in Christ appeared in perfected
beauty, and are to-day the charm of life, the power of religion, and
the glory of Christianity.
WOMAN'S WORK AND WOMAN'S MISSION.
Woman's work is a work of charity. The fact points back to woman's
origin. God brought her as a gift to man, with characteristics and
endowments which fitted her to be his helpmeet, his counsellor, and
companion. Recall Adam's position. He was alone in the garden. He
found no helper in the beasts. He longed for a kindred spirit. Endowed
with a nature too communicative to be content with itself, he requires
society, a resting point, a complement, for he only half lives while
he lives alone. Made to speak, to think, to love, his thought seeks
another thought to reveal and quicken itself; his speech is lost
sorrowfully in the air, or only awakens an echo which reverberates it,
but cannot reply; his love knows not where to fix itself, and falling
back on itself, threatens to become a barren egotism; in short, fill
his being aspires to another self, but his other self does not exist.
At this time, when the desire for communion was stifling him, he
slept, and from his side God took a rib and made woman, and brought
her to him. Behold Adam. He sees her, and is in rapture.
"Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love."
Milton describes Adam as saying--
"I now see
Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, myself
Before me; Woman is her name, of man
Extracted: for this cause he shall forego
Father and mother, and to his wife adhere;
And they shall be one flesh, one heart, one soul."
The imagination paints this scene. In fancy we behold Adam winning
Eve, "for she would be wooed, and not unsought be won." Won she was,
and Adam was brought to the sum of earthly bliss. They dwell together
in sweet accord, Adam fears for her safety when apart from him. Evil
threatens them. Together they would be strong, he thinks, apart they
would be weak, and so in fear he speaks of the enemy lurking in the
garden, and seeking to find them asunder.
"Hopeless to circumvent us joined, where each
To other speedy aid might lend at need;
Whether his first design be to withdraw
Our fealty from God, or to disturb
Conjugal love, than which, perhaps, no bliss
Enjoyed by us excites his envy more;
Or this or worse, leave not the faithful side
That gave thee being, still shades thee and protects.
The wife, where danger or dishonor lurks,
Safest and seemliest by her husband stays,
Who guards her, or with her the worst endures."
Eve resents the imputation of weakness, and insists on being left
forever fancy free to roam at will. In self-confidence she goes forth
and falls, and in falling introduces sin into the world.
Let us review the past, and recall a few facts which, deserve
consideration, before we enter upon the contemplation of Woman's Work
and Woman's Mission. It will not be denied that Eve was created to be
a helpmeet. That Satan tempted her, and converted the helpmeet into a
tempter. In that light we have considered her power. We have seen that
Eve, in bringing ruin to man, turned her back upon the Creator and
Preserver of mankind, and paved the way for the introduction of
idolatry, the shadows of whose multiplying altars shrouded the old
world in the gloom of night. From the ruin of Eve to the restoration
in Mary, the history of this world resembles a deep valley filled with
death and sorrow and gloom. In Adam all died, in Christ all shall be
made alive. Bethlehem with its manger is set over against Eden with
its bower. During that old dispensation, manly qualities were honored
and womanly qualities were ignored. The effects of sin are seen. God
doth not hold guiltless the sinner. The consequences of sin run on.
They made woman's life wretched. They changed the helpmeet into a
slave. Do not rebel, woman, at the utterance, nor suffer yourself to
feel that God does not care for woman, or that he willingly afflicts
her.
It is at this point you do well to survey the field. We know that
God's purposes run on. That God was not and will not be defeated. That
the plan formed in the councils of eternity is sure to be successfully
executed.
Hence God's idea of woman is yet to bless the world. What sin
destroyed Christ came to restore, and more than to restore. In heaven
if not on earth we shall see woman as God made her, and as God
glorified her. This brings us to the consideration of what Christ did
for her. He did not permit Mary to become Intercessor, and so give a
sanction to Mariolatry, which in evil is second only to idolatry.
He did not lift woman to the position of ruler, nor did he give any
sanction to the wild vagaries of the Christless ones, who are striving
to overturn the foundations of society, and who rebel against
motherhood, wifehood, and sisterhood; but he did turn the attention
of the world towards the graces of womanhood, and while he turned his
back upon those manly qualities of labor, of pluck, of brute courage,
he turned his face towards meekness, gentleness, and love, and made
the vales of life to blossom with a new beauty. He welcomed woman as a
companion. He sought her for sympathy's sake, and opened his heart to
her in the fullest confidence.
Let us notice this truth. In making woman's work a work of charity, he
continued in the New Dispensation the work which was commenced in the
Old. He lifted the thread where woman broke it, and reuniting it again
sent her forth into the world to bless it with love, with sympathy,
with ministrations of tenderness, with an elevating companionship,
which makes man worthy of his origin, and helps him to fulfil the
mission of God's anointed.
And though Satan has taken this new thought and perverted it, as he
has perverted all the rest, and though he has employed the Church of
Rome, by organizing women into orders and sisterhoods of charity, so
that woman may again be enslaved and destroyed; though the story of
her confinement in nunneries and establishments little better in form
than prisons, and far more cruel in character, has been written, let
us not be discouraged, but believing that Christ's plan is best, let
us learn what his will is, and then let us do it in the fear of God
and in the love of truth, assured that his ways are higher and better
and grander than ours, and that it is safe to trust God even where
we cannot trace him, remembering that "he doeth great things, past
finding out; yea, and wonders without number."
In considering Woman's Work and Woman's Mission, we discover that they
go hand in hand, and faith is the bond which unites them. Separate
woman's work from her mission, and you divorce it from that which
makes it honorable and praiseworthy. It is the spirit of faith, and
love, and hope, and charity, which pervades the life of the true
woman, that is her glory and her praise. The difference between woman
as a drudge and woman as a helpmeet, describes the relation existing
between her work and her mission. Work separated from this path of
faith, love, and charity, becomes unholy to the world and unbearable
to her. The holiest of all work for a mother is to care for her child.
That child, so helpless now, is to reward her by acts of love and
deeds of valor. Take away from woman her faith, let her feel that her
work is a degradation, and there is nothing more beautiful in her
attentions to a child than there would be in her attentions to a pig.
When in the country the children and their parents were floating in a
little boat on a river's surface, they admired the lilies with their
white leaves spread out on the wave. After they had looked upon the
flower, I asked them to observe the roots, and see in what they
were embedded. They replied, "The roots are in the mud." That lily
illustrates truthfully the spiritual character of woman's work. Though
her life may be passed in drudgery, yet the flower of her life is
seen in the neatness, beauty, and comfort of the home, and her joy
is derived from the commendation received by her diligence and toil.
Truly has the poet told, in this homely way, how
LOVE LIGHTENS LABOR.
A good wife rose from her bed one morn,
And thought, with a nervous dread,
Of the piles of clothes to be washed, and more
Than a dozen mouths to be fed.
There were meals to be got for the men in the field,
And the children to fix away
To school, and the milk to be skimmed and churned;
And all to be done that day.
It had rained in the night, and all the wood
Was wet as it could be,
And there were pudding and pies to bake,
And a loaf of cake for tea.
The day was hot, and her aching head
Throbbed wearily as she said--
"If maidens but knew what good wives know,
They would, be in no hurry to wed."
"Jennie, what do you think I told Ben Brown?"
Called the farmer from the well;
And a flush crept up to his bronzed brow,
And his eye half bashfully fell;
"It was this," he said, and coming near,
He smiled, and stooping down,
Kissed her cheek--"'twas this, that _you were the best
And dearest wife in town_!"
The farmer went back to the field, and the wife,
In a smiling and absent way,
Sang snatches of tender little songs
She'd not sung for many a day.
And the pain in her head was gone, and the clothes
Were white as foam of the sea;
Her bread was light, and her butter was sweet,
And golden as it could be.
"Just think," the children all called in a breath,
"Tom Wood has run off to sea!
He wouldn't, I know, if he only had
As happy a home as we."
The night came down, and the good wife smiled
To herself, as she softly said,
"'Tis sweet to labor for those we love--
'Tis not strange that maids will wed!"
There is a glory in motherhood which robes woman in beauty, and fills
the home with the light of heaven. The mother, busy with her cares,
and attending to the wants of her children, is honored wherever Christ
is loved.
Now, because the world links woman's work and mission together,
the world is full of pictures of the mother and the child. To a
true-hearted man, it is almost impossible to find any picture to which
his nature turns with fonder delight than to that of a mother with
a child sleeping on the breast, full of sweet trust and enjoying a
dreamless repose, or being ministered to in his nude state in the
morning bath. The spiritual covers the common with a halo of glory,
and robes woman in the light of love.
The same is true of the housewife. In the daily routine of duty, which
is essential to the comfort and bliss of home life, there is nothing
very attractive in the ordinary occupations of the home. Let a woman
attempt the task with no outlook, with no hope. Let her do it for so
much money, and nothing more, and she becomes morose, discontented,
sad and cheerless. Let her do this for love. Let her feel that she is
contributing to some one's joy, or that she is to use the money earned
for some worthy purpose, and at once the loftiness of her purpose
sanctifies her deed, and renders that which would have been
unbecoming, if done without a motive, right and noble when performed
under the pressure of a great and noble aspiration, for "'tis sweet to
labor for those we love."
Woman's work is defined by her Creator to be a work of charity. She is
a helpmeet. A gift she came to man. Her life is a constant giving up
of rights and privileges for the happiness of others. She waits on man
not for pay, but for love. She ministers to him in sickness and in
health. It is not the deed, but the spirit which sanctifies the deed,
that makes it lovely. Compel her by force, by fear, or by rewards, to
do what she performs because of love, and you destroy all the beauty
of the action, and convert the ministering angel into a menial, the
God-appointed woman into a brutalized slave. God made her a gift, and
the law of her life is in giving. She fulfils the functions of her
life by living in harmony with the law of love. The woman, described
with such inexpressible tenderness by Luke (vii. 37-50), attracts
attention by this feature. She came to Christ while he was reclining
at table. She had sinned. Still she loved. Here were Christ's feet
hanging over the table's edge, while Christ reclined. As he was
talking, behold this woman bending over them, her hot tears raining
on them, and she busy wiping off the tear-drops with her hair, and
kissing them, anointed them with costly ointment. She loved, and
therefore evidenced it by deeds. Her love, blossoming into action,
won Christ. He saw that she loved. Perhaps love had led her astray at
first. No matter. Love she possessed, and love she desired to lavish
on some object worthy of her regard. That object she discovered in
Jesus. She took her alabaster-box of precious ointment, and went after
him. She enters the Pharisee's house; it may have been the house where
she had fallen. The Pharisee seemed to know her character, and so he
said, "This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what
manner of woman this is that toucheth him, for she is a sinner."
Christ did not at once recognize the suspicion, but supposing the case
of the two debtors, and having obtained from Simon the declaration,
that the one would love most who was forgiven most, turned upon him
the force of the logic, by saying, "Seest thou this woman? I entered
into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet, but she both
washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head.
Thou gavest me no kiss; but this woman, since the time I came, hath
not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint;
but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. And he said to the
woman, _Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace_."
Let woman's work be regarded as a work of charity by man, and the
larger portion of women will be satisfied. The servant finds pleasure
in service, when the obligation is recognized as a debt not to be paid
for in money.
No wife would do what she is compelled to perform, or suffer what she
is compelled to endure, for her board and clothes. It is when man
refuses to give her more than these, she revolts. Man never won woman
to leave her single life and her home comforts to enter his house as a
helpmeet by a consideration of the work to be done. It was not in the
contract. He talked then of love, of companionship, of help. The other
was in the bond by mutual consent, but it was regarded as beneath
their notice to talk about it. Her nature yearned for love, and lives
on love.
Now, when a man forgets that love, companionship, and the thousand
attentions which sweeten and brighten life, are due to his wife, and
when he lifts up the drudgery and the slavery of life into prominence,
and tells her that she is only fitted to hold a menial place, he
insults, if he does not destroy the woman, and degrades himself. On
the other hand, let a woman refuse to be influenced by this law of
charity, and she becomes a curse instead of a blessing, a hinderance
instead of a helpmeet.
It is a very common complaint that a good servant is difficult to
find. Some are slovenly, some are dishonest, while those who are both
able and truthful, are pronounced intolerable, frequently because of
their impertinence. All can understand the reason. The servant has no
interest in her employer who refuses to _give_ anything. The servant
works for so much money. "As to rights, privileges, and perquisites,
it is not unfrequently either a battle or a sort of armed treaty
between kitchen and parlor." Many will admit this, and will forget or
ignore the cause. Listen to the servants' story, and you will find
them complaining of the stinginess, or tyranny, or selfishness of the
employer.
Let the law of charity rule both employer and employed, and behold the
change. The mistress recognizes her weight of obligation to a good
and faithful domestic. She feels that her services are beyond price,
invaluable to her. The effect is seen at once. The sluggish step is
quickened. Love takes the place of indifference if not of dislike, and
the relations of friendship are at once recognized. No mistress has a
right to expect that her servants will be bound to her by the ties of
friendship, if she manifest no friendly feeling for them; or that they
will become devoted to her interests, if she take no interest in their
welfare. The law of mutual dependence must be recognized and obeyed.
God is love. God loves. Therefore, it is a pleasure to love and serve
God. It is a pleasure to serve whoever is appreciative and lovable. It
is a task to serve those who are unappreciative and unlovable. At the
same time a Christian servant has no right to slight her work, or be
unfaithful, because of the harshness or unkindness of her employer.
Live for God, and serve Christ in serving well those by whom you are
employed, and you will not lose your reward on earth nor in heaven.
Trusty and true, your services will become of immense importance, and
doors to usefulness will open before you because of the superintending
care of Him who is too wise to err and too good to be unkind. Let not
woman dislike the term _service_ or _servant_. Christ honored it by
becoming the servant of all, and made it honorable by commanding that
he who would be chief must serve, and by his service rise.
Woman sometimes revolts because her work is classed under the head
of _domestic_, and yet this is the chief characteristic that must
distinguish it. That is, her work must have a look homeward, whether
she toils in the store or factory or printing-office or kitchen.
Somehow the stream of love must sing as it goes babbling by, "Home,
home, there is no place like home," else woman fails in her life-work.
Her education must fit her for a home and for home work. Let a man
learn that he married a toy, a plaything, a lay figure, useful only
for the purposes of exhibiting his taste in jewelry and dress, who
desires to be petted and fondled, to be caressed and flattered, but
who is incapable of doing anything to contribute to his happiness at
home or to his influence abroad, and he comes to feel that she is
an encumbrance. If he clings to the old love, and cherishes the old
conviction, he learns to treat his wife as a plaything, and to forget
her as a helpmeet. He thinks of her as of a toy, which may be used or
cast aside at pleasure. She knows and feels the lack of his love. If
she becomes dissatisfied, and refuses to make the effort to become a
helpful wife and a loving companion, or to be influenced by the law
of charity; if she determines to seek happiness in obtaining the
admiration of others, which once unwittingly came from her husband;
then is she probably ruined, and becomes a "body of death" fastened to
one who looks forward to the grave as a refuge and a release, or who
finds in the society of other women that pleasure which is denied him
at home. Perhaps nothing is more disgusting than to see an empty brain
hidden behind a pretty face, or an empty heart concealed beneath
costly drapery. A woman who is handsome and is illiterate, who is
incapable of speaking entertainingly, is far more homely than a plain
face in front of a well cultivated intellect; and a plain dressed
woman, with a heart full of love, is to be preferred to a splendidly
dressed form which is destitute of soul. Jewels, laces, and silks are
not a fit dress for a corpse, and yet a heartless woman is to a man
who knows her as soulless as an inanimate body coffined for the tomb.
Having thus briefly considered the necessity of linking woman's work
and mission together, let us define her work, and consider what is her
mission.
Woman has work to do. Though idleness does not destroy her as it does
a man, yet it does not become her. Merely to display her charms for
the admiration of others cannot be the destiny of one created with a
woman's hand and head, and endowed with woman's soul. From the nature
of the case, her work should be womanly in its character; that which
is within doors rather than without; which belongs to the ornamental
rather than to the mechanical. There is no sense in woman's working in
the field while man measures tapes or counts thimbles, or in his doing
other in-door work for which woman's light touch renders her better
qualified. When we look at women who have become coarse in the
expression of their features, and ungainly in form and movement,
through the weight of their daily toil, we see the folly of those who
would make the woman the equal, or the rival, instead of the helpmeet
of man; and feel indignation that, since many of our women must earn
their own livelihood, we have not a more natural division of labor,
which would assign to man the heavier, and to woman the lighter
kinds of work. As woman's faith blesses as well as saves her; it is
essential that her work be linked in some way to the exercise of
faith, and to the unfolding of love. For the character of the work
exerts an influence upon woman's body as well as upon her soul. If
you will contrast the looks of a happy housewife or domestic with the
looks of a majority of the faces that are seen in factories, the truth
of the position taken will be abundantly sustained. It matters not so
much where the roots of woman's life-work grow, if up through it all,
and above it all, the vine may twine its tendril, and send forth its
flower, and yield its fruit. For this cause the love of Christ and
the hopes of a Christian life seem so essential to her growth and
development, that it is almost impossible to write of a happy,
contented woman, without describing a woman whose faith in Jesus has
regenerated and disinthralled her. Love is the prime requisite to
successful endeavor on a woman's part to be her husband's true
helpmeet; and so, in discharging the duties incident to a life of
toil, woman must be soothed and sustained in her tasks by the joys of
a Christian life. Hence the ruin wrought in shops and factories, in
stores, and homes where Christ is cast out, and where the bliss of
high and holy living is denied.
Woman's mission is to be inferred from a consideration of the wants of
man. Created to be a helpmeet for man, it is essential, if we would
determine her mission, that we ascertain for what purpose man needs
her influence.
God declared, "It is not good for man to be alone," and woman was
brought to him as a companion, to charm his life, to prolong it by
sharing it with him. Her vocation, by birth, is a vocation of love. To
be his helpmeet, not his rival; not to increase, but to lighten, or to
support him, under his cares; to recognize him as the immediate object
of her existence, instead of fancying that he was formed to wait on
her; this is the end for which God has called her into being. As has
been said, "This representation may not satisfy the ambition of some,
who do but degrade themselves by aspiring to occupy a position for
which they are neither intended by God nor qualified by nature,--even
as men and angels fell when they sought to become as gods,--but in
reality it tends to woman's elevation; and, as the whole history of
Christianity doth show, where its truth is most recognized and relied
upon, there woman is happiest and greatest."
The word "mission," as applied to woman, refers to the purpose for
which she was created and brought to man. In considering her mission,
we are safe in avowing that woman found her mission, 1. At home.
Her mission is in the home. Her training must fit her for the home,
whether she serves as a wife or as a domestic. Her life is a success
when she makes home a pleasure and a joy to those to whom the home
properly belongs. It is for this reason that there is deep concern on
the part of many thoughtful minds because the drift of the times is
against educating women for the home. Of the women who are compelled
to earn their own subsistence many prefer the factory and the store to
the work in the family, and, as a result, there are large numbers of
young women who cannot make a loaf of bread or cook a meal, who would
not hesitate to become wives of working-men, who expect to find in
them a helpmeet in building a home like that which blessed their
childhood. The result is dissatisfaction and recrimination, leaving
the wife for the club, and turning from the joys of the home to the
revel of jovial companions.
The same is true of the class of young ladies who know something of
music, vocal and instrumental. They can dance. They have studied
drawing sufficiently to be able to sketch a few flowers and figures.
Perhaps they can speak French and translate German. They know in what
position to sit, and how to move gracefully. All very well these
things in their places, and fitted to increase the charm of manner
when the eyes are lighted up by the informing soul; not undeserving
notice either in their influence upon man, when they are accompanied
by something better, for, amid all the weighty cares of life, he
is sometimes in the mood when such things do please; but sadly
over-estimated when they are made the sole substance and end of a
woman's education. They might nearly all be done by a being without
a soul. They do nothing to draw out the noble qualities of her deep
womanly nature. They leave her altogether unfitted for her peculiar
mission of a wife and mother.
Now, there are times when a woman, despite her imperfect education,
acquires after marriage the knowledge which fits her for the duties
appertaining to wifehood. But where nature yields to such training,
the woman fails both in filling her sphere and in fulfilling her
mission, and falls beneath her true position as the helpmeet of man.
How bitter his disappointment, who, having been smitten by these
gewgaw attractions, and having put faith in the mother of the child
that with this outward attraction she had corresponding qualifications
to fill the home with helpful counsel and sustaining sympathy, when he
comes to find that, instead of a _wife_, he has married a plaything,
and that his children are being committed to the care of a helpless,
unformed companion, rather than to the guidance of a true and noble
wife.
A proper conception of woman's mission as the helpmeet of man would
tend greatly to her elevation. A man who knows for what woman has been
made, and what advantage he should look for from the woman whom he
calls wife, will not select a mere toy as the partner of his life; and
when woman properly recognizes her place, mothers will not be content
to give their daughters, nor will daughters be ambitious, or even
content to receive only such a training as fits them for amusing or
pleasing man in his playful hours, but leaves them altogether unfit
to be his companion under the weightier cares and graver concerns of
life.
Let it be understood that woman's life and labor, mission and work,
point ever homeward, and whether she serve in the store or shop,
in the factory or in the home, she will be ready, whenever God's
providence opens the way, to make home bright for another, because it
has been made bright for herself. In her reading, in her planning, in
her waking dreams and in her night visions, let her live to make
her own home joyous, and she will not live in vain. To do this
successfully in the future, she must make home bright and beautiful in
the present. It is the girl, whose hand is skilful in the home, who
is prized as a companion, because of the substantial linked with
the ornamental. The same is true of a man. Talent, genius even, is
valueless unless it can earn bread. There must be something to make
home pleasant with, which it is the duty of man to provide, else woman
finds it hard to do her work or fulfil her mission. This does not
disparage woman. Her intellect should not be regarded as inferior to
man's because it differs from his. Her mind is formed for a distinct
work and sphere, just as truly as is her body. In that sphere she
is endowed with faculties superior to that of man. Here she has her
requital: here she proves herself mistress of the field, and employs
those secret resources which might be termed admirable, if they did
not inspire a more tender sentiment, both towards her, and towards
God, who has so richly endowed her. "Her practical survey, equally
sure and rapid; her quick and accurate perception; her wonderful power
of penetrating the heart in a way unknown and impracticable to man;
her never-failing presence of mind, and personal attention on all
occasions; her numerous and fertile resources in the management of her
domestic affairs; her ever ready access and willing audience to all
who need her; her freedom of thought and action in the midst of
the most agonizing sufferings and accumulated embarrassments; her
elasticity,--may I say her perseverance,--in spite of feebleness; her
tact to practise it, were it not instinctive; her extreme perfection
in little things; ... her incomparable skill in re-awakening a
sleeping conscience, in re-opening a heart that has long been closed;
in fine, innumerable are the things which she accomplishes, and which
man can neither discern nor offset without the aid of her eye and
hand. Thus, mentally as well as physically, is she predestined for a
work and sphere different from those of her stronger companions. And,
as everything is beautiful in its place and season, so is woman most
beautiful and useful when, like a modest flower, she blooms in
the privacy for which her nature fits her, and perfumes, with the
fragrance of her character, the hallowed precincts of home."[A] "No
man," says Mr. Jay, "was ever proof against the kindness of a sensible
woman; but where, in all history, can an instance be produced in which
an ascendency over him has been obtained by forwardness, scolding, and
strife for preeminence? No wife has such influence with, or even such
control over, her husband, as
"'She who never answers till her husband cools,
Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules;
Charms by accepting, by submission sways,
Yet has her humor most when she obeys.'"
[Footnote A: Woman's Sphere and Work, by Rev. Wm. Landels, D.D.,
London.]
2. Woman's mission is social as well as domestic. The domestic part
of her life is the garden, in which the seed is planted, which brings
forth the flower of social joy. A woman who is the soul of a beautiful
home is a power in society. No matter what her talents may be, let it
be known that she is a slattern at home, and she is without influence.
The pen may serve as a feather to adorn her social life, but it looks
mean when the use of it causes the neglect of the needle.
Woman may be a secret power in the home. She may make home attractive
to the refined and cultured, and thus prove to be the magnet
attracting to herself and to her fireside those gifted sons and
daughters, the scintillations of whose genius and the dissemination of
whose beautiful thoughts make the home luminous with a light which is
inextinguishable. The influence of such a woman over her children and
over the young cannot be overestimated.
"Such a sphere, so far from being insufficient to satisfy a true
woman's ambition, is well fitted, by its tremendous responsibilities,
to excite her fears. There is not one, perhaps, which a human being
can occupy, on which hang more stupendous issues. Though less public,
it is still more potential than man's."
The influence of a true woman cannot be confined to the home. Home
is the fountain, and the world gladly furnishes channels for the
diffusion of her influence. In promoting the cause of reform, in
alleviating the woes of the unfortunate, in carrying forward the cause
of temperance, in ministering to the sick, either as a nurse or a
physician, in using her pen to delight and guide the thoughts of the
young and old along the garden paths of her own loving life, thick
with the blossoms of hope, and made glorious by deeds of charity,--in
these, and in numberless other ways, woman, finding her throne in the
house, is welcomed as a ruler in the world.
For woman there is a felt a necessity which should send her forth as a
missionary to those like herself in everything but blessings. Think of
our large factory towns, where women are congregated by hundreds and
thousands. Let it be remembered that there is something unnatural in
all this. Woman was made for man, for home, for love. Separate her
from them all, herd her with her kind, subtract from her the incentive
to endeavor, leave her mind to brood in fancy, to welcome unholy
aspirations and degrading thoughts to her soul, and you leave her to
prey upon herself. Let woman see to it that reading-rooms for women be
established in our factory towns, that their boarding-houses be warmed
and rendered inviting, that the talented be encouraged to exertion,
and that tidiness and neatness be made an incentive for all, and woman
will do a work of immeasurable importance,--a work on which God's
blessing will rest,--and those who toil to accomplish it will obtain
an abundant reward from Him who declares, "Inasmuch as ye did it to
one of the least of these, ye did it unto me."
In the cause of Reform woman's help is needed. From the earliest
commencement of the temperance movement, appeals, arguments, and
expostulations have been addressed by earnest reformers to woman,
because it was felt that on any great social question the power of
woman to help, or to hinder, was all-important. When it is remembered
that woman is the greatest sufferer from the vice of intemperance,
that she regulates the customs of society, it is apparent that she
should seek to abolish bad, and promote good customs. More than others
she trains the young and builds up character, and therefore she
should, by example and precept, implant such habits as may be not
only a safeguard in childhood and youth, but become fixed as moral
principles in those she has reared, when the responsibility arrives;
because of these, we find reasons in abundance why woman must help, or
aid cannot reach the imperilled and undone.
Again: Woman needs help. Addison well said, "Women are either the
best or the worst of human beings." The very feelings which, rightly
directed, prompt her to soar even to the apex of the pyramid of human
virtue, warped from their right exercise, precipitate her to the
lowest and most grovelling depths of human vice. Is woman intemperate,
she differs from man in the gratification of her appetite. He seeks
the social club. Woman seeks retirement, and drinks alone and apart.
Her appetite, from this very cause, becomes unmanageable. Men will
stop drinking, oftentimes, when the open bar is closed. Woman, with
an appetite formed, drinks the more, because she drinks in secret.
Because of this fact, woman is in peril if she form an appetite for
strong drink.
Woman as a Mother has work to do as a teacher. "We hear a great deal
about education in the present day; but," said Mrs. Ellis, "my strong
impression is that there will have to come a teaching out of the
mother's heart and life,--herself being taught of God,--such as alone
can save us as a nation and a people from falling from our high
material prosperity into a condition of moral degradation, which it is
terrible to contemplate." Such being the case, every woman should ask,
What have I done in those opportunities which God gave me with the
young? What did I pour into that open heart and mind? Was my influence
for Christ or against him? Which way did I point out to those
uncertain feet? Who can estimate a mother's influence! There is a
power in a mother's love greater than any other human power,--a power
to suffer, to serve, and to save; a power which many waters cannot
quench, and which is stronger than death. As she leads, the broodlings
will follow. Does she sanction card-playing, theatre-going, dancing,
and what are called innocent recreations, or does she set herself
against them, and turn the thoughts of her children to books that
treat of science, of philosophy, and of religion? Upon the answer to
this question the future of children and the young depends. Many a boy
has been checked in a career of shame by a mother's sad look; many
have been encouraged by a mother's smile. God help women to know
how to use their power for home, for woman-kind, for man-kind, for
country, and for God!
"No one has such power over a river as he who stands near its source.
No one has such power over the tree as he who plants and tends it
while yet it is a pliant sapling. And no earthly power is to be
compared with that which, humanly speaking, determines the course
and destiny of an immortal soul. Under God the mother is the first
guardian of the child's eternal interest. It is from the mother, who
moves constantly among her little ones, much more than the father,
whose vocation necessitates his absence from home, and prevents his
being much in their presence, that children receive their bias. Her
gentle hand gives to our ductile natures the impress which we wear
through life; her loving voice awakens in the soul those sweet echoes
which never cease to sound; and her look and manner fill the mind with
images which haunt our memory until our dying day."
"O, Mother! sweetest name on earth;
We lisp it on the knee,
And idolize its sacred worth
In manhood's ministry."
A mother's hand gave us our first welcome, and hers was the last we
grasped in our farewell. She is the nurse of both of our childhoods;
the queen of the home, and the friend of the heart.
"And if I e'er in heaven appear,
A mother's holy prayer,--
A mother's hand and gentle tear,--
That pointed to a Saviour here,
Shall lead the wanderer there."
Woman's mission is religious. Christ recognized her as a helpmeet, as
a comforter, and a companion. Woman ministered to him with delight,
and gladly made a resting-place for him in the quiet retreat of the
home in Bethany. He recognized her faith as an element of strength,
which saves her when properly exercised. The spiritual life of woman
is her glory. We think of the woman who had sinned looking in love and
faith on Jesus, bathing his feet with her tears, and wiping them with
her hair, kissing and anointing them, with a feeling akin to devotion.
The Magdalene, delivered of her seven demons, because of her devotion
to Christ, and the triumph won by her faith, achieved a position
which, in the regards of the church, is equal to that held by the
Mother of our Saviour.
Woman's daily life is to her spiritual life what the debris of the
stream is to the water-lily that floats upon the surface. What cares
the servant girl of Rome for the place where she toils? The cathedral,
and the wonderful pictures that hang upon its walls, are her glory
and pride. Look at her toil from that stand-point, and she becomes a
helper in the estimation of the world that cannot be ignored. We have
said woman's work is a work of charity. Satan has warped the truth and
wielded it against Christ; but as it is wrong to give up a good tune
because bad men sing it, so we must not give up a truth because Satan
takes advantage of it. This work of charity,--of giving up for others,
of denying self for another's advantage, of abandoning comfort to
assuage another's grief,--so wonderfully illustrated by a Florence
Nightingale, and by women quite as worthy in our own land, whose
presence in the hospitals was like a benediction from God, and whose
presence in our homes, in our churches, beside the sad and sorrowing
everywhere, is proof that woman has a mission which she alone can
fill, and a work which she alone can perform. "And now abideth faith,
hope, and charity, and the greatest of these is charity." Man has
faith, he has hope; but he lacks, to a large extent, in the charities
which come to woman as gifts of God, because of which Christ employed
her as an agency to win men back to faith in God. In the sick chamber
she moves with step noiseless as falling snow-flakes, and speaks in
a voice soft as an angel's whisper. Her touch is so gentle that it
soothes the sufferer, and her sympathy is more precious than rubies.
On this account she is man's first and last solace. Suffering never
appeals to woman in vain. "I never addressed myself," says Ledyard,
"in the language of decency and friendship to woman, whether civilized
or savage, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. With man
it has often been otherwise. In wandering over the barren plains of
inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, frozen Lapland, rude and
churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the wide-spread regions of
the wandering Tartar, if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, woman has
ever been friendly to me, and uniformly so; and, to add to this
virtue,--so worthy of the appellation of benevolence,--these actions
have been performed in so free and kind a manner, that if I was dry, I
drank the sweet draught, and if hungry, ate the coarse morsel, with
a double relish." Park, and many other travellers, bear similar
testimony.
"Woman all exceeds
In ardent sanctitude, in pious deeds;
And chief in woman charities prevail,
That soothe when sorrow or desire assail;
Ask the poor pilgrim on this convex cast,--
His grizzled locks, distorted in the blast,--
Ask him what accents soothe, what hand bestows
The cordial beverage, raiment, and repose.
Ah! he will dart a spark of ardent flame,
And clasp his tremulous hands, and Woman name.
Peruse the sacred volume. Him who died
Her kiss betrayed not, nor her tongue denied;
While even the apostles left Him to His doom,
She lingered round His cross and watched His tomb."
How precious is such sympathy in her who is to be the solace, because
the helpmeet, of man! How it qualifies her for being the priestess of
the temple of home; the gentle nurse of helpless infancy, manhood's
counsellor and comforter!
"O Woman! Woman! thou wast made,
Like heaven's own pure and lovely light,
To cheer life's dark and desert shade,
And guide man's erring footsteps right."
This is a power which monarchs well might envy,--a power to bless
mankind and honor God; a power which, working in obscure and limited
sphere, is yet felt in the high places of the earth, and identified
with the deeds of men whose names are renowned in the history of the
world, and shine as stars in the diadem of God.
WOMAN _versus_ BALLOT.
Three facts stand in the way of Woman's being helped by the
Ballot,--God, Nature, and Common Sense. The purpose for which God made
or "formed" woman is clearly avowed in the history of her origin and
in the assignment of her duties.
In discussing this question, whether the ballot, and all the
immunities growing out of the right to vote, shall be granted to
woman, it is essential that we inquire reverently and earnestly, on
which side is God. That the question in its philosophical treatment
can only be fathomed by the profoundest intellect, and that it can
be embraced, in all its details, only by the most comprehensive
knowledge, is but a partial statement of this truth. The question can
only be understood, measured, and gauged by that Being who sees the
end from the beginning, and can follow into its infinite ramifications
the influence which must result from our actions. God does understand
it. Being infinitely wise, there can be no new issues, no new facts,
or combinations of facts, to influence the decisions of the Omniscient
Mind. It becomes us then to inquire what sphere God assigned to woman.
Having found it, we shall see that Nature and Common Sense unite in
making manifest the wisdom in adhering to the Divine Plan.
The necessity of recalling attention to the portraiture of woman as
God made her, is the more apparent, when we remember that those who
ask the ballot for woman practically ignore the teachings of the Bible
and the right of God to rule, and claim by word, as well as by deed,
that they have outgrown the wisdom of the past, and have entered upon
a stage of progress in advance of old time precedents. We believe in
the rule of God, and in the wisdom of God, and claim that Omniscience
is not dependent either upon a morning newspaper, or upon the crude
conjectures of a godless Infidelity, for wisdom or light in adjusting
means to an end, or in assigning to woman her proper sphere.
Again. We are impelled to seek wisdom from God, because we seek for
it in vain elsewhere. As to how the ballot is to help woman, even its
advocates give us no light. Whether it is proposed to lighten by its
aid the penalties, and do away with the ruin of the fall, we are left
in doubt.
If we give to woman the ballot, shall the equality which woman lost,
when she ate of the forbidden fruit, be restored, and shall she be
made again the equal of man? Shall the sorrow in child-bearing be
removed? Can housework, or the duties of motherhood, and wifehood, and
sisterhood, be met and discharged by the use of the ballot?
These are questions which deserve to be answered. It is patent to
every one that this attempt to secure the ballot for woman is a revolt
against the position and sphere assigned to woman by God himself. It
is a revolt against the holiest duties enjoined upon woman. It is
an attempt to reorganize society upon a new basis; to change the
relations of men and women; to secure the millennium by a vote, and by
majorities to do away with the rule of God. The Bible declares that
the headship of the house devolves on man. Man is lawgiver. Woman is
not slave: she is helpmeet; the sharer of man's joys and sorrows; the
light of his home, if there be any light in his home; the solace of
his life, if his life have solace; the mother of his children, if
children there be. Now, as then, woman, in her natural state, before
she makes the attempt to unsex herself, and render herself a monster,
finds it in her nature to look to man as lawmaker, and expects to
submit to his rule in the home. We do not say that all women submit
cheerfully to this rule, for there are some who do not. But when this
is the case, from the nature of things, happiness takes its flight,
the marriage-bed is defiled, woman becomes an outlaw in her heart, and
the two bound together by a chain rather than by the silken cord of
love, are candidates for a peaceable divorce or a continuous battle.
The advocates of the ballot for woman hope through its aid to secure
an overthrow of this rule, or escape from this so-called bondage. They
demand a change in public sentiment regarding the sphere woman is to
fill, securing to her an equality before the law, in representation,
in privileges, and in wages.
In other words, there are women who hope and expect to do away with
the disabilities incident to the female portion of the community, and
by education and culture, obtain for woman this same strength, this
same ability to study, to think, to work, and to plan, that is enjoyed
by man. In short, some believe that a woman can be so changed that
she can, for all practical purposes, get on without man's help or
protection.
Against this revolutionary scheme we protest, because, by a reference
to the Word of God,[A] we find reasons for believing that it is in the
constitution and nature of woman, with some slight modifications, to
occupy the place assigned her in this land, where Christian influence
unites with the better instincts of humanity in lightening her
burdens, smoothing her pathway, and filling her lap with the tributes
of manly regard.
[Footnote A: I am aware that this sneer is often made: "The same class
oppose us who defended the divine right of slavery." This is untrue
so far as I am concerned. I was second to no man in condemnation of
slavery, because the Bible condemned it. That one utterance, "God hath
made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face
of the earth," was the seedling out of which liberty, equality, and
fraternity grew. Liberty was won because of the faith, and prayers,
and efforts of a God-believing and a Christ-loving church. Their
prayers and their faith girded the nation with strength, and their
prowess, aided by those who followed their lead, secured victory.]
I.
_The Scriptural Argument_.
To state our faith more definitely, we believe that in Eden woman
enjoyed an equality with man; that she took advantage of her
privilege, and, transgressing the law of God without consulting her
husband, proved treacherous to her high trust, opened the gate of
perdition to the enemy of souls, and brought upon man and the race
the curse consequent upon sin, and the ruin wrought by the fall. In
consequence of this, God pronounced a curse upon her; gave her sorrow
in child-bearing, as he gave to man fatigue in toil; changed the
relations hitherto subsisting between man and woman, and compelled
her to live henceforth in another; to sink her own individuality, and
merge it in that of her husband. This is the language. Unto the woman
he said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in
sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to
thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." This is her portion of the
curse. This portion endures. Man from that moment became ruler. The
wife's desire was to the husband, so that whatever she desires is
naturally referred to him. He became adviser, lawmaker and head. The
right or wrong of God's action it does not become us to discuss. It is
right because God did it. Dispute the right who will, but the curse
lives. The serpent crawls on his belly and eats dust. The wife has
sorrow in conception; her desire is to her husband, and he rules her;
and man, by the sweat of his brow, eats his bread.
But, says some one, did not the coming of Christ change the status of
woman, and place her again on the same equality which she enjoyed
when Adam led the beautiful Eve to her nuptial bower, and found it
impossible to exist without what the poet describes as
"Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self,
Thy wish exactly to thy heart's desire?"
If we have not mistaken the relations subsisting even in Eden between
the original pair, woman was not the ruler even there. Milton has
truthfully said,--
"For well I understand in the prime end
Of Nature her the inferior, in the mind
And inward faculties which most excel,
In outward, also, her resembling less
His image who made both, and less expressing
The character of that dominion given
O'er other creatures; yet when I approach
Her loveliness, so absolute she seems,
And in herself complete, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best:
All higher knowledge in her presence falls
Degraded; wisdom in discourse with her
Loses discountenanced, and like folly shows;
Authority and reason on her wait,
As one intended first, not after made
Occasionally; and to consummate all,
Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat
Build in her, loveliest, and create an awe
About her, as a guard angelic placed."
With woman, as God made her, we are not acquainted. Glimpses of her
pristine beauty, and characteristics of her former excellence, shine
forth; but sin has marred the original picture, and defaced the model
fashioned by the Creator's hand. The ruin wrought by the fall brought
Christ to earth. He opened a way back to Eden--not on earth, but in
heaven. The curse remains. The race is under it, because sin is in the
world. The law, formed after the fall, is the expressed will of God.
Christ did not come to do away with it, but to fulfil it. Then, as
now, it was a law of love, of good will, of peace. When Christ came,
woman's condition was deplorable. She was the abject slave of man in
nearly all the world. Yet Christ made no attempt to break down their
original arrangements. He knew that without a change in woman herself,
no external changes in her condition could be of any benefit to her.
He recognized the great fact that she herself must be educated to a
better life, that she must have a character which in itself would
command respect, and make her worthy of a higher place and a larger
liberty. Truly has it been said, "Institutions, of themselves, can
never confer freedom upon a people. They must be free men, capable
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