Part 8 (1/2)
_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 G.o.d 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, G.o.d p.r.o.nounced a curse upon her; gave her sorrow in child-bearing, as he gave to man fatigue in toil; changed the relations. .h.i.therto 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 G.o.d's action it does not become us to discuss. It is right because G.o.d 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 n.o.bleness their seat Build in her, loveliest, and create an awe About her, as a guard angelic placed.”
With woman, as G.o.d made her, we are not acquainted. Glimpses of her pristine beauty, and characteristics of her former excellence, s.h.i.+ne forth; but sin has marred the original picture, and defaced the model fas.h.i.+oned 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 G.o.d.
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, ”Inst.i.tutions, of themselves, can never confer freedom upon a people. They must be free men, capable of liberty, and then they will be able not only to make their own inst.i.tutions, but keep and defend them also. So the emanc.i.p.ation of woman can be effected only by breaking the bonds of her ignorance, frivolity, and vice. A character must be given her, and then the iron door of her prison-house will open to her of its own accord, and she will find that the angel of liberty has been leading her forth indeed.” In this direction Jesus labored. Paul, in his Epistles, gave emphasis to the teachings of the Old Testament, and so he wrote, ”Let your women keep silence, in the churches, for it is not permitted them to speak; but they are to be in subjection, as the law also says; and if they will to learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church,”--I Cor. xiv. 34, 35.
Against this command many arguments have been brought to bear, and despite this apostolic command, some women insist upon their right to preach. It is a significant truth, that whoever does this, enters upon a conflict with public sentiment born of G.o.d, and subjects herself to terrible mortification. The refusal of lending Universalist divines to share the exercises of an ordination with a woman, ill.u.s.trates this principle. The recognition given to man as the head of the household, involves the loss of woman's individuality, and of her right to a support. It opens a window to life, and shows why our higher nature revolts against woman being compelled to labor in the field. That is man's place, and the labor elevates him. It degrades a woman. The praises of agricultural toil for man find a place in song and story; but labor in the field is destructive of womanhood, of motherhood, and of wifehood.
We have seen that the Scriptures declare, 1. That it is not well for man to be alone. He is not complete until woman is joined to him in marriage. 2. Woman was made for man. Manliness is an attribute that belongs to man; it disgraces a woman. To be womanly, is the n.o.blest tribute that can be paid to woman; but it disgraces a man, because G.o.d, the Creator, placed this characteristic within the heart and soul and nature, just as he gave a difference of nature, mould, and form, to the outward appearance of man and woman. He made them for a particular purpose, and not for the same purpose. They were not made in the same manner, nor of the same material. If woman be the weaker vessel, she is of the finer mould. G.o.d made man in his own image, and woman was created to be his helpmeet.
3. We have noticed the change in the relations which was the product of the curse. Woman in Eden was the source of influence. After it, man became the head, and her desire was unto him.
4. Since the fall, labor has been multiplied to man, sorrow to woman; but such is the kindness of G.o.d, that these two facts are sources of perpetual joy in the home. The wife is proud of her toiling husband, the man is tender of his suffering wife; and in the bliss of childhood happiness both find their reward.
These statements shrine all the facts of the separate histories of man and woman. It were easier to change earth to water, and sea to land, than it is to make a womanly woman consent to appear manly. Her G.o.d made her a woman. It is not a fault. It is a glory. The bird that skims the wave would not exchange places with the bird that goes to meet the sun; but this is not to bring a charge against the eagle or the swan.
One more truth, and then we will pa.s.s to the consideration of the lessons discoverable in woman's nature. All the Scripture requirements, such as refer to the plaiting of the hair, to being uncovered in public, are said to refer to the customs of the East, and not to bind woman in this age of progress. The principle covered by those requirements then, rules now. Paul said, Let not a Christian woman break through any of the restraints of womanhood, and so appear as do the harlots, with uncovered faces and with plaited hair, who mingle freely with men, and are shorn of that modesty and weakness so becoming woman. Woman's right to be a woman implies the right to be loved, to be respected as a woman, to be married, to bring forth to the world the product of that love; and woman's highest interests are promoted by defending and maintaining this right.
There are those who object to the word _service_, and claim that those who take the Bible as authority wish to reduce woman to slavery. No charge could be more absurd; and G.o.d's care for woman is manifest, both in the teachings of the Bible and in the const.i.tution of the race. Woman owes to Christianity all she enjoys. Leave her to be subject to the conditions imposed on her by unregenerated manhood or womanhood, and you leave her to become either a thing in society, or else reduce her to a level with the beasts of burden. In old savage and pagan tribes the severest burdens of physical toil were laid upon her. She was valued for the same reason that men prize their most useful animals, or as a means of gratifying sensual and selfish desires. Even in the learned and dignified forms of modern paganism, the wife is the slave rather than the companion of her husband. She is kept apart from him. The education of her mental faculties is neglected. She is not allowed to walk with him; she must walk behind him. She must not eat with him, but eat after he has done, and eat what _he leaves_. She must not sleep until he is asleep, nor remain asleep after he is awake. If she is sitting down, and he comes into the room, she must rise up. She must bow to no other G.o.d on the earth besides her husband. She must wors.h.i.+p him while he lives, and when he dies she must be burned with him. In case she is not burned, she is not allowed to marry, and is considered an outcast. There is little social intercourse between the s.e.xes, little or no acquaintance of the parties before marriage, and, consequently, little mutual attachment.
Women are not allowed to learn to read, because there can be no solid foundation laid for future influence.
Under the Crescent the condition of woman is worse rather than better, for in pagan India she is permitted to share in the hope of religion; but in Mohammedan countries it is a popular tradition that women are forbidden paradise; and it requires some effort for the imagination to conceive how debased and wretched must be the condition of the female s.e.x to originate and sustain such a horrible and blasphemous tradition.
Even in the refined and s.h.i.+ning ages of Greece and Rome, where the cultivation of letters and the graces of polished style, the charms of poetry and eloquence, the elegances of architecture, sculpture, painting, and embroidery, the glory of conquest and the pride of national distinction, were unsurpa.s.sed,--even then and there, woman was but the abject slave of man, the object of his ambition, avarice, l.u.s.t, and power.
Truly has it been said that nothing more surely distinguishes the savage state from the civilized, the East from the West, Paganism from Christianity, antiquity from the middle ages, the middle ages from modern times, than the condition of woman.
In China, she is used as a beast of burden. The Chinese peasant woman goes to the field with her male infant on her back, and ploughs, sows, and reaps, exposed to all the changes of the weather. In Calcutta, women are the masons, and maybe seen daily conveying their hods of cement, and spreading it on the tops of their houses.
In a country where no European man can labor, where the native rests until compelled by his conqueror to work, seven thousand of these women might have been seen, in 1859, climbing to the edge of ravines, with baskets of stone on their heads, to fill, with these tedious contributions, thousands of perpendicular feet, in order that a railroad might wind among the mountains.
In Australia, she carries the burden which man's indolence refuses; and in Great Britain, the condition of women among the lower cla.s.ses, revealed by the statistics of her mines and of her manufacturing districts, is such as to make a moralist blush. Behold her, with a strap around her waist, dragging the coal-cart in the mine, and so ignorant, that when asked if she knew Jesus, replied, ”He never worked in our shaft.”
Do we turn to America, we find that in the providence of G.o.d her fortune has been advanced and improved by the extension of the era of free government, and by the diffusion of the principles of the gospel of Christ.
True, in the past, throughout the South, a negro woman worked in the field as a beast of burden; but emanc.i.p.ation and the diffusion of the principles of Christianity changes all this in the South, as it has changed it in Turkey and in the East. The colored man builds for his wife a house, and toils for her in the field or shop, while she keeps the house, and beautifies the sanctuary of the heart.
Now, in all this land, woman's right to be a woman is recognized, and ”woman's right to be a man” is opposed, though eloquent orators of either s.e.x may declaim in its behalf. G.o.d's law, natural and revealed, is against it. Woman's nature will be woman's nature no longer when she shall desire it.