said anything about their parents,--that we know absolutely nothing of them? Is there any evidence that they showed any particular respect even for the mother of Christ?
Mary Magdalen is, in many respects, the tenderest and most loving character in the New Testament.
According to the account, her love for Christ knew no abatement,--no change--true even in the hopeless shadow of the cross. Neither did it die with his death. She waited at the sepulchre; she hasted in the early morning to his tomb, and yet the only comfort Christ gave to this true and loving soul lies in these strangely cold and heartless words: "Touch "me not."
There is nothing tending to show that the women spoken of in the Bible were superior to the ones we know. There are to-day millions of women making coats for their sons,--hundreds of thousands of women, true not simply to innocent people, falsely accused, but to criminals. Many a loving heart is as true to the gallows as Mary was to the cross.
There are hundreds of thousands of women accept- ing poverty and want and dishonor, for the love they bear unworthy men; hundreds and thousands, hun- dreds and thousands, working day and night, with
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strained eyes and tired hands, for husbands and children,--clothed in rags, housed in huts and hovels, hoping day after day for the angel of death. There are thousands of women in Christian England, working in iron, laboring in the fields and toiling in mines. There are hundreds and thousands in Europe, everywhere, doing the work of men--deformed by toil, and who would become simply wild and ferocious beasts, except for the love they bear for home and child.
You need not go back four thousand years for heroines. The world is filled with them to-day.
They do not belong to any nation, nor to any religion, nor exclusively to any race. Wherever woman is found, they are found.
There is no description of any women in the Bible that equal thousands and thousands of women known to-day. The women mentioned by Mr. Talmage fall almost infinitely below, not simply those in real life, but the creations of the imagination found in the world of fiction. They will not compare with the women born of Shakespeare's brain. You will find none like Isabella, in whose spotless life, love and reason blended into perfect truth; nor Juliet, within whose heart passion and purity met, like white and red within the bosom of a rose; nor Cordelia, who chose to
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suffer loss rather than show her wealth of love with those who gilded dross with golden words in hope of gain; nor Miranda, who told her love as freely as a flower gives its bosom to the kisses of the sun; nor Imogene, who asked: "What is it to be false?"
nor Hermione, who bore with perfect faith and hope the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her heart; nor Desdemona, her innocence so perfect and her love so pure, that she was incapable of sus- pecting that another could suspect, and sought with dying words to hide her lover's crime.
If we wish to find what the Bible thinks of woman, all that is necessary to do is to read it.
We will find that everywhere she is spoken of simply as property,--as belonging absolutely to the man. We will find that whenever a man got tired of his wife, all he had to do was to give her a writing of divorcement, and that then the mother of his children became a houseless and a homeless wanderer.
We will find that men were allowed to have as many wives as they could get, either by courtship, purchase, or conquest. The Jewish people in the olden time were in many respects like their barbarian neighbors.
If we read the New Testament, we will find in the
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epistle of Paul to Timothy, the following gallant passages:
"Let the woman learn in silence, with all "subjection."
"But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp "authority over the man, but to be in silence."
And for these kind, gentle and civilized remarks, the apostle Paul gives the following reasons:
"For Adam was first formed, then Eve."
"And Adam was not deceived, but the woman "being deceived was in the transgression."
Certainly women ought to feel under great obli- gation to the apostle Paul.
In the fifth chapter of the same epistle, Paul, advising Timothy as to what kind of people he should admit into his society or church, uses the following language:
"Let not a widow be taken into the number under "threescore years old, having been the wife of one "man."
"But the younger widows refuse, for when they "have begun to wax wanton against Christ, they will "marry."
This same Paul did not seem to think polygamy wrong, except in a bishop. He tells Timothy that:
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"A bishop must be blameless, the husband of one "wife."
He also lays down the rule that a deacon should be the husband of one wife, leaving us to infer that the other members might have as many as they could get.
In the second epistle to Timothy, Paul speaks of "grandmother Lois," who was referred to in such extravagant language by Mr. Talmage, and nothing is said touching her character in the least. All her virtues live in the imagination, and in the imagina- tion alone.
Paul, also, in his epistle to the Ephesians, says:
"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own hus- "bands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the "head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the "church."
"Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, "so let the wives be to their own husbands, in "everything."
You will find, too, that in the seventh chapter of First Corinthians, Paul laments that all men are not bachelors like himself, and in the second verse of that chapter he gives the only reason for which he was willing that men and women should marry. He advised all the unmarried, and all widows, to remain
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as he was. In the ninth verse of this same chapter is a slander too vulgar for repetition,--an estimate of woman and of woman's love so low and vile, that every woman should hold the inspired author in infinite abhorrence.
Paul sums up the whole matter, however, by telling those who have wives or husbands, to stay with them--as necessary evils only to be tolerated--but sincerely regrets that anybody was ever married; and finally says that:
"They that have wives should be as though they "had none;" because, in his opinion:
"He that is unmarried careth for the things that "belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord; "but he that is married careth for the things that are "of the world, how he may please his wife."
"There is this difference also," he tells us, "be- "tween a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman "careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be "holy both in body and in spirit; but she that is "married careth for the things of the world, how she " may please her husband."
Of course, it is contended that these things have tended to the elevation of woman.
The idea that it is better to love the Lord than to
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love your wife, or your husband, is infinitely absurd.
Nobody ever did love the Lord,--nobody can--until he becomes acquainted with him.
Saint Paul also tells us that "Man is the image "and glory of God; but woman is the glory of "man;" and for the purpose of sustaining this posi- tion, says:
"For the man is not of the woman, but the woman "of the man; neither was the man created for the "woman, but the woman for the man."
Of course, we can all see that man could have gotten along well enough without woman, but woman, by no possibility, could have gotten along without man. And yet, this is called "inspired;" and this apostle Paul is supposed to have known more than all the people now upon the earth. No wonder Paul at last was constrained to say: "We are fools for "Christ's sake."
_Question_. How do you account for the present condition of woman in what is known as "the civilized "world," unless the Bible has bettered her condition?
_Answer_. We must remember that thousands of things enter into the problem of civilization. Soil, climate, and geographical position, united with count-
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