In this day
innovations march with rapid strides. The fantastic suggestion of yesterday,
entertained only by a few fanatics, and then only mentioned by the sober to be
ridiculed, is to-day the audacious reform, and will be to-morrow the recognized
usage. Novelties are so numerous and so wild and rash, that in even conservative
minds the sensibility of wonder is exhausted and the instinct of righteous
resistance fatigued. A few years ago the public preaching of women was
universally condemned among all conservative denominations of Christians, and,
indeed, within their bounds, was totally unknown. Now the innovation is brought
face to face even with the Southern churches, and female preachers are knocking
at our doors. We are told that already public opinion is so truckling before the
boldness and plausibility of their claims that ministers of our own communion
begin to hesitate, and men hardly know whether they have the moral courage to
adhere to the right. These remarks show that a discussion of woman's proper
place in Christian society is again timely.
The arguments advanced by those
who profess reverence for the Bible, in favor of this unscriptural usage, must
be of course chiefly rationalistic. They do indeed profess to appeal to the
sacred history of the prophetesses, Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, and Anna, as
proving that sex was no sufficient barrier to public work in the church. But the
fatal answer is, that these holy women were inspired. Their call was exceptional
and supernatural. There can be no fair reasoning from the exception to the
ordinary rule. Elijah, in his civic relation to the kingdom of the ten tribes,
would have been but a private citizen without his prophetic afflatus. By
virtue of this we find him exercising the highest of the regal functions (I
Kings 18), administering the capital penalty ordained by the law against
seducers into idolatry, when he sentenced the priests of Baal and ordered their
execution. But it would be a most dangerous inference to argue hence, that any
other private citizen, if moved by pious zeal, might usurp the punitive
functions of the public magistrate. It is equally bad logic to infer that
because Deborah prophesied when the supernatural impulse of the Spirit moved
her, therefore any other pious woman who feels only the impulses of ordinary
grace may usurp the function of the public preacher. It must be remembered,
besides, that all who claim a supernatural inspiration must stand prepared to
prove it by supernatural works. If any of our preaching women will work a
genuine miracle, then, and not until then, will she be entitled to stand on the
ground of Deborah or Anna.
A feeble attempt is made to
find an implied recognition of the right of women to preach in I Cor. 11:5: "But
every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered, dishonoreth her
head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven." They would fain
find here the implication that the woman who feels the call may prophesy in
public, if she does so with a bonnet on her head; and that the apostle provides
for admitting so much. But when we turn to the fourteenth chapter, verses 34,
35, we find the same apostle strictly forbidding public preaching in the
churches to women, and enjoining silence. No honest reader of Scripture can
infer that he meant by inference to allow the very thing which, in the same
epistle and in the same part of it, he expressly prohibits. It is a criminal
violence to represent him as thus contradicting himself. He did not mean, in
chapter 11:5, to imply that any woman might ever preach in public, either with
bonnet on or off. The learned Dr. Gill, followed by many more recent expositors,
supposes that in this place the word "prophesy" only means
"praise," as it unquestionably does in some places (as in I Chron.
25:2, the sons of Asaph ancl Jeduthun "prophesied with the harp"), and
as the Targums render it in many places in the Old Testament. Thus, the
ordinance of worship which the apostle is regulating just here is not public
preaching at all, but the sacred singing, of psalms. And all that is here
settled is, that Christian females, whose privilege it is to join in this
praise, must not do so with unveiled heads, in imitation of some pagan
priestesses when conducting their unclean or lascivious worship, but must sing
God's public praises with heads modestly veiled.
We have no need to resort to
this explanation, reasonable though it be. The apostle is about to prepare the
way for his categorical exclusion of women from public discourse. He does so by
alluding to the intrusion which had probably begun, along with many other
disorders in the Corinthian churches, and by pointing to its obvious
unnaturalness. Thus he who stands up in public as the herald and representative
of heaven's King must stand with uncovered head; the honor of the Sovereign for
whom he speaks demands this. But no woman can present herself in public with
uncovered head without sinning against nature and her sex. Hence no woman can be
a public herald of Christ. Thus this passage, instead of implying the admission,
really argues the necessary exclusion of women from the pulpit.
But the rationalistic arguments
are more numerous and are urged with more confidence. First in natural order is
the plea that some Christian women are admitted to possess every gift claimed by
males, zeal, learning, piety, power of utterance, and it is asked why these are
not qualifications for the ministrv in the case of the woman as well as of the
man. It is urged that there is a mischievous, and even a cruel impolicy, in
depriving the church of the accessions and souls of the good which these gifts
and graces might procure when exercised in the pulpit. Again, some profess that
they have felt the spiritual and conscientious impulse to proclaim the gospel
which crowns God's call to the ministry. They "must obey God rather than
men," and they warn us against opposing their impulse, lest haply we be
"found even to fight against God." They argue that the apostle
himself has told us, in the new creation of grace "there is neither
Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor
free." In Christ "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is
neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female" (Col. 3:11;
Gal. 3:28). But if the spiritual kingdom thus levels all social and temporal
distinctions, its official rights should equally be distributed in disregard of
them all. And last, it is claimed that God has decided the question by setting
the seal of his favor on the preaching of some blessed women, such as the "
Friend," Miss Sarah Smiley. If the results of her ministry are not
gracious, then all the fruits of the gospel may as reasonably be discredited.
And they ask triumphantly, Would God employ and honor an agency which he himself
makes unlawful?
We reply, Yes. This confident
argument is founded on a very transparent mistake. God does not indeed honor,
but he does employ, agents whom he disapproves. Surely God does not approve a
man who "preaches Christ for envy and strife" (Phil. 1:15), yet
the apostle rejoices in it, and "knows that it shall result in salvation
through his prayers and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ." Two
very simple truths, which no believer disputes, explode the whole force of this
appeal to results. One is that a truly good person may go wrong in one
particular, and our heavenly Father, who is exceedingly forbearing, may withhold
his displeasure from the misguided efforts of his child, through Christ's
intercession, because, though misguided, he is his child. The other is, that it
is one of God's clearest and most blessed prerogatives to bring good out of
evil. Thus who can doubt but it is wrong for a man dead in sins to intrude into
the sacred ministry? Yet God has often employed such sinners to convert souls;
not sanctioning their profane intrusion, but glorifying his own grace by
overruling it. This experimental plea may be also refuted by another answer. If
the rightfulness of actions is to be determined by their results, then it ought
evidently to be by their whole results. But who is competent to say whether the
whole results of one of these pious disorders will be beneficial or mischievous?
A zealous female converts or confirms several souls by her preaching. Grant it.
But may she not, by this example, in the future introduce an amount of
confusion, intrusion, strife, error and scandal which will greatly overweigh the
first partial good? This question cannot be answered until time is ended, and it
will require an omniscient mind to judge it. Thus it becomes perfectly clear
that present seeming good results cannot ever be a sufficient justification of
conduct which violates the rule of the word. This is our only sure guide. Bad
results, following a course of action not commanded in the word, may present a
sufficient, even an imperative, reason for stopping, and good results following
such action may suct est some probability in its favor. This is all a finite
mind is authorized to argue in these matters of God's service, and when the
course of action transgresses the commanclment such probability becomes
worthless.
Pursuing the arguments of the
opposite party in the reverse order, we remark next, that when the apostle
teaches the equality of all in the privilege of redemption, it is obvious be is
speaking in general, not of official positions in the visible church, but of
access to Christ and participation in his blessings. The expository ground of
this construction is, that thus alone can we save him from self-contradiction.
For his exclusion of women from the pulpit is as clear and emphatic as his
assertion of the universal equality in Christ. Surely he does not mean to
contradict himself. Our construction is established also by other instances of a
similar kind. The apostle expressly excludes "neophytes " from office.
Yet no one dreams that he would have made the recency of their engrafting a
ground of discrimination against their equal privileges in Christ. Doubtless the
apostle would have been as ready to assert that in Christ there is neither young
nor old, as that in him there is neither male nor female. So every sane man
would exclude children from office in the church, yet no one would disparage
their equal interest in Christ. So the apostle inhibited Christians who were
implicated in polygamy from office, however sincere their repentance. So the
canons of the early church forbade slaves to be ordained until they had legally
procured emancipation; and doubtless they were right in this rule. But in Christ
there is "neither bond nor free." If, then, the equality of
these classes in Christ did not imply their fitness for public office in the
church, neither does the equality of females with males in Christ imply it.
Last, the scope of the apostle in these places proves that be meant no more, for
his object in referring to this blessed Christian equality is there seen to be
to infer that all classes have a right to church membership, if believers, and
that Christian love and communion ought to embrace all.
When the claim is made that the
church must concede the ministerial function to the Christian woman who
sincerely supposes she feels the call to it, we have a perilous perversion of
the true doctrine of vocation. True, this vocation is spiritual, but it is also
scriptural. The same Spirit who really calls the true minister also dictated the
Holy Scriptures. When even a good man says that he thinks the Spirit
calls him to preach, there may be room for doubt; but there can be no doubt
whatever that the Spirit calls no person to do what the word dictated by him,
forbids. The Spirit cannot contradict himself. No human being is entitled to
advance a specific call of the Spirit for him individually to do or teach
something contrary to or beside the Scriptures previously given to the church,
unless he can sustain his claim by miracle. Again, the true doctrine of vocation
is that the man whom God has designed and qualified to preach learns his call
through the word. The word is the instrument by which the Spirit teaches him,
with prayer, that he is to preach. Hence, when a person professes to have felt
this call whom the word distinctly precludes from the work, as the neophyte, the
child, the penitent polygamist, the female, although we may ascribe her mistake
to an amiable zeal, yet we absolutely know she is mistaken; she has confounded a
human impulse with the Spirit's vocation. Last, the scriptural vocation comes
not only through the heart of the candidate, but of the brotherhood, and the
call is never complete until the believing choice of the brethren has confirmed
it. But by what shall they be guided? By the "say so" of any one who
assumes to be sincere? Nay, verily. The brethren are expressly commanded "not
to believe every spirit, but to try the spirits whether they are of God."
They have no other rule than Scripture. Who can believe that God's Spirit is the
agent of such anarchy as this, where the brotherhood hold in their hands the
word, teaching them that God does not call any woman, and yet a woman insists
against them that God calls her? He "is not the author of confusion, but
of peace, as in all the churches of the saints." It is on this very
subject of vocation to public teaching that the apostle makes this declaration.
The argument from the seeming
fitness of some women, by their gifts and graces, to edify the churches by
preaching, is then merely utilitarian and unbelieving. When God endows a woman
as he did Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, it may be safely assumed that he has some wise end
in view; he has some sphere in earth or heaven in which her gifts will come into
proper play. But surely it is far from reverent for the creature to decide,
against God's word, that this sphere is the pulpit. His wisdom is better than
man's. The sin involves the presumption of Uzzah. He was right in thinking that
it would be a bad thing to have the sacred ark tumbled into the dust, and in
thinking that he had as much physical power to steady it and as much accidental
proximity as any Levite of them all; but he was wrong in presuming to serve God
in a way he had said he did not choose to be served. So when men lament the
"unemployed spiritual power," which they suppose exists in many gifted
females, as a dead loss to the church, they are reasoning with Uzzah; they are
presumptuously setting the human wisdom above God's wisdom.
The argument, then, whether any
woman may be a public preacher of the word should be prevalently one of
Scripture. Does the bible really prohibit it? We assert that it does. And first,
the Old Testament, which contained, in germ, all the principles of the New,
allowed no regular church office to any woman. When a few of that sex were
employed as mouth-pieces of God, it was in an office purely extraordinary, and
in which they could adduce a supernatural attestation of their commission. No
woman ever ministered at the altar, as either priest or Levite. No female elder
was ever seen in a Hebrew congregation. No woman ever sat on the throne of the
theocracy, except the pagan usurper and murderess, Athaliah. Now, Presbyterians
at least believe that the church order of the Old Testament church was imported
into the New, with less modification than any other part of the old religion.
The ritual of types was greatly modified; new sacramental symbols replaced the
old; the temple of sacrifice was superseded, leaving no sanctuary beneath the
heavenly one, save the synagogue, the house of prayer. But the primeval
presbyterial order continued unchanged. The Christianized synagogue became the
Christian congregation, with its eldership, teachers, and deacons, and its women
invariably keeping silence in the assembly. The probability thus raised is
strong.
Secondly, If human language can
make anything plain, it is that the New Testament institutions do not suffer the
woman to rule or "to usurp authority over the man." (See 1 Tim.
2:12; 1 Cor. 11:3, 7-10; Eph. 5:22, 23; 1 Peter 3:1, 5, 6.) In ecclesiastical
affairs, at least, the woman's position in the church is subordinate to the
man's. But, according to New Testament precedent and doctrine, the call to
public teaching and ruling in the church must go together. Every elder is not a
public teacher, but every regular public teacher must be a ruling elder. It is
clearly implied in 1 Tim. 5:17 that there were ruling elders who were not
preachers, but never was the regular preacher heard of who was not ex officio
a ruling elder. The scriptural qualifications for public teaching, the
knowledge, piety, experience, authority, dignity, purity, moral weight, were a
fortiori qualifications for ruling. "The greater includes the
less." Hence it is simply inconceivable that the qualified person could
experience a true call to public teaclling and not also be called to spiritual
rule. Hence, if it is right for the woman to preach, she must also be a ruling
elder. But God has expressly prohibited the latter, and assigned to woman a
domestic and social place, in which her ecclesiastical rule would be anarchy.
This argument may be put in a
most practical and ad hominem (or ad foeminan) shape. Let it be
granted, for argument's sake, that here is a woman whose gifts and graces,
spiritual wisdom and experience, are so superior her friends feel with her that
it is a blamable loss of power in the church to confine her to silence in the
public assembly. She accordingly exercises her public gift rightfully and
successfully. She becomes the spiritual parent of new-born souls. Is it not
right that her spiritual progeny should look up to her for guidance? How can
she, from her position, justify herself in refusing this second service? She
felt herself properly impelled, by the deficiency in the quantity or quality of
the male preaching at this place, to break over the restraints of sex and
contribute her superior gifts to the winning of souls. Now, if it appear that a
similar deficiency of male supervision, either in quantity or quality, exists at
the same place, the same impulse must, by the stronger reason, prompt her to
assume the less public and obtrusive work of supervision. There is no sense in
her straining out the gnat after she has swallowed the camel; she ought to act
the ruling elder, and thus conserve the fruits she has planted. She ought to
admonish, command, censure, and excommunicate her male converts, including,
possibly, the husband she is to obey at home, if the real welfare of the souls
she has won requires.
The attempt may be made to
escape this crushing demonstration by saying that these women consider
themselves as preaching, not as presbyters, but as lay persons, that thiers is
but a specimen of legitimate lay preaching. The answers are, that stated, public
lay preaching is not legitimate, either for women or men, who remain without
ordination (as was proved in this Review, April, 1876); and that the terms of
the inspired prohibition against the public preaching of women are such as to
exclude this plea.
Let us now look at these laws
themselves; we shall find them peculiarly, even surprisingly, explicit. First,
we have I Cor. 11:3-16, where the apostle discusses the relation and deportment
of the sexes in the public Christian assemblages; and he assures the
Corinthians, verses 2 and 16, that the rules he here announces were universally
accepted by all the churches. The reader will not be wearied by details of
exposition; a careful reading of the passage will give to him the best evidence
for our interpretation, in its complete coherence and consistency. Two
principles, then, are laid down: first, verse 4, that the man should preach (or
pray) in public with head uncovered, because he then stands forth as God's
herald and representative; and to assume at that time the emblem of
subordination, a covered head, is a dishonor to the office and the God it
represents; secondly, verses 5, 13, that, on the contrary, for a woman to appear
or to perform any public religious function in the Christian assembly, unveiled,
is a glaring impropriety, because it is contrary to the subordination of the
position assigned her by her Maker, and to the modesty and reserve suitable to
her sex; and even nature settles the point by giving her her long hair as her
natural veil. Even as good taste and a natural sense of propriety would protest
against a woman's going in public shorn of that beautiful badge and adornment of
her sex, like a rough soldier or a laborer, even so clearly does nature herself
sustain God's law in requiring the woman to appear always modestly covered in
the sanctuary. The holy angels who are present as invisible spectators, hovering
over the Christian assemblies, would be shocked by seeing women professing
godliness publicly throw off this appropriate badge of their position (verse
10). The woman, then, has a right to the privileges of public worship and the
sacraments; she may join audibly in the praises and prayers of the public
assembly, where the usages of the body encourage responsive prayer; but she must
always do this veiled or covered. The apostle does not in this chapter pause to
draw the deduction, that if every public herald of God must be unveiled, and the
woman must never be unveiled in public, then she can never be a public herald.
But let us wait. He has not done with these questions of order in public
worship; he steadily continues the discussion of them through the fourteenth
chapter, and he there at length reaches the conclusion lie had been preparing,
and in verses 34, 35, expressly prohibits women to preach publicly. "Let
your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted to them to
speak" (in that public place), "but to be in subordination, as
also the law saith. And if they wish to learn something " -about some
doctrine which they there hear discussed but do not comprehend- "let
them ask their own husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for women to speak in
church." And in verse 37 he shuts up the whole discussion by declaring
that if anybody pretends to have the Spirit, or the inspiration of prophecy, so
as to be entitled to contest Paul's rules, the rules are the commandments of
the Lord (Christ), not Paul's mere personal conclusions, so that to contest
them on such pretensions of spiritual impulse is inevitably wrong and
presumptuous. For the immutable Lord does not legislate in contradictory ways.
The next passage is 1 Tim.
2:11-15. In the eighth verse the apostle, having tauaht what should be the tenor
of the public prayers and why, says: "I ordain therefore that the males
pray in every place" (in which the two sexes prayed publicly together).
He then, according to the tenor of the passage in 1 Cor. 11, commands Christian
women to frequent the Christian assemblies in raiment at once removed from
untidiness and luxury, and so fashioned as to express the retiring modesty of
their sex. He then adds: "Let the woman learn in quiet in all
subordination. But I do not permit woman to teach" (in public) "nor
to play the ruler over man, but to be in quietude. For Adam was first fashioned;
then Eve. Again, Adam was not deceived" (by Satan), "but the
woman, having been deceived, came to be in transgression" (first). "However,
she shall be saved by the child-bearing, if they abide, with modest discretion,
in faith and love and sanctity." In 1 Tim. 5:9-15, a sphere of church
labor is evidently defined for aged single women, and for them only, who
are widows or celibates without near kindred. So specific is the apostle that he
categorically fixes the limit below which the church may not go in accepting
even such laborers at sixty years. What was this sphere of labor? It was
evidently some form of diaconal work, and not preaching, because the age,
qualifications and connections all point to these private charitable tasks, and
the uninspired history confirms it. To all younger women the apostle then
assigns their express sphere in these words (verse 14), "I ordain
accordingly that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give
no start to the adversary to revile" (Christians and Christianity).
Here is at least strong negative evidence that Paul assigned no public preaching
function to women. In Titus 2:4, 5, women who have not reached old age are to be
"affectionate to their husbands, fond of their children, prudent, pure, keepers
at home, benevolent, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God
may not be reviled." And the only teaching function hinted even for the
aged women is, verse 4, that thev should teach these private domestic virtues to
their younger sisters. Does not the apostle here assign the home as the
proper sphere of the Christian woman? That is her kingdom, and neither the
secular nor the ecclesiastical commonwealth. Her duties in her home are to
detain her away from the public functions. She is not to be a ruler of men, but
a loving subject to her husband.
The grounds on which the
apostle rests the divine legislation against the preaching of women make it
clear that we have construed it aright. Collating 1 Cor. 11 with 1 Tim. 2, we
find them to be the following: The male was the first creation of God, the
female a subsequent one. Then, the female was made from the substance of the
male, being taken from his side. The end of the woman's creation and existence
is to be a helpmeet for man, in a sense in which the man was not originally
designed as a helpmeet for the woman. Hence God, from the beginning of man's
existence as a sinner, put the wife under the kindly authority of the husband,
making him the head and her the subordinate in domestic society. The Lord said
(Gen. 3:16), "Thy desire shall be unto thy husband, and he shall rule
over thee." Then last, the agency of the woman in yielding first to
Satanic temptation and aiding to seduce her husband into sin was punished by
this subjection, and the sentence on the first woman has been extended, by
imputation, to all her daughters. These are the grounds on which the apostle
says the Lord enacted that in the church assemblies the woman shall be pupil,
and not public teacher, ruled, and not ruler. The reasons bear upon all women,
of all ages and civilizations alike. Hence the honest expositor must conclude
that the enactments are of universal force. Such reasons are, indeed, in strong
opposition to the radical theories of individual human rights and equality now
in vogue with many. Instead of allowing to all human beings a specific equality
and an absolute natural independence, these Scripture doctrines assume that
there are orders of human beings naturally unequal in their inherited rights, as
in their bodily and mental qualities; that God has not ordained any human being
to this proud independence, but placed all in subordination under authority, the
child under its mother, the mother under her husband, the husband under the
ecclesiastical and civil magistrates, and these under the law, whose guardian
and avenger is God himself. And so far from flouting the doctrine of imputation
as an antiquated barbarism, these Scriptures represent it as a living and just
ruling principle, this very day determining, by the guilt of a woman who sinned
six thousand years ago, when combining with the natural qualities of sex
propagated in her race, a subordinate social state and a rigid disqualification
for certain actions, for half the human race. Between the popular theories of
individual human right and this sort of political philosophy there is indeed an
irreconcilable opposition. But this is inspired. The only solution is that the
other, despite all its confidence and arrogance, is false and hollow. "He
that replieth against God, let him answer it."
The inspired legislation is
explicit to every candid reader as human language can well make it. Yet modern
ingenuity lias essayed to explain it away. One is not surprised to find these
expositions, even when advanced by those who profess to accept the Scriptures,
tinctured with no small savor of infidelity. For a true and honest reverence for
the inspiration of Scripture would scarcely try so hopeless a task as the
sophisticating of so plain a law. Thus, sometimes we hear these remarks uttered
almost as a sneer, "Oh, this is the opinion of Paul, a crusty old bachelor,
an oriental, with his head stuffed with those ideas of woman which were current
when society made her an ignoramus, a plaything, and a slave." Or, we are
referred to the fable of the paintings of the man dominating the lion, in which
the man was always the painter, and it is said, "Paul was a man; he is
jealous for the usurped dominion of his sex. The law would be different if it
were uttered through woman." What is all this except open unbelief and
resistance, when the apostle says expressly that this legislation was the
enactment of that Christ who condescended to be bom of woman?
Again, one would have us read
the prohibition of 1 Cor. 14:34, "it is not permitted to females to
babble." Some pretended usage is cited to show that the verb is here
used in a bad sense only, and that the prohibition to a woman to talk nonsense
in public address does not exclude, but rather implies, her right to preach,
provided she preaches well and solidly. No expositor will need a reply to
criticism so wretchedly absurd as this. But it may not be amiss to point out in
refutation that the opposite of this verb in Paul's own mind and statement is
"to be silent." The implied distinction, then, is not here between
solid speech and babbling, but between speaking publicly at all and keeping
silence. Again, in the parallel declaration (1 Tim. 2:12), the apostle says
[Greek translation] "but a women to teach I do not allow" where he
uses the word for "to teach" concerning whose regular meaning no such
cavil can be invented. And the apostle's whole logic in the contexts is
directed, not against silly teachings by women, but against women's teaching, in
public at all.
Another evasion is to say that
the law is indeed explicit, but it was temporary. When woman was what paganism
and the oriental harem had made her, she was indeed unfit for ruling and public
teaching; she was but a grown-up child, ignorant, capricious and rash, like
other children; and while she remained so the apostle's exclusion was wise and
just. But the law was not meant to apply to the modem Christian woman, lifted by
better institutions into an intellectual, moral and literary equality with the
man. Doubtless were the apostle here, he would himself avow it.
This is at least more decent.
But as an execesis it is as unfair and untenable as the other. For, first, it is
false that the conception of female character Christianized, which was before
the apostle's mind when enacting this exclusion from the pulpit, was the
conception of an ignorant grown-up child from the harem. The harem was not a
legitimate Hebrew institution. Polygamy was not the rule, but the exception, in
reputable Hebrew families; nor were devout Jews, such as Paul had been, ignorant
of the unlawfulness of such domestic abuses. Jewish manners and laws were not
oriental, but a glorious exception to orientalism, in the place they assigned
woman; and God's word of the Old Testament had doubtless done among the Jews the
same ennobling work for woman which we now claim Christianity does. To the
competent archæologist it is known that it has ever been the trait of Judaism
to assign an honorable place to woman; and the Jewish race has ever been as rare
an exception as Tacitus says the German race was to the pagan depression of the
sex common in ancient days. Accordingly, we never find the apostle drawing a
depreciated picture of woman; every allusion of his to the believing woman is
full of reverent respect and honor. Among the Christian women who come into
Paul's history there is not one who is portrayed after this imagined pattern of
childish ignorance and weakness. The Lydia, the Lois, the Eunice, the Phoebe,
the Priscilla, the Damaris, the Roman Mary, the Junia, the Tryphena, the
Tryphosa, the "beloved Persis" of the Pauline history, and the
"elect lady" who was honored with the friendship of the aged John, all
appear in the narrative as bright examples of Christian intelligence, activity,
dignity, and nobleness. It was not left for the pretentious Christianity of the
nineteenth century to begin the emancipation of woman. As soon as the primitive
doctrine conquered a household, it did its blessed work in lifting up the
feebler and oppressed sex; and it is evident that Paul's habitual conception of
female Christian character in the churches in which he ministered was at
least as favorable as his estimate of the male members. Thus the state of
facts on which this gloss rests had no existence for Paul's mind; he did not
consider himself as legislating temporarily in view of the inferiority of the
female Christian character of his day, for he did not think it inferior. When
this invasion is inspected it unmasks itself simply into an instance of quiet
egotism. Says the Christian "woman of the period" virtually, "I
am so elevated and enlightened that I am above the law, which was well enough
for those old fogies, Priscilla, Persis, Eunice; and the elect lady."
Indeed! This is modesty with a vengeance! Was Paul only legislating temporarily
when he termed modesty one of the brightest jewels in the Christian woman's
crown?
A second answer is seen to this
plea in the nature of the apostle's grounds for the law. Not one of them is
personal, local, or temporary. Nor does he say that woman must not preach in
public because he regards her as less pious, less zealous, less eloquent, less
learned, less brave, or less intellectual, than man. In the advocates of woman's
right to this function there is a continual tendency to a confusion of thought,
as though the apostle, when he says that woman must not do what man does, meant
to disparage her sex. This is a sheer mistake. His reasoning will be searched in
vain for any disparagement of the qualities and virtues of that sex; and we may
at this place properly disclaim all such intention also. Woman is excluded from
this masculine task of public preaching by Paul, not because she is inferior to
man, but simply because her Maker has ordained for her another work which is
incompatible with this. So he might have pronounced, as nature does, that she
shall not sing bass, not because he thought the bass chords the more beautiful-
perhaps he thought the pure alto of the feminine throat far the sweeter-
but because her very constitution fits her for the latter part in the concert of
human existence, and therefore unfits her for the other, the coarser and less
melodious part.
But that the scriptural law was
not meant to be temporary, and had no exclusive reference to the ignorant and
childish woman of the Eastern harem is plain from this, that every ground
assigned for the exclusion is of universal and perpetual application. They apply
to the modern, educated woman exactly as they applied to Phoebe, Priscilla,
Damaris and Eunice. They lose not a grain of force by any change of social
usages or feminine culture, being found in the facts of woman's origin and
nature and the designed end of her existence. Thus this second evasion is
totally closed. And the argument finds its final completion in such passages as
2 Tim. 2:9 and 5:14. A few aged women of peculiar circumstances are admitted as
assistants in the diaconal labors. The rest of the body of Christian women the
apostle then assigns to the domestic sphere, intimating clearly that their
attempts to go beyond it would minister to adversaries a pretext to revile.
Here, then, we have the clearest proof, in a negative form, that he did not
design women in future to break over; for it is for woman as elevated and
enlightened by the gospel he preached that he laid down the limit.
Every true believer should
regard the scriptural argument as first, as sufficient, and as conclusive by
itself. But as the apostle said in one place, that his task was "to
commend himself to every man's conscience in God's sight," so it is
proper to gather the teachings of sound human prudence and experience which
support God's wise law. The justification is not found in any disparagement of
woman as man's natural inferior, but in the primeval fact: "Male and
female made he them." In order to ground human society God saw it
necessary to fashion for man's mate, not his exact image, but his counterpart.
Identity would have utterly marred their companionship, and would have been an
equal curse to both. But out of this unlikeness in resemblance it must obviously
follow that each is fitted for works and duties unsuitable for the other. And it
is no more a degradation to the woman that the man can best do some things which
she cannot do so well, than to the man that woman has her natural superiority in
other things. But it will be cried: "Your Bible doctrine makes man the
ruler, woman the ruled." True. It was absolutely necessary, especially
after sin had entered the race, that a foundation for social order should be
laid in a family government. This government could not be made consistent,
peaceful or orderly by being made double-headed, for human finitude, and
especially sin, would ensure collision, at least at some times, between any two
human wills. It was essential to the welfare of both husband and wife and of the
offspring that there must be an ultimate human head somewhere. Now let reason
decide, was it meet that the man be head over the woman, or the woman over the
man? Was it right that lie for whom woman was created should be subjected to her
who was created for him; that he who was stronaer physically should be subjected
to the weaker; that the natural protector should be the servant of the protegée;
that the divinely ordained bread-winner should be controlled by the
bread-dispenser? Every candid woman admits that this would have been unnatural
and unjust. Hence God, acting, so to speak, under an unavoidable moral
necessity, assigned to the male the domestic government, regulated and tempered,
indeed, by the strict laws of God, by self-interest and by the tenderest
affection; and to the female the obedience of love. On this order all other
social order depends. It was not the design of Christianity to subvert it, but
only to perfect and re-fine it. Doubtless that spirit of wilfulness, which is a
feature of our native carnality in both man and woman, tempts us to feel that
any subordination is a hardship, so that it is felt while God has been a Father
to the man, he has been but a stepfather to the woman. Self-will resents this
natural subordination as a natural injustice. But self-will forgets that
"order is heaven's first law;" that subordination is the inexorable
condition of peace and happiness, and this as much in heaven as on earth; that
this subjection was not imposed on woman only as a penalty, but as for her and
her offspring's good; and that to be governed under the wise conditions of
nature is often a more privileged state than to govern. God has conformed his
works of creation and providence to these principles. In creating man he has
endued him with the natural attributes which qualify him to labor abroad, to
subdue dangers, to protect, to govern. He has given these qualities in less
degree to woman, and in their place has adorned her with the less hardy, but
equally admirable, attributes of body, mind and heart which qualify her to
yield, to be protected, and to "guide the home." This order is
founded, then, in the unchangeable laws of nature. Hence all attempts to reverse
it must fail, and must result only in confusion.
Now, a wise God designs no
clashing between his domestic and political and his ecclesiastical arrangements.
He has ordained that the man shall be head in the family and the commonwealth;
it would be a confusion full of mischief to make the woman head in the
ecclesiastical sphere. But we have seen that the right of public teaching must
involve the right of spiritual rule. The woman who has a right to preach, if
there be anv such, ought also claim to be a ruling elder. How would it work to
have husband and wife, ruler and subject, change places as often as they passed
from the dwelling or the court-room and senate chamber to the church? When we
remember how universally the religious principles, which it is the prerogative
of the presbyter to enforce, interpenetrate and regulate man's secular duties,
we see that this amount of overturning would result in little short of absolute
anarchy.
Again, the duties which natural
affection, natural constitution, and imperious considerations of convenience
distribute between the man and the woman make it practicable for him and
impracticable for her to pursue, without their neglect, the additional tasks of
the public preacher and evangelist. Let an instance be taken from the nurture of
children. The bishop must be "husband of one wife." Both the
parents owe duties to their children; but the appropriate duties of the mother,
especially towards little children, are such that she could not leave them as
the pastor must for his public tasks without criminal neglect and their probable
ruin. It may be said that this argument has no application to unmarried women.
The answers are, that God contemplates marriage as the proper condition of
woman, while he does not make celibacy a crime, and that the sphere he assigns
to the unmarried woman is also private and domestic.
Some minds doubtless imagine a
degree of force in this statement, that God has bestowed on some women gifts and
graces eminently qualifying them to edify his churches, and as he commits no
waste he thereby shows that he designs such women at least to preach. Enough has
been already said to show how utterly unsafe such pretended reasonings are. "God
giveth no account of his matters to any man." Does he not often give
most splendid endowments for usefulness to young men whom he then removes by
what we call a premature death from the threshold of the pastoral career? Yet
"God commits no waste." It is not for us to surmise how he will
utilize those seemingly abortive endowments. He knows how and where to do it. We
must bow to his dispensation, whether explicable or not. The case is the same in
this respect with his ordinance restraining the most gifted woman from
publicity. But there is a more obvious answer. God has assigned to her a private
sphere sufficiently important and honorable to justify the whole expenditure of
angelic endowments- the formation of the character of children. This is the
noblest and most momentous work done on earth. Add to it the efforts of
friendship, the duties of the daughter, sister, wife and charitable almoner, and
the labors of authorship suitable for woman, and we see a field wide enough for
the highest talents and the most sanctified ambition. Does self-will feel that
somehow the sphere of the pulpit orator is more splendid still? Wherein? Only in
that it has features which gratify carnal ambition and the lust for carnal
applause of men. But let it be noted that Christians are forbidden to have
these desires! Let, then, the Christian comply with God's law requiring him
to crucify ambition, and the only features which made any difference between the
private and the public spheres of soul-culture are gone. The Christian who, in
the performance of the public work of rearing souls for heaven, fosters the
ambitious motive, has deformed his worthiness in the task with a defilement
which sinks it far below that of the humblest peasant mother who is training her
child for God. Does the objector return to the charge with the cavil that, while
the faithful mother rears six, or possibly twice six, children for God, the
gifted evangelist may convert thousands? But that man would not have been the
gifted evangelist had he not enjoyed the blessing of the modest Christian
mother's training. Had he been reared in the disorderly home of the clerical
Mrs. Jellyby, instead of being the spiritual father of thousands, he would have
been an ignorant rowdy or a disgusting pharisee. So that the worthiness of his
public success belongs fully as much to the modest mother as to himself. Again,
the instrumentality of the mother's training in the salvation of her children is
mighty and decisive; the influence of the minister over his hundreds is slight
and non-essential. If he contributes a few grains, in numerous cases, to turn
the scales for heaven, the mother contributes tons to the right scales in her
few cases. The one works more widely on the surface, the other more deeply; so
that the real amount of soil moved by the two workmen is not usually in favor of
the preacher. The woman of sanctified ambition has nothing to regret as to the
dignity of her sphere. She does the noblest work that is done on earth. Its public
recognition is usually more through the children and beneficiaries she ennobles
than through her own person. True; and that is precisely the feature of her work
which makes it most Christ-like. It is precisely the feature at which a sinful
and selfish ambition takes offence.
The movement towards the
preaching of women does not necessarily spring from a secular "woman's
rights" movement. The preaching of women marked the early Wesleyan movement
to some extent, and the Quaker assemblies. But neither of these had political
aspirations for their women. At the present time, however, the preaching of
women and the demand of all masculine political rights are so synchronous, and
are so often seen in the same persons, that their affinity cannot be disguised.
They are two parts of one common impulse. If we understand the claim of rights
made by these agitators, it includes in substance two things: that the
legislation at least of society shall disregard all distinctions of sex and
award all the same specific rights and franchises to women and men in every
respect; and that women, while in the married state, shall be released from
every form of conjugal subordination and retain independent control of their
property. These pretensions are indeed the proper logical consequences of that
radical theory of human right which is now dominant in the country. According to
that doctrine, every human being is naturally independent, owes no duties to
civil or ecclesiastical society save those freely conceded in the "social
contract"; is the natural equal of every other human except as he or she
has forfeited liberty by crime. Legislation and taxation are unjust unless based
on representation, which means the privilege of each man under government to
vote for his governors. If these propositions were true, then, indeed, their
application to women would be indisputable. And it would be hard for the radical
politician to explain why it was right to apply them in favor of ignorant
negroes and deny their application to intelligent ladies. We here see the great
danger attending the present misguided woman's movement. Neither the politicians
nor the American masses cherish the purpose of being logically consistent; and
both are in the well-known habit of proclaiming doctrines for which they care
nothing, and which they do not mean to hold honestly, as "stalking
horses" for a temporary end. But their demagogism has given a currency and
hold to these political heresies whose extent and tenacity make them perilous.
God has made man a logical animal; the laws of his reason compel him to think
connectedly to some degree. Hence false principles once firmly fixed are very
apt to bring after them their appropriate corollaries in the course of time,
however distasteful to the promulgators of the parent errors. To the radical
mind, possessed with these false politics, the perpetual demand of these obvious
corollaries by pertinacious women must apply a stress which is like the
"continual dropping that weareth away a stone." They can quote the
Declaration of Independence in the sense these radicals hold it: "We hold
these truths to be self-evident; that all men are by nature equal and
inalienably entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
"All just government is founded in the consent of the governed," etc.,
etc. It is true that this document, rationally interpreted, teaches
something wholly different from the absurd equality of the radical, which
demands for every member of society all the specific franchises which any member
has. The wise men of 1776 knew that men are not naturally equal, in strength,
talent, virtue, or ability; and that different orders of human beings naturally
inherit very different sets of rights and franchises, according as they are
qualified to enjoy and employ them for their own good and the good of the whole.
But they meant to teach that in one very important respect all are naturally
equal. This is the equality which job recognized (ch. 31:15) as existing between
him and his slave; the equality of a common origin, a common humanity and
immortality. It is the equality of the golden rule. By this right, that human
being whom the laws endow with the smallest franchises in society has the same
kind of moral right to have that small franchise respected by his fellows, as
the man who justly possesses the largest franchise. It is the equality,embodied
in the great maxim of the British Constitution, "that before the law all
are equal." This is true, although Britain is an aristocratic monarchy, and
rights are distributed to the different orders very differently. Earl Derby has
sundry franchises which the British peasant can no more possess than he can
grasp the moon. Yet in the constitutional sense, the peasant and the earl are
"equal before the law." If indicted for crime, each has the
inalienable right to be tried by his peers. The same law which shields the
earl's entailed estates, equally protects the peasant's colltage. As the men of
1776 were struggling to retain for America the rights of British freemen, which
the king was unconstitutionally invading, their declaration must be construed as
teaching this equality of the free British Constitution. So when they said that
"taxation without representation" was intrinsically unjust, they never
dreamed of teaching this maxim as to individual tax-payers. The free British
Constitution, for which they were contending, had never done so. They asserted
the maxim of the commonwealth. Some representation of the commonwealth taxed,
through such order of the citizens as properly constitute the representative populus,
is necessary to prevent taxation from becoming unjust.
But this, the true, historical
and rational meaning of these maxims, is now unpopular with radicalism; it
cannot away with the true doctrine. And for this reason it has no sufficient
answer for the plea of " women's rights." The true answer is found in
the correct statement of human right we have given. The woman is not designed by
God, nor entitled to all the franchises in society to which the male is
entitled. God has disqulified her for any such exercise of them as would benefit
herself or society, by the endowments of body, mind, and heart he has given her,
and the share he has assigned her in the tasks of social existence. And as she
has no right to assume the masculine franchises, so she will find in the attempt
to do so only ruin to her own character and to society. For instance, the very
traits of emotion and character which make woman man's cherished and invaluable
"helpmeet," the traits which she must have in order to fulfil the
purpose of her being would ensure her unfitness to meet the peculiar temptations
of publicity and power. The attempt would debauch all these lovelier traits,
while it would leave her still, as the rival of man, "the weaker
vessel." She would lose all and gain nothing.
One consequence of this
revolution would be so certain and so terrible, that it cannot be passed over.
It must result in the abolition of all permanent marriage ties. Indeed, the
bolder advocates do not scruple to avow it. The destruction of marriage would
follow by this cause, if no other, that the unsexed politicating woman, the
importunate manikin-rival, would never inspire in men that true affection on
which marriage should be founded. The mutual attraction of the two complementary
halves would be forever gone. The abolition of marriage would follow again by
another cause. The rival interests and desires of two equal wills are
inconsistent with domestic union, government, or peace. Shall the children of
this unnatural connection be held responsible to both of two sinful but
coordinate and equally supreme wills? Heaven pity the children. Again, who ever
heard of a perpetual copartnership in which the parties had no power to enforce
the performance of the mutual duties nor to dissolve the tie made intolerable by
violation? It would be as iniquitous as impossible. Such a copartnership of
equals, with coordinate wills and independent interests, must be separable at
will, as all other such copartnerships are.
This common movement for
"women's rights," and women's preaching, must be regarded, then, as
simply infidel. It cannot be candidly upheld without attacking the inspiration
and authority of the Scriptures. We are convinced that there is only one safe
attitude for Christians, presbyters, and church courts to assume towards it.
This is utterly to discountenance it, as they do any other assault of infidelity
on God's truth and kingdom. The church officer who becomes an accomplice of this
intrusion certainly renders himself obnoxious to discipline, just as he would by
assisting to celebrate an idolatrous mass.
We close with one suggestion to
such women as may be inclined to this new claim. If they read history, they find
that the condition of woman in Christendom, and especially in America, is most
enviable as compared with her state in all other ages and nations. Let them
ponder candidly how much they possess here, which their sisters have enjoyed in
no other age. What bestowed those peculiar privileges on the Christian women of
America? The Bible. Let them beware, then, how they do anything to undermine the
reverence of mankind for the authority of the Bible. It is undermining their own
bulwark. If they understand how universally in all but Bible lands the
"weaker vessel" has been made the slave of man's strength and
selfishness, they will gladly "let well enough alone," lest in
grasping at some impossible prize beyond, they lose the privileges they now
have, and fall back to the gulf of oppression from which these doctrines of
Christ and Paul have lifted them.
Endnotes
1 Appeared in The Southern Presbyterian Review for October, 1879.