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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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less other influences, have resulted in the civilization
of our time. If we want to find what the influence of
the Bible has been, we must ascertain the condition
of Europe when the Bible was considered as abso-
lutely true, and when it wielded its greatest influence.
Christianity as a form of religion had actual posses-
sion of Europe during the Middle Ages. At that
time, it exerted its greatest power. Then it had the
opportunity of breaking the shackles from the limbs
of woman. Christianity found the Roman matron a
free woman. Polygamy was never known in Rome;
and although divorces were allowed by law, the
Roman state had been founded for more than five
hundred years before either a husband or a wife
asked for a divorce. From the foundation of Chris-
tianity,--I mean from the time it became the force in
the Roman state,--woman, as such, went down in
the scale of civilization. The sceptre was taken from
her hands, and she became once more the slave and
serf of man. The men also were made slaves, and
woman has regained her liberty by the same means
that man has regained his,--by wresting authority
from the hands of the church. While the church had
power, the wife and mother was not considered as
good as the begging nun; the husband and father
was far below the vermin-covered monk; homes
were of no value compared with the cathedral; for
God had to have a house, no matter how many of
his children were wanderers. During all the years in
which woman has struggled for equal liberty with
man, she has been met with the Bible doctrine that
she is the inferior of the man; that Adam was made
first, and Eve afterwards; that man was not made for
woman, but that woman was made for man.
I find that in this day and generation, the meanest
men have the lowest estimate of woman; that the
greater the man is, the grander he is, the more he
thinks of mother, wife and daughter. I also find that
just in the proportion that he has lost confidence in the
polygamy of Jehovah and in the advice and philosophy
of Saint Paul, he believes in the rights and liberties of
woman. As a matter of fact, men have risen from a
perusal of the Bible, and murdered their wives. They
have risen from reading its pages, and inflicted cruel
and even mortal blows upon their children. Men
have risen from reading the Bible and torn the flesh
of others with red-hot pincers. They have laid
down the sacred volume long enough to pour molten
lead into the ears of others. They have stopped
reading the sacred Scriptures for a sufficient time to
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incarcerate their fellow-men, to load them with chains,
and then they have gone back to their reading,
allowing their victims to die in darkness and despair.
Men have stopped reading the Old Testament long
enough to drive a stake into the ground and collect a
few fagots and burn an honest man. Even ministers
have denied themselves the privilege of reading the
sacred book long enough to tell falsehoods about
their fellow-men. There is no crime that Bible
readers and Bible believers and Bible worshipers and
Bible defenders have not committed. There is no
meanness of which some Bible reader, believer, and
defender, has not been guilty. Bible believers and
Bible defenders have filled the world with calumnies
and slanders. Bible believers and Bible defenders
have not only whipped their wives, but they have
murdered them; they have murdered their children.
I do not say that reading the Bible will necessarily
make men dishonest, but I do say, that reading the
Bible will not prevent their committing crimes. I do
not say that believing the Bible will necessarily make
men commit burglary, but I do say that a belief in the
Bible has caused men to persecute each other, to
imprison each other, and to burn each other.