It will be admitted by all who will read the history of man's ruin, as
recorded in Genesis, the third chapter, and sixth verse, that woman
first partook of the forbidden fruit, and "gave also to her husband,
and he did eat." Admit the truth of history, and woman appears as
man's first tempter.
"Woman as a Helpmeet" described her condition before the fall; "Woman
as a Tempter" describes her in the fall; and, alas! while it is the
high privilege of woman to be a helpmeet in the midst of the ruin
wrought by sin, it is unwise to disguise the truth that as a _tempter_
she has not abandoned her vocation.
Plain speaking may prove to be disagreeable. God grant that it may
prove to be profitable. There is need of it. Disguise it as we may
talk as we choose about man in his narrowness, in his degradation, a
wicked woman _was_, and to a large extent _is_, the means employed by
Satan in leading astray the unwary. The manner of her fall has been
declared. It may be profitable to review the steps of her downward
descent from the bliss of Eden to the woe of the desert; from the
position of an equal to the position of a subject.
1. _Satan, in the form of the serpent, undermines woman's confidence
in God_. The serpent, the most subtle beast of the field, said to the
woman, "Is it even so, that God has said, Ye shall not eat of every
tree of the garden?" Thus he attempted to weaken the child-like
confidence she reposed in her Creator, and endeavored to inspire in
its place a spirit of unbelief and distrust. This done, and the battle
was half won, and the work was well nigh accomplished. Truly has it
been said, "The sure basis of simple trust in God as the all-loving
and the all-wise, once shaken, there is little left to be done." This
is the rock on which character builds its hopes. There is nothing so
essential to woman as faith in God. Destroy this, or let woman attempt
to live without it, and she is in imminent peril. It was an infidel
woman who declared, "It has been said that marriage is a divine
institution, because all power comes from God. _We know very well
that all power comes from God', and therefore we wish neither God nor
power._" Shall professedly Christian women, by action, give their
assent to such an utterance?
2. _Satan rouses woman's suspicion_. "And the woman said to the
serpent. Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat. But of
the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden God has
said, Ye shall not eat of it, and ye shall not touch it, lest ye die.
And the serpent said to the woman, Ye shall not surely die. For God
knows that in the day ye eat thereof your eyes will be opened, and ye
will be as God, knowing good and evil."
"Your eyes will be opened," expresses the power of mentally
apprehending things before unperceived and unknown; but, of course,
both in an intellectual and moral sense. The position taken appeared
reasonable, and had a semblance of truth, and exerted its consequent
influence.
"_Will be as God, knowing good and evil._" Knowing for yourselves,
and able to choose between the evil and the good. Here ambition again
overleaped itself. Humility was slain, and a womanly virtue was
destroyed by the tempter, who aimed to infuse into the mind of the
woman, first, a doubt of the truth of the Word of God, and of the
certainty of the divine threatening; second, a suspicion that God was
withholding from her a good, instead of guarding her against an evil;
and, third, he attempted to induce her to believe that adherence to
this divine command stood in the way of her freedom, of her growth,
and so by the words, "Ye will be as God, knowing good and evil," he
strove to awaken the feeling of self-exaltation,--the longing for a
higher development, in which she should attain to self-discretion and
freedom of choice and action.
This suspicion is very common, even among our good women. When a woman
gets cold in her love for Jesus, she becomes suspicious of those
she loves. She permits the feeling, "My husband gives too much for
benevolence, too little to me, and he is away too much in meetings,
and is too little in his home," to influence her. She begins to talk
against the church, and loves to stay at home. Finds excuses for
keeping away from the prayer meeting or from the paths of endeavor,
and becomes a hinderance instead of a blessing to husband, to
family, and to society. A man finds it difficult to push the bark of
benevolence and of holy endeavor up against the current of womanly
opposition and suspicion, but when in the work of God she acts the
part of a helpmeet, everything moves smoothly. A recent writer uses
this language: "Expel woman as you will, she is in fact the parish.
Within, in her lowest spiritual form, as the ruling spirit she
inspires, and sometimes writes the sermons. Without, as the bulk of
his congregation, she watches over his orthodoxy, verifies his texts,
visits his schools, and harasses his sick." ... "The preacher who
thunders so defiantly against spiritual foes, is trembling all the
time beneath the critical eye that is watching him with so merciless
an accuracy in his texts. Impelled, guided, censured by woman, we can
hardly wonder if, in nine cases out of ten, the parson turns woman
himself, and the usurpation of woman's rights in the services of
religion has been deftly avenged by the subjugation of the usurpers.
Expelled from the temple, woman has simply put her priesthood into
commission, and discharges her ministerial duties by proxy." Woman is
the mainspring and the chief support of Ritualism. Things were at
a dead lock and stand still, until the so-called devotion gave an
impetus to the movement. The medieval church have glorified the
devotion of woman; but once become a devotee, it had locked her in the
cloister. As far as action in the world without was concerned, the
veil served simply as a species of suicide, and the impulses of woman,
after all the crowns and pretty speeches of her religious counsellors,
found themselves bottled up within stout stone walls, and as inactive
as before. From this strait woman released herself by the organization
of charity. The Sisters of Charity at once became a power. They
discovered the value of costume. The district visitor, whom nobody had
paid the smallest attention to in the common vestments of the world,
became a sacred being as she donned the crape and hideous bonnet of
the "Sister."
"The 'Mother Superior' took the place of the tyrant of another sex who
had hitherto claimed the submission of woman; but she was something
more to her 'children' than the husband or father whom they had left
in the world without. In all matters, ecclesiastical as well as civil,
she claimed within her dominions to be supreme. The quasi-sacerdotal
dignity, the pure religious ministration which ages have stolen from
her, was quietly resumed. She received confessions, she imposed
penances, she drew up offices of devotion. If the clergyman of
the parish ventured an advice or suggestion, he was told that the
sisterhood must preserve its own independence of action, and was
snubbed home again for his pains. The Mother Superior, in fact, soon
towered into a greatness far beyond the reach of ordinary persons.
She kept her own tame chaplain, and she kept him in a very edifying
subjugation. From a realm completely her own, the influence of woman
began to tell upon the world without. Little colonies of Sisters,
planted here and there, annexed parish after parish. Astonished
congregations saw their church blossom its purple and red, and frontal
and hanging told of the silent energy of the group of Sisters. The
parson found himself nowhere, in his own parish: every detail managed
for him, every care removed, and all independence gone. If it suited
the ministering angels to make a legal splash, he found himself landed
in the law courts. If they took it into their heads to seek another
field, every one assumed it a matter of course that their pastor would
go too." It is because of this influence that in certain quarters the
ecclesiastical hierarchy are taking, year by year, a more feminine
position. It is not impossible that a church who worships Mary as the
Mother of God may be brought to recognize woman as the proper head of
the church. True, as the writer quoted above adds, "she must stoop
to conquer heights like these." Yet the question has been seriously
asked, "Is not the Episcopal office admirably adapted to woman?"
Between a priest and a nun there is only the difference of a bonnet
in their dress, and we know how easily woman can be persuaded to go
without a bonnet, or to exchange it for a hat such as is worn by men.
In England, the curate is sometimes called the first lady of the
parish; and what he now is in theory, a century hence may find him in
fact. "It would be difficult, even now, to detect any difference
of sex in the triviality of purpose, the love of gossip, the petty
interests, the feeble talk, the ignorance, the vanity, the love of
personal display, the white hand dangled over the pulpit, the becoming
vestment, and the embroidered stole, which we are learning gradually
to look upon as attributes of the British curate. So perfect, indeed,
is the imitation, that the excellence of her work may, perhaps, defeat
its own purpose, and the lacquered imitation of woman may satisfy the
world, and for long ages prevent any anxious inquiry after the real
feminine Brummagem."
The tendency thus truthfully described furnished the seedling out of
which grew the Monasticism of the past, and in which the Ritualism of
the present finds its underlying cause. The Church of Rome harnesses
woman to her system, and compels her to contribute greatly to its
prosperity. In Europe the people tire of those great establishments
and endowments, which rest like an incubus on the national life.
In America we are so blind that we foster them by grants from our
legislatures, by giving up the care of hospitals to their use, where
the weak are subjected to the influences of superstition, and the
thoughtless are led astray. Another avenue to power is opened by the
ballot. Grant this to that church, which, through a fatherhood of
priests and a sisterhood of nuns, reaches every portion of the body
politic, and the promise of Religious Liberty and a Free Republic is
at once exchanged for the despotism of Rome and the imperialism
of France. Infidelity joins hands with Rome in asking this power.
Christianity, united with patriotism, must refuse to grant the
request.
3. Mystery was employed as an instrument in securing woman's fall.
Rouse a womanly curiosity, and there is little difficulty in leading
the excited one astray. Hold out to her a key which promises to unlock
the hidden and concealed glories of the unexplored future, and woman
will be tempted again to forego God's favor and the joys of paradise
to grasp or wield it. In every heathen religion women occupied a
prominent place. Priestess or prophetess, she stood in all ministerial
offices on an equality with man. Christianity rejects the ministerial
services of women, and selects for its standard bearers men acquainted
with life, filled with religious zeal, and capable of hardy endeavor,
assuring faith and martyr patience.
The Church of Rome dealt with women as the Empire dealt with its
Caesars: it was ready to grant her apotheosis, but only when she was
safely out of this world. It was only when the light of revelation
was extinguished in her midst that the teachings of the Bible were
ignored, and woman was welcomed back to the place she held in pagan
climes and at heathen shrines.
Spiritualism, that scourge of modern times, which has swept like the
breath of a pestilence over the land, found in woman its prophetess
and minister. Satan works in erring woman now, as in the past, to
destroy and to delude. That power was resisted by Christian woman.
Many an irreligious man was saved from this delusion by the fidelity
of his wife. Many a good man has been ruined because his wife listened
to the siren voice of the tempter, and desired to explore and explain
this mystery. The forbidden fruit ever grows upon the tree beside her.
Those who would be wiser than that which is written, have plucked
and eaten it, and have given to others that which is so destructive.
Witchcraft is a womanly profession. The heathen divinities were nearly
all ministered unto by woman, and mystery was the influencing cause.
We know the result in the case of Eve. It led her away from God. It
caused her to listen to the enemy of her soul. Does it not become
woman to ask herself, "Am I losing my hold on God? Is suspicion that
some good is being withheld, or does the desire to pry into the
future, exercise an undue influence upon my heart and imagination?" If
so, your ruin has commenced, and a speedy return to God is your only
door of escape.
4. Deception was the result. "And the woman saw the tree was good for
food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to
be desired to make her wise; and she took of its fruit and ate, and
gave also to her husband and he ate." Sight deceived, desire allured,
and action born of a delusive faith destroyed her happiness. The
process of temptation culminated in deception. This is the end ever
kept in view by Satan. Every individual that refuses to be ruled
absolutely by God, in little or great affairs, may know of a truth
that the end is deception, and the consequent ruin is sure to follow.
There is no exception to the rule. Paul felt this when he wrote the
church in Corinth, concerning his interest in them, saying, "For I am
jealous over you with a godly jealousy; for I have espoused you to one
husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ;" "But I
fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve, by his subtlety,
so your minds should be corrupted from your simplicity toward Christ."
Many claim that error is not mischievous while truth is left free to
combat. Error poisons the mind, and so produces disease, and bars out
truth, which carries health to the mind and blesses the soul.
Eve knew the law, for she quotes it word by word. She deliberated as
to obeying it. Here she made her first mistake. A woman cannot do
this. The moment a woman hesitates in regard to discharging the duties
she owes to herself or to God she falls. She seems to be provided
with an almost self-acting nature. It is natural for her to protect
herself. She revolts against her higher self when she hesitates. Her
intuitions, allied to a sensitive nature, unite in defending against
evil. Had Eve said, "I do not need to sin to secure the development of
my higher nature; the Creator knows my wants much better than one who
seeks to be my destroyer," she would have been saved. Faith in God
would have been a sure defence against the tempter's wiles.
But she deliberated, yielded, and fell, and the world is still full of
the resounding echoes of that fall. The race fell with her. That fact
teaches its lesson. Some one falls with every ruined soul. We lift
up or drag down those associated with us. "For none of us liveth to
himself, and no man dieth to himself;" an influence goes out from
us, which is a felt power in the world either for or against God and
humanity.
Consider the effects of the temptation. 1. It caused Eve to become to
Adam an agent of Satan. Tempted herself, she became a tempter. Ruined
in her nature by this exclusion of God, and by this welcome of Satan,
she seeks to ruin her companion. This principle rules now. The carnal
heart is at enmity with God, the converted heart is in union with God.
Here is a significant fact. A man loves to have woman pure, if he is
impure. Temperate, if he is intemperate. Holy and Christian, if he is
the opposite in every particular. Not so a woman. Intemperate herself,
she seeks to induce others to be like her. Here is the peril of
society. If our fashionable women love wine, they become emissaries of
the wicked one to a fearful extent. It is almost an impossibility for
the tempted to withstand their wiles. In fashionable, perhaps, more
than in the other grades of life, woman as a leader in intemperance,
in extravagance, and in opposition to Christ, is to be feared. Her
power is fearful to contemplate. The Secretary of the Treasury
declares that the national debt is increased, and threatens to
increase, unless the fashionable world shall declare against the,
importation of that which costs gold, but which fails to contribute to
the prosperity of the community. This is by no means wholly chargeable
to women. Men share in the blame. A sadder fact is the expressed
dissatisfaction with woman's work and with woman's sphere. The home
of the olden time is passing out of mind, and in its place is the
fashionable boarding-house. The skilled housewife is felt to be
unappreciated. Men, they tell us, prefer a pretty face to a noble
heart, a delicate to a skilled hand, a girl who can play the piano
rather than one who can cook a dinner, a pretty doll instead of a
glorious woman capable of keeping the house, and of guiding the man
with womanly strength. Ah, it is a mistake. America is the land of
homes. Our undeveloped territory offers to every man a farm. Men and
women need not to be cooped up in garrets or shut up in cellars, if
they will but possess the spirit of those who sought in this Western
world a home, and who, as they toiled with the axe, the plough, and
the loom,
"Shook the depths of the forest gloom
With their hymns of lofty cheer."
The cause of this discontent is apparent. There is something in the
commonplaces of fashionable life which turns woman from the real to
the unreal, from the substantial to the superficial, which smothers
all originality of thought, and makes her a simple reproduction
in appearance, if not in disposition, of the "Anonyma," with her
meretricious beauty and dashing toilets. Is it well for woman to
subject herself to be criticised as follows? "The girl of the period
is a creature who dyes her hair and paints her face, whose sole idea
of life is a plenty of fun and luxury, and whose dress is the object
of such thought and intellect as she possesses. Her main endeavor
is to outvie her neighbors. She cares little for advice or counsel.
Nothing is too extraordinary, and nothing too extravagant, for her
vitiated taste; and things which in themselves would be useful reforms
if let alone, become monstrosities worse than those which they have
displaced, so soon as she begins to manipulate and improve. If a
sensible fashion lifts the gown out of the mud, she raises hers midway
to the knee. If there is a reaction against an excess of hair oil, and
hair slimy and sticky with grease is thought less nice than if left
clean with a healthy crisp, she dries and frizzes and sticks hers out
on end like certain savages in Africa, or lets it wander down her back
like Madge Wildfire's, and thinks herself all the more beautiful the
nearer she approaches in look to a maniac or a negress! What the
_demi-monde_ does in its frantic efforts to excite attention, she also
does in imitation. If some fashionable courtesan is reported to have
come out with her dress below her shoulder blades, and a gold strap
for all the sleeve thought necessary, the girl of the period follows
suit next day, and then wonders that men sometimes mistake her for
her prototype, or that mothers of girls, not so far gone as herself,
refuse her as a companion for their daughters."
If the fashionable danseuse is imported from the brothels of Paris,
and is brought to our cities to exhibit herself to whoever is vulgar
and lewd enough to desire to see her, thousands of the fashionables go
with opera glass, and tolerate a disgusting play that they may enjoy
a sight which is a guarantee to every young man that the woman knows
little of and cares less about the virtue which distinguished the girl
of the olden time, before whom men bowed in admiration, and concerning
whom an impure thought seemed like an unpardonable sin. Women may say
that "men desire them to go, and they must gratify them." It is not
true. Every man loves to have his wife and daughters virtuous, and
unless he be besotted by intemperance, or given over to courses of
shame, will quietly and joyfully yield to the remonstrance of a
virtuous wife or daughter against patronizing scenes which degrade,
and against permitting the mind and heart to give welcome to thoughts
which pollute. True men desire to love, and to be influenced by pure,
tender, loving, retiring, and domestic women.
Woman, it is your fault if you do not retain the affections of a true
and noble man. Alas, how frequently young men mourn your fickleness,
your frivolity, your fondness for show and dress, and your total lack
of desire for the more solid attainments which enrich character, and
beautify life. "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far
above rubies." Whoever conforms to the requirements of fashion, at the
expense of culture, is false to her high nature, and degrades herself
in the estimation of every true man. A woman is constructed for
companionship, and in her normal condition her yearnings are more
mental than physical. It is natural for man to desire to enjoy this
God-given boon. A talented woman, that will talk sense, is the idol of
sensible men. Nothing displeases a true woman more than to waste an
evening on a brainless fop. Nothing is more needless. Let her develop
herself, and she will be sought after by men whose opinions are
valuable, and whose love is a recompense. Better far would it be for
women who are poor, to spend their evenings in reading, writing, and
study, in familiarizing themselves with those themes of ennobling
thought, which will fit them to win love by conversation, by culture,
by the graces of refinement, rather than by the outward adorning, by
plaiting the hair, and wearing of gold and of costly apparel; "for it
is the hidden man of the heart, even the ornament of a meek and quiet
spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price."
Young women need to be reminded of this. They are in peril. Exposure
lines the paths of those who pass from the factory, or from the
workshop, to their little rooms and cheap boarding-houses. You see it
in the leering look of depraved men, and in the atmosphere of crime
that contaminates their shops. They show it by their themes of
conversation. Woman must be resolute, if she would change all this.
Let her be true to herself and to Christ, and there will be no danger.
The condition of women in many of our factory villages is frightful to
contemplate, and few seem to have any knowledge of it. They pass from
their factory to their boarding-houses. Their rooms are cold and
cheerless in winter. There is no common reading-room or sewing-room.
Unless they will suffer from cold, they must retire to their beds, or
seek warmth and companionship in the world without. As a result they
are watched by men who care not for their comfort or happiness,
but for the gratification of passion and the pleasures of social
excitements. Hence, thousands of good country girls are annually
ruined in many of our large factory villages and cities, for the
lack of comfortable houses or associations, where talents can be
cultivated, piety promoted, and virtue protected.
1. "_She gave to her husband, and he did eat._" It was altogether
natural. She was the provider in the home, as he was the keeper of the
garden. She gave him and he ate. Man fell because of woman's fall. A
woman can repel a man. It is difficult for a man to resist the wiles
of a woman. God has placed in woman a fearful power, and devolves
unmeasured responsibilities upon her in the home, in society, and in
the world.
2. The second result is seen in the effect produced. "Lust conceived
and brought forth sin, and sin brought forth shame." And the eyes of
both of them were opened, not so as to have an advanced knowledge of
things pleasant, profitable, and useful, as was promised and expected,
but of things very disagreeable and distressing. Their eyes were
opened to see that they had broken God's law, lost his favor,
destroyed their home, and left themselves exposed to the terrors of
the judgment. They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the
garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves
from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
They knew that they were naked. In place of conscious innocence and
purity came the sense of guilt and shame. "We are not to understand,"
says Dr. Conant, "that there is allusion here to any physical effect
of the eating of the forbidden fruit. So gross a conception is foreign
to the spirit and purpose of the narrative. As the language in ch. ii.
v. 5, is an expression of purity and peace of mind, so the language
used here is the expression of conscious guilt, of self-condemnation
and shame." Look at that criminal arrested. See him shiver as if cold.
His nature is exposed because it is weakened. Righteousness is a
defence. A man in sweet communion with God is girded with strength and
endurance, with recuperative energies, of which a man is ignorant when
he is alienated from God, and exposed to wrath. "For the word of God
is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing
even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow,
and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there
is no creature that is not manifest in his sight; but all things are
naked and opened to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." The Lord
God was abroad. They hid themselves. They were afraid. Ah, there is a
nakedness which the culprit feels, which cannot be covered up. God's
eye pierces through every form of concealment, and lays bare the cause
of ruin and the deed of shame. It is impossible to hide from God. If
this world is deceived by our disguises, and pasteboard faces, and
long robes, the Being with whom we have to do shall laugh at our
calamities and mock when our fear cometh, as we shall stand out in our
true characters, and shall be judged for the deeds done in the body,
whether they be good or evil.
3. Sin not only changed their relations to each other, awakening their
animal nature and killing their spiritual hope of sweet communion with
God, but it changed their relations towards God. They became aliens to
him. They lost their love, and were tortured by fear. They feared him
whom they once loved. "And Jehovah God called to the man, and said to
him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and
was afraid because I was naked, and hid myself. And he said, Who has
showed thee that thou art naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree which
I commanded thee not to eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou
gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate."
Adam, in his beginnings of sin, furnishes an example to sinners, which
has been abundantly copied. He says, "The woman whom thou gavest to be
with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate." He finds fault with
God the giver, and fails to condemn woman the sinner. The passage is
sometimes falsely interpreted, as an unworthy attempt of the man to
cast the blame of his offence on the woman. But the emphasis lies on
the words _whom thou gavest to be with me_, by which utterance he
seeks to transfer the responsibility from himself to God, who gave him
the companion by whose example he was betrayed into sin, instead of
placing it upon the woman, who was the guilty cause. Thus he refuses
or neglects to denounce the sin; but takes for granted that woman was
as God made her, and acted in accordance with her mechanism. Hence,
Adam argued, if any one was responsible, it was her Maker. She acted
in accordance with the nature which had been given her. We hear this
doctrine advanced daily. "I am what God made me." A cotton mill weaves
cotton because it was made to weave cotton. It is not responsible. It
weaves well or ill in accordance with the skill of the mechanism, and
not in accordance with the desire of the proprietor. If it weaves
ill, you blame the maker. If well, you praise the maker. Adam, in his
reply, ignored woman's moral nature, and talked of her as though she
had been a machine. "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she
gave me of the tree, and I ate." He forgot his own higher nature,
forgot his position, and fell. How he differed from the second Adam we
shall see before we are done.
It is noticeable, not only that Adam ignored woman's moral nature, and
the ruin wrought by sin, but he asserts a truth. Woman was given to
man to provide him with food, to spread the feast, and to keep the
house; and in her vocation, and while performing the duties assigned
her, she led him astray. It is noteworthy that God does not reply to
Adam, but turns to woman with the question, "_What is this that thou
hast done?_" recognizing the fact that she turned from God, and turned
towards God's enemy, and in listening, sinned; and in sinning, fell;
and in falling, carried with her man; and in carrying man, whelmed the
race in the ruin of the fall.
In speaking of woman as a tempter, we are not to forget that she is
woman. The serpent beguiled her, and she ate. Satan found in her an
ally; an so pleased was he with the results of the partnership he has
never dissolved the firm. While woman, as a helpmeet, becomes an ally
of Christ, as a tempter she is the ally of Satan. Not as a woman, but
as a tempter, she is the ally of the evil one. Satan works in her,
as a tempter, both to will and to do according to his good pleasure,
whenever she submits to his sway. The reason for this is recorded in
the Word of God. Some sneer at the reference to this time-honored
record; but we reassert the truth. The Bible is the revealed will of
God, and it declares the God-given sphere of woman. The Bible is,
then, our authority for saying woman must content herself with this
sphere, and try to meet its responsibilities, or she will lose
self-respect and cast away the regard of the community. Without the
Bible, her life is everywhere proven to be gloomy. With it, and
beneath its protection, she becomes an heir of hope.
Notice the characteristics of her power as a tempter.
1. She is regarded as God's best gift to man. She fills a place in
man's heart which is empty without her. It is difficult to think of
her as an ally of Satan. We prefer to think of her as God's first
and best gift to man. Even a fallen woman is regarded as a poor
unfortunate, and is tolerated because the many claim she has been more
sinned against than sinning. Excuses are woven for her, out of the
statements ever afloat, that she was in a starving condition, and was
driven to desperation; that she was turned out upon the world, was
deceived, led astray, and shipwrecked, and then did not care, and so
went from bad to worse, until she became the wreck of her former self,
and was given up to lust and the pollutions of shame. God forbid that
we should cast stones at her. In the words of Christ, let us rather
say to every fallen woman, "Go, _and sin no more_." But when a woman
persists in sinning, we should speak of her in the language of
Scripture, and boldly warn against her wiles.
A fallen woman is not God's gift to man. Before her fall she was God's
gift. In beauty Eve still remains the model. The artist delights to
paint her, and the poet sings her praises. But in conduct she is a
warning. Scripture pictures her going to Adam, hiding from him the
ruin wrought, and pressing to his lips the fruit which carried death.
(Then she was the devil's gift to a sin-cursed world.) A fallen
woman--a woman who refuses to love Christ and to serve him, who sweeps
out into the paths of dissipation and of lust, and becomes a seductive
wile--is the devil's ally; "for she forsaketh the guide of her youth,
and forgetteth the covenant of her God. For her house inclineth unto
death. None that go unto her returneth again, neither take they hold
of the paths of life."
Against such a woman God warns us in the thunder tones of wrath,
and the picture of her doom is lurid with the glow of the devouring
flames, "for her feet go down to death and her steps take hold on
hell."
This is but a single characteristic of her power as a tempter, and
we love to think that it is the least employed. A mind retaining the
perception of woman's worth, shrinks from the idea of linking her name
with impurity. We cherish the hope that she is virtuously inclined,
and cannot bear to think that she willingly forsakes the right and
casts herself down the steeps of ruin. Ah, woman, when this is not the
case society has a right to cast you off. It is because of this
faith that the good despise the woman who persists in folly, and who
secretly tries to seduce the unwary. God's judgments seem not too
severe, and the language is none too strong, though the denunciation
is terrible and the destruction certain. God makes no apologies for
sin. A fallen woman is an abomination. Her crimes are terrible. She is
the foe of the home, and the enemy of all that is pure. Hence she
is thrown out upon the rocks, and left there to die, unpitied and
unbefriended, without God and without hope in the world. By every
virtuous person she is despised. Hence, between a virtuous woman and
ruin there is a bridged chasm; whoever crosses that bridge leaves
hope, and honor, and happiness behind. Think of the thousands about us
going, unprayed for, down to perdition!
Society tolerates a man as it does not tolerate a woman. God did
business with Adam, but he does not mention Eve after her fall.
Society recognizes a fallen man as it cannot recognize a fallen woman.
Thus her crime is proclaimed to be the greater than man's, even by the
world. Let us be just. We do not heap the blame all on woman, even of
her fall. All we say is, she bears the burden of the woe. In this fact
she is warned. Society may pity her: it cannot palliate her guilt.
Thus is she advised against throwing herself away, and casting off her
allegiance to Christ, to herself, and to humanity. Let her fall, and
almost without exception she is hopelessly ruined. Society points the
finger of scorn at her, and, what is worse, the barriers to virtue
having been broken down, they seem to be destroyed. It is as difficult
to get back what a woman loses when she falls, as it would have been
to have forced an entrance back into Eden after the banishment.
2. The fact that she is a woman gives her influence. In her terrible
work beauty is an aid. God says, "Desire not her beauty in thy heart,
neither let her take thee with her eyelids." That is, look for
something besides a pretty face or a twinkling eye. "Pretty is that
pretty does," is a good motto, and utters a truth which is quite too
frequently ignored. Beauty is not to be despised or condemned. God,
who painted the lilies' bloom, and covered the sky with the wondrous
tints of a glowing sunset, must enjoy beauty, and surely made it to
please and to bless us. Yet when it comes to be used as an agent of
evil, it is to be shunned and disregarded. In all this world there is
nothing so empty as a heartless, brainless woman, with a pretty face.
Yet beauty is a power; so the heathen declare, "Every woman would
rather be handsome than good." That may be true in heathen, but it is
not true of all in Christian climes. If there is one woman who thinks
more of dress than duty, more of shadow than substance, more of Vanity
Fair than of Virtue's bower, then beware. You are not an ally of
Christ. At once begin a new life, if you would shun the dangers and
avoid the terrible doom threatening you. Cast away that which excites
passions and gives the body unrest, and seek the food for mind and
soul which gives rest and peace. Seek Christ, and through him victory
over self and over sin. Do something to brighten your home life and to
honor your Master. Clear your soul from the taint of vanity. Do not
rejoice in conquests, either that your power to allure may be seen by
other women, or for the pleasure of rousing passionate, feelings that
gratify your love of excitement. It must happen, no doubt, that frank
and generous women will excite love they do not reciprocate; but, in
nine cases out of ten, the woman has, half consciously, done much to
excite it. In this case she shall not be held guiltless, either as
to the unhappiness or injury of the lover. Pure love, inspired by a
worthy object, must ennoble and bless, whether mutual or not; but that
which is excited by coquettish attraction, of any grade of refinement,
must cause bitterness and doubt as to the reality of human goodness so
soon as the flush of passion is over. And that you may avoid all taste
for these false pleasures,
"steep the soul
In one pure love, and it will last thee long."
The love of truth, the love of excellence, whether or not you clothe
them in the person of a special object, will have power to save you
much of evil, and lead you into the green glades where the feet of the
virtuous have trod. Preserve the modesty of your sex by filling the
mind with noble desires, that shall ward off the corruptions of vanity
and idleness. "A profligate woman, who left her accustomed haunts and
took service in a New York boarding-house, said, 'She had never
heard talk so vile at the Five Points as from the ladies at the
boarding-house.' And why? Because they were idle; because, having
nothing worthy to engage them, they dwelt, with unnatural curiosity,
on the ill they dared not go to see." This seems like an exaggeration.
Yet Margaret Fuller is responsible for the utterance.[A] Avoid
idleness. The mind, like a mill, must have some thought in the hopper
of reflection, or the machinery will prove to be self-destructive.
Shun flattery. The woman who permits in her life the alloy of vanity;
who lives upon flattery, coarse or fine, is lost, and loses the
tribute paid the woman by the iron-handed warrior, whom he rejoiced to
recognize as his helpmeet, saying, "Whom God loves, to him he gives
such a wife."
[Footnote A: Woman of the Nineteenth Century, p. 168.]
The influence of married women over their younger sisters may be
beneficent and good. It often is pernicious and bad. Young women judge
of men very much by what married women say concerning men. If they
speak of men as virtuous and pure, as noble and generous; if they can
talk of their husbands as of men who have honored them with their
love, and whose kindness blesses their daily life, then will the
maiden of a pure heart believe that her dream is real, and that the
man of her choice is pure; whose heart is free and open as her own;
all of whose thoughts may be avowed; who is incapable of wronging the
innocent, or still further degrading the fallen,--a man, in short,
whose brute nature is entirely subject to the impulses of his
better self. Such men there are in countless numbers, who have kept
themselves free from stain, and who can look the purest maiden in the
eye and not shun the glance. Through God's grace they have been saved
from the path full of peril, and desire nothing more than to share
the confidence and friendship of the pure. If, on the other hand, the
unmarried are assured by the married that, "if they knew men as they
do,"--that is, by being married to them,--"they would not expect
continence or self-government from them;" if mothers permit their
daughters to mingle freely with the dissipated and vile because of
rank or wealth, and when warned that such are not fit companions for
a chaste being, reply, "All men are bad sometimes in their life; but
give them a pure wife and a home and they will not want to go wrong,"
then be not surprised if homes are converted into abodes of perpetual
sorrow, if not of shame, and the fair young bride is left to weep over
the sacrifice of virtue, of honor, and of love, on the altar of an
unholy passion. The influence of a pure woman over young women is
invaluable.
"Do not forget the unfortunates who dare not cross your guarded way.
If it do not suit you to act with those who have organized measures of
reform, then hold not yourself excused from acting in private. Seek
out these degraded women, give them then tender sympathy, counsel,
employment. Take the place of mothers, such as might have saved them
originally. If you can do little for those already under the ban of
the world,--and the best considered efforts have often failed, from a
want of strength in those unhappy ones to bear up against the sting of
shame and the frigidness of the world, which makes them seek oblivion
again in their old excitements,--you will at least leave a germ of
love and justice in their hearts, that will prevent their becoming
utterly embittered and corrupt." And you may learn the preventives
for those yet uninjured. These will be found in a diffusion of mental
culture, simple tastes, best brought by your example, a genuine
self-respect, and, above all, the love and fear of a divine in
preference to a human tribunal. Let woman live for God and the
development of her higher nature,--live so that she can be
self-helped, as well as helping,--then if she finds what she needs in
man embodied, she will know how to love, and be worthy of being loved.
Much is said about the underpay of woman as a cause of temptation. It
is for the interests of society that there should be an equality of
compensation wherever there is an equality of distribution. It is well
for woman to ask herself if she is ready to assume the burdens that
come from an equality of compensation, such as giving up the prospect
of marriage, or of sharing with man the toil of the field, of the
factory, as well as of the house. Would woman be willing to take upon
herself the responsibility of planning to economize, of building
churches, railroads, of entering into a competition with man?--Woman
is dependent, not independent.--For this reason man toils to keep his
wife, and is ashamed to have his wife keep him. His pride lies in
having his home a joy and his wife a helpmeet, rather than to have his
wife a rival and his home empty of happiness.
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."