This is only another form in which the social philosophy is pleased to
express its one idea. We need only notice the additional error
acquired by the change of language. “All men,” it is said, “are
created.” It is written in the first of Genesis, that “God created man
in his own image: in the image of God created he him: male and female
created he them.” The term “man” is, of course, to be understood in
its generic sense, and all that is affirmed is, that God directly
_created_ Adam and Eve, and all their posterity seminally in them; and
from whom, therefore, they have proceeded, as to both soul and body,
by _generation_, and not by a separate act of creation by Jehovah. Now
of these two created beings, one was placed in direct and immediate
subordination to the other; and although it be true, as it often
practically is, that the _fall_ has reversed this order of things, and
placed the wife at the head of affairs, still the doctrine of
headship, the doctrine of _inequality_, prevails in the one case as in
the other. It is not amiss, however, to remark in passing, that even
so great and humble a man as the Apostle Paul preferred the
old-fashioned doctrine: he insists that we observe the original order
of things: “I suffer not a woman to usurp authority over the man;” 1
Tim. ii. 12; “but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also
saith the law.” 1 Cor. xiv. 34.
As to other points in this dogma, they have been already treated. We
only add that philosophy, no less than religion and true patriotism,
cannot fail to regret that a dogma setting each of their claims aside,
and teaching the purest agrarianism, and that under the most deadly
form--the form of _pure abstract truth_--should have found its way
into that immortal instrument, the Declaration of American
Independence. We cannot otherwise account for it than by the fact that
one of the presiding minds of that great paper had become strongly
tinctured with the infidel philosophy of France.