not become one of her own. The equilateral idea is a
physiological[18] and psychological impossibility. The unity
is in the man. The woman by marriage becomes a member of the
man, therefore she cannot put him away; for a member cannot
put away the head; the impurity of the wife imperils the
family, renders pedigree and all concerned therein uncertain,
and so she may be put away. But the husband’s unchastity,
while it may be as sinful, yet has no such effect. It does not
render it doubtful who are rightful children of his stock, who
are entitled to the name that he and his wife both bear, and
therefore does not call for the severance of the marriage tie,
that is, the dissolution of the family. That is, divorce so
far as Scripture goes seems to be a measure for the protection
of the family and of the rightful inheritance of whatever is
to be transmitted to the children, and so a remedy open only
to man. There seems to be no way of preventing the abuse of
divorce, if any principle is admitted that will extend it to
woman.
Under this form of reasoning, both Dr. Gray and the English bishop
dispose with ease of the state obstacle to marriage with a deceased
wife’s sister. Inasmuch as by marriage the husband forms no ties of
consanguinity with the wife’s family, she having become a member of his
family without his having become a member of hers, marriage with his
deceased wife’s sister would be the same as marriage with an entire
stranger, saying:
As the husband enters into no connection with the wife’s
family, her sisters are no more his sisters than they had been
before. Therefore he may marry one of them as freely as any
one else, as far as any real principle involved in matrimony
is concerned.
The _Christian Register_, of Boston, commenting upon Dr. Gray’s work,
although itself a recognized organ of the Unitarian church, yet in a
spirit more in accord with modern thought, carefully corrected the size
of type in the word “wife” upon the title-page and outside of the book,
thus: HUSBAND AND wife:[19] also facetiously referring to the late
Artemus Ward, who at time of the late civil war was ready to sacrifice
all his wife’s relations.[20] These two works of the English bishop and
the American dean are consistent with the teaching of the Christian
ages in reference to woman. Not held as belonging primarily to herself,
but ever to some man, her very relationship to the mother who brought
her into life destroyed by law, she once again through the church
is presented to the world as a being without a birthright, not even
receiving for it Esau’s mess of pottage, or a father’s shorn blessing,
after its loss. She is held up to view as without father, mother, or
individual existence. Rev. Knox-Little, a high church clergyman of
England, traveled in the United States in the fall of 1880. During his
stay in Philadelphia, he preached a “Sermon to Women,” in the large
church of St. Clements. As reported in the _Times_ of that city, its
chief features were a representation of woman’s inferior intellect, her
duty of unqualified obedience to her husband, however evil his life,
the sinfulness of divorce and the blessedness of a large family of
children. He said:
God made himself to be born of a woman to sanctify the virtue
of endurance; loving submission is an attribute of woman;
men are logical, but women lacking this quality, have an
intricacy of thought. There are those who think woman can
be taught logic; this is a mistake, they can never by any
power of education arrive at the same mental status as that
enjoyed by man, but they have a quickness of apprehension,
which is usually called leaping at conclusions, that is
astonishing. There, then, we have distinctive traits of a
woman, namely: endurance, loving submission and quickness
of apprehension. Wifehood is the crowning glory of a woman.
In it she is bound for all time. To her husband she owes
the duty of unqualified obedience. There is no crime which
a man can commit which justifies his wife in leaving him or
applying for that monstrous thing, divorce. It is her duty to
subject herself to him always, and no crime that he can commit
can justify her lack of obedience. If he be a bad or wicked
man, she may gently remonstrate with him, but refuse him,
never. Let divorce be anathema; curse it; curse this accursed
thing, divorce; curse it, curse it! Think of the blessedness
of having children. I am the father of many and there have
been those who have ventured to pity me; “keep your pity for
yourself,” I have replied. “They never cost me a single pang.”
In this matter let women exercise that endurance and loving
submission, which with intricacy of thought are their only
characteristics.
Such a sermon as the above preached to women under the full blaze of
nineteenth century civilization, needs few comments. In it woman’s
inferiority and subordination are as openly asserted as at any time
during the dark ages. According to Rev. Knox-Little, woman possesses
no responsibility; she is deprived of conscience, intelligent thought,
self-respect, and is simply an appendage to man, a thing. As the clergy
in the Middle Ages divided rights into those of persons and things,
themselves being the persons, the laity things, so the Rev. Knox-Little
and his ilk of today, divide the world into persons and things, men
being the persons, and woman the things. Rev. Dr. T. De Witt Talmage,
of Brooklyn, New York, joins his brethren in preaching of “the first,
fair, frail woman; her creation, her fall and her sorrow.” Speaking of
the trials of housekeepers, he said:
Again, there is the trial of severe economy. Nine hundred and
ninety-nine households out of the thousand are subject to it,
some under more, and some under less stress of circumstances.
Especially if a man smokes very expensive cigars and takes
very costly dinners at the restaurants, he will be severe in
demanding domestic economics. This is what kills thousands
of women; attempting to make five dollars do the work of
seven. How the bills come in. The woman is the banker of the
household; she is the president, and cashier, and teller,
discount clerk, and there is a panic every four weeks. This
thirty years war against high prices; this perpetual study of
economics, this lifelong attempt to keep the outgoes less than
the income exhausts millions of housekeepers. O, my sister,
this is part of divine discipline.
It should require but little thought upon woman’s part to see how
closely her disabilities are interwoven with present religious belief
and teaching as to her inferiority and pre-ordained subordination. If
she needs aid to thought, the Cravens, the Knox-Littles, the Talmages,
will help her. The spirit of the priesthood, Protestant equally with
Catholic, is that of the early and middle ages. The foundation being
the same, the teaching is of similar character. From the sermons
referred to, we can justly declare they express the opinions of the
priesthood as a body; we meet no protest against them. Not a single
church has denied these degrading theories; no clergyman has preached
against the doctrines mentioned, blasphemous as they are against the
primal rights of the soul. These sermons stand as representatives, not
only of high church theology in regard to woman, but as expressing the
belief of all churches in her creation and existence as an inferior
and appendage to man. All her suffering, material or spiritual, her
restrictions, her sorrows, her deprivation of the right of unrestricted
conscience are depicted as parts of her divine discipline, which
she must accept with endurance and loving submission. Even from the
criminal, she is not to free herself, or refuse him obedience. Scarcely
a Protestant sect that has not within a few years, in some way, placed
itself upon record as sustaining the doctrine of woman’s subordination.
The Pan-Presbyterian Council that assembled in Edinburg a few years
since refused to admit a woman even as a listener to its proceedings
although women constitute at least two-thirds of the membership of
that church. A solitary woman who persisted in remaining to listen
to the discussions of this body was removed by force; “six stalwart
Presbyterians” lending their ungentle aid to her ejection. The same
Pan-Presbyterian body in session in Philadelphia, the summer of 1880,
laughed to scorn the suggestion of a liberal member that the status to
woman in that church should receive some consideration; referring to
the work of the Sisters of Charity, in the Catholic church, and that of
women among the Quakers. Although this question was twice introduced it
was as often “met with derisive laughter,” and no action was taken upon
it. But had this liberal member been wise enough to have brought before
this body the fact that the Presbyterian church is losing its political
influence because of the great preponderance of its women members
without the ballot, he would have received more consideration. As all
churches seek influence in politics, we may rest assured that when
the church as a whole, or any sect thereof, shall be found sustaining
the political rights of woman or her religious equality in the church,
it will be from the worldly wisdom of a desire to retain fleeting
political power. The life or the death of the church largely depends
upon its political forethought.
Differing political rights have ever been productive of diverse moral
codes. What was considered right for the king and the nobility has
ever been wrong for the peasant. The moral rights of the master and
the slave were ever dissimilar, while under Christianity two codes of
morals have ever been extant, the lax code for man, the strict for
woman. This diversity is shown by the different position that society
accords to an immoral man and an immoral woman, but nowhere is the
recognition of differing codes of morals for man and woman as clearly
shown as in the church, as presented in discourses of clergymen. To
them adultery in the husband is merely a pastime in which he can
indulge without injury to his wife, who is powerless to put him away,
nor has she been wronged. But to the contrary, under the same teaching,
should the wife prove thus unfaithful she should immediately be cast
out. Colored pastors unite with their white brethren in denying
woman’s moral, spiritual or personal equality with man. Rev. Alexander
Crummel,[21] a colored clergyman of Washington, rector of St. Lukes
(Episcopal) church, in 1881, preached a sermon upon the biblical
position of woman, which was published in tract form for circulation.
He referred to her as having been created inferior to man, with no
right, natural or acquired by creation or revelation, to govern herself
or hold opinions of her own. This sermon—“Marriage and Divorce”—laid
down the following principles:
Marriage is a divine institution. It came from God. It is
not, therefore, the creation of legislative action. It is not
merely a civil contract. It is not the invention of man. The
estate of matrimony is a sacred one; originated by the will
of God, and governed by his law. Marriage is indissoluble.
Adultery on part of the wife is ground for divorce. Thus
far we have considered the case with reference to the
unfaithfulness of the wife, and have shown that when a woman
violates the covenant of marriage by adultery, her husband
has the right to divorce her. But now the question comes, “Is
not this a reciprocal right?” When husbands are unfaithful,
have not wives the right to divorce them? My reply is that
no warrant for such divorce can be found in the Bible. Under
both covenants, the right of divorce is given exclusively to
husband. The right in all cases is guaranteed to the man only.
And so far forth we have the word of God for its specific
reservation to husbands. In no case is it even hinted that a
woman has the right of divorce, if even her husband be guilty
of unfaithfulness. There is a broad, general obligation laid
upon woman in the marriage relation. The sum of the matter
respecting the woman seems to be this; the woman is bound by
the ties of wedlock during the whole period of her husband’s
life; and even under distressful circumstances has no right to
break them; i. e., by divorce.
The additional reasons presented by Rev. Mr. Crummel against woman’s
right of divorce, even for the infidelity of the husband, are “The
hidden mystery of generation, the wondrous secret of propagated life
committed to the trust of woman.” In thus referring to those laws of
nature whose conditions are not yet fully understood, Rev. Mr. Crummel
presented the strongest reasons why the mother and not the father
should be regarded as the true head of the family. This “hidden mystery
of generation, this wondrous secret of propagated life, committed to
the trust of woman, “most forcibly demonstrates that she should be
the one in whose power is placed the opportunity for escape from an
adulterous husband, thus enabling her to keep her body a holy temple
for its divine-human uses, over which as priestess she alone should
possess control. The assertion of Rev. Alexander Crummel, that an
adulterous husband cannot do the same wrong to the wife that the wife
does to the husband under similar circumstances, is absolutely false.
By reason of certain “physiological mysteries,” to which he refers,
but to which he also shows absolute ignorance, the wrong done woman by
reason of her potential motherhood is infinitely greater to her than
similar infidelity upon her part can possibly be to the husband. And
not to her alone but to the children whom she may bring to life. His
attempted justification of the husband’s adultery upon the plea that
“when a man begets bastard children, he does so beyond the boundary of
the home,” and so cannot “foist spurious children upon the household
and kindred—that the family is kept together,” are most sophistical and
fallacious methods of reasoning, entirely inimical to truth and purity.
Of an absolutely selfish and libidinous character, they have been used
by profligates in the church and in the state as pleas for a license
that has no regard to the rights of woman, or the duties of fatherhood,
and are not only essentially immoral in themselves, but are equally
destructive of personal and social purity.
The individual and not the family is the social unit; the rights of
individuals are foremost. Immorality of man everywhere presents a
more serious and destructive aspect than that of woman. Aside from
the unmarried mother whom society does not recognize as longer a part
of it, is the irreparable wrong done to those innocent human beings
whom Rev. Mr. Crummel designates as “spurious children;” whom the
Catholics call “sacrilegious” when the father is shown to be a priest,
and upon whom society at large terms “illegitimate.” Closely connected
with injury to the innocent child itself, thrust into being without
provision for its future needs, is the detriment to society which thus
finds itself compelled to assume the duties belonging to the bastard’s
father. Such children, for whom neither home nor fatherly care awaits,
are allowed by him to grow up neglected street waifs, uneducated,
untrained, uncared for, filling alms-houses, reformatories, and prisons
of the land, perhaps to die upon the gallows. The responsibility of
such fathers is not a subject of church teaching; it is simply passed
carelessly by, regardless of the unspeakable wrongs connected with it.
If, as the Rev. Mr. Turnstall asserts, the Bible is not for woman,
if his position is true, or if that of the Jews who claim that the
Ten Commandments were given to man alone, is true, it is to man alone
that adultery is forbidden. Luther asserted that the Ten Commandments
applied to neither Gentiles nor Christians, but only to the Jews. It
was to man alone that Christ spoke against adultery saying: “Whosoever
looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery
with her, in his heart.” To man, Christ also said: “Owing to the
hardness of their hearts, Moses permitted a man to put away his wife,
but it was not so from the beginning.” Man, and not woman, is commanded
to leave father and mother; man is to cleave unto his wife, not woman
unto her husband. It was the men of Corinth whom Paul addressed
concerning lewdness, “Such fornication was never known among the
heathen as that a man should take his father’s wife.”[22]
One of the most remarkable facts connected with church teaching, is
the lightness with which such positive declarations of Christ as to
the relations of husband and wife are cast aside, or his teaching
entirely reversed, in order that man may receive license for an
immorality forbidden to woman.
It must be noted that the chief reason given by the church for assuming
woman’s greater guilt in committing adultery is not based upon the
greater immorality of the act, _per se_, but the injury to property
rights, succession, etc. It must also be noted that the great objection
of the church to divorce on part of woman lies in the fact that the
wife thus escapes from a condition of bondage to one of comparative
freedom. In securing a divorce she repudiates the husband’s “headship,”
she thus subverts his authority; by this act she places herself upon
an equality of moral and property rights with man, and the church not
admitting such equality between man and woman, is hostile to divorce
upon her part. Every new security gained by woman for the protection
of her civil rights in or out of the family, is a direct blow at the
church theory of her inferiority and subordination. Her full freedom is
to be looked for through her increased legal and political rights and
not through the church.
During the same year of the remarkable sermon by Rev. Alexander
Crummel, 1881, Rev. S. W. Dilke read a paper before the Social Science
Association at Saratoga, entitled “Lax Divorce Legislation.” He
showed the same disregard for the rights of the individual, when the
individual was a wife, as his brother clergymen, saying: “Our lax
divorce system treats the wrongs of the wife chiefly as those of a
mere individual.” He was assiduous in his regard for the protection of
the womanly nature, recognizing sex, “her sex” as “a profound fact in
nature,” but why the sex of woman should be a more “profound fact” than
the sex of man, he did not show. That woman now claims a recognition
of her individuality as a being possessed of personal rights, is the
basis of present attack upon divorce by the church; nor is the state
more ready to admit her individual representation and personal rights
of self-government. In March, 1887, Rev. E. B. Hurlbert preached a
sermon in the First Baptist church of San Francisco on “The Relation of
Husband and Wife,” afterward published, in which he said:
The principal objection to the Episcopal marriage service
raised by the self-willed woman of the period is that it
requires her to _obey_ her husband. But this objection is
leveled equally against the requirement of the word of
God, and, furthermore, the additional promise to honor and
love him can only be kept in the spirit of obedience. This
obligation is founded upon the fact that he is her husband,
and if she cannot reverence him for what he is in himself,
still she must reverence him for the position which he holds.
And, again, she must render this submissive reverence to
her husband’s headship as unto the Lord, as is fit in the
Lord. She reverences him not simply as a man, but as her
own husband, behind whom stands the Lord himself. It is the
Lord who has made him husband, and the honor with which she
regards him, though himself personally not deserving it, is
in reality an honoring of the Lord. Many a Christian woman,
actuated by this motive, has been most tenderly submissive,
dutiful and patient, as towards the most unreasonable and
despotic of husbands—inspired by the remembrance that it was
a service rendered unto Christ. Let the wife, then, reverence
her husband for what he is in himself, for his loving and
noble qualities; but if these qualities do not belong to him,
then let her reverence him for the sake of his office—simply
because he is her husband—and in either event let her
reverence him, because in doing so she is honoring the Lord
and Savior.
It is but a short time since the pastor of the Swedenborgian church,
Washington, D.C., as reported by one of his flock, expressed to that
body his opinion that the church had better remain unrepresented rather
than have women represent it, and this, although nine-tenths of his
congregation are women. It is, however, pleasing to state that the
committee for that purpose elected an equal number of women with men;
the efforts of the pastor against woman, securing but seven votes. The
Unitarian and Universalist churches which ordain women to preach and
administer the ordinances, still make these women pastors feel that the
innovation is not a universally acceptable one. In a lengthy pastoral
letter issued by the Episcopal convention held in Chicago a few years
since, it was asserted that the claim of the wife to an equal right
with her husband to the control of her person, her property and her
earnings was “disparaging the Christian law of the household.” The
Methodist church still refuses to place woman upon an equality with
man, either in the ministry or in lay representation, a few years since
taking from them their previous license to preach, and this despite
the fact that Mrs. Van Cott, a woman evangelist, did such severe work
during a period of fourteen years, as to seriously injure her health,
and so successful were her ministrations that she brought more converts
to the church than a dozen of its most influential bishops during the
same time. To such bitter lengths has opposition to woman’s ordination
been carried in that church that Rev. Mr. Buckley, editor of _The
Christian Advocate_,[23] when debating the subject, declared that he
would oppose the admission of the mother of our Lord into the ministry,
the debate taking on most unseemly form.[24] Miss Oliver who had long
been pastor of the Willoughby Street church, in Brooklyn, appealed
to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, at its
session in Cincinnati, May, 1880, for full installment and ordination,
saying:
“I am sorry to trouble our dear mother church with any
perplexing question, but it presses me also, and the church
and myself must decide something. I am so thoroughly convinced
that the Lord has laid commands upon me in this direction
that it becomes with me really a question of my own soul’s
salvation.” She then gave the reasons that induce her to
believe that she is called to pastoral work, and concluded:
“I have made almost every conceivable sacrifice to do what I
believe to be God’s will. Brought up in a conservative circle
in New York City, that held it a disgrace for a woman to work,
surrounded with the comforts and advantages of ample means,
and trained in the Episcopal church, I gave up home, friends
and support, went counter to prejudices that had become second
nature to me, worked several years to constant exhaustion,
and suffered cold, hunger and loneliness; the things hardest
for me to bear were laid upon me. For two months my own
mother would not speak to me. When I entered the house she
turned and walked away, and when I sat at the table she did
not recognize me. I have passed through tortures to which the
flames of martyrdom would be nothing, for they would end in a
day; and through all this time and today I could turn off to
positions of comparative ease and profit. I ask you, fathers
and brethren, tell me what would you do in my place? Tell me
what would you wish the church to do toward you, were you
in my place? Please only apply the golden rule, and vote in
conference accordingly.”
In answer to this powerful and noble appeal and in reply to all women
seeking the ministry of that church, the General Conference passed this
resolution:
Resolved: That women have already all the rights and
privileges in the Methodist church, that are good for them,
and that it is not expedient to make any change in the books
of discipline that would open the doors for their ordination
to the ministry.