We all know her--she is simply the woman of the past with an added
grace--a newer charm. Some of her dearest ones call her "selfish"
because she thinks so much of herself she spends her whole time helping
others. She represents the composite beauty, sweetness, and nobility of
all those who scorn self for the sake of Love and her handmaiden
Duty--of all those who seek the brightness of truth not as the moth to
be destroyed thereby, but as the lark who soars and sings to the great
sun. She is of those who have so much to give they want no time to take,
and their name is legion. She is as full of beautiful possibilities as a
perfect harp, and she realizes that all the harmonies of the universe
are in herself, while her own soul plays upon magic strings the
unwritten anthems of love. She is the apostle of the true, the
beautiful, the good, commissioned to complete all that the twelve have
left undone. Hers is the mission of missions--the highest of all--to
make the body not the prison, but the palace of the soul, with the brain
for its great white throne.
When she comes like the south wind into the cold haunts of sin and
sorrow her words are smiles and her smiles are the sunlight which heals
the stricken soul. Her hand is tender--but steel tempered with holy
resolve, and as one whom her love had glorified once said--she is soft
and gentle, but you could no more turn her from her course than winter
could stop the coming of spring. She has long learned with patience, and
to-day she knows many things dear to the soul far better than her
teachers. In olden times the Jews claimed to be the conservators of the
world's morals--they treated woman as a chattel, and said that because
she was created after man, she was created solely for man. Too many
still are Jews who never called Abraham "Father," while the Jews
themselves have long acknowledged woman as man's proper helpmeet. In
those days women had few lawful claims and no one to urge them. True,
there were Miriam and Esther, but they sang and sacrificed for their
people, not for their sex. To-day there are ten thousand Esthers, and
Miriams by the million, who sing best by singing most for their own sex.
They are demanding the right to help make the laws, or at least to help
enforce the laws upon which depends the welfare of their husbands, their
children, and themselves. Why should our selfish self longer remain deaf
to their cry? The date is no longer B.C. Might no longer makes right,
and in this fair land at least fear has ceased to kiss the iron heel of
wrong. Why then should we continue to demand woman's love and woman's
help while we recklessly promise as lover and candidate what we never
fulfill as husband and office-holder? In our secret heart our better
self is shamed and dishonored, and appeals from Philip drunk to Philip
sober, but has not yet the moral strength and courage to prosecute the
appeal. But the east is rosy and the sunlight cannot long be delayed.
Woman must not and will not be disheartened by a thousand denials or a
million of broken pledges. With the assurance of faith she prays, with
the certainty of inspiration she works, and with the patience of genius
she waits. At last she is becoming "as fair as the morn, as bright as
the sun, and as terrible as an army with banners" to those who march
under the black flag of oppression and wield the ruthless sword of
injustice.
In olden times it was the Amazons who conquered the invincibles, and we
must look now to their daughters to overcome our own allied armies of
evil and to save us from ourselves. She must and will succeed, for as
David sang--"God shall help her and that right early." When we try to
praise her later works it is as if we would pour incense upon the rose.
It is the proudest boast of many of us that we are "bound to her by
bonds dearer than freedom," and that we live in the reflected royalty
which shines from her brow. We rejoice with her that at last we begin to
know what John on Patmos meant--"And there appeared a great wonder in
Heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and
upon her head a crown of twelve stars." She brought to warring men the
Prince of Peace, and He, departing, left His scepter not in her hand,
but in her soul. "The time of times" is near when "the new woman" shall
subdue the whole earth with the weapons of peace. Then shall wrong be
robbed of her bitterness and ingratitude of her sting; revenge shall
clasp hands with pity, and love shall dwell in the tents of hate, while
side by side, equal partners in all that is worth living for, shall
stand the new man with the new woman.
(_Christian Science Journal_, January, 1895.)