While under advancing civilization, a recognition of the religious rights of woman is steadily progressing among people at large, it requires but slight investigation to prove that olden church theories regarding her not only came into the reformation, but largely remain the same today. The Christianity of the ages having taught the existence of a superior and an inferior sex possessing different rights in the Christian Church, held accountable to different codes of morals, it is not strange that we do not find morality to have been more of a fundamental principle among the pastors of early Protestant churches than in the Catholic priesthood. The doctrine of “Once in grace, always in grace,” carries with it a plea for vice, and the early experience of strict Calvinistic Scotland was much that of mediaeval Catholic Europe. The Presbyterian Conventicles early bore an extremely evil reputation. The fact that ministers of the reformed church were permitted marriage did not change priestly teaching that woman was created solely for man, and they found apologies in the Bible for illicit conduct. These Protestant clergymen taught, as had the Catholic, that a priest was incapable of sinning; and from the Sermon on the Mount, “To the pure all things are pure,” was quoted in proof of this assertion. Even when under circumstances of great personal peril and danger to life, the trust of parishioners in the morality of their shepherds was often abused; of this, Rev. David Williamson, one of the most eminent Presbyterian ministers of Edinburgh, was a conspicuous example. In defense of his immorality Mr. Williamson said, “Verily, I do not deny that with St. Paul I have a law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity unto the love of sin which is in my members.” The strangest sermons, most insulting to woman and too indecorous for quotation, were constantly preached; while her inferiority and incapacity for understanding even the gospel was also as constantly declared from the pulpit. An old Presbyterian preacher, Rev. David Douglas, discovering a woman weeping in the kirk, pointed toward her, crying, “Wife, what makes you weep? I am sure thou understandeth not what I am saying; my discourse is directed to the brethren and not to the like of you.” The present century, with all its enlightenment does not cease to give us glimpses of that favorite mediaeval doctrine that “sin can be killed with sin as the best way of becoming innocent again,” and its concomitant, that it is impossible for a person in grace to commit sin. The doctrines of holiness and entire sanctification, taught by some sects today, and the theory that all experience is necessary in order to a full development of character, are of the same nature. Eastern “Wisdom Religion” declares that a person can become neither God nor deva without passing through all experience, returning again and again to earth for this purpose.
The departure of the soul-atom from the bosom of the Divinity is a radiation from the life of the Great All, who expends his strength in order that he may grow again and live by its return. God thereby acquires new vital force, provided by all the transformation that the soul-atom has undergone. Its return is its final reward. Such is the secret of the evolution of the Great Being and of the Supreme Soul.
Directions for seeking out the way:
Seek it not by any one road, to each temperament there is one road which seems the most desirable. But the way is not found by devotion alone, by religious contemplation alone, by ardent progress, by self-sacrificing labor, by studious observation of life. None can take the disciple more than one step onward. All steps are necessary to make up the ladder, one by one, as they are surmounted. The virtues of men are steps indeed, necessary—not by any means to be dispensed with. Yet, though they create a fine atmosphere and happy future, they are useless if they stand alone. The whole nature of man must be used wisely by the one who desires to enter the way. Each man is to himself absolutely the way, the truth and the life. Seek it by plunging into the mysterious and glorious depths of your own inmost being. Seek it by testing all experience, by utilizing the senses in order to understand the growth and meaning of individuality and the beauty and obscurity of those other divine fragments which are struggling side by side with you, and form the race to which you belong.
The Catholic and Calvinistic doctrines of woman’s inferiority of position and intellect taught from the pulpit, are by no means relegated to past centuries, but continue to be publicly taught by the Protestant clergy of every sect, as fully as by their Catholic and Greek brethren. The first National Woman Suffrage Convention which assembled in Washington, 1869, having invited Rev. Chaplain Gray, of the House, to open its proceedings with prayer, he referred in this petition to woman as an after-thought of the Creator, an inferior and secondary being, called into existence for the special benefit of man. The noble old Quakeress, Lucretia Mott, sitting in an attitude of devout attention, suddenly raised her head, and at close of the prayer, Bible in hand, she read aloud the account of the creation, Genesis I. 27-28, woman and man equals, both having been given dominion over nature. The thirtieth anniversary of the first public demand of woman for the recognition of her equality of right with man, held in Rochester, N.Y., July 18, 1878, passed a series of resolutions asserting woman’s equality and religious rights with man. Three of these proved especially obnoxious to the clergy of the country, in declaring the first duty of every individual to be self development; the duty of every woman to be guided by her own reason rather than the authority of another; and that it was owing to the perversion of the religious element in woman that she had been so completely subjugated to priestcraft and superstition.
Resolved: That as the first duty of every individual is self-development, the lessons of self-sacrifice and obedience taught to woman by the Christian church have been fatal, not only to her own vital interests, but through her, to those of the race.
Resolved: That the great principle of the Protestant Reformation, the right of individual conscience and judgment heretofore exercised by men alone, should now be claimed by woman; that, in the interpretation of Scripture, she should be guided by her own reason, and not by the authority of the church.
Resolved: That it is through the perversion of the religious element in woman—playing upon her hopes and fears of the future, holding this life with all its high duties in abeyance to that which is to come—that she and the children she has borne have been wrongfully subjugated by priestcraft and superstition.
These resolutions immediately called forth a sermon in opposition from the Rev. A. H. Strong, D.D., president of the Rochester Theological Seminary (Baptist) in which he said:
She is subordinate to man in office, she is to be helper, not principal. Therefore man has precedence in the order of creation, woman is made of man, and to supply the felt need of man. The race, therefore, is called the race of man and not the race of woman. For this office of subordination and whether they assert it or not, women are fitted by their very constitution, and in the very creation of mankind in the garden of beauty undefiled by the slimy track of the serpent as it was, God ordained the subordination of woman and the differences of nature that makes her subordination inevitable. The power of rule seems to me to have been invested in the head of the family that he may act for them, or rather that they may act through him.
The assertion of this theologian that “the race therefore is called the race of man and not the race of woman,” is of the same character as that of Inquisitor Sprenger in regard to the word femina, as applied to woman, showing the intellectual calibre of both inquisitor and theologian to be the same. But in their assertion of woman’s inferiority and subordination, neither Chaplain Gray nor President Strong proceeded quite as far as an opposing speaker at the Philadelphia Woman Suffrage Convention of 1854, who said, “Let woman first prove that she has a soul, both the Bible and the Church deny it.” Here we are set back to the Macon Council of the sixth century, which debated the question of woman’s humanity.
That the church of the nineteenth century possesses the same character as that of the fourteenth, the twelfth, and fifth, was forcibly illustrated during the early days of the anti-slavery struggle, especially in its persecution of the women who took part in that reform. Lucretia Mott and Esther Moore were integral members of the American Anti-slavery Society, having assisted in the convention which organized this society in 1833. Shortly afterward the Grimke sisters of South Carolina, Sarah and Angelina, convinced of the sinfulness of slavery, left their delightful home in Charleston, and coming North, spoke eloquently through Massachusetts against those wrongs of which they themselves had been witnesses. The church, becoming frightened at woman’s increasing power and influence, determined to crush her work. Its action began with the Orthodox Congregational, at that time the largest and most influential ecclesiastical body of Massachusetts, and in 1837 the General Association of Massachusetts issued a pastoral letter calling upon all “churches under their care” to defend themselves by closing their doors against the abolitionists, who had set aside the laws of God by welcoming women to their platforms and allowing them to speak in public; section third was the most significant portion of this pastoral letter.
III. We invite your attention to the dangers which at present seem to threaten the female character with wide spread and permanent injury.
The appropriate duties and influence of woman are clearly stated in the New Testament. Those duties and that influence are unobtrusive and private, but the source of mighty power. When the mild, dependent, softening influence of woman under the sternness of man’s opinions is fully exercised, society feels the effects of it in a thousand forms. The power of woman is her dependence, flowing from the consciousness of that weakness which God has given her for her protection, and which keeps her in those departments of life that form the character of individuals and of the nation. There are social influences which females use in promoting piety and the great objects of Christian benevolence which we cannot too highly commend. We appreciate the unostentatious prayers and efforts of woman in advancing the cause of religion at home and abroad; in Sabbath schools; in leading religious inquirers to the pastors for instruction; and in all such associated effort as becomes the modesty of her sex; and earnestly hope that she may abound more and more in these labors of piety and love.
But when she assumes the place and tone of man as a public reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary; we put ourselves in self-defense against her; she yields the power which God has given her for her protection, and her character becomes unnatural. If the vine whose strength and beauty is to lean upon the trellis work, and half conceal its clusters, thinks to assume the independence and the overshadowing nature of the elm, it will not only cease to bear fruit, but fall in shame and dishonor into the dust. We cannot, therefore, but regret the mistaken conduct of those who encourage females to bear an obtrusive and ostentatious part in measures of reform, and countenance any of that sex who so far forget themselves as to itinerate in the character of public lecturers and teachers. We especially deplore the intimate acquaintance and promiscuous conversation of females with regard to things which ought not to be named; by which that modesty and delicacy which is the charm of domestic life, and which constitutes the true influence of woman in society is consumed, and the way opened, as we apprehend, for degeneracy and ruin.
We say these things not to discourage proper influences against sin, but to secure such reformation as we believe is scriptural, and will be permanent.
That we may rightly judge the character of this pastoral letter, it must be remembered, that no discussion upon what is known as “the woman question” took place at those meetings, which were entirely devoted to the southern slave. This letter was written by men, emanating from a body of christian people that sustained colored slavery as an institution upon which God had as equally placed his sanction, as upon the subordination of woman. To such extent have the conscience and will been under the bondage of the priesthood, that the more timid members of the anti-slavery society became frightened, even some of those who believed in woman’s equality advising these speakers to yield their rights in the meetings, lest the ministers who had joined them should withdraw, taking others with them. Thus priestly intolerance and the timidity of anti-slavery men, had the effect of silencing the philanthropic and eloquent Grimke sisters, in their efforts for the freedom of the slave. After ten months work, their voices were heard no more. These sisters were not only persecuted in the North, under ban of the church, but in the South the State united with the Church, and by a decree of the city of Charleston they were rendered permanent exiles from home, and informed that should they return despite this, they would not be able to escape personal violence from a mob. With one noble exception, this mandate of the church and clergy had effect for a time in silencing woman’s plea for the slave. For seven long years the voice of but one woman, that of Abby Kelly, was heard upon the anti-slavery platform, and the persecutions of the church made her life one long martyrdom; her appeals for the slave were met by mob violence, furious howls, cries, and the vilest language being supplemented by more material efforts for silencing her voice. Were these proceedings not so thoroughly substantiated, the time so shortly past, credence could not be given as to the means used against this noble woman to prevent her pleading for those so greatly wronged. Ministers of high standing assailed her from the pulpit, a favorite text being, “Revelations” 2-20. I “have a few things against thee, because thou suffereth that woman, Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication.” Not alone the Congregational body, but all Christian sects, were imbued with the same persecuting spirit, a Methodist presiding elder characterizing the Garrisonian societies, as no longer anti-slavery, but “no-government, no-sabbath, no-church, no-bible, no-marriage, woman’s rights societies.”
That woman had assumed the right to speak in public for the oppressed was the origin of all this vituperation. Its real cause was of the same nature as that which laid 30,000 heads low, at St. Bartholomew, that woman’s voice had been heard in public contrary to the teaching of the church. It was perhaps foreseen that she might, as really at a later period was done, draw a vivid illustration of the similitude between the condition of the white wife and the black slave. The unity and peace of the World’s Anti-slavery Convention, London, 1840, was disturbed by the hostility of several clergymen, and a few bigoted laymen of the same spirit, who objected to the recognition of the women delegates sent by several American societies, among whom were Lucretia Mott and Esther Moore, members of the parent organization. After a spirited discussion their admission was decided to be a violation of the ordinances of Almighty God, and their credentials were rejected.
In 1843, the Hopkinson Association of Congregational Divines, of New Hampshire, unanimously enacted a statute in opposition to women opening their lips in church, even to “sigh” or “groan” in contrition; doubtless agreeing with Minister Douglas, that they were incapable of understanding a discourse directed to the brethren, who alone were allowed to shout “Amen,” “Bless the Lord,” and “Glory.” By a strange inconsistency women were still allowed to sing “under men as leaders.” This statute of restriction declared:
But, as to leading men, either in instruction or devotion, and as to any interruption or disorder in religious meetings, “Let your women keep silence in the churches;” not merely let them be silent, but let them keep or preserve silence. Not that they may not preach, or pray, or exhort merely, but they may not open their lips to utter any sounds audibly. Let not your women in promiscuous religious meetings preach or pray audibly, or exhort audibly, or sigh, or groan, or say Amen, or utter the precious words, “Bless the Lord,” or the enchanting sounds, “Glory! Glory!”
In 1888, forty-five years after this statute, Rev. Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler in the New York Evangelist, gave his opinion in regard to woman’s action in reform work and her demand for a share in making the laws which govern her, in this wise:
We can say frankly to our temperance brethren, that if they attempt to lash the wise project of prohibition of saloons, and the foolish project of female suffrage inseparably together, they will encounter fatal opposition. They will repel tenfold more sensible voters than they will win. Their most eloquent and logical advocate, Dr. Herrick Johnson, is intensely opposed to the Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton doctrines of woman suffrage, as I am. Nineteen-twentieths of our Presbyterian ministers will never cast a vote which is nominally only for prohibition, and yet is really a vote for burdening womanhood with civil government. What is true of our church is true of the Episcopal, Reformed, Baptist, Congregationalist, and the most influential portion of the Methodist church.
The same year of President Strong’s opposing sermon, 1878, the United Presbyterian Assembly passed a resolution to the effect that they found no sufficient authority in Scripture to warrant the ordination of women as deacons, yet they might with profit to themselves, and great advantage to the cause of suffering humanity, and for Christ, be allowed to act as assistants to deacons, thus emphasizing the dominant church teaching of woman’s irresponsibility and secondary position to man. The same year, however, an advance step was taken in Europe, the Synod of Born (Old Catholic), following the example of Pere Hyacinth, adopted a resolution in favor of the marriage of the clergy by a vote of 76 to 22. At the same time the Old Catholics were taking this advance step, the Protestant Episcopal Diocesan Convention of South Carolina forbade woman’s voting upon church matters, although it was proven during the discussion that in some parishes that were but five male members. The Southern Baptist Convention, held in Savannah, Georgia, 1885, appointed a committee with title of, and whose business was to decide upon “Representation by Women” in church affairs. This committee reported in favor of the word “brethren” instead of “members” being incorporated in the constitution, thus confirming the right of man alone to take part in church councils. Having thus effectively closed the lips of women on discussion of church questions, the convention introduced a resolution on divorce followed by a speech declaring that but one cause could exist. The convention having shut off all chance for woman’s opinion upon this question of equal and even of more vital interest to her, “applaudingly and overwhelmingly adopted the resolution.” At the annual election for officers of Christ Church, New Haven, Connecticut, April 1886, a discussion arose upon the right of women to become members of the society and consequently voted it in. Several ladies having signified a desire to unite with the society, Bishop Williams was consulted as to their admission; he decided the Canon was clearly against them, and on motion of the clerk their application was rejected, only one member speaking in favor.
The title of the sermons still preached upon woman, illustrate priestly thought regarding her. Among those of recent date are found, “Blighted Women;” “Sins of Women;” “Women and Divorce;” “Women and Skepticism;” “Woman’s Place and Work;” “Our Common Mother;” “The Relation of Husband and Wife;” “Marriage and Divorce;” “The Sphere of Woman;” “Husband and Wife;” “A Mission for Women;” “The Church and the Family;” “The Duties of Wives to Husbands;” these sermons all subordinating woman to man in every relation of life; all designed to repress woman’s growing tendency towards freedom, and her claim for the same opportunities in life conceded to man. That the clerical teaching of woman’s subordination to man was not alone a doctrine of the dark ages, is proven by the most abundant testimony of today. The famous See trial of 1876, which shook not only the Presbytery of Newark, but the whole Synod of New Jersey, and finally the General Presbyterian Assembly of the United States, was based upon the doctrine of the divinely appointed subordination of woman to man, and arose simply because Rev. Dr. Isaac See admitted two ladies to his pulpit to speak upon temperance; Rev. Dr. Craven, the prosecutor, declared this act to have been “an indecency in the sight of Jehovah.” He expressed the general clinical and church view, when he said:
I believe the subject involves the honor of my God. I believe the subject involves the headship and crown of Jesus. Woman was made for man and became first in the transgression. My argument is that subordination is natural, the subordination of sex. Dr. See has admitted marital subordination, but this is not enough; there exists a created subordination; a divinely arranged and appointed subordination of woman as woman to man as man. Woman was made for man and became first in the transgression. The proper condition of the adult female is marriage; the general rule for ladies is marriage. Women without children, it might be said, could preach, but they are under the general rule of subordination. It is not allowed woman to speak in the church. Man’s place is on the platform. It is positively base for a woman to speak in the pulpit; it is base in the sight of Jehovah. The whole question is one of subordination.
Thus before a vast audience largely composed of women, Dr. Craven stood and with denunciatory manner, frequently bringing his fists on his Bible emphatically down, devoted a four hours speech to proving that the Bible taught woman’s subordination to man. His arguments were the same as those of the church in the past and were based upon the same theory, viz. that woman was created inferior to man, for man, and was the first in sin. He referred to the fashions as aid in his argument, saying, “In every country, under every clime, from the peasant woman of Naples, with a handkerchief over her hair, to the women before me with bonnets, every one wears something upon her head in token of subordination.” Dr. Craven made this statement in direct contradiction to historical facts which prove that the head covering is always removed in presence of a superior. To remain bareheaded is an act of deference to a higher authority. Even the Quaker custom of men’s wearing the hat in meeting, originated as an act of defiance to the Anglican Church. Dr. Craven also forgot to state that flowing hair has always been regarded as an emblem of superiority and freedom; clipped hair that of a slave or prisoner. Thus Dr. Craven’s appeal to fashion reacted against him in the minds of all historically informed persons, yet together with his other statements it was fully endorsed by most of his brother clergymen present, some of whom enthusiastically shouted, “Amen!” At the close of his speech several other clergymen gave their views. Dr. Ballentine considered the subject too simple for an argument. Dr. Few Smith, although he “admired Miss Smiley, more than almost any orator he had ever listened to, did not want her or any other woman to permanently occupy the Presbyterian pulpit.” Dr. Wilson rejoiced to see so many women crowding in the lecture room; but Brother See should not take all the glory to himself. He was glad to see the women take so deep an interest in the subject under discussion; but as he looked at them he asked himself: “What will all the children do while these women are away from home?” A decision of censure against Dr. See, was agreed in by the Synod of New Jersey, and confirmed by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, in session at Pittsburg.
Thus we find that the Christianity of today continues to teach the existence of a superior and an inferior sex in the church, possessing different rights and held accountable to a different code of morals. Not alone did Dr. Craven express the idea that woman’s very dress was typical of her inferiority, but the Right Rev. Dr. Coxe, Bishop of the Western (Episcopal) Diocese of New York refused the sacrament in 1868 to the lady patients of the Clifton Springs sanitarium whose heads were uncovered, although the chapel was under the same roof and on the same floor with the patients’ rooms. This same Right Rev. Dr. Coxe, in a speech at his installation as first president of the Ingham Seminary for young ladies, declared “the laws of God to be plainly Salic.” Rev. W. W. Patten, D.D., president of Howard University, Washington, D.C., in a sermon preached at the Congregational church, upon “Woman and Skepticism,” January, 1885, advanced the proposition that as soon as they (women) depart from their natural sphere, they become atheistical and immoral. In March, 1891, a half column editorial in the “Presbyterian” discussed the ethics and aesthetics of woman’s dress at communions, not precisely in line with Dr. Coxe, yet of the same general character as to regulating woman’s dress, in, “Should women receive the elements at communion with gloved hands?” Some authorities objected to the practice upon the ground “that nothing might come between the recipient and the mystic power contained in the bread and wine after consecration by the priest.” But while, as the editor remarks, “It is after all a very small matter,” it is in a historical aspect, a great one, showing such pronounced change from the church teaching of but a few centuries since, when women were forbidden to take the eucharist in their naked hands because of their impurity. Rev. Mr. Denhurst, member of the Connecticut Legislature (House), during a hearing before a committee upon that question March 10, 1886, while speaking favorably of woman suffrage still betrayed his belief in the old theological idea that women brought sin into the world, through which her subordination to man ensued. But like Dr. See he limited this subordination to married women, saying:
As a minister of the gospel, I deny that you can find anywhere in the Bible, woman’s subordination till she sent the curse of sin upon the world, and that relates only to married women, and marriage is a matter of choice.
The spiritual and temporal superiority of man over woman is affirmed by clergymen of the present day as strongly as by those of the dark ages, and sermons in opposition to her equality of rights are as frequently preached. The entrance of woman into remunerative industries is as energetically opposed as is her demand for governmental and religious freedom. Rev. Morgan Dix, rector of Trinity church, New York, in a series of “Lenten Lectures” a few years since, made woman the subject of violent attacks as an inferior and subordinate being, now attempting to pass beyond the bounds set by God for her restraint.
There is a more emphatic, a more hopeless degradation for her. It is seen when she seeks to reverse the laws of her nature and upset the economy of the universe, pushing her way out of her own sphere into a rivalry with men in their sphere and in their proper pursuits. On that must follow a degradation, greatly to be feared. When the claim for rights seems to be taking the form of a competition with man, on a field which God has reserved for man only, in a work not suited to the woman, and in professions already overstocked that must end, not in enhancing the merit of woman in his eye but in making her offensive and detestable. There is a point beyond which patience will not hold out; and of this let the woman be sure: that if she go too far the end will arise; and man having long borne her manners and finding that she is becoming a social nuisance and a general tormentor, will finally lose all respect for her and thrust her away with loathing and disgust and bid her behave herself and go back to her old inferiority.
In this series of lectures, Dr. Dix emphatically declared man’s spiritual supremacy even in the household.
The father is by God's law, priest over his household; to him should they look as a witness for that God who gave him his rank and title.
The sects agree in their teachings regarding woman; Rev. A. Sherman, at one time president of Bacon College, Kentucky, declaring that woman was first in transgression, that she beguiled man and was therefore put in bondage under his authority, said:
The wide spreading contempt for this truth exhibited by the political-religious fashion and infidelity of the age, is one of the most alarming symptoms of approaching anarchy and the overthrow of our liberties. The attempt which is being made in these United States to elevate the wife to a perfect equality with the husband, or to change in any respect the relation between them, established by God himself, is rank infidelity, no matter what specious disguise it may assume.
In a sermon of his Lenten series, entitled “The Calling of a Christian Woman, and her Training to Fulfill it,” Dr. Dix said:
We, priests, who whatever our personal short comings, have a commission from above and a message to man from God, and are the mouth-piece of that church to which his hand-maidens belong, may be and ought to be able to help occasionally, by merely stating what the Bible and the church declare on certain great matters, on which many lower ones depend.... What did Almighty God, the Creator, the wise Father of all, make woman for? What did he intend her to do? What did he not mean her to do or try to do?
He answered these questions in a lecture entitled, “A Mission for Woman,” of the same series.
Looking for a mission, for a work to do, this is the attitude of many women today.... You hear of the education of women, of co-education of the sexes, of emancipation of woman from bonds—what bonds the Lord only knows! Here is a mission worthy of yourselves, it is of all works that could be rendered the fittest for a church woman, because she was at the beginning of all the trouble in the world.... We believe the old story of the Bible re-affirmed by Christ and his apostles, that Adam was not deceived by the devil, but that the woman being deceived, was in the transgression. Now to her with whom the wrong began, we look for the beginning of the right. Remember that in the woman are the poles of the good and the evil in human nature.
When she is good she is the best of all that exists; when bad, the worst.
Another sermon of this Lenten series, expressed the views of the reverend gentleman upon the family relation, bearing of children and divorce, in which he expressed his hatred of modern development saying:
I feel great solicitude about the subject of this evening’s lecture; I had rather not touch it at all. You may think that its selection is an instance of that disrespect to which I have referred. Not so, oh, not so. I hold the old ideas. I abhor and detest the modern development; before any woman who fears God, does her duty, and gives us in her life and acts the picture of a true and beautiful womanliness, I rise up and bless her and do her reverent homage. It is thus in no spirit of assumption that I shall say what I have to say tonight. It is rather in a tone of remonstrance, of wonder, of expostulation. Why do women err as they do? Why lower themselves to men’s level? Why should the queens abdicate their thrones and go down to the ring and act unseemly parts and lay their honor in the dust? Let us think this evening of some things done by women which one would have said that no woman with a woman’s heart and a woman’s sense could, after due reflection, justify. Sins fall naturally into groups or classes, and if I speak this evening of only one class of sins it is because the time does not permit us to take a larger survey of the field. We shall limit ourselves, then, to these topics:
The lack of serious views of life and the habit of turning the thoughts exclusively to enjoyment. The degradation of the idea of matrimony, as shown by entering into that estate for low and unworthy motives. The deliberate determination of some married women to defeat the objects for which marriage was instituted; to have no real home; to avoid first the pains and next the cares and duties of maternity. The habit, where a home exists, of neglecting it by spending most of the time away from it, running up and down in pursuit of excitement and turning their children over to the care of servants. The growing indifference to the chief of all social abominations, divorce, and the toleration of lax notions about it.
These questions of most vital import to woman, to her material condition, intellectual development and place in the church, Rev. Dr. Dix and the great body of the church, deem themselves supremely competent to adjust without woman’s voice upon them. Wherever she has shown her views upon the subject of education, industries, the family, the church, to be in opposition to those of theologians, she has at once been told to remain in her old position of “inferiority” looking up to man as her divinely appointed master and spiritual head; Dr. Dix, in his lectures, but gave the views of priests of all denominations at the present day. Despite the advancing civilization of the age, and the fact that in so many avocations woman has shown her capacity for taking equal part with man, we find theology still unprogressive; a portion of the press, however, severely criticised these discourses. The “Lenten Pastoral” 1886, of Rev. A. Cleveland Coxe, bishop of Western New York, to the laity of his diocese, contained a middle-age reminder to women of the impurity of motherhood, in the demand made for church cleansing subsequent to her bringing an immortal being into life:
6. Christian women, active as they often are, above all comparison with men, are yet sometimes negligent of their immediate duties as wives and mothers and fail to exert that healthful influence over the family, which God has made it the high privilege of woman to exercise in this sphere of her duty and her glory. The office for “the Churching of Women” testifies against those who neglect it, as forgetting the dignity of motherhood and that gratitude to God which every woman owes to the Christian religion, for enthroning her in the household, and making the example of the “Blessed among Women” her peculiar lesson and incentive to piety.
Many portions of this advice is an open insult to woman, and could the divine but see it, is even from the Christian standard an imputation upon that being he professes to revere as the Creator of the universe.
A work was recently written by an English bishop, bearing upon the governmental effort for repeal of the law forbidding marriage with a deceased wife’s sister or brother. This work was written for the express purpose of proving that, while it is eminently improper and sinful for a woman to marry her deceased husband’s brother, it is eminently proper and right for a man to marry his deceased wife’s sister, and this upon the same principle that governed the disinheritance of woman under the Salic law; i.e., because by marriage a woman becomes merged into her husband’s family. He specifically declares that the sister of the wife is in no sense the sister of the husband, therefore it is permissible for a man to marry his wife’s sisters successively. But he affirms that to the contrary, the widow cannot marry her deceased husband’s brother, as by the act of her marriage she became a part of her husband’s family; a second marriage to such husband’s brother thereby becoming incestuous. This is the law of England, both religious and civil. A striking evidence of the incongruity of this law is found in the fact that the illegitimacy of such brother is held to destroy the relationship, as by law of both church and state an illegitimate child is not held as related to its father; he is the son of nobody. A woman can marry two brothers in succession, one the child of marriage, the other a child of the same father born outside of the marriage relation. The son of nobody, a being unfathered in the eye of the law, is the brother of nobody. A striking instance of the effect of this law occurred in England within the past few years, when a lady successively married two brothers, the first a natural son of the Earl of Waldegrave, the second his legitimate son. The father, although not recognized as such in law, left the bulk of his property to his natural son; the title, over which he had no power of alienation, descending to the son born under authority of the church. The first husband, dying, the lady afterward married the legitimate son, thus becoming first, “Mrs.” Waldegrave, and afterwards, “Lady” Waldegrave, securing both fortune and title by her marriage with the non-recognized and law-recognized sons of the same father, and breaking neither the law of state or church in so doing. American clergymen of the Episcopal church have expressed views in accordance with those of the English bishop. Rev. George Zabriskie Gray, D.D., dean of the Episcopal Theological School of Cambridge, Mass., published a work in 1885 entitled “Husband and Wife,” also suggested by the constantly debated English question of State, concerning the lawfulness of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister. Dr. Gray coincides with many of his reverend brethren in the declaration that with the wife no liberty of divorce is allowable, but his reasons present somewhat the freshness of novelty. As previously stated, the non-relationship of husband and wife was at one time the general Christian belief. While like the English bishop, Rev. Mr. Gray admits the relationship of the wife to the husband to such extent that becoming fully absorbed by him his relatives become hers; like the English bishop he further declares that in consequence of this absorption, the wife loses her former family relationship, her mother and father, her sister or brother no longer bearing relationship to her, but have become to her as strangers. He said:
The wife becomes a member of his family, while he does not become one of her own. The equilateral idea is a physiological 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: 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. 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, 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.”
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, 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. 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.
The General Conference, after so summarily deciding what was for the spiritual good of women, in thus refusing to recognize their equality of rights to the offices of that church, resolved itself as a whole into a political convention, adjourning in a body to Chicago before its religious business was finished, in order that its presence might influence the National Republican Convention there assembled, to nominate General Grant for a third term to the presidency of the United States; General Grant being in affiliation with the Methodist church.
The Congregational church is placed upon record through laws, governing certain of its bodies, which state that:
By the word “church” is meant the adult males duly admitted and retained by the First Evangelical church of Cambridgeport, present at any regular meeting of said church and voting by a majority.
The New York Independent, of February 24, 1881, commenting upon this official declaration that only “adult males” are to be considered the “church,” says:
The above is Article XIV of the by-laws of the society connected with the aforesaid church. It is a matter of gratitude that the society, if it forbids females to vote in the church, yet allows them to pray and to help the society raise money.
The Rev. W. V. Turnstall, in the Methodist Recorder, a few years since, gave his priestly views in regard to woman, and by implication those of the Methodist church. He declared woman to be under the curse of subjection to man, a curse not removable until the resurrection. He said that under the Mosaic law woman had no voice in anything; that she could hold no office, yet did so in a few instances when God wished to especially humiliate the nation; that she was scheduled as a higher piece of property; that even the Bible was not addressed to her but to man alone; woman finding her salvation even under the new covenant, not directly through Jesus, but approaching him through man; his points were:
First: That woman is under a curse which subjects her to man.
Second: This curse has never been removed, nor will it be removed until the resurrection.
Third: That woman under the Mosaic law, God’s civil law, had no voice in anything. That she was not allowed her oath; that she was no part of the congregation of Israel; that her genealogy was not kept; that no notice was taken of her birth or death, except as these events were connected with some man of providence; that she was given no control of her children; that she could hold no office; nor did she, except in a few instances, when to reproach and humiliate the nation, God suspended his own law, and made an instrument of women for the time being. That she offered no sacrifices, no redemption money was paid for her; that she received no religious rites; that the mother’s cleansing was forty days longer, and the gift was smaller for a female child than for a male; and that in the tenth commandment—always in force—she is scheduled as a higher species of property; that her identity was completely merged in that of her husband.
Fourth: That for seeking to hold office Miriam was smitten with leprosy; and that under the new covenant she is only permitted to pray or prophesy with her head covered, which accounts for the fashion of wearing bonnets in public to this day; that she is expressly prohibited from rule in the church or usurpation of authority over the man.
Fifth: That to vote is to rule, voting carrying with it all the collaterals of making, expounding, and executing law; that God has withheld from woman the right to rule, either in the church, the state or the family; that He did this because of her having “brought sin and death into the world, and all our woe.”
Sixth: That the Bible is addressed to man and not to woman; that man comes to God through Jesus, and woman comes to Jesus through man; that every privilege the wife enjoys she but receives through the husband, for God has declared that woman shall not rule man, but be subject unto him.
A more explicit statement of the opinion of the church regarding woman is seldom found. Later action of the Methodist body proves its agreement with Rev. Mr. Turnstall. The General Conference of that church convened May 1, 1888, in the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, numbering delegates from every part of the United States as well as many from foreign lands. Among these delegates were sixteen women. The question of their admission came up the first day. The senior bishop, Rev. Thomas Bowman, in his opening remarks, declared that body to stand in the presence of new conditions, in that they found names upon the roll of a class of persons whose eligibility had never been determined by the high tribunal of the church. A committee was appointed to report upon their admission. Bishop Merrill, occupying the chair upon the second day, said that “for the first time in the history of the conference, women had been sent as delegates,” but the bishops did not think the women were eligible. The report of the committee was submitted, which declared that after a serious discussion they had become convinced that, while the rule was passed relating to the admission of lay delegates to the General Conference, the church contemplated admission only to men as lay delegates and that under the constitution and laws, women were not eligible. The committee agreed that the protest against women should be sustained, and the conferences from which they were sent be notified that their seats were vacant. A long discussion ensued. Rev. John Wiley, president of the Drew Theological Seminary of the New York Conference, spoke against woman’s admission, saying:
That if the laws of the church were properly interpreted they would prove that women are not eligible and then, besides, no one wanted them in the General Conference.
Rev. J. R. Day, the New York Conference, argued against the admission of women, saying:
When the law was passed for the admission of lay delegates it was never intended that women should be delegates to the General Conference. It is proposed today to make one of the most stupendous pieces of legislation that has been known to Christendom. I am not opposed to woman doing the work that she is capable of doing but I do not think that she should intrude upon the General Conference. Woman has not the necessary experience; this is a tremendous question.
Rev. Jacob Rothweiler, of the Central German Conference, asserted that:
The opponents of the report are trying to override the constitution of the church, and are making an effort to strike at the conscientiousness of 90 per cent of the Christian church which has existed for the last 1,800 years. The history of Christianity shows that women were never intended to vote.
The conference was seriously divided upon this question. Although eventually lost, yet many clergymen permeated with the spirit of advancing civilization, voted in its favor, among them Rev. Dr. Hammond, of Syracuse, New York, a delegate for the episcopacy; while arrayed in bitter opposition was Rev. Mr. Buckley, editor of The Christian Advocate, also a candidate for the bishopric, and the man that when the question of the ordination of Miss Oliver came up a few years since, declared he would oppose the admission of the Mother of the Lord to the ministry. His remark recalls that of Tetzel, the great Catholic dealer in indulgences, given in another part of this work, and illustrates to what extent of blasphemy the opponents of women’s equality proceed. It was not until the seventh day of the conference that the question of woman’s admission was decided in the negative, and the great Methodist Episcopal church put itself upon record as opposed to the recognition of more than one half of its members. The women delegates were not even allowed seats upon the floor during the debate. Mrs. Nind, president of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, arose to vote, but was not counted, although the Woman’s Foreign Missionary societies are making converts where men cannot reach—in the zenanas. The action of the Conference was foreshadowed by that of Baltimore a few weeks previously, when it was decided that women missionaries should not be permitted to administer communion in the zenanas as it would open the door for their ordination to the ministry and this despite the fact that women alone are admitted to the zenanas. At the Methodist minister’s bi-monthly meeting, Syracuse, N.Y., near time of the General Conference, Rev. Thomas Tinsey, of Clyde, read a paper entitled “Is it advisable to make women of the church eligible to all the ecclesiastical councils and the ministerial order of the church,” quoting Paul in opposition to giving her a voice, saying:
What can our modern advocates of licensing and ordaining women and electing them to annual conferences, do with the command to the Corinthians, “Let your women keep silence in the church;” or to Timothy: “Let the women learn in silence and all subjection,” Paul certainly meant something by such teaching. The position taken by the Fathers of Methodism appears to me to be the only tenable one, viz: that the prohibition applies to the legislation or official business of the church—precisely the kind of work contemplated in the effort to make them eligible to the General Conference, and to Methodist orders. Concerning these things, “Let them learn of their husbands at home.”
Rev. Mr. Tinsey farther gave his opinion as to the comparative uselessness of woman. He was able to conceive of no good reason for her creation, aside from that of burden bearer in the process of reproduction, saying:
Woman is that part or side of humanity upon which the great labor, care and burden of reproduction is placed. We can conceive of no good reason for making women aside from this. Man is certainly better suited to all other work.
After discussion, the ministers present generally agreed that, because of motherhood, woman should be debarred from such official recognition.
The final ground of women’s exclusion as delegates to the General Conference, is most noticeable inasmuch as appeal was ultimately made to the State. Upon the seventh day’s session it was resolved to suspend the rules and continue the debate on the admission of women as lay-delegates. So anxious were men to speak that forty-one delegates at once sprung to their feet and claimed the floor. Judge Taylor, a lay delegate from the St. Louis conference, walking down the aisle with a number of law books under his arm, proceeded to argue the question on constitutional grounds, saying:
It would do much harm to admit women at the present time. There are bishops to be elected and other important matters to be voted on, and if women are admitted and allowed to vote, and it should subsequently be decided that women should not be entitled to seats, the acts of the present General Conference would be illegal and unconstitutional.
While claiming, personally, to favor women’s admission, he quoted law to sustain their rejection, and wished the question to be submitted to a vote of the church. The “vote of the church,” as shown by the adoption of Rev. F. B. Neely’s amendment, signifying the ministers present at annual conferences. The vote upon this amendment, which excluded women from seats in the General Conference, submitting their eligibility to the decision of ministers of the annual conferences, was adopted 237 to 198. It thus requires three-fourths vote of the members present and voting at the annual conferences, this vote to be ratified by a two-thirds vote of the General Conference in order to woman’s acceptance as lay delegate to such General Conference. Aside from the fact of an appeal to the civil law for the exclusion of woman, thus showing the close union of church and state, one other important point must be noticed. In the declaration that the church should be consulted in regard to such an important matter, that body was defined as the ministers of the annual conference, laymen not here ranking as part of the church. The lay delegates, unnarrowed by theological studies were, as a body, favorable to woman’s admission. Nor did they refrain from criticising the clergy, declaring that the episcopacy did not interpret the law of the church, this power resting in the General Conference. But one more favoring vote would have tied the question. Gen. Samuel H. Hurst, dairy and food commissioner of Ohio, the first layman to gain the floor, defended the right of women to admission. He alluded to the opponents of the women as “old fogies.” He criticized the bishop’s address.
The episcopacy does not interpret the law of the church, but the General Conference does. Woman does not come here as a strong-minded person demanding admittance, but she comes as representative of the lay conference. The word “laymen” was interpreted to mean all members of the church not represented in the ministry. That is the law, and if women are “laymen” they are entitled to admission.
The Southern Baptist Association, meeting in New Orleans in July of the same year, refused to admit women by a vote of 42 to 40. The church as of old, is still strenuous in its efforts to influence legislation. An amendment to the National Constitution is pressed by the National Reform Association, recognizing the sectarian idea of God; another placing marriage and divorce under control of the general government by uniform laws; while priestly views upon the political freedom of woman are thrust into the very faces of our law makers. The following portions of a sermon preached at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston, February 21, 1886, by the Rev. Father J. P. Bodfish, were printed and distributed among the members of the Massachusetts Legislature that spring by the opponents of woman suffrage:
Not that I would have woman step out of her sphere; the man is the natural protector, the father, the lawgiver, of his family; not would I counsel wives to usurp the places of their husbands at the polls. I believe this to be one of the errors of modern times, to try to unsex woman, and take her from the high place she occupies and drag her into the arena of public life. What has she to do there? We might as well try to drag down the angels to take part in the menial affairs of this world as to take woman from the high place she occupies in the family, where ’tis her privilege and duty to guide, to counsel and to instruct—to lead that family in the way of righteousness. It is but offering her a degradation; Almighty God never intended it. The charm, the influence of woman, is in that purity that comes from living in a sphere apart from us. God forbid that we should ever see the day that a man, a husband or a father, is to find his will opposed and thwarted at the polls by his daughter or his wife. Then farewell to that reverence which belongs to the character of woman.
She puts herself on an equal footing with man when she steps down from that place where every one regards her with reverence, and becomes unsexed by striving to make laws which she cannot enforce, and taking upon herself duties for which she is altogether unfitted.
Decrees of various characters presenting woman as a being of different natural and spiritual rights from man, are constantly formulated by the churches. The Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1884, busied itself in the enactment of canons directly bearing upon marriage and divorce, re-affirming the sacramental character of marriage and declaring that marriages under civil rites should be resented by the whole Catholic world. This council was preceded by an encyclical from the Pope, laying out its plans by work yet leaving it within the power of the diocesan bishops to promulgate its canons according to their own wisdom. Consequently, not until three years later were those upon marriage published on the Pacific Coast, at which time the archbishop of San Francisco, the bishops of Monterey, Los Angeles and Grass Valley, addressed a pastoral letter to the Catholics of those regions, condemning civil marriage as a sin and sacrilege, illegal, and a “horrible concubinage.” It was farther stated that marriage unblessed by a priest, subjected the parties to excommunication. At the still later Catholic Congress, in honor of the hundredth anniversary of the Catholic Hierarchy in America, divorces were affirmed to be the plague of civilization, a discredit to the government, a degradation of the female sex, and a standing menace to the sanctity of the marriage bond. In noting these canons of the Plenary Council and the resolutions of the Catholic Congress, it should be borne in mind that the chief secret of the long-continued power of the Catholic church has been its hold upon marriage and the subordination of woman in this relation. To these celibate priests, nothing connected with woman is sacred. Celibacy and the sacramental nature of marriage are each of them based upon the theory of woman’s created inferiority and original sin. Priestly power over marriage, and the confessional, through which means it is able to wrest all family and state secrets to its own use, are powers that will not be peaceably relinquished. Their destruction will come through the growing intelligence of people, and the responsibility of political self-government. These will insure confidence in the validity of civil marriage and a belief in the personal rights of individuals. To woman, the education of political responsibility is most essential in order to free her from church bonds, and is therefore most energetically opposed by the church. In 1890, a number of Catholic ladies of Paris formed a union for the emancipation of woman from different kinds of social thraldom. Their first attack was upon the priesthood, whom they declared the mortal adversary of woman’s advancement, affirming that every woman “who abets the abbés is an enemy of her sex.” This open rebellion of Catholic ladies against the power of the hierarchy, is a significant sign of woman’s advancing freedom.
All canons, decrees, resolutions and laws of the church, especially bearing upon the destinies of woman are promulgated without the hearing of her voice, either in confirmation or rejection. She is simply legislated for as a slave. Two of the later triennial conclaves of the Episcopal church of the United States, energetically debated the subject of divorce, not, however, arriving at sufficient unanimity of opinion for the enactment of a canon. When Mazzini, the Italian patriot, was in this country, 1852, he declared the destruction of the priesthood to be our only surety for continued freedom, saying:
They will be found as in Italy, the foes of mankind, and if the United States expects to retain even its political liberties, it must get rid of the priesthood as Italy intends to do.
Frances Wright, that clear-seeing, liberty-loving, Scotch free-thought woman, noted the dangerous purpose and character of the Christian party in politics, even as early as 1829; and the present effort of this body, now organized as the “National Reform Association” with its adjunct “The American Sabbath Union,” officered by priests and influential members of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and kindred bodies, is a perpetual menace to the civil and religious liberties of the United States. Its effort for an amendment to the Federal Constitution which shall recognize the United States as a Christian nation, is a determined endeavor toward the union of church and state; and its success in such attempt will be the immediate destruction of both civil and religious liberty. That such a party now openly exists, its intentions no secret, is evidence that the warnings of Italian patriot and the Scotch free thinker were not without assured foundation.
As a body, the church opposes education for woman, and all the liberalizing tendencies of the last thirty-five or forty years, which have opened new and varied industries to women and secured to wives some relief from their general serf condition. Bishop Littlejohn, of the Episcopal church, at the Triennial Conclave of bishops, 1883, preached as his “triennial charge” upon “The Church and the Family,” presenting the general church idea as to woman’s inferiority and subordination. He made authoritative use of the words “sanctities of home,” a phrase invented by the clergy as a method of holding woman in bondage; directed the church to “strictly impose her doctrines as to marriage and divorce, clash as they may with the spirit of the times and the laws of the state” (thus emulating the Catholic doctrines of the supremacy of the church). He declared that in any respect to change the relation established by God himself between husband and wife, was rank infidelity, no matter what specious disguise such change might assume, explicitly declaring the authority of the church over marriage, as against the authority of the state; protesting against omission of the word “obey” from the marriage service, and the control of the wife over her own earnings and expenditures, saying:
If it be outside the province of the states to treat marriage as more than a contract between a man and a woman, the church must make it understood, as it is not, that it is inside her province to treat it as a thing instituted of God. Practically, we have reached a point where the wife may cease to have property interests in common with her husband, may control absolutely her own means of living, and determine for herself the scale of expenditures that will suit her tastes or her caprices. The man is no longer the head of the household, the husband. It has been made an open question whether the man or his wife will fulfill that function, and “a community of interests, with the recognized authority of the husband to rule the wife, and the recognized duty of the wife to obey that authority, is no longer deemed expedient or necessary.” This rebellion against the old view of marriage is so strong that in many cases the word “obey” is omitted from the marriage service.
Even among Christianized Indians we find different laws governing man and woman. In 1886, the governor of Maine paid a visit to the governor of the Passamaquody Indians, at a time when a large council was in progress upon the St. Croix reservation. This council first assembled at the chapel, where the Revised Statutes—the whole basis of government of the Passamaquodies—are posted. These statutes having been approved by Bishop Healy, of Portland, are also looked upon as canons of the church.
The statutes principally affecting women, are:
Third: No woman who is separated from her husband shall be admitted to the sacrament, or to any place in the church except the porch in summer and the back seat in winter, unless by the consent of the bishop.
Fourth: Any woman who admits men into her house by night shall be treated as a criminal and delivered to the courts.
Fifth: Any woman who is disobedient to her husband, any common scold or drunkard, shall not be permitted to enter the church, except by permission of the priest.
It will be noted that these statutes forbid the sacrament to the woman who is separated from her husband, not even permitting her an accustomed seat in church. She must remain in the porch during the summer and in a back seat during the winter, except “the bishop” otherwise permits. Also the woman not rendering obedience to her husband, is denied permission to enter the church except under priestly permit. The Christian theory of woman’s inferiority and subordination to man, is as fully endorsed by these statutes as in the mediaeval priestly instruction to husbands.
No profession as constantly appeals to the lower nature as the priestly, the emotions rather than reason, are constantly invoked; ambition, love of power, hope of reward, fear of punishment, are the incentives presented and in no instance are such incentives more fully made use of than for purposes of sustaining the supremacy of man over woman. The teaching of the church cannot fail to impress woman with the feeling that if she expects education, or even opportunity of full entrance into business, she must not heed the admonitions of the priesthood, when, as by Dr. Dix, she is contemptuously forbidden to enter the professions on the ground that God designed these offices alone for man. When women sought university honors at Oxford, a few years since, many “incredibly foolish” letters, said London Truth, were written by its opponents who were chiefly clergymen. Canon Liddon’s influence was against the statute; the Dean of Norwich referred to it as “an attempt to defeat divine Providence and Holy Scripture.” Dr. Gouldbourne thought it would “unsex woman.”
“There is no sin,” said Buddha, “but ignorance,” yet according to Rector Dix, Rev. S. W. Turnstall, Dr. Craven and the priesthood of the present day, in common with the earlier church, woman’s normal condition is that of ignorance, and education is the prerogative of man alone; and yet the dangers of ignorance have by no means been fathomed, although the latest investigations show the close relation between knowledge and life. That as intelligence is diffused, there is a corresponding increase of longevity, is proven; the most uneducated communities showing the greatest proportion of deaths. Ignorance and the death rate are parts of the same question; education and length of life are proportionately synonymous. Statistics gathered in England, Wales and Ireland a few years since showed the percentage of infantile deaths to be much greater in those portions where the mother could not read and write, than where the mother had sufficient education to read a newspaper and write her own name. In districts where there was no other appreciable difference except that of education, the mortality was the largest in the most ignorant districts.
In deprecating education for women, no organized body in the world has so clearly proven its own tyrannous ignorance as has the priesthood, and no body has shown itself so fully the enemy of mankind. Church teaching and centuries of repression acting through the laws of heredity have lessened woman’s physical size, depressed her mental action, subjugated her spirit, and crushed her belief in her right to herself and the proper training of her own children. The church, in its opposition to woman’s education through the ages, has literally killed off the inhabitants of the world with much greater rapidity than war, pestilence, or famine; more than one-half the children born into the world have soon died because of the tyranny and ignorance of the priesthood. The potential physical energy of mankind thus destroyed can in a measure be estimated, but no one can fathom the infinitely greater loss of mental and moral force brought about through condemnation of knowledge to woman; only by induction can it even be surmised. Lecky points out the loss to the world because so many of its purest characters donned the garb of monk or nun. That injury was immediately perceptible, but in the denial of education and freedom to woman more than ninety per cent of the moral and physical energy of the world has literally been suffocated, and owing to ignorance and lack of independent thought this loss is as yet scarcely recognized. So dense the pall of ignorance still overshadowing the world that even woman herself does not yet conjecture the injury that has been done her, or of what she and her children have been deprived. Nor has the world yet roused to a full consciousness of the mischief to mankind that has been perpetrated through the falsehood and ignorant presumption of those claiming control over its dearest rights and interests. Resistance to the wrong thus done the world has been less possible because perpetrated in the name of God and religion. It has caused tens of thousands of women to doubt their equality of right with man in education, to disbelieve they possess the same authority to interpret the Bible or present its doctrines as man; neither, having been deprived of education, do they believe themselves to be man’s political equal, or that they possess equal rights with him in the household. This degradation of woman’s moral nature is the most direful result of the teaching of the church in regard to her. A loss of faith in one’s own self, disbelief in one’s own right to the fullest cultivation of one’s own powers, proceeds from a debasement of the moral sentiments. Self-reliance, self-respect, self-confidence, are acquired through that cultivation of the intellectual faculties which has been denied to woman. Rev. Dr. Charles Little, of the Syracuse University, says: “In the report of a sermon of a distinguished theologian which appeared not long ago, this striking passage occurred: If I were to choose between Christianity as a life and Christianity as a dogma, I would choose Christianity as a dogma.” Judging from its treatment of woman and the many recent trials for heresy, dogma rather than life is the general spirit of the churches everywhere. It is dogma that has wrecked true religion; it is dogma that has crushed humanity; it is dogma that has created two codes of morals; that has inculcated the doctrine of original sin; that has degraded womanhood; that has represented divinity as possessing every evil attribute.
From all these incontrovertible facts in church and state, we see that both religion and government are essentially masculine in their present forms and development. All the evils that have resulted from dignifying one sex and degrading the other may be traced to one central error, a belief in a trinity of masculine gods, in one from which the feminine element is wholly eliminated; and yet in the scriptural account of the simultaneous creation of man and woman, the text plainly recognizes the feminine as well as the masculine element in the Godhead, and declares the equality of the sexes in goodness, wisdom and power. Genesis i, 26-27.
And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness, and so God created man in his own image; in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them, and gave them dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
In nothing has the ignorance and weakness of the church been more fully shown than in its controversies in regard to the creation. From time of the “Fathers” to the present hour, despite its assertion and its dogmas, the church has ever been engaged in discussions upon the Garden of Eden, the serpent, woman, man, and God as connected in one inseparable relation. Amid all the evils attributed to woman, her loss of Paradise, introduction of sin into the world and the consequent degradation of mankind, yet Eve, and through her, all women have found occasional defenders. A book printed in Amsterdam, 1700, in a series of eleven reasons, threw the greater culpability upon Adam, saying:
First: The serpent tempted her before she thought of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and suffered herself to be persuaded that not well understood his meaning.
Second: That believing that God had not given such prohibition she eat the fruit.
Third: Sinning through ignorance she committed a less heinous crime than Adam.
Fourth: That Eve did not necessarily mean the penalty of eternal death, for God’s decree only imported that man should die if he sinned against his conscience.
Fifth: That God might have inflicted death on Eve without injustice, yet he resolved, so great is his mercy toward his works, to let her live, in (that) she had not sinned maliciously.
Sixth: That being exempted from the punishment contained in God’s decree, she might retain all the prerogatives of her sex except those that were not incidental with the infirmities to which God condemned her.
Seventh: That she retained in particulars the prerogative of bringing forth children who had a right to eternal happiness on condition of obeying the new Adam.
Eighth: That as mankind was to proceed from Adam and Eve, Adam was preserved alive only because his preservation was necessary for the procreation of children.
Ninth: That it was by accident therefore, that the sentence of death was not executed on him, but that otherwise he was more (justly) punished than his wife.
Tenth: That she was not driven out from Paradise as he was, but was only obliged to leave it to find out Adam in the earth; and that it was with full privilege of returning thither again.
Eleventh: That the children of Adam and Eve were subject to eternal damnation, not as proceeding from Eve, but as proceeding from Adam.
In 1580, but three hundred years since, an inquiry set on foot as to the language of Paradise, resulted in the statement that God spoke Danish; Adam, Swedish; and the serpent, French. Eve doubtless was conceded to have spoken all three languages, as she conversed with God, with Adam, and with the serpent. Hieronymus, a Father of the Church, credited Eve with possessing a much finer constitution than Adam, and in that respect as superior to him. Thus, during the ages, the church through its “Fathers” and its priests has devoted itself to a discussion of the most trivial questions concerning woman, as well as to the formation of most oppressive canons against her, and although as shown she has found an occasional defender, and even claimants for her superiority upon certain points, yet such discussions have had no effect upon the general view in which the church has presented her, as one accursed of God and man.
