vidence that women in Asiatic cities could assist at
assemblies, or give votes, or speak in public, or serve on legations,
or enter into political relations with the Roman authorities. There
were women among the Asiarchs, but probably only when they were
associated in an honorary manner with their husbands. In the early
Christian church the influence of women was put to far nobler uses than
in Asiatic cities; but their position relatively to men was not far
different from what would have been recognized in the general society
of that region[24]. In other parts of the empire the {228} women of
the Christian church were conspicuously in advance of those outside.

In somewhat later days of the Church there was some resentment at the
high and free position assigned to women in the New Testament
documents. Thus one celebrated MS. of the New Testament[25]--the Codex
Bezae--changes 'not a few of the honourable Greek women and of men'
(Acts xvii. 12) into 'of the Greeks and the honourable, many men and
women.' In xvii. 34 it cuts out Damaris. And in xvii. 4 it changes
the 'leading women' into 'wives of the leading men.' The spirit which
prompted these changes in an early Christian scribe and reviser, has
not been wanting in much later ages, though it had not a chance of
tampering with our sacred texts.

B. PARENTS AND CHILDREN. VI. 1-4.

[Sidenote: _Parents and children_]

After laying down the principles which determined the relation of wives
to their husbands, St. Paul turns to the relation of children to their
parents. The wives are to be _subordinate_ to their husbands.
Children are to be _obedient_ to their parents as part of their duty
'in the {229} Lord,' as members of His body. They are to show honour
to their parents as directed by the commandment which we call the
fifth, but which St. Paul here probably calls 'a commandment standing
first accompanied with promise.' It stands first among those which
refer to our neighbour grouped apart--as our Lord also says 'Thou
knowest the commandments,' and then specifies those six alone[26]. And
it is accompanied with a promise implied in the words 'that it may be
well with thee and that thou mayest live long in the land[27]'--a
promise that the prosperity and permanence of the nation shall be bound
up with the observance of the natural law of obedience to those from
whom we derive our life. I say the prosperity of the nation, and so no
doubt secondly of the in