inferiority between them. They are
coequal.

Is there, then, no distinction made between the sexes in the text?
Certainly there is. Men were directed to remove their caps or turbans
when they prayed or prophesied in public, while women, on the contrary,
were to remain with their heads covered; that is, to keep veiled when
they prayed or prophesied in public. The latter, it is evident, was
simply a prudential or local arrangement. Throughout the East, and more
especially in heathen countries, it was the custom for women to be
veiled when they made their appearance in public; but immodest women not
unfrequently violated the usage, appearing in public unveiled. In the
state of society then in Corinth, for a Christian woman to have appeared
in public, or to have taken any prominent part in an assembly with her
head uncovered, would have placed her in a false position before
unbelievers, both Jews and Gentiles. That their liberty under the
Gospel, then, might not be made occasion of offense by gainsayers,
against the cause of Christ, that their good should not be evil spoken
of by the profane multitude, the apostle counseled them to submit to the
usages and restraints which the customs of the times and place imposed
on women, wherever the usages or restraints so imposed were not in
themselves sinful. In the same spirit he returned Onesimus to his
master; not that he thereby gave his sanction to slavery, but in this,
as other directions regarding civil affairs, advising submission to the
existing state of things, "that the Gospel be not blamed." The effecting
of civil or political reforms, however much they might be needed, was
not the immediate object of Paul's preaching or writing. His grand,
all-absorbing business was to proclaim the Gospel in all its fullness,
trusting to its benign influence to right every wrong. There is no
doubt Paul clearly understood and did not intend to controvert the
declaration of the prophet Joel (ii, 28), which was quoted by Peter as
being one evidence of the ushering in of the Christian dispensation
(Acts ii, 17, 18): "And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith
God, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your
old men shall dream dreams. And on my servants and on my handmaidens I
will pour out in those days of my spirit, and they shall prophesy." "The
last days" evidently means the Gospel dispe