d, when he might have consulted either Jeremiah or one of the
brother prophets. Is it not equally strange that the Lord should have
answered him by her mouth? or rather should not his having done so,
forever silence such questioning?

Other women have been emphatically the "called," according to "God's
purpose," to combat evil in countries even where women were treated with
greater indignities than in Israel. We do not make any distinction
between prophets and prophetesses. Men and women were alike called to
the prophetic office, as God pleased, and kings and princes
acknowledged their authority. Many women became noted for their active
service rendered to the Jewish Church and nation.

Women have proved themselves to be skillful diplomatists, and to be
possessed of an equal amount of courage and perseverance with men; but
these capabilities have not always been employed aright. There have been
distinguished statesmen who have been frightfully wicked men; and,
unhappily, there have been clever women who have been fully their equals
in wickedness. In nothing is the mental equality of women with men more
clearly indicated than in the manner in which both pursue a career of
sin.

Jezebel appears to have been a stronger-minded person than Ahab, and to
have excelled him in subtlety and wickedness. She was as active as he in
pushing the persecution against the people of God; indeed, more active
and determined than her weak and wicked husband. At the time the life of
Elijah was threatened, she would seem not only to have been the more
determined of the two, but to have exercised greater authority over the
realm. Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel, was no whit behind her mother
in atrocious wickedness. Indeed, where women are brought up in
wickedness, they differ nothing in the depth of their depravity from men
educated in like manner.

The more frequently the Hebrews relapsed into idolatry, the less
inclined were they to allow women their legitimate privileges. The
administrators of the laws constantly curtailed female liberty,
tenaciously exacting from them the service and obedience of slaves. A
woman, even among the Jews, must have had no small amount of both
courage and wisdom, to have surmounted the difficulties which hedged up
the path to fame and honor, and risen to the distinction which some of
them reached. "The rabbins"--not Moses--"taught that a woman should know
nothing but the use of her distaff." Their idea of