the education
fitting for a woman was, that she should understand merely how to manage
the work of a house; in other words, know nothing but how to minister to
the appetites or whims of her husband, regarding him as her lord, her
irresponsible master. Rabbi Eliezer said, "Let the words of the law be
burned rather than that they should be delivered to a woman." Why, we
wonder? Because they might, if they read it, learn what privileges it
accorded them, and perhaps claim them--a state of things to be prevented
by any means, no matter how unscrupulous.

Notwithstanding the teachings of the rabbins, however, and dark as was
the day just prior to the coming of the Messiah, we find a woman who was
prophesying in the temple even then. The prediction of Anna the
prophetess is mentioned in the New Testament without a word of censure
on the unwomanliness of her conduct, or her profanation of the temple
by it. Modern writers would perhaps have been wiser, and treated her
with what they considered deserved contempt.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote F: Gen. i, 26, 27, 28.]

[Footnote G: Gen. ii, 18, 20, 21, 22.]

[Footnote H: For the original meaning of the word _woman_ see Dr. Clarke
on Genesis ii, 23.]

[Footnote I: Gen. vi, 6.]

[Footnote J: Clarke on Exodus xxi, 7.]

CHAPTER V.

New Testament Teachings.

In this enlightened age, the sentiment of the Rabbi Eliezer, that the
law should be burned rather than delivered to women, would be execrated
by the right-minded of every Christian country. But was such a sentiment
any farther from right, either in theory or practice, than are those
held and openly avowed by some of the advocates of the theory of the
inferiority of women; who, while asserting that these inferior creatures
are, by the constitution of their minds, incapable of comprehending the
meaning of a law, yet hold them equally accountable with men--who are
supposed to understand all about it--for any violation of that law? If,
indeed, there is any difference made in the punishment of delinquents,
the greater severity is most frequently meted out to the woman.

Those who insist on the absolute, unqualified subjection of women to the
opposite sex, and place them in a subordinate place in the Christian
Church, persistently quote the writings of St. Paul as authority for the
position which they take. We apprehend that the great apostle to the
Gentiles is as wrongfully misapprehended and misrepresented by certain
cl