d to which, can
we say, was the empire given? Both were set in conditions, hemmed
in to divine and special work: man, by the stress and sorrow of
the ground; woman, by the stress and sorrow of her maternity, and
of her spiritual conception, making her truly the "mother of all
the living."

At the beginning of human history, or tradition, then, we get
the answer to our question: the law of woman-life is central,
interior, and from the heart of things; the law of the man's life
is circumferential, enfolding, shaping, bearing on and around,
outwardly; wheel within wheel is the constitution of human power.
It will be an evil day for the world when the nave shall leave its
place and contend for that of the felloe. Iron-rimmed for its busy
revolution and outward contact is the life and strength of man;
but the tempered steel is at the heart and within the soul of the
woman, that she may bear the silent pressure of the axle, and
quietly and invisibly originate and support the entire onward
movement. "The spirit of the living creature is in the wheels,"
and they can move no otherwise. "When the living creatures went,
the wheels went by them; and when the living creatures were lifted
up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up." That was what
Ezekiel saw in his vision.

There can he no going forward without a life and presence and
impulse at the center; and in the organization of humanity there
is where the place and power of woman have been put. For good or
for evil, for the serpent or for the redeeming Christ, she must
move, must influence, must achieve beforehand, and at the heart;
she must be the mother of the race; she must be the mother of the
Messiah. Not woman in her own person, but "one born of woman," is
the Saviour. For everything that is formed of the Creator, from
the unorganized stone to the thought of righteousness in the heart
of the race, there must be a matrix; in the creation and in the
recreation of His human child God makes woman and the soul of
woman His blessed organ and instrument. When woman clears herself
of her own perversions, her self-imposed limitations, returns to
her spiritual power and place, and cries, "Behold the handmaid of
the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word," then shall the
spirit descend unto her; then shall come the redemption.