over that age was not perceptible to
Paul. The lapse of time is of itself sufficient to idealize, and even to
apotheosize, remarkable personages who in reality were not without their
weaknesses.

What were the precise duties of these female servants we do not know. In
the uncrystallized organism of early Christianity it is likely that
their field of activity was not closely defined. From the Apostle's rule
we know that they did not take part in the public ministrations. "Let
the women," says he, "keep silence in the churches." In his idea of
Christianity, the family is the unit, with the man as the responsible
head. "If they would learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at
home; for it is shameful for a woman to speak in the church." And yet,
in what he says in the eleventh chapter of his first Epistle to the
Church at Corinth, he seems to admit that the women have the right both
to pray and prophesy in the congregation. But it may be the Apostle is
judging the question not as _per se_, but in accordance with the
prevailing ideas of his time. He who was "all things to all men," in
order to win them, concluded that it was the duty of women to keep
silent rather than to arouse prejudice by trampling on custom and thus
endangering the success of the Gospel. The women of the Corinthian
Church seem to have abandoned the traditions of their time and people in
this respect and were in the habit of praying and prophesying in the
congregation, and, moreover, without the customary veil. In regard to
this last-mentioned departure, Paul is emphatic: "Every woman praying or
prophesying with her head unveiled dishonoreth her head. Judge ye among
yourselves, is it seemly that a woman pray unto God unveiled?" On this
subject Dr. McGiffert comments as follows: "The practice, which was so
out of accord with the custom of the age, was evidently a result of the
desire to put into practice Paul's principle that in Christ all
differences of rank, station, sex, and age are done away. But Paul, in
spite of his principle, opposed the practice. His opposition in the
present case was doubtless due in part to traditional prejudice, in part
to fear that so radical a departure from the common custom might bring
disrepute upon the Church, and even promote disorder and licentiousness.
But he found a basis for his opposition in the fact that by creation the
woman was made subject to the man. Paul's use of such an argument from
the natural orde