of mankind. Physiologically, mentally, and morally this truth holds
good. Even the highest virtues have never sprung from monasteries and
convents, but from the rude rough world of toiling and suffering men and
women outside.

According to Paul, although marriage was lawful, virginity was a higher
state; that is, to be perfect, a woman must stultify her nature and
trample upon her maternal instincts. It also implies that she is
essentially impure, and that she can only please God by abnegating her
sex. This is the deepest disrespect of womanhood, as every healthy wife
and mother would admit if such stuff were taught by another than Paul.

The great apostle troubled his poor head about the heads of women. If he
lived now when the ladies affect short hair he would go raving mad. It
was a subject on which he felt profoundly. To his mind a woman losing
her long hair, was like an angel falling from glory. He warns the whole
sex against meddling with their tresses. Men, however, are recommended
to crop close, long hair being "shameful." We have a shrewd suspicion
that Paul was bald. Perhaps if hair restorer had been then invented a
successful trial might have considerably changed his views upon this
subject.

Man was not created for woman, says Paul, but woman for man. He is of
course alluding to the old Rib Story. But a similar observation would
have been as sensible about the two halves of a pair of scissors. When
they meet what does it matter which was made for the other? Consistently
with this view he says, "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands
as unto the Lord... as the Church is subject unto Christ so let the
wives be to their husbands in everything." Some men have tried this with
no great success, and many a man thinks he is having his own way
"in everything" when he is sweetly and beautifully led by the nose.
Obedience is a hateful word in marriage. Its introduction makes the wife
a legalised concubine. Besides, if there _must_ be obedience, Paul's
rule is ridiculously sweeping, for some women have more sense and
judgment than their husbands. Every afflicted woman who applies to the
magistrate for relief from the sot who curses her home is flying in
the face of Paul. "My dear woman," the magistrate _should_ say, "your
request is very reasonable, but it is very unorthodox. Go home and read
the fifth chapter of Ephesians, where you will see that wives must obey
their husbands in _everything_."

Paul (1 C