ction. He who descended from the cross
went not to see her; and the son had no word for the broken-hearted
mother.

The story is not true. I believe Christ was a great and good man, but
He had nothing about Him miraculous except the courage to tell what he
thought about the religion of His day. The new testament, in relating
what occurred between Christ and his mother, mentions three instances;
once, when they thought He had been lost in Jerusalem, when He said to
them, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" Next,
at the marriage of Cana, when He said to the woman, "What have I to do
with thee?"--words which He never said; and again from the cross,
"Mother, behold Thy Son;" and to the disciple, "Behold thy Mother!"
So of Mary Magdalene. In some respects there is no character in the
new testament that so appeals to us as loving Christ--first at the
sepulchre--and yet when He meets her after the resurrection He had for
her the comfort only of the chilling words, "Touch me not!" I don't
believe it. There were thousands of heroic women then. There are
heroic women now. Think of the women who cling to fallen and disgraced
husbands day by day, until they reach the gutter, and who stoop down to
lift them from that position, and raise them up to be men once more!
Every country is civilized in proportion as it honors woman. There are
women in England working in mines, deformed by labor, that would become
wild beasts were it not for the love they bear for home. Can you find
among the women of the new testament any women that can equal the women
born of Shakespeare's brain? You can find no woman like Isabella,
where reason and purity blend into perfect truth; no woman like Juliet,
where passion and purity meet like red and white within the bosom of a
flower; no woman like Imogen, who said, "What is it to be false?" No
woman like Cordelia, that would not show her wealth of love in hope of
gain; nor like Hermione, who bore the cross of shame for years; nor
like Miranda, who told her love as the flower exposes its bosom to the
sun; nor like Desdemona, who was so pure that she could not suspect
that another could suspect her of a crime.

And we are told that woman sinned first and man second; that man was
made first and woman not till afterwards. The idea is that we could
have gotten along without the woman well enough, but they never could
have gotten along without us. I tell you that love is better