s,
then, our authority for saying woman must content herself with this
sphere, and try to meet its responsibilities, or she will lose
self-respect and cast away the regard of the community. Without the
Bible, her life is everywhere proven to be gloomy. With it, and
beneath its protection, she becomes an heir of hope.

Notice the characteristics of her power as a tempter.

1. She is regarded as God's best gift to man. She fills a place in
man's heart which is empty without her. It is difficult to think of
her as an ally of Satan. We prefer to think of her as God's first
and best gift to man. Even a fallen woman is regarded as a poor
unfortunate, and is tolerated because the many claim she has been more
sinned against than sinning. Excuses are woven for her, out of the
statements ever afloat, that she was in a starving condition, and was
driven to desperation; that she was turned out upon the world, was
deceived, led astray, and shipwrecked, and then did not care, and so
went from bad to worse, until she became the wreck of her former self,
and was given up to lust and the pollutions of shame. God forbid that
we should cast stones at her. In the words of Christ, let us rather
say to every fallen woman, "Go, _and sin no more_." But when a woman
persists in sinning, we should speak of her in the language of
Scripture, and boldly warn against her wiles.

A fallen woman is not God's gift to man. Before her fall she was God's
gift. In beauty Eve still remains the model. The artist delights to
paint her, and the poet sings her praises. But in conduct she is a
warning. Scripture pictures her going to Adam, hiding from him the
ruin wrought, and pressing to his lips the fruit which carried death.
(Then she was the devil's gift to a sin-cursed world.) A fallen
woman--a woman who refuses to love Christ and to serve him, who sweeps
out into the paths of dissipation and of lust, and becomes a seductive
wile--is the devil's ally; "for she forsaketh the guide of her youth,
and forgetteth the covenant of her God. For her house inclineth unto
death. None that go unto her returneth again, neither take they hold
of the paths of life."

Against such a woman God warns us in the thunder tones of wrath,
and the picture of her doom is lurid with the glow of the devouring
flames, "for her feet go down to death and her steps take hold on
hell."

This is but a single characteristic of her power as a tempter, and
we love to think that it is t