Part 5

2. The second result is seen in the effect produced. "Lust conceived and brought forth sin, and sin brought forth shame." And the eyes of both of them were opened, not so as to have an advanced knowledge of things pleasant, profitable, and useful, as was promised and expected, but of things very disagreeable and distressing. Their eyes were opened to see that they had broken God's law, lost his favor, destroyed their home, and left themselves exposed to the terrors of the judgment. They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

They knew that they were naked. In place of conscious innocence and purity came the sense of guilt and shame. "We are not to understand," says Dr. Conant, "that there is allusion here to any physical effect of the eating of the forbidden fruit. So gross a conception is foreign to the spirit and purpose of the narrative. As the language in ch. ii. v. 5, is an expression of purity and peace of mind, so the language used here is the expression of conscious guilt, of self-condemnation and shame." Look at that criminal arrested. See him shiver as if cold. His nature is exposed because it is weakened. Righteousness is a defence. A man in sweet communion with God is girded with strength and endurance, with recuperative energies, of which a man is ignorant when he is alienated from God, and exposed to wrath. "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature that is not manifest in his sight; but all things are naked and opened to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." The Lord God was abroad. They hid themselves. They were afraid. Ah, there is a nakedness which the culprit feels, which cannot be covered up. God's eye pierces through every form of concealment, and lays bare the cause of ruin and the deed of shame. It is impossible to hide from God. If this world is deceived by our disguises, and pasteboard faces, and long robes, the Being with whom we have to do shall laugh at our calamities and mock when our fear cometh, as we shall stand out in our true characters, and shall be judged for the deeds done in the body, whether they be good or evil.

3. Sin not only changed their relations to each other, awakening their animal nature and killing their spiritual hope of sweet communion with God, but it changed their relations towards God. They became aliens to him. They lost their love, and were tortured by fear. They feared him whom they once loved. "And Jehovah God called to the man, and said to him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and was afraid because I was naked, and hid myself. And he said, Who has showed thee that thou art naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree which I commanded thee not to eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate."

Adam, in his beginnings of sin, furnishes an example to sinners, which has been abundantly copied. He says, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate." He finds fault with God the giver, and fails to condemn woman the sinner. The passage is sometimes falsely interpreted, as an unworthy attempt of the man to cast the blame of his offence on the woman. But the emphasis lies on the words _whom thou gavest to be with me_, by which utterance he seeks to transfer the responsibility from himself to God, who gave him the companion by whose example he was betrayed into sin, instead of placing it upon the woman, who was the guilty cause. Thus he refuses or neglects to denounce the sin; but takes for granted that woman was as God made her, and acted in accordance with her mechanism. Hence, Adam argued, if any one was responsible, it was her Maker. She acted in accordance with the nature which had been given her. We hear this doctrine advanced daily. "I am what God made me." A cotton mill weaves cotton because it was made to weave cotton. It is not responsible. It weaves well or ill in accordance with the skill of the mechanism, and not in accordance with the desire of the proprietor. If it weaves ill, you blame the maker. If well, you praise the maker. Adam, in his reply, ignored woman's moral nature, and talked of her as though she had been a machine. "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate." He forgot his own higher nature, forgot his position, and fell. How he differed from the second Adam we shall see before we are done.

It is noticeable, not only that Adam ignored woman's moral nature, and the ruin wrought by sin, but he asserts a truth. Woman was given to man to provide him with food, to spread the feast, and to keep the house; and in her vocation, and while performing the duties assigned her, she led him astray. It is noteworthy that God does not reply to Adam, but turns to woman with the question, "_What is this that thou hast done?_" recognizing the fact that she turned from God, and turned towards God's enemy, and in listening, sinned; and in sinning, fell; and in falling, carried with her man; and in carrying man, whelmed the race in the ruin of the fall.

In speaking of woman as a tempter, we are not to forget that she is woman. The serpent beguiled her, and she ate. Satan found in her an ally; an so pleased was he with the results of the partnership he has never dissolved the firm. While woman, as a helpmeet, becomes an ally of Christ, as a tempter she is the ally of Satan. Not as a woman, but as a tempter, she is the ally of the evil one. Satan works in her, as a tempter, both to will and to do according to his good pleasure, whenever she submits to his sway. The reason for this is recorded in the Word of God. Some sneer at the reference to this time-honored record; but we reassert the truth. The Bible is the revealed will of God, and it declares the God-given sphere of woman. The Bible is, 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 the least employed. A mind retaining the perception of woman's worth, shrinks from the idea of linking her name with impurity. We cherish the hope that she is virtuously inclined, and cannot bear to think that she willingly forsakes the right and casts herself down the steeps of ruin. Ah, woman, when this is not the case society has a right to cast you off. It is because of this faith that the good despise the woman who persists in folly, and who secretly tries to seduce the unwary. God's judgments seem not too severe, and the language is none too strong, though the denunciation is terrible and the destruction certain. God makes no apologies for sin. A fallen woman is an abomination. Her crimes are terrible. She is the foe of the home, and the enemy of all that is pure. Hence she is thrown out upon the rocks, and left there to die, unpitied and unbefriended, without God and without hope in the world. By every virtuous person she is despised. Hence, between a virtuous woman and ruin there is a bridged chasm; whoever crosses that bridge leaves hope, and honor, and happiness behind. Think of the thousands about us going, unprayed for, down to perdition!

Society tolerates a man as it does not tolerate a woman. God did business with Adam, but he does not mention Eve after her fall. Society recognizes a fallen man as it cannot recognize a fallen woman. Thus her crime is proclaimed to be the greater than man's, even by the world. Let us be just. We do not heap the blame all on woman, even of her fall. All we say is, she bears the burden of the woe. In this fact she is warned. Society may pity her: it cannot palliate her guilt. Thus is she advised against throwing herself away, and casting off her allegiance to Christ, to herself, and to humanity. Let her fall, and almost without exception she is hopelessly ruined. Society points the finger of scorn at her, and, what is worse, the barriers to virtue having been broken down, they seem to be destroyed. It is as difficult to get back what a woman loses when she falls, as it would have been to have forced an entrance back into Eden after the banishment.

2. The fact that she is a woman gives her influence. In her terrible work beauty is an aid. God says, "Desire not her beauty in thy heart, neither let her take thee with her eyelids." That is, look for something besides a pretty face or a twinkling eye. "Pretty is that pretty does," is a good motto, and utters a truth which is quite too frequently ignored. Beauty is not to be despised or condemned. God, who painted the lilies' bloom, and covered the sky with the wondrous tints of a glowing sunset, must enjoy beauty, and surely made it to please and to bless us. Yet when it comes to be used as an agent of evil, it is to be shunned and disregarded. In all this world there is nothing so empty as a heartless, brainless woman, with a pretty face. Yet beauty is a power; so the heathen declare, "Every woman would rather be handsome than good." That may be true in heathen, but it is not true of all in Christian climes. If there is one woman who thinks more of dress than duty, more of shadow than substance, more of Vanity Fair than of Virtue's bower, then beware. You are not an ally of Christ. At once begin a new life, if you would shun the dangers and avoid the terrible doom threatening you. Cast away that which excites passions and gives the body unrest, and seek the food for mind and soul which gives rest and peace. Seek Christ, and through him victory over self and over sin. Do something to brighten your home life and to honor your Master. Clear your soul from the taint of vanity. Do not rejoice in conquests, either that your power to allure may be seen by other women, or for the pleasure of rousing passionate, feelings that gratify your love of excitement. It must happen, no doubt, that frank and generous women will excite love they do not reciprocate; but, in nine cases out of ten, the woman has, half consciously, done much to excite it. In this case she shall not be held guiltless, either as to the unhappiness or injury of the lover. Pure love, inspired by a worthy object, must ennoble and bless, whether mutual or not; but that which is excited by coquettish attraction, of any grade of refinement, must cause bitterness and doubt as to the reality of human goodness so soon as the flush of passion is over. And that you may avoid all taste for these false pleasures,

"steep the soul In one pure love, and it will last thee long."

The love of truth, the love of excellence, whether or not you clothe them in the person of a special object, will have power to save you much of evil, and lead you into the green glades where the feet of the virtuous have trod. Preserve the modesty of your sex by filling the mind with noble desires, that shall ward off the corruptions of vanity and idleness. "A profligate woman, who left her accustomed haunts and took service in a New York boarding-house, said, 'She had never heard talk so vile at the Five Points as from the ladies at the boarding-house.' And why? Because they were idle; because, having nothing worthy to engage them, they dwelt, with unnatural curiosity, on the ill they dared not go to see." This seems like an exaggeration. Yet Margaret Fuller is responsible for the utterance.[A] Avoid idleness. The mind, like a mill, must have some thought in the hopper of reflection, or the machinery will prove to be self-destructive. Shun flattery. The woman who permits in her life the alloy of vanity; who lives upon flattery, coarse or fine, is lost, and loses the tribute paid the woman by the iron-handed warrior, whom he rejoiced to recognize as his helpmeet, saying, "Whom God loves, to him he gives such a wife."

[Footnote A: Woman of the Nineteenth Century, p. 168.]

The influence of married women over their younger sisters may be beneficent and good. It often is pernicious and bad. Young women judge of men very much by what married women say concerning men. If they speak of men as virtuous and pure, as noble and generous; if they can talk of their husbands as of men who have honored them with their love, and whose kindness blesses their daily life, then will the maiden of a pure heart believe that her dream is real, and that the man of her choice is pure; whose heart is free and open as her own; all of whose thoughts may be avowed; who is incapable of wronging the innocent, or still further degrading the fallen,--a man, in short, whose brute nature is entirely subject to the impulses of his better self. Such men there are in countless numbers, who have kept themselves free from stain, and who can look the purest maiden in the eye and not shun the glance. Through God's grace they have been saved from the path full of peril, and desire nothing more than to share the confidence and friendship of the pure. If, on the other hand, the unmarried are assured by the married that, "if they knew men as they do,"--that is, by being married to them,--"they would not expect continence or self-government from them;" if mothers permit their daughters to mingle freely with the dissipated and vile because of rank or wealth, and when warned that such are not fit companions for a chaste being, reply, "All men are bad sometimes in their life; but give them a pure wife and a home and they will not want to go wrong," then be not surprised if homes are converted into abodes of perpetual sorrow, if not of shame, and the fair young bride is left to weep over the sacrifice of virtue, of honor, and of love, on the altar of an unholy passion. The influence of a pure woman over young women is invaluable.

"Do not forget the unfortunates who dare not cross your guarded way. If it do not suit you to act with those who have organized measures of reform, then hold not yourself excused from acting in private. Seek out these degraded women, give them then tender sympathy, counsel, employment. Take the place of mothers, such as might have saved them originally. If you can do little for those already under the ban of the world,--and the best considered efforts have often failed, from a want of strength in those unhappy ones to bear up against the sting of shame and the frigidness of the world, which makes them seek oblivion again in their old excitements,--you will at least leave a germ of love and justice in their hearts, that will prevent their becoming utterly embittered and corrupt." And you may learn the preventives for those yet uninjured. These will be found in a diffusion of mental culture, simple tastes, best brought by your example, a genuine self-respect, and, above all, the love and fear of a divine in preference to a human tribunal. Let woman live for God and the development of her higher nature,--live so that she can be self-helped, as well as helping,--then if she finds what she needs in man embodied, she will know how to love, and be worthy of being loved. Much is said about the underpay of woman as a cause of temptation. It is for the interests of society that there should be an equality of compensation wherever there is an equality of distribution. It is well for woman to ask herself if she is ready to assume the burdens that come from an equality of compensation, such as giving up the prospect of marriage, or of sharing with man the toil of the field, of the factory, as well as of the house. Would woman be willing to take upon herself the responsibility of planning to economize, of building churches, railroads, of entering into a competition with man?--Woman is dependent, not independent.--For this reason man toils to keep his wife, and is ashamed to have his wife keep him. His pride lies in having his home a joy and his wife a helpmeet, rather than to have his wife a rival and his home empty of happiness.

It is not alone by an excess of passion or of beauty that woman becomes a tempter. The absence of love, and of beauty, sins of omission as well as sins of commission, are sources of temptation. Man desires an educated woman. Intellectually and spiritually she must be able to meet his wants, and render help, or she is a failure. He tires of a useless toy or plaything, and cries out for a helpmeet. Another has said, "The bad housekeeping, and the neglect of domestic duties, on the part of many wives, is, no doubt, attributable to the slovenly tenements, and inadequate providings, and careless neglect of the husbands. But more husbands, we fear, are driven to shiftlessness and discouragement--driven to the saloon and gambling-room--by the extravagance or inefficiency, the disorderly arrangements or badly prepared food, the irritating complaints or exacting demands of those who preside in the home. None but a man of low instinct, of base passion, of weak character, will turn away from and neglect a home where order reigns, where a cheerful smile, well-prepared food, neatly arranged table await him; where a word of cheer greets him, and where patient forbearance is exercised, even with his irregularities and faults. It is the part of woman to win; and her winning arts should not be laid aside when she grasps what she has considered a prize. She should seek in every way to win, beyond the possibility of loss, the abiding love, the unwavering confidence, the undoubting respect of her husband. If woman would be man's equal, she must challenge the equality by proving herself mistress of those arts that minister the highest comfort to his physical nature, as well as to his affections, that further his interests as well as his happiness."

Alas! how many fail here because they know not how to make a home pleasant. Such are the slaves of servants and the creatures of circumstances. In some cases the fault is man's, in others it is woman's. Perhaps in all cases both are somewhat at fault; yet the responsibility rests on woman to make home a delight. When she fails she must take the consequences. Failure with her is often a mistake. She knows no better. Ignorance, in some, is wilful, but in more it is educational. Their mothers, through ill-judged kindness, mistaken notions of life, or careless neglect, suffered them to grow up without the necessary practical training; or else they failed before them; and inefficiency and slatternliness, bad cooking, and worse manners, are the patrimony bequeathed in perpetuity to the daughters. Happy is the man who has a wife capable of getting a better meal than the hired help, and whose smile is the light of his dwelling! Sometimes a girl knows how to win, but cares not to keep. She gives place in her heart, and a welcome in her home, to others more readily than to the one she has given her plighted troth. This is criminal. A woman who does it is a suicide. She is bent on ruin, and will find the pit ere long.

_Consider her wiles of speech_. Mystery here brings ruin to man as it brought ruin to woman. Young ladies of culture and of refinement are not ashamed to employ the language of the Parisian to lead astray the companion of her life. God curse the language and the forms of speech whose words drop with the very gall of death, which revel in elegant dress as near the edge of indecency as is possible without treading over the boundary! Her wiles of speech are bad, but her wiles of love are the most perilous of all. Man needs love. He is fond of it. It is his joy, come from whence it may. Love is the mind's light and heat. A mind of the greatest stature, without love, is like a huge pyramid of Egypt--chill and cheerless in all its dark halls and passages. A mind with love, is as a king's palace lighted for a royal festival. Shame that the sweetest of all the mind's attributes should be suborned to sin. Think of it! each wile, rightly used, is a power given to woman to make her man's helpmeet, and wrongly used will make her man's destroyer.

Some one asked a minister for his conception of the personal appearance of the devil. His reply was, "A false-hearted and well-dressed gentleman, or a vain and fashionable woman." Woman was Satan's first ally, though he worked in ambush, and approached man in concealment. In the wisdom of his choice we discover the peril of woman. It may be well briefly to review the public manner in which Satan employs her talent for the ruin of man and in opposing the rule of Christ.

1. Passing over her social power, and without referring to her wiles of speech, of dress, of flattery, and of love, think of her in the arena of politics, joining her forces to infidelity, and with the disbelievers of the Bible, to obtain for woman a place for which she is not fitted, and which will destroy her peace, injure and undermine her influence in the home, and cause her to neglect wifehood and motherhood, to turn from the interior world of a quiet home, to the outside world of conflict and strife. It is the boast of a writer in favor of "Woman's Rights," that "among the disbelievers of revealed religion, I have not found, during a life of half a century, a single opponent to the doctrine of equal rights for males and females." The correctness of this statement is to a wonderful extent true. The believers of the Bible claim that the teachings and commands of the Word of God are in opposition to the doctrine. When woman joins the ranks of the infidel, she turns from God, and loses her power in her former sphere.