Chapter 8

_Man moves in three circles_. The first is that of Self; the second that of Family; the third that of Country. A man who properly performs duties that pertain to himself, we shall not call noble. By neglecting family he becomes less than a man. By performing them never so well he comes not to merit applause. Distinctive nobleness begins with the third class. It is when he rises above self and family, when he looks abroad on the family of mankind, that he takes the altitude which in a man is distinctively great; when he feels no longer the little necessities which compel, or the little pleasures which allure, and yet is able to contemplate men as a great brotherhood of immortals, with a gaze analogous to Him in whose image he is made; when he can look on the world through the light of eternity, and is willing to suffer all things, and to endure all things, that by him and through him blessings may reach others,--then it is he does that which it is the high privilege of man on this earth to do, and becomes a power to which under God humanity owes all it has achieved in time. "I serve" is the law of the living forces of mankind. Each man and woman has a place. If they fill it, they furnish a channel along which God's beneficent purposes find their way to a lost world. If they do not fill it, they are set aside, and the verdict of the world is, Served them right.

It if surprising that, after Mary had been rebuked at Cana of Galilee, that she should have presumed to have interrupted Jesus in the presence of the multitude. It is instructive that Christ taught us that the tie binding us to God and to humanity, is the most sacred of all; for while it made the God-man a brother to us, it makes us co-workers with God in carrying forward the enterprises with which men are identified on the earth. When a man is true to self, to humanity, and to God, and so girds himself with the strength arising from confidence, he deserves the support, if not the admiration, of those with whom he is associated. It was unworthy of Mary to ignore the Divine origin of Jesus, and call Joseph his father before the elders. She thought to raise herself by lowering him. He would not be lowered. By his mother and by the world he knew that he had a right to be recognized as the Son of God. This tendency to belittle greatness lives yet. Men are seldom known until they die. We praise the dead and ignore the living, as a rule. There is too little respect shown to men occupying positions of public trust. There is too little respect shown in the household. The father and mother are not honored in the home as they deserve to be, and in the state the same principle rules. "Thou shall not speak evil of the ruler of thy people," is an apostolic precept, and the command, "Honor thy father and thy mother," was repeatedly reiterated by Christ.

It is a significant fact, that Eve was led astray by Satan in the same direction that was Mary. Mariolatry is only the outgrowth of the seedling that lay dormant in Mary's heart, and is indigenous. It is not natural for us to be contented with being used as an instrument for glorifying God. We desire to be honored, as something more than an instrument. In fact, it is true, that all are, no matter what their powers or capacities, instrumentalities employed of God for distinct purposes. Against this power we revolt and are thrust aside. The _really_ great delight to recognize this truth, and their prayer is, "Use me for thy glory" and for the world's advantage.

Another truth incidentally appears, and furnishes the root of Mariolatry. We come to appear to the world what we really are. Mary was tempted to place herself above Christ, and so we are not surprised that those who have turned against Christ should join the tempter in placing Mary above her Son. The refutation is the life of Christ, who died for man, and the life of Mary, who never forgot herself in thinking of others. The triumph of Mary was won by submission. Had she revolted against Christ, she had lost all. In the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, the apostle speaks of the glory of the women as of a thing distinct from the glory of the men. They are the two opposite poles of the sphere of humanity. "Their provinces are not the same, but different. The qualities which are beautiful when predominant in one are not beautiful when predominant in the other. That which is the glory of the one is not the glory of the other." The glory of true womanhood is a combination of various qualities, many of which were illustrated by the life of Mary. She was considerate of others. She was submissive. As has been said, "In the very outset of the Bible, submission is revealed as her peculiar lot and destiny. If you were merely to look at the words as they stand declaring the results of the fall, you would be inclined to call that vocation of obedience a curse but in the spirit of Christ it is transformed, like labor, into a blessing." The origin or root of Mariolatry has been accounted for in the following manner: "In all Christian ages the especial glory ascribed to the Virgin Mother is purity of heart and life. Gradually in the history of the Christian church, the recognition of this became idolatry. The works of early Christian art commonly exhibit the progress of this perversion. They show how Mariolatry grew up. The first pictures of the early Christians simply represent the woman. By and by we find outlines of the mother and the child. In an after age, the Son is seen sitting on a throne, with the mother crowned, but sitting, as yet, below him. In an age still later, the crowned mother is on a level with the Son. Later still, the mother is on a throne above the Son. And, lastly, a Romish artist represents the Eternal Son, in wrath, about to destroy the earth, and the Virgin Intercessor interposing, pleading by significant attitudes her maternal rights, and redeeming the world from his vengeance. Such was, in fact, the progress of virgin worship."

First, the woman reverenced for the Son's sake, then the woman reverenced above the Son and adored. This is the history. To account for it, various theories have been advocated. One, assuming it as a principle that no error has ever spread widely that was not the exaggeration or perversion of a truth, finds in the influence exerted by Christ the germ out of which Mariolatry springs. But surely nothing could be farther from what Christ taught. By word, by look, and by action, Christ opposed the debasing and degrading thought. Mariolatry, like idolatry, is the outgrowth of the religion of nature. The carnal heart is at enmity with God. It prefers to worship something besides God, and so in the old dispensation it found its idol in the hero. As the heathen counted for divine the legislative wisdom of the man,--manly strength, manly truth, manly justice, manly courage, Hercules with his club, Jupiter with his thunderbolt, so Baal, representing the primeval power of nature, became the object of idolatrous worship. After Christ, partly because of the new spirit which pervaded the world, and largely because the carnal heart, ruled by Satan, is glad of any pretext to neglect Christ, Mary, the mother, became preferable to Christ the Son. Salvation depends upon faith in Christ. Whosoever believeth in the Son hath everlasting life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. This being true, a belief in Mary as an intercessor is as sinful in God's sight, and is as directly opposed to a faith in Christ, as was a belief in Baal or Jupiter. By whatever means Satan induces men to reject Christ, he ruins them, and destroys their hope of salvation. Satan induced Eve to reject God, to believe in him, and to serve him. There is no evidence that Mary would have consented to occupy the place to which an idolatrous world has raised her, but Satan cares not for that, so that "he may work with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish."

The peril arising from the perversion's of biblical truth is illustrated by the history of the diaconate as well as by the history of the motherhood of Jesus. The influences set in motion by the life of Christ deserve to be carefully pondered. Perverted, they have helped on error. Used and employed as Christ designed them, they are subservient of the highest interests of society. Truly has it been said, The life and the cross of Christ shed a splendor from heaven upon a new and till then unheard of order of heroism--that which may be called the feminine order--meekness, endurance, long-suffering, the passive strength of martyrdom. For Christianity does not say, "Honor to the wise," but, "Blessed are the meek." Not "Glory to the strong," but "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Not the Lord is a man of war; Jehovah is his name, but God is love. In Christ, not intellect, but love, is glorified. In Christ is magnified, not force of will, but the glory of a Divine humility. He was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; wherefore God hath also exalted Him. Therefore it was, that from that time forward, woman assumed a new place in the world. It is not to mere civilization, but to the spirit of life in Christ, that woman owes all she has and all she has yet to gain. In Christ, manly and womanly characteristics were united, and were in equipoise. He was not the Son of the Man, but the Son of Man. It was not manhood, but humanity, that was made divine in him. Humanity has its two sides: one side in the strength and intellect of manhood; the other in the tenderness and faith and submission of womanhood; man and woman, the two halves of one thought, make up human nature. In Christ, not one alone, but both were glorified. Strength and Grace, Wisdom and Love, Courage and Purity,--Divine Manliness, Divine Womanliness. In all noble characters, the two are blended; in Him--the noblest--blended into one entire and perfect humanity. The spirit which pervades the world because of Christ's coming, and of the influence exerted by his Gospel, opens to woman a faith which has been growing clearer and brighter for eighteen centuries. By this we do not affirm or imply that the coming of Christ restored woman to the equality she enjoyed in the morning of creation, or that his coming removed the curse then pronounced upon her. If Christ's coming removed a part of the curse, then it must have removed all, which we know is false; woman still has sorrow in child-bearing, and man earns his daily bread by the sweat of his brow. Christ's coming removed the disabilities from woman. He turned the attention of the world to feminine characteristics, and shed over them the halo of a divine light. He brought the woman up as he lowered the glory hitherto attached to characteristics distinctively manly. Where Christ is loved, the gladiator and prize-fighter are despised, and a meek and quiet spirit is honored. The heart is the seat of power more than the intellect. Blessed are the pure in heart, rather than the great in intellect. Pureness rather than strength is the ideal of the human heart, since Christ was slain. While, then, it is true that the worship of Mary is idolatry, and that the worship given to her is so much taken from Christ, we must not forget that the only glory of the Virgin was the glory of true womanhood. "The glory of true womanhood consists in being herself; not in striving to be something else. It is the false paradox and heresy of this present age to claim for her as a glory, the right to leave her sphere. Her glory lies in her sphere, and God has given her a sphere distinct; as in the Epistle to the Church of Corinth, when, in that wise chapter, St. Paul rendered unto womanhood the things which were woman's, and unto manhood the things which were man's."

Mary's glory was not immaculate origin, nor immaculate life, nor exaltation to Divine honors. She has none of these things. Hers was the glory of simple womanhood. The glory of being true to the nature assigned her by her Maker, the glory of Motherhood; the glory of a meek and quiet spirit, which is, in the sight of God, of great price. For all women there is something nobler than to be recognized as the queen of heaven. Let woman be content to be what God made her, to fill the sphere God appointed for her, in unselfishness, and humbleness, and purity, rejoicing in God her Saviour, content that He had regarded the lowliness of His handmaiden, and rejoicing that God has honored the characteristics regarded as feminine, which she possesses, and which she may use for the glory of God and the good of the race. Now, as in the olden time, it is her privilege to minister unto the necessities of Jesus, by cheerfully contributing of her substance to the support of His cause, and by lavishing her love, upon those qualities of the head and heart, which in Christ appeared in perfected beauty, and are to-day the charm of life, the power of religion, and the glory of Christianity.

WOMAN'S WORK AND WOMAN'S MISSION.

Woman's work is a work of charity. The fact points back to woman's origin. God brought her as a gift to man, with characteristics and endowments which fitted her to be his helpmeet, his counsellor, and companion. Recall Adam's position. He was alone in the garden. He found no helper in the beasts. He longed for a kindred spirit. Endowed with a nature too communicative to be content with itself, he requires society, a resting point, a complement, for he only half lives while he lives alone. Made to speak, to think, to love, his thought seeks another thought to reveal and quicken itself; his speech is lost sorrowfully in the air, or only awakens an echo which reverberates it, but cannot reply; his love knows not where to fix itself, and falling back on itself, threatens to become a barren egotism; in short, fill his being aspires to another self, but his other self does not exist. At this time, when the desire for communion was stifling him, he slept, and from his side God took a rib and made woman, and brought her to him. Behold Adam. He sees her, and is in rapture.

"Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, In every gesture dignity and love."

Milton describes Adam as saying--

"I now see Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, myself Before me; Woman is her name, of man Extracted: for this cause he shall forego Father and mother, and to his wife adhere; And they shall be one flesh, one heart, one soul."

The imagination paints this scene. In fancy we behold Adam winning Eve, "for she would be wooed, and not unsought be won." Won she was, and Adam was brought to the sum of earthly bliss. They dwell together in sweet accord, Adam fears for her safety when apart from him. Evil threatens them. Together they would be strong, he thinks, apart they would be weak, and so in fear he speaks of the enemy lurking in the garden, and seeking to find them asunder.

"Hopeless to circumvent us joined, where each To other speedy aid might lend at need; Whether his first design be to withdraw Our fealty from God, or to disturb Conjugal love, than which, perhaps, no bliss Enjoyed by us excites his envy more; Or this or worse, leave not the faithful side That gave thee being, still shades thee and protects. The wife, where danger or dishonor lurks, Safest and seemliest by her husband stays, Who guards her, or with her the worst endures."

Eve resents the imputation of weakness, and insists on being left forever fancy free to roam at will. In self-confidence she goes forth and falls, and in falling introduces sin into the world.

Let us review the past, and recall a few facts which, deserve consideration, before we enter upon the contemplation of Woman's Work and Woman's Mission. It will not be denied that Eve was created to be a helpmeet. That Satan tempted her, and converted the helpmeet into a tempter. In that light we have considered her power. We have seen that Eve, in bringing ruin to man, turned her back upon the Creator and Preserver of mankind, and paved the way for the introduction of idolatry, the shadows of whose multiplying altars shrouded the old world in the gloom of night. From the ruin of Eve to the restoration in Mary, the history of this world resembles a deep valley filled with death and sorrow and gloom. In Adam all died, in Christ all shall be made alive. Bethlehem with its manger is set over against Eden with its bower. During that old dispensation, manly qualities were honored and womanly qualities were ignored. The effects of sin are seen. God doth not hold guiltless the sinner. The consequences of sin run on. They made woman's life wretched. They changed the helpmeet into a slave. Do not rebel, woman, at the utterance, nor suffer yourself to feel that God does not care for woman, or that he willingly afflicts her.

It is at this point you do well to survey the field. We know that God's purposes run on. That God was not and will not be defeated. That the plan formed in the councils of eternity is sure to be successfully executed.

Hence God's idea of woman is yet to bless the world. What sin destroyed Christ came to restore, and more than to restore. In heaven if not on earth we shall see woman as God made her, and as God glorified her. This brings us to the consideration of what Christ did for her. He did not permit Mary to become Intercessor, and so give a sanction to Mariolatry, which in evil is second only to idolatry. He did not lift woman to the position of ruler, nor did he give any sanction to the wild vagaries of the Christless ones, who are striving to overturn the foundations of society, and who rebel against motherhood, wifehood, and sisterhood; but he did turn the attention of the world towards the graces of womanhood, and while he turned his back upon those manly qualities of labor, of pluck, of brute courage, he turned his face towards meekness, gentleness, and love, and made the vales of life to blossom with a new beauty. He welcomed woman as a companion. He sought her for sympathy's sake, and opened his heart to her in the fullest confidence.

Let us notice this truth. In making woman's work a work of charity, he continued in the New Dispensation the work which was commenced in the Old. He lifted the thread where woman broke it, and reuniting it again sent her forth into the world to bless it with love, with sympathy, with ministrations of tenderness, with an elevating companionship, which makes man worthy of his origin, and helps him to fulfil the mission of God's anointed.

And though Satan has taken this new thought and perverted it, as he has perverted all the rest, and though he has employed the Church of Rome, by organizing women into orders and sisterhoods of charity, so that woman may again be enslaved and destroyed; though the story of her confinement in nunneries and establishments little better in form than prisons, and far more cruel in character, has been written, let us not be discouraged, but believing that Christ's plan is best, let us learn what his will is, and then let us do it in the fear of God and in the love of truth, assured that his ways are higher and better and grander than ours, and that it is safe to trust God even where we cannot trace him, remembering that "he doeth great things, past finding out; yea, and wonders without number."

In considering Woman's Work and Woman's Mission, we discover that they go hand in hand, and faith is the bond which unites them. Separate woman's work from her mission, and you divorce it from that which makes it honorable and praiseworthy. It is the spirit of faith, and love, and hope, and charity, which pervades the life of the true woman, that is her glory and her praise. The difference between woman as a drudge and woman as a helpmeet, describes the relation existing between her work and her mission. Work separated from this path of faith, love, and charity, becomes unholy to the world and unbearable to her. The holiest of all work for a mother is to care for her child. That child, so helpless now, is to reward her by acts of love and deeds of valor. Take away from woman her faith, let her feel that her work is a degradation, and there is nothing more beautiful in her attentions to a child than there would be in her attentions to a pig.

When in the country the children and their parents were floating in a little boat on a river's surface, they admired the lilies with their white leaves spread out on the wave. After they had looked upon the flower, I asked them to observe the roots, and see in what they were embedded. They replied, "The roots are in the mud." That lily illustrates truthfully the spiritual character of woman's work. Though her life may be passed in drudgery, yet the flower of her life is seen in the neatness, beauty, and comfort of the home, and her joy is derived from the commendation received by her diligence and toil. Truly has the poet told, in this homely way, how

LOVE LIGHTENS LABOR.

A good wife rose from her bed one morn, And thought, with a nervous dread, Of the piles of clothes to be washed, and more Than a dozen mouths to be fed. There were meals to be got for the men in the field, And the children to fix away To school, and the milk to be skimmed and churned; And all to be done that day.

It had rained in the night, and all the wood Was wet as it could be, And there were pudding and pies to bake, And a loaf of cake for tea. The day was hot, and her aching head Throbbed wearily as she said-- "If maidens but knew what good wives know, They would, be in no hurry to wed."

"Jennie, what do you think I told Ben Brown?" Called the farmer from the well; And a flush crept up to his bronzed brow, And his eye half bashfully fell; "It was this," he said, and coming near, He smiled, and stooping down, Kissed her cheek--"'twas this, that _you were the best And dearest wife in town_!"

The farmer went back to the field, and the wife, In a smiling and absent way, Sang snatches of tender little songs She'd not sung for many a day. And the pain in her head was gone, and the clothes Were white as foam of the sea; Her bread was light, and her butter was sweet, And golden as it could be.

"Just think," the children all called in a breath, "Tom Wood has run off to sea! He wouldn't, I know, if he only had As happy a home as we." The night came down, and the good wife smiled To herself, as she softly said, "'Tis sweet to labor for those we love-- 'Tis not strange that maids will wed!"

There is a glory in motherhood which robes woman in beauty, and fills the home with the light of heaven. The mother, busy with her cares, and attending to the wants of her children, is honored wherever Christ is loved.

Now, because the world links woman's work and mission together, the world is full of pictures of the mother and the child. To a true-hearted man, it is almost impossible to find any picture to which his nature turns with fonder delight than to that of a mother with a child sleeping on the breast, full of sweet trust and enjoying a dreamless repose, or being ministered to in his nude state in the morning bath. The spiritual covers the common with a halo of glory, and robes woman in the light of love.