The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1870-03-19
WOMAN---PAST, PRESENT
IND FUTURE.
PAST.

all that is Tor many years known of its men
and its events. To the Interpretation put up
on one of its accounts of the creation of wo-
man is largely owing, whatever of social, le-
gal, or domestic inferiority may have been by
! the Jew and the Christian attributed to her.
Something not so very unlike our old testament
account exists among the legends ofother peo-
pies, in part accounting for her continued
inferiority with more barbarous peoples, wEile
the great law of might, the only right for long
centuries with the most cultivated peoples,
contributed mainly to the fixing her in that
state of real degradation from which only slow
ly has christianity, aided by civilization lifted
her
Neither testament gives us, in any fulness of
detail, the biography of woman, anything
by which we may fairly construct an ndividu-
alcharacter, or satisfactorily picture to ourselves
the really womanly qualities demanded ac-
cepted or attained at the separate stages of the
Jewish life. The old Hebrew mothers have a rev.
erend halo about their names, but themselves
they are nothing. " The types of female ex-
cellence exhibited in the early period of jew
ish history are in general of low order and
certainly far inferior 30 tps'e os Rc4Ia n isteTy
or Greek poetry, and the warmest eulogy Of a
woman in the Old Testament is probably that
which was bestowed upon her who, with cir
cumstanccs of the most aggravated treachery,
has murdered the sleeping fugitive who had
taken refuge under her roof" Though we have
the names of women of the New Testament
which we constantly repeat, and associate with
certain types OF womanly character, they really
have no character drawn for us by the sacred
writers, but brieiest hints are given by which
we can fill out their portraits, while all that
alteration of the Virgin Mary which has orly
brought world PROSTATE before it, rests solely
on the fact that Mary was the mother of Jesus.
| or Mary herself the writers are all silent IL
is only taken for granted on general principles,
that she was gentle, sweet, and pure, the en-
! bodimeGt of all that makes up eur ideal wo-
| man.
A certain, yet restricted latitude was perhaps
! allowed the Hebrew woman and at times of
| national disaster she seems to have welded
an influence unknown then, as now among
other Eastern peoples. While the average wo-
| man was but u tender of herds, ur Il house
| hold drudge, there was evidently room and
| encoura cement for the sex TO show and cxer-
else any quality that it had. On great nation
| al occasions, women seem to have taken the
matter of public rejoicing, as Miriam at the
Red Sea, the maidcns at the victories of David,
and Saul and Jephthah's daughter on her faith
theirs return, while to Hannah and to Deborah
we must, as well as TO Miriam. attribute some
ability in the lyric art, and Jezebel, a queen,
showed the power of great wickednces, as
Ruth had of rustic sweetness and judith, long
after of heroic patriotism. These however
are mostly instances adorning the heroic epochs
of the people, rather than characteriziug
their general history. II was the outgrowth Of
of Rabbincal teachings that had made con-
versation in public with woman q thing con-
demned at the time of the Savior :" Let no
one talk with woman III the street, no. not
! his own wife," was one of their sayings
| Lecky, from whom | borrow much in this in
| troductory statement, says that of the three
| great nations ofantiquity, " the Jews produced
in history and in poetry the smallest number
| of illustrious men,. Diodorus Liculus, as
Kenrck quotes, writing at the the time of Jul
Illus Cesar, and just prior TO Christ, describes
the condition of females in Egypt as singular
| ly favorable" the prerogatives of queen be
ing greater than those of king, and the hus-
band cngGgingi in the marriage contract to obeyhe
| that day come around again and may keep
look for it in "the good time coming?" Earlier
than this, their condition seems not TO have
| been so favorable, while it is by means i'm
| probable that whatever under the Mosaic dis
| pensation tended to elevate the sex, was adopt
ed by him from the habits or laws of that old
centre, and mother OF civilization and Of art.
The great fact that Moses, learned in all things
of the Egyptians, moulded his polity LARGELY
| by what he had observed in that country, retain
| ing what seemed to him wise and establishing
the opposite of what seemed to him foolish,
cannot, presume at this day, be successfully
controverted. Moses was no puppet in the
| Divine hand; no mouth piece of Divine Ora
| Gle, but man trained as other men, and as
other men prepared for his great mission by
antecedent knowledge and experience, aided
| by the mysterious helpings of Divine Spirit,
| as all providential men.
Though among the least of the Kingdoms of
the earth and hardly at anytime of its existence
| maintaining a condition of established indie
| pendence and prosperity, the Hebrew nation
must always come in for large share in what
ever concerns the moral and religious develop
ment of the race" 1t is one of the most strik-
ing facts of its existence, as we'll as one Of
| those hints of some special Divine purpose and
| oversight which it seems impossible wholly to
| get away from, while the fact of the allowance
of polygamy, which is said only to have ceas
ed at the captivity,-more degrading to wo-
man as to man and to the whole domestic
growth, hope and order, than any direct socialo or
legal disabilities could be, goes to show that all
| things within that Commonwealth were not or
| dered by that one immutable law of right which
governs God as man. Ifthe woman does notseem
| to touch so low condition among the Jews Of
| the two testaments as we suppose her level to
have been in the peoples about, it is attributa-
BILE to something in her own .polity rather than
to any direct ordering of God.
1t is a curious fact that to Great Civilization
| we owe the institution of monogamy and
that the very slow, gradual rise of the sex not
of the wretched degradation to which not on
ly barbarians but Oriental polygamy had con-
signed her. WHAT'S it aboutcertain geograph-
ical positions that seems to make impossible
within them certain moral ideas? How does
it happen that an imaginary geographical line
separating the East from the West, is more
than Chinese wall against the advance of
habits and customs? Europe repels Asia and
the frontier. Her civilization hurls back the
others barbarism. Greece was just on the
confines ofpolygamy, the law of the peoples be-
| yond her. She took her stand upon the law
| which was in the beginning, is now, and ever
shall be, that man shall have but one wife at
time, took it at an early and comparatively rude
cfa md 10 a ,orlyoh h1a fooft OF
"types of female excellence contained in the
Greek poems, while they are among the earli-
est, are also among the most perfect in the lit
erature of mankind. The graces as well as the
virtues of the most perfect womanhood have
never been more exquisitely portrayed. The
| Greek civilization, however ripening in the di-
rection of philosophy and art, the latter bring
ing luxury and license, introducing class of
| learned, beautiful, and much-sought women,
who were not wives. Exalting these and al
lowing them honor and public privilege, while
| keeping the wife TO the absolute seclusion of
home, and the detail of domestic occupation.
Married young, Ignorant of the world, not ap-
pearng in public OF attending the public games
or seeing the male guests of her husband,
she led a monotonous, though notunhappy life,
cheered by certain negative quality of love
from her husband, with which no outside cau-
ses would interfere think few words which
a husband spoke to his young wife on receiv-
ing her Into his home, admirably adapted to
show the entire, if gentle, slavery in which,
she was held, while in part his words may be
as appropriate to our times as to his. She was
but fifteen years-too young for any woman to
make such venture. 1 believe the crude in
experience of too early married women has
more to do with the question of woman than
we are willing too see! He speaks to her with
extreme kindness, tells her she is to be "a queen
bee, dwelling continually at home. She must
give to each servant his task; economize the
family income; take special care that the
house is strictly orderly the shoes, the pots
and the clothes always in their places. If
she faithfully performs her duties, he assures
her he will be the first and most devoted of
her slaves. And he assures Socrates that in
any domestic dispute he could extricate himself
admirably if he was in the right; but whenever
he ,oaS inhe orong, he found 1t impossible to con-
visce his 0ife that 1t otherwise! Alta later pc
riodPlutarch represents the wife "not as the
mere housekeeper or chiefslave her husband,
but as his equal and his companion. He en-
{ forces, in the strongest terms, reciprocity of
obligations, and desires that the minds of 'Wo-
men should be cultivated to the highest point.
His precepts of marriage fall little, if at all,
, below any that have appeared in modern
days."
The Roman idea Of woman, while it eleva-
ted both the character and position of the sex,
had that something of harshness which be-
longed to everything Roman. The husband
had the most absolute power over the the wife
| hod fha i0hf in of auff 10