The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-12-07
THE woMAN's BIBLE.


NO woman OF feVerenC mlnQ ana
true Christian feeling can contem-
plate with anything but sorrow, the
appearance of this book, of which Mrs.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the in
stigator and editor. No woman who
sincerely honors Mrs. Stanton for the
work she has done in lifting so many
of the legal disabilities under which
the sex has suffered for SO many gen.
erations, can help feeling that in TAX
ing up work for which she was so
ill-prepared and SO incapacitated, by
reason of prejudice and lack of
learning, from doing we'll, she has
made the greatest mistake of her
life; and one vital in the direction in
which she has so long labored. Those
of us who knew Mrs. Stanton best,
and her peculiar prejudices concern
ing the influence which the Bible
and Christianity have had upon the
political status of women, were pre-
pared for anything she might say
against them, but not for the flip
pant, irreverent way in which she has
said it. One can only regret, still
further, that others who have written
have allowed her to set the pace and
have obediently followed.
The method of the work, according
to Mrs. Stanton, was this:
each person purchased two Bibles,
ran through them from Genesis to
Revelations, marking all the texts
that concerned women. The pass
ages were cut out and pasted in
blank book and the commentaries
were written underneath"
The audacity of the plan suggests
the old adage of those who break in
where angels fear even to tread.
Nothing but entire ignorance of the
hold which the Bible has upon the
affections of Christian people, lack of
knowledge of modern Biblical re-
search, of the higher criticism, could
excuse any one in adopting such
method in commenting on the Script
ures. When one remembers the rev.
erent attitude of mind, the wisdom,
the wide learning, the patient com
parison of texts, the inquiries into
contemporaneous history, the pains
taking research which characterized
the eminent scholars who gave us our
new version, and which continued
for twenty years, and contrasts this
with the fippant, almost vicious at
tack upon sacred things by these
women, one is humiliated beyond
measure; especially if she be wo-
man hoping for the best for ner sex.
Mrs. Stanton has been compared to
Colonel Ingersoll; but it is doubtful
if even he could have used language
more irreverent. In one thing they
are much alike; they allow no per-
spective. History is like Chinese
drawing, all on the surface with no
vanishing visual lines. That the
world has grown older and wiser
through successive revelations of
truth, the moral side of which re-
vealed truth has come down to us
mainly through the records of the
Old and New Testaments, seems never
to have occurred to these feminine
iconoclasts. If Mrs. Stanton and her
compeers owe nothing else to Jesus
of Nazareth, they owe it to the spread
of his Gospel that they dare to pub
lish such travesty upon the Bible.
Some things are to be taken into ac-
count, which all Bible students al
low. Moses was learned in the lore
of the Egyptians. How far the Mo-
sale religion was tinctured with this
lore, it is difficult to tell, but to some
extent surely. Christianity had its
rise in the East, and was very early
in its history compounded with the
philosophy of the Greeks. The
deepest mark which Alexander the
Great made upon the history of the
world was the founding of the city
of Alexandria. This city became,
under the Ptolomies, the abiding
place of a great throng of Greeks,
Jews, and Egyptians. Here oriental
theosophy, Greek culture, philosoph-
ic speculation, found ample room;
the city "seethed with intellectual
excitement" Philo, wealthy and
ninent Jew, became the exponent
of Jewish Hellenism, that is, the ut
terance of oriental thought in Greek
language. st. Paulis known to have
been a student of the works of Philo.
Alexandria became also the seat of
Christian school OF thought which
claimed St. Mark, the Evangelist, as
its founder, and which had among
its earliest teachers st. Clement and