The age-herald., 1898-03-24
ETCHINGS FROM
 CURRENT TOPICS

from entering the arena, by the self-asser- ton of recently developed specimens of femininity In replying to this query, which has lately been propounded by a metropol- itan journal, many-minded women have an- swered in accord with their investigations, their faith in their prejudice. ;.
 The second volume Of the woman's Biz ble, edited by Elizabeth cady Stanton, has just come from the press, and it contains some strange, unwomanly utterances from notable women.
 Mrs Stanton. in the interest of her edi- ton of the Bible. sent to many prominent women, these two questions. Have the teachings of the Bible advanced or re- tarded the emancipation of women? Have they dignified or degraded the mothers of the racer"
 Several replies received by Mrs. Stanton declared that the teaching of the Bible de- graded women, and cited instances to prove the truth of the writer's position. A few letters from very progressive, intellectual women gave evidence of a brave develop ment sufficiently expansive to embrace the good old-fashioned Bible and the largest ambitions for woman's advancement at one and the same time.
 There seems to be an unfortunate ten- dency the part of a certain class of as- plrlng women to consider growth incom- patble, inconsistent with a chld-like faith in the fundamental principles underlying all Christianity.
 Progress does not signify rejection of bar in ina abstract, has remained the same through the centuries, and has only varied according to the lights thrown upon it by research and investigation. Truth is always abreast with the age. There can be no advance ment without 1t.
 But many fanatics, male and female, in- jure a cause which they espouse by their imperfect knowledge of facts, and by their limited investigations.
 They prejudice the outside world by their vehement ignorance and their turbulent contentious. They have little tact in pre- senting their cause and are consumed with their own zeal.
 Josephine K. Henry, in replying to Mrs. Stantons enquiries, says:
 In Genesis the Bible strikes the keynote of woman's inferiority and subjection; and the note rings true through every accepted and rejected book which has ever consti- tuted the Bible
 Women have but to read the Bible and the history of Christianity in conjunction with the sacred books and the histories of other religions to discover the soundness of this claim, and that the Bible cannot stand the light of truth. The Bible esti- mate of woman is summed up in the words of the president of a leading theological seminary when he exclaimed to his stu dents My Bible commands the subjection of women forever"
 The ownership of the wife, established and perpetrated through Bible teaching, is responsible for the domestic pandemonium and the carnival of wife murder which regns throughout Christendom.
 Could anything be more absurd than this statement from a woman who is of suff1- cient prominence to incline Mrs. Stanton to ask for her written views on this sub- ject?
 Josephine K. Henry is evidently ignor- ant to a Imaginable degree of Bible history and teaching, touching womanhood. Ev- cry Biblical student, whether a Christian or not, is forced to admit that the women of the Bible were not insignificant crea- lures, nor was there any effort made to emphasize the inferiority of women, save in certain portions of the New Testament, which were written by St. Paul.
 
 Many of the most exquisite stories of womanhood are taken from the pages of Holy Writ. From the creation of Eve down +o +ba To ct oh into of tiopS wbarnV- CT a woman figures in a Christian home. she Is the companion of man, as far as the conditions of the times would permit. Eve and Adam created together, disobey- ed together, and went out of Eden hand in hand; Sarah and Abraham; Rebecca and Isaac; Rachel for whom Jacob labored for fourteen years; Pharoh's daughter through whose intervention Moses was saved to the Jews; the women who ministered unto the prophets, all along down the ages, until the time when Mary and Martha were the companions of Christ, and women stood about the cross, there is not single sem tence, not an incident that suggests tho degredation of woman by Biblical writers.
 The writings of St. Paul-the grandest personality in sacred history, except the Savior, were largely influenced by the times in which he lived. He naturally imbibed the feeling regarding woman's position held at the period in which his epistles were indebted St. Paul merely voiced the almost universal sentiment of his genera tion concerning the conduct of women in public places. He gave code of manners for the women of his time. which cannot any more be enforced in the present day than that people shall continue to live in houses such as St. Paul knew, or wear garments like those fashioned in that peril cd.
 The Bible has not degraded womanhood; it has elevated her and placed her side by side with man. The great epochs in the history of the human race have always found woman the companion of man in Christian lands; she has gone forward step by step in the gradatons of advancement in accord with her faith in the Creator and the Christ,