The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-10-19

By SHINING first Eve became the
primal cause of human sin. For this
reason God punished woman by max
ing motherhood painful and by setting
man to rule and Cypress her. This has
been one Interpretation of the third
chapter of Genesis. In this view wo-
man is the baser element in the human
compound, more prone to evil, spiritual
w weaker. of the earth earthier than
man, the sedueer of her more majestic
mate and source of the evil infection
of the race. Hence her condition of
less physical power and her larger share
of suffering are her due, to be borne
uneomplainingly. Man, the nobler and
more righteous creature, is justly her
lord and she should be happy in serv-
ing him.
The Iiteralist who finds exact history
in these Genesis stories often gets into
the deep water of such interpretations.
If he be right, the spirit of Christian
| ity is sadly wrong and great Asia IS
attitude toward woman-man S drudge
lis fundamentally correct. Preach
throughout that continent these ccrol-
laries-s' Woman is lower and baser
than man; sin entered this world
| through her: God therefore cursed her
to become man s servant and play
thing and so every masculine of them
will bow in fervent amen and swell
with self -righteousness at though of his
cruelty to woman legitimate and
laudable share of the punishment God
intended her to bear for her guilty part
in the fall of the race.
But we Christians neither preach nor
live this gospel. We cannot because an
honest study of woman shows her to
be not worse than man. The crowd
of immoral foreigners who infest far
Eastern cities cherish low estimates of
native women simply because of their
own greater depravity. In Japan as
well as America, in China and India
equally with England, man and not wo-
man is the coarser. Science agrees with
the Christian consciousness in finding
woman by nature more spiritual than
man, more contemplative and religious,
fitted by God in the very constitution
of her body and in the nature of her
function as mother to receive and cher
ish the higher and holier, the quieter
and gentler virtues. If woman we're
the baser of the two what colossal
blunder God committed, when He made
her mother and entrusted to her sole
guidance the tender babe during the
most important and formative period of
life. All human progress laughs to
scorn such absurdity. Were it true,
evolution would be impossible. Our age
and country are stalking the future both
of civilization and Christianity upon
the theory that woman must be accord
ed the privileges of the highest educa'
ton and largest culture because her
loftier and more spiritual tendencies
unite with her physical constitution in
fitting her to be the ruler of the cradle
and as such the most puissant charac- |
ter-formative power in the human |
world. Nay we have gone farther and |
entire primary schooling of the com
ing generations. A literal exegesis of |
Genesis may justify the Brahman for
the unspeakable cruelty of India IS mil ;
lions of child widows, may quiet a
Moslem s scruples when he adds one
more pretty slave girl to his harem and
may have satisfied the conscience of /
centuries of men for their inhumanity
to women, but the disciple of Jesus and
the man of science look not for the
letter that killeth but for the spirit that
giveth life in all of these imaginative
pictures of God dealings with His
children.
The touchstone of this course of SER
mons was announced to be Jesus. What
bearing has his spirit upon the problem
of woman and her pain2 Whatever be
the final verdict of historical investiga-
ton upon the question of the virgin
birth, the centuries have agreed with
Luke in Gabriel's address TO Mary,
- Blessed art thou among women =
purest, gentlest, fittest of her sex to
bear a sinless son, and the whole spirit
of the modern view of woman accords
with the narrative which makes the
ideal Son of Man derive his kinship
with us all through the more refined
and spiritual feminine human nature.
But for the present historic moment
this consideration is one of poetry
rather than prose. For a more vital
bearing upon the problem we must look
to Jesus public life. Here, wherever He
is found in association with the wo-