Year: 1870

their graves, radical changes came over the re


lation of marriage as the condition OF woman


Divorce, utterly unknown for over 500 years


the right to which was equally woman's, be-
came go common in the Roman Empire, thai
one woman is mentioned as married to hei
" t,0enty-t third husband, she herself being his


taUenty- first Wife!" At the same time this por


ton of the Roman history is illumined with
some of the most enlightened laws for woman {
benefit, as most exquisite instances OF woman


ly graces and mutual combined love.


At this crisis Christianity entered upon Its
conflict with paganism In that tconfct nothing
is more remarkable than that while it struck
staggering blows at condition of things soci-
ally, politically, morally rotten, its attitude
with regard to woman is rather that of dead
paganism than the living christianity: Ii
came at the moment of a sort of reacting lnfiu-
ence, led by the Neo Platonic and Pythagoreau
PHILOSOPHERS, and seems to have struck hands
with those which succeeded to the old cynic
philosophy. Some of the later Emperors, mod
els of ascetic purity and devoted to the Stole
philosophy, had interposed themselves to check
the prevalent profigacy, and more than one
before the accession of Constantine had taken
ground essentially that which christianity
soon established, the real spirit of which is
detected in the, monastic institutions, and thai
doctrine of celibaey which became funda-
mental tenet of the new church. The tone a
the Early Christian fathers against marriage
may be detected in a single line of the great
Chrysostom," woman is a necessary evil, a nat
ural temptation, desirable calamity, u do
mestic peril, deadly fascination and paint
ed ill., Under such teachings men and women
Stunned marriages those married sought di
vorce. " Woman was represented as the door
OF hell; rs the mother of all ills She should be
ashamed at the very thought that she is a wo-
man; she should be ashamed of her dress, for
it is the memorial of her fall. and especially
ashamed of her beauty, for it is the most po-
tent instrument of the demon" So late as the
sixth century "a woman might not receive the
Eucharist with her naked hands, because OF
her impurity.


All this inevitably produced its effect upon
the moral, domestic, social, legal position and
rights of woman, while it is very curious fact
that the inroad of the northern barbarians,
who overran the Roman Empire and establish
ed themselves on its ruins, again elevated the
degraded idea and condition of this unfortunate
sex. Still, in no way was her position superb
or to that under the better days of pagan
law, nor did chivalry, breaking in upon the
rough life and rapine of feu ialism, while it
gave certain sentimental honor to woman,
do anything toward her real elevation. The
medieval conception Of the Virgin Mary,
added to and aiding the chvalrous idea,
tended to the gradual raising of the ideal Of
the " For the first time woman ele-
'dtSu " Htl pOSlIou duu bHc ShHCtlJy
of weakness was recognized as we'll as the sane
tty of srrow."- No longer the slave or toy OF
man,no longer associated only with ideas OF deg
radiation or fsenSuality, woman rose into new
sphere, and became the object of a reverential
homage of which antiquity had had no con
ception. The moral charm and beauty of fe-
male excellence was for the first time felt


But all this. WAS merely the ideal woman,
preparing the way for new era, not itself tha
era. That has had to wait. 1t has taken all
the subtle and combined powers of which 90
to make up that mighty but indefinite thing we
call a christian civilization, the refinement of
culture and education, and the growing of no
tions too tardily outgrown to place woman
where we to-day find her.


With no bright, healthy past, suddenly to-
day, she finds herself, as by some great wrench
in the condition of the body polite, sharply
and somewhat rudely confronted with the
problem of her own position and capacity.
An enigma to man, the question may be fairly
puts she yet anything but puzzle to her
self?


In the past then we should say of woman
that just in proportion to the vigor or purity
of the civilization of her age has been her rel.
ative domestic and social position and infu-
ence. In the rudest days of barbarism some
thing lower than a drudge-hardly more than
another domestic animal, coming in the days
y hon houcs ana courage are @msnly viHueF
to be, if subordinate, mans companion and
friend sinking as luxury and licentiousness
degrade all things; rising again under the ge-
nial encouragement Of christianity to be mans
equal in every aspiration, privilege and right.
1t is to day strife to realize for woman what
we allow i'll thought but hardly yet allow in
fact. The woman of the present is being
whom as mother we venerate; as wife we love
as betrothed we adore as friend we trust. In
her more remote relations she is one we in
stinctiveIy honor; who unconsciously inhu-
enccs us to whom by many tender ties and
sympathics we are attached, and to whom cer-
tain courtesies and ceremonies belong. We
could not to-day say in the words of the old
philosopher Cato "if the world were only free
from women, men would not be without the
converse of the gods" nor in the language Of
at other Roman who said if we could live
without wives, we should all keep free from
that source of trouble, but nature has ordained
that men can neither live sufficiently agree
ably with wives nor at all without them !"
while yet good deal of the actual, practical
talk and feeling is not much higher. The
place which in the abstract we allow to wo-
man does not tally with what in reality we al
low. We profess one thing and do another; /;
we acknowledge equality of right but very lit
tie of it we carry out A man pays q certain
Difference to a woman, but he does it with the
assumption that he is stronger if not superior
He has feeling and good deal the air of pa
tronage, which he may disguise for his occa-
sions when he is in public or with strangers,
but which he throws off at home. wo-
mans opinions not so wise or so broad as they
ought to be sometimes, are treated with good
deal of derison, simply because they are wo-
mans opinions. The same feeling that indu-
ces a man to underpay woman's work, induces
him to underrate won ans thought. He does
not take her up on to just that level of advan-
tage he processes to. There is a somewhat Of
condescenson to his actual relationship, how
ever advanced his theory, and SO woman is still
the appendage, the ornament, the vine cllnging
to the oak, and all that sort of stuff, and not
her own God-dowered and independently pois-
ed self. l do not know how good many
questions up are going to be settled, but this |
know, woman was created not to lean but to
stand alone, has her own substantive life, her
own powers, her own character, her own
sphere, and she can just as we'll stand alone
as man can, and no better. If she must stand
alone, don't let any of us stand in her way, but
in every way by education, and by law, help
her with that knowledge and training Of
herself by which she can surely reach content,
respectability and profit. If she stand by us,
and with us, in the dear and sweet relations Of
family and home, from son to husband let us
see to it that no shadows of domestic thrall
settle deeply, darkly, fatally about her. Ii |
remember rightly Washington Irving has a
paper entitled "the wife, in which he has
beautifully elaborated the figure of the vin&
1t comes to me from far back in my boyhood
reading and may not be wholly right But this
l think, the tree is just as much indebted to
the vine as the vine to the tree; and l have
seen many an old stump of a man who owed
all the honor and decency he had to the quiet
virtues of wife, who would twine herself
about his ugly life, and over its flaws and
fissures, continue to drape the concealing beauty
of her grace, and this know, thatlet the blight
come, let pain and anguish wiring the brow when
the oak snaps before the blast, it is only the
tenderness of the vine, and wooing of its
caresses, the sweetness of its presence, the
binding of its tendrils, the whisperings of hope
straying amid its branches, that puts any
manhood back whence trouble is SO quick to
drive it. l tell you, friends to-day, woman,
though as an idea she may be enshrined in our
hearts, as fact she is not; though we may
bow before the pedestal on which we place
her as our idol, as an everyday reality, we do
not yield the rights that are individually hers


Of woman in the abstract, the sex, we have
certain feelings and convictions, but individual
woman, a poor woman, an old woman, an ugly
woman, colored woman, a woman who has
only her womanhood to recommend her, and
stands before you for sympathy, for courtesy
for aid, has little chance of the recognition
- l. Is m