chapter ii

., she was created after him, without at once admitting that man is inferior to the creeping things because created after them."

These commentators, on the whole, agree that the first account of creation does not teach woman's subjection to man; that, although "some wily Jew" inserted the second account in an endeavor to give "heavenly authority for requiring a woman to obey the man she married," he has been outwitted after all, for the ascending series of creation really teaches the same lesson as the first account, and from it woman's inferiority cannot be maintained. And yet it would seem that she must be an "afterthought" if she is to be superior.

Mrs. Stanton, in summing up the concensus of opinion on a matter which is not of the slightest importance to any of them, except that they feel an interest, for the cause of Suffrage, in endeavoring to release woman from the long bondage of superstition, says: "The first account dignifies woman as an important factor in the creation, equal in power and glory with man. The second makes her a mere afterthought. The world in good running order without her, the only reason for her advent being the solitude of man. There is something sublime in bringing order out of chaos; light out of darkness; giving each planet its place in the solar system; oceans and lands their limits,--wholly inconsistent with a petty surgical operation to find material for the mother of the race. It is in this allegory that all the enemies of woman rest their battering-rams, to prove her inferiority. Accepting the view that man was prior in the creation, some Scriptural writers say that, as the woman was of the man, therefore her position should be one of subjection. Grant it. Then, as the historical fact is reversed in our day, and the man is now of the woman, shall his place be one of subjection? The equal position declared in the first account must prove more satisfactory to both sexes; created alike in the image of God--the heavenly Mother and Father. Thus, the Old Testament,' in the beginning,' proclaims the simultaneous creation of man and woman, the eternity and equality of sex; and the New Testament echoes back through the centuries the individual sovereignty of woman growing out of this natural fact. Paul, in speaking of equality as the very soul and essence of Christianity, said, 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.' With this recognition of the feminine element in the Godhead in the Old Testament, and this declaration of the equality of the sexes in the New, we may well wonder at the contemptible status woman occupies in the Christian Church to-day."

So the woman who spurns the Bible as the book that is responsible for woman's degradation, who denies that it is the word of God, who pours out upon Paul the vials of her wrath, finds in them both her highest warrant for believing in the "equal position" of woman, "the perfect equality of the sexes." When the wrath of woman thus praises God, the one who believes that through woman's status in the Bible and in the Christian Church this perfect equality is being worked out day by day need not take up controversial cudgels. Ribaldry in woman seems more gross than in man, and this is woman's ribaldry. It is profane to speak of the "feminine element in the Godhead." God is a spirit. There is no more a feminine than a masculine element in the Godhead. Sex belongs to mortal life and its conditions. It begins and ends with this earth. Christ has told us so: There will be in another world "no marrying, nor giving in marriage, but we all shall be as the angels in heaven." The equality of which Paul spoke as "the very soul and essence of Christianity" is the equality of the essence and soul of male and female humanity, and the oneness of the believer's soul with that of the Christ in whom his soul believes. The soul of humanity, as well as its body, is bound by sex conditions as long as it draws the breath of this transitory life. Every thought and every act reveal the governing power of the sex mould in which its form is cast for this world's uses. The use of this world is to give preparation for another and a better one; final spiritual triumph is the end to be attained. Humanity is now in the image of God only in the essential sense in which the full corn in the ear may be said to be wrapped up in its kernel, and it can unfold only according to the laws of its being. The first account of Creation sets forth, with the beautiful imagery of the Orient, the general and ultimate truth. The second account, with the same grand simplicity, foreshadows the method and the long, slow process by which this ultimate end is to be attained.

In continuing their comments, the editors say: "In