In an appeal to the women of New York, in 1860, signed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lydia Mott, Ernestine Rose, Martha C. Wright, and Susan B. Anthony, we read: "The religion of our day teaches that, in the most sacred relations of the race, the woman must ever be subject to the man; that in the husband centres all power and learning; that the difference in position between husband and wife is as vast as that between Christ and the Church; and woman struggles to hold the noble impulses of her nature in abeyance to opinions uttered by a Jewish teacher, which, alas! the mass believe to be the will of God."
In 1895, among the names of those responsible for the Suffrage Woman's Bible, we find three to which the title "Rev." is prefixed. The opening commentary on the first verses of Genesis, where the creation of man is described, says: "Instead of three male personages, as generally represented, a Heavenly Father, Mother, and Son would seem more rational. The first step in the elevation of woman to her true position, as an equal factor in human progress, is the cultivation of the religious sentiment in regard to her dignity and equality, the recognition by the rising generation of an ideal Heavenly Mother, to whom their prayers should be addressed, as well as to a Father." Here is Ann Lee's doctrine revived with a mocking suggestion that savors more of Frances Wright than of its poor, half-crazed author. The soul-sufficiency of Ann Hutchinson, the spiritual anarchy of Lucretia Mott, the infidelity and the veiled coarseness of Frances Wright, have all found fit setting in this commentary on the Pentateuch. I know that Miss Anthony repudiates the Suffrage Woman's Bible in the name of the Association of which she is President. It certainly does not represent the faith or the culture or the doctrines of many who belong to that body; but she cannot really repudiate it for herself or for them. It was promised in the History of which she is co-editor, it was foreshadowed in her circular quoted above, as well as in innumerable speeches of hers in convention. Those Christian and philanthropic bodies that have attached themselves to the Suffrage movement have this book to account for and with. Whatever they may personally decide to think or say of it, it is the consummate blossom of the spirit of the Suffrage movement, and the names it bears upon its title-page represent the varied classes that have worked for the political enfranchisement of woman. By the world outside it will so be dealt with.
Few movements have been started, especially among women, that did not professedly stand upon high moral and religious ground. Fourierism was superhuman in its intention,—in this country, at least. Free-thinking hopes to deliver the soul from the bondage of superstition in all religion. Mormonism was founded as "the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- Day Saints." Communism at Oneida was professedly built upon the doctrine of human perfection in Christian love. The disaster to the soul is in proportion to the amount of perversion of a living faith. Every movement must be judged, not by what its advocates suppose themselves to believe, but by that which time proves they do believe.
But to return to the Suffrage charge. "American men may quiet their consciences with the delusion that no such injustice exists in this country as in Eastern nations. Though, with the general improvement in our institutions, woman's condition must inevitably have improved also, yet the same principle that degrades her in Turkey insults her here." American men may quiet their consciences, while striving to enlighten them further. The answer to Mohammedanism is Turkey. The answer to Christianity is America. Ceremonial uncleanness is absolutely unlike religious and social orderliness in the distribution of duties. How came there to be "general improvement in our institutions?" There has been no improvement in Turkey, in China, in India, or in Japan, except such as is creeping back from the Christendom of which these Suffragists speak with a sneer. Freedom and education have not been appreciably advanced by "woman's becoming a component part of the government" in any land. The lands where she has the most apparent governmental control are the ones that are least educated and least free among those of modern civilization.
The church is an ever-growing body, and its clergy hold widely differing beliefs. The Egyptian priesthood guarded the sacred mysteries and ruled the state. Through the utmost that natural religion can do for man, they had gleaned the secret of a Supreme Maker and Ruler of the universe. Moses, who was "learned in all their wisdom," led the first exiles across the sea to find "freedom to worship God," and, from that day to this, the ministers of religion have stood as public guard over the mysteries of faith and, in the beginnings of each civilization, have ruled the state. Whenever they have forgotten the lesson that Moses taught, the lesson that Paul more clearly taught, that to God alone is any soul responsible, they have proved stumbling-blocks to progress. It is true that religious bigots, as Suffrage writers say, have "defended capital punishment, intemperance, slavery, polygamy, and the subjection of woman." But capital punishment is defended by many besides bigots. Intemperance finds not only its strongest but its most effective foes in the Christian ministry and the Christian church. Slavery in our country rent in twain several great religious bodies. James G. Birney says that "probably nine-tenths of the Abolitionists were church-members." With polygamy came woman's subjection and woman suffrage into our free States. And the bigots outside the Christian ministry and church must share the same condemnation with any who, professing freedom, have yet forgotten the injunction of the Bible and the Christ.
"She would invade the pulpit." Invasion seems a strange word to use in regard to woman's entrance upon one of the highest of human duties. A pulpitless teacher she is and always has been. Missionary women have taught multitudes of beings. The Salvation lassie has no thought of invasion, or of self-exaltation, when she leads the service of a thousand souls; and I am not willing to believe that a single woman who has entered the regular ministry has any more. It is the spirit of Suffrage that looks upon woman's advance as an attack.
But times have changed, say Suffrage leaders. Mrs. Cornelia K. Hood, in her report of the King's County Suffrage work for 1895, says: "A circular letter was addressed to all the clergymen known to be friends, asking them that a sermon might be preached by them in favor of woman suffrage. This request met with a liberal response, and many able addresses were made on the Sunday morning set for that purpose." In her report of the Suffrage campaign in New York city in the winter of 1895-96, Dr. Jacobi says, speaking of the parlor meetings: "Several prominent clergymen joined us— Mr. Rainsford, the Rev. Arthur Brooks, Mr. Percy Grant, Mr. Eaton, Mr. Leighton Williams." In referring to the last regular meeting of the County Suffrage Association held that winter in Cooper Union, she says: "The meeting was addressed by Samuel Gompers, President of the Federation of Labor, by Dr. Peters, an Episcopal clergyman, by Father Ducey, the Catholic priest, Dr. Saunders, a Baptist minister, and Henry George, the advocate of single tax." In her address before the Constitutional Convention, she said: "The Church, which fifty years ago was a unit in denouncing the public work of woman—even for the slave—is now divided in its councils." The church never was a unit in denouncing the public work of woman, and much of her noblest public work has been done under its auspices. The behavior of Suffrage women in slavery times caused scandal to church and state. The right of private judgment, claimed always by Protestant Christianity, has divided the clergy on all questions; and "a clergyman, a priest, and a minister" were as free to believe, and to speak what they believed, on suffrage, as were Samuel Gompers, who lately offended the Labor organization by inviting two anarchists to address it, and Henry George, whose single-tax theories have lately turned law and order upside down in Delaware.
"Interpret the Bible anew from her own standpoint." The volume in which a beginning has been made in this work is a thick pamphlet bearing a motto from Cousin on one cover, and the picture of a piano as an advertisement on the other. It is with a profound sense of sadness and disgust that any woman who honors God and loves her own sex turns its pages. Behold the first dilemma in which the commentators find themselves involved. Mrs. Stanton opens the comments on the Creation as follows: "In the great work of the creation, the crowning glory was realized when man and woman were evolved on the sixth day, the masculine and feminine forces in the image of God, that must have existed eternally, in all forms of matter and mind…. How then is it possible to make woman an afterthought?… All those theories based on the assumption that man was prior in the creation, have no foundation in Scripture. As to woman's subjection, on which both the canon and civil law delight to dwell, it is important to note that equal dominion is given to woman over every living thing, but not a word is said giving man dominion over woman. No lesson of woman's subjection can be fairly drawn from the first chapter of the Old Testament."
In commenting on the second account of the Creation, Ellen Battelle Dietrick says: "It is now generally conceded that some one (nobody pretends to know who) at some time (nobody pretends to know exactly when) copied two creation myths on the same leather roll, one immediately following the other. Modern theologians have, for convenience sake, entitled these two fables, respectively, the Elohistic and the Jahoistic stories. They differ not only in the point I have mentioned above, but in the order of the 'creative acts,' in regard to the mutual attitude of man and woman, and in regard to human freedom from prohibitions imposed by deity. Now, it is manifest that both of these stories cannot be true; intelligent women who feel bound to give the preference to either, may decide according to their own judgment which is more worthy of an intelligent woman's acceptance. My own opinion is, that the second story was manipulated by some wily Jew, in an endeavor to give 'heavenly authority' for requiring a woman to obey the man she married." Lillie Devereux Blake takes still another horn of the dilemma. She says: "In the detailed description of creation we find a gradually ascending series. 'Creeping things,' 'great sea-monsters,' every bird of wing,' 'cattle and living things of the earth,' the 'fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens;' then man, and, last and crowning glory of the whole, woman. It cannot be maintained that woman was inferior to man, even if, as asserted in 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.