The True Woman / A Series of Discourses, to Which Is Added Woman vs. Ballot

by Justin D. Fulton

3. Sin not only changed their relations to each other, awakening their animal nature and killing their spiritual hope of sweet communion with God, but it changed their relations towards God. They became aliens to him. They lost their love, and were tortured by fear. They feared him whom they once loved. "And Jehovah God called to the man, and said to him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and was afraid because I was naked, and hid myself. And he said, Who has showed thee that thou art naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree which I commanded thee not to eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate."

Adam, in his beginnings of sin, furnishes an example to sinners, which has been abundantly copied. He says, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate." He finds fault with God the giver, and fails to condemn woman the sinner. The passage is sometimes falsely interpreted, as an unworthy attempt of the man to cast the blame of his offence on the woman. But the emphasis lies on the words whom thou gavest to be with me, by which utterance he seeks to transfer the responsibility from himself to God, who gave him the companion by whose example he was betrayed into sin, instead of placing it upon the woman, who was the guilty cause. Thus he refuses or neglects to denounce the sin; but takes for granted that woman was as God made her, and acted in accordance with her mechanism. Hence, Adam argued, if any one was responsible, it was her Maker. She acted in accordance with the nature which had been given her. We hear this doctrine advanced daily. "I am what God made me." A cotton mill weaves cotton because it was made to weave cotton. It is not responsible. It weaves well or ill in accordance with the skill of the mechanism, and not in accordance with the desire of the proprietor. If it weaves ill, you blame the maker. If well, you praise the maker. Adam, in his reply, ignored woman's moral nature, and talked of her as though she had been a machine. "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate." He forgot his own higher nature, forgot his position, and fell. How he differed from the second Adam we shall see before we are done.

It is noticeable, not only that Adam ignored woman's moral nature, and the ruin wrought by sin, but he asserts a truth. Woman was given to man to provide him with food, to spread the feast, and to keep the house; and in her vocation, and while performing the duties assigned her, she led him astray. It is noteworthy that God does not reply to Adam, but turns to woman with the question, "What is this that thou hast done?" recognizing the fact that she turned from God, and turned towards God's enemy, and in listening, sinned; and in sinning, fell; and in falling, carried with her man; and in carrying man, whelmed the race in the ruin of the fall.

In speaking of woman as a tempter, we are not to forget that she is woman. The serpent beguiled her, and she ate. Satan found in her an ally; an so pleased was he with the results of the partnership he has never dissolved the firm. While woman, as a helpmeet, becomes an ally of Christ, as a tempter she is the ally of Satan. Not as a woman, but as a tempter, she is the ally of the evil one. Satan works in her, as a tempter, both to will and to do according to his good pleasure, whenever she submits to his sway. The reason for this is recorded in the Word of God. Some sneer at the reference to this time-honored record; but we reassert the truth. The Bible is the revealed will of God, and it declares the God-given sphere of woman. The Bible is, then, our authority for saying woman must content herself with this sphere, and try to meet its responsibilities, or she will lose self-respect and cast away the regard of the community. Without the Bible, her life is everywhere proven to be gloomy. With it, and beneath its protection, she becomes an heir of hope.

Notice the characteristics of her power as a tempter.

1. She is regarded as God's best gift to man. She fills a place in man's heart which is empty without her. It is difficult to think of her as an ally of Satan. We prefer to think of her as God's first and best gift to man. Even a fallen woman is regarded as a poor unfortunate, and is tolerated because the many claim she has been more sinned against than sinning. Excuses are woven for her, out of the statements ever afloat, that she was in a starving condition, and was driven to desperation; that she was turned out upon the world, was deceived, led astray, and shipwrecked, and then did not care, and so went from bad to worse, until she became the wreck of her former self, and was given up to lust and the pollutions of shame. God forbid that we should cast stones at her. In the words of Christ, let us rather say to every fallen woman, "Go, and sin no more." But when a woman persists in sinning, we should speak of her in the language of Scripture, and boldly warn against her wiles.

A fallen woman is not God's gift to man. Before her fall she was God's gift. In beauty Eve still remains the model. The artist delights to paint her, and the poet sings her praises. But in conduct she is a warning. Scripture pictures her going to Adam, hiding from him the ruin wrought, and pressing to his lips the fruit which carried death. (Then she was the devil's gift to a sin-cursed world.) A fallen woman—a woman who refuses to love Christ and to serve him, who sweeps out into the paths of dissipation and of lust, and becomes a seductive wile—is the devil's ally; "for she forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God. For her house inclineth unto death. None that go unto her returneth again, neither take they hold of the paths of life."

Against such a woman God warns us in the thunder tones of wrath, and the picture of her doom is lurid with the glow of the devouring flames, "for her feet go down to death and her steps take hold on hell."

This is but a single characteristic of her power as a tempter, and we love to think that it is the least employed. A mind retaining the perception of woman's worth, shrinks from the idea of linking her name with impurity. We cherish the hope that she is virtuously inclined, and cannot bear to think that she willingly forsakes the right and casts herself down the steeps of ruin. Ah, woman, when this is not the case society has a right to cast you off. It is because of this faith that the good despise the woman who persists in folly, and who secretly tries to seduce the unwary. God's judgments seem not too severe, and the language is none too strong, though the denunciation is terrible and the destruction certain. God makes no apologies for sin. A fallen woman is an abomination. Her crimes are terrible. She is the foe of the home, and the enemy of all that is pure. Hence she is thrown out upon the rocks, and left there to die, unpitied and unbefriended, without God and without hope in the world. By every virtuous person she is despised. Hence, between a virtuous woman and ruin there is a bridged chasm; whoever crosses that bridge leaves hope, and honor, and happiness behind. Think of the thousands about us going, unprayed for, down to perdition!

Society tolerates a man as it does not tolerate a woman. God did business with Adam, but he does not mention Eve after her fall. Society recognizes a fallen man as it cannot recognize a fallen woman. Thus her crime is proclaimed to be the greater than man's, even by the world. Let us be just. We do not heap the blame all on woman, even of her fall. All we say is, she bears the burden of the woe. In this fact she is warned. Society may pity her: it cannot palliate her guilt. Thus is she advised against throwing herself away, and casting off her allegiance to Christ, to herself, and to humanity. Let her fall, and almost without exception she is hopelessly ruined. Society points the finger of scorn at her, and, what is worse, the barriers to virtue having been broken down, they seem to be destroyed. It is as difficult to get back what a woman loses when she falls, as it would have been to have forced an entrance back into Eden after the banishment.