"When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up,
And topples down the scales; but this is fixt
As are the roots of earth and base of all:
Man for the field, and woman for the hearth;
Man for the sword, and for the needle she;
Man with the head, and woman with the heart;
Man to command, and woman to obey;
All else confusion."
Woman is not content to remain separate and apart. She will give her love to some object, and desires to repose her faith in some person worthy of her regard. She lives for man. She dresses and studies for him. She acquires knowledge and accomplishments, which are known to please and to allure.
Woman, being by nature dependent, finds it easier to lay hold of the offer of salvation than does man. His independent spirit keeps him back. Woman has only to recognize her dependence upon One higher than man, and in doing this is obliged to do but little violence to her habits of thought and feeling, and no violence at all to such sentiments of independence as stand most in the way of man. Hence men shrink with horror from coming in contact with a godless woman. In their eyes she is monstrous, unreasonable and offensive. Even an utterly godless man, unless he be debauched and debased to the position of an animal, deems such a woman without an excuse. He looks on her with suspicion. He would not intrust his children to her care. Oh happy lot, and hallowed even as the joy of angels, where the golden chain of godliness is entwined with the roses of love, as one of our own poets wrote:—
"O, what is woman—what her smile,
Her lip of love, her eye of light;
What is she if her lip revile
The lowly Jesus? Love may write
His name upon her noble brow,
Or linger in her curls of jet;
The bright spring flowers may scarcely bow
Beneath her step, and yet, and yet
Without that meeker grace, she'll be
A lighter thing than vanity."
Thus wrote N.P. Willis. He felt that a woman, with Christ in her heart, was the beau ideal of man. The home is her kingdom, and the heart of husband or brother is her throne. In that sphere her influence is the most potent instrumentality on earth.
Demosthenes declared that by this influence she can in an hour upset the legislation of a year of statesmanship. Her power is, however, through man, not apart from him.
This is the scriptural view. Nowhere do we read of woman as though she had a mission apart from man. We talk of men and forget women. It seems almost impossible to legislate for woman and forget man.
Mankind includes womankind, but womankind does not include mankind.
It may not be complimentary, yet it remains true, that the Scriptures fail to furnish us with a model woman.
Jesus was the model man; but Eve, and Mary, and Rebekah, and Rachel, were model women to none besides those to whom they were given as wives. This, perhaps, is well, for it would be injudicious to try and prove to any man that his wife should differ radically from herself.