The woman ministry in America has had no warmer friend than Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, herself a preacher of well-known ability, occasionally preaching in the pulpits of this country, and having preached in Rome, Jerusalem, and Santo Domingo while sojourning in those places. In 1873 Mrs. Howe succeeded in securing a convention of such ministers as were within convenient distance of Boston during Anniversary week, at which addresses were made and the communion observed, Rev. Lorenza Haynes and Rev. Mary H. Graves officiating.
Since that time eight annual conventions have been held in Boston; and in the Hollis Street Church, on June 2, 1882, the “Woman’s Ministerial Conference” was formed, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, president. This is not a working body, but a fellowship of women preachers, whether ordained or not, representing all denominations. Its present officers are: Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, president; Rev. Mary H. Graves, corresponding secretary; Rev. Ada C. Bowles, recording secretary. These, with the additional names of Rev. Louise S. Baker and Rev. Mary T. Whitney, form its executive committee. The title of Rev. is never applied save to those who have been regularly ordained in their respective denominations.
That women bore an important part in the planting and early growth of the Christian church needs no argument. That the plain teaching of Paul should have been so perverted as to mean their exclusion from the office of public teaching is to be explained only by the fact of a departure from the methods of the primitive church, through a purely masculine interpretation and application of regulations which, entirely adapted to the age and country in which uttered, were never intended to be prohibitive of women’s preaching in that, or at any later, period.
The establishment of the Diaconate, in which, as an order of the clergy, women administered the sacraments, interpreted and promulgated doctrines, in connection with the practical work of charity and benevolence, are matters of history.
In its periods of persecution, the church received no more devoted service than that given by its consecrated women. For its sake, they cheerfully accepted martyrdom, in its most cruel forms. Princesses of the blood and other women of noble birth left the allurements of courts for the studious seclusion of the cloister, or, seeking out the poor and needy, they divided with them their substance. No conditions of miserable poverty or loathsome disease hindered the most tender devotion. In all ages and in all lands women have given proof of a loyalty to Christianity as sincere as it was serviceable. By their proselyting power in converting royal relatives, they were the means of bringing not only Rome but France, England, Spain, Hungary, Poland, and Russia under Christian rule.[[160]]
Is the church to-day less in need of such service than in the past, that it will seek in any way to circumscribe the work of its faithful women by denying to them such sanction, through its prescribed forms, as it bestows freely upon like qualified men, is the question which presses itself persistently forward for settlement.
Certain it is that, as ecclesiastical despotism loses its hold upon the people, they will more readily seek spiritual guidance under a broader law of adaptation and natural fitness, in which women must stand at least an equal chance with men. What the world has already lost by their exclusion from a controlling influence in the church, finds its most painful illustration in the widespread and deep depravity of the masses in our great cities, which the church, in none of its branches, has materially lessened. From the efforts now being made in America for the restoration of the Diaconate of woman, it is safe to argue a change for the better in this respect. The new departure in methods has also an important illustration in the city of Chicago, where, under the leadership of D. L. Moody, gifts amounting to $250,000 have been secured for a theological school and home, to be conducted under the auspices of the Chicago Evangelical Society, which is to be open to both sexes upon the same terms. Its object is the evangelization of the unchurched masses of that great city.
The evils which have resulted to society, and which threaten the very life of the nation by the long neglect to establish proper relations between the vast army of ignorant and degraded beings throughout the land with the active life of Christianity, have become too appalling to be contemplated with indifference, even by the most callous and selfish. The call for service of a most heroic kind is urgent and pressing. For this work of redemption, women have an especial fitness. Invested with all the sanction the church can bestow, supplemented by municipal authority where necessary, let the Christian womanhood of America rise to the level of the demand; “In His Name,” their motto, In His spirit, their inspiration. No pure-hearted, strong-purposed woman but can find a place here to labor as “a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.”
IX.
WOMAN IN LAW.
BY