The Woman's Bible Part 73

Ursula Bright.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton:--Dear Madam: I have received your letter and the specimen of "The Woman's Bible" which you have sent me. I have not had time to examine it minutely; but I have been aware of your purpose from the beginning. I am afraid that I cannot say anything which you will wish to print; for I look upon the Bible very differently from what you do.

I have no superst.i.tious reverence for it, but hold it in high regard as a valuable collection of very old literature well representing the thought and the life of a great, earnest people at different periods of their career. As such, it is full of precious lessons of wisdom and of sweet and beautiful poetry. I certainly could not endorse Mr. White's statement; for I have very recently in public lectures spoken of the great value of this collection as one of the best educators of the common people in Christendom generally, and especially in Scotland and the United States. I should say the same, so far as my knowledge extends, of the Koran and other so-called sacred books.

That the superst.i.tious worship of the Bible as a direct revelation from G.o.d, and the practice of using what is merely the history of human life as authority for human action now, or as prophecy, has produced or strengthened great evils in the world I readily admit, and I welcome all the thorough and searching criticism which can be applied to the Bible, but nothing is gained by exaggeration. There are n.o.ble examples of woman in the Old Testament of the heroic type, as in the New Testament of the tender and loving one.

The whole subject of the relations of the s.e.xes is a deep and difficult one; and the ages have been struggling with it. That woman is handicapped by peculiarities of physical structure seems evident; and according to the character of the age these are more or less unfavorable. Civilization in many instances has emphasized and increased them to her great disadvantage; but it is only by making her limitations her powers that the balance can be restored, and in an age of more intellectual and spiritual superiority this will come to pa.s.s.

I read this in the development of woman's life in education, in industry and in self-support.

I have tried to express my views frankly, although I cannot fully ill.u.s.trate them in a brief letter, which is all I have time for at present. Your own active mind will follow out whatever there is of value in my thought. Yours very respectfully,

Jamaica Plain, Ma.s.s.

Ednah D. Cheney.

The Bible--both the books of the Old Testament and of the New, express the views in regard to woman which prevailed when those books were written. The conception in regard to woman was that she was naturally man's inferior, that her position should be one of subordination, that she should have no will of her own, except as it was in accord with that of her father, husband, or master.

The enlightened portions of the world have gradually been outgrowing these ideas. This progress has constantly been opposed by the influence of Bible teachings on the subject. The influence of the Bible against the elevation of woman, like its influence in favor of slavery, has been great because of the infallibility and the Divine authority with which the teachings of the Bible have been invested. If the Bible had, like other books, been judged by its actual merits, in the light of reason and common sense, its teachings about woman would have had no authoritative weight; but when millions have for centuries been brought up to believe that the Bible is an inspired and infallible revelation from G.o.d, its influence has been mischievous in a thousand ways.

A collection of books which teaches, as from G.o.d, that man was made first for the glory of G.o.d, and woman for man simply; that woman was first to sin, and therefore should be in submission to man; that motherhood implies moral impurity and requires a sin offering (twice as much in the case of a female as a male child), must have continued to keep woman in a degraded condition just in proportion as such ideas have been believed to be true and inspired by G.o.d.

The advancement of woman throughout Christendom has been going on only where these doctrines have been outgrown or modified through the influence of science, of skepticism, and of liberal thought generally.

That the Bible does teach that woman's position should be one of subordination and submission to man, and that through her first came sin into the world, is indisputable; and I do not see how such teachings, believed to be direct from G.o.d, can be accepted without r.e.t.a.r.ding woman's progress. Mr. Lecky and others have shown historically that these Oriental conceptions have distinctly degraded woman wherever they have prevailed.

What we should naturally expect to have resulted from these conceptions is shown by experience actually to have been the result of such teachings, enforced by the authority of Moses and of St. Paul.

The idea of woman's equality with man in all natural rights and opportunities finds no support in the Bible. The doctrine that there is neither male nor female, neither bond nor free, in Christ Jesus, had no practical application to social conditions. It left the slave in chains, and the woman in fetters. Where the old theological dogmas respecting woman are the least impaired, woman's condition is the least hopeful. Where the authority of reason is in the ascendant, or where it is superseding the authority of book revelations, of creeds and of churches, woman's position is the most advanced, her rights are the most completely recognized, her opportunities for progress the most fully allowed, and her character the most fully developed.

Sarah A. Underwood.

A solution, in accordance with the fundamental laws of ethics, of the woman question, which is a part of the great social question, can be arrived at only by a transformation of the social order of things, made in conformity with the principle of equal liberty and equal justice to each and every one.

As a necessary proposition to let this principle be universally recognized, we must designate the philosophical view of the world, based upon scientific Materialism, which former, penetrated by the conviction that the natural doctrine of evolution also retains its validity with regard to the mental, vital principles of humanity, believes in the social, political and ethical evolution of human society, from which progressive evolution the equal claim to all social relations of the female and the male halves of humanity are inseparable.

As the firmest enemy of modern ethics based upon scientific knowledge of natural laws, there stands the Christian religion, the outspring of the Jewish one, which former, resting upon the principle of the necessary subordination of woman to man, in consequence thereof energetically combats the attempts for equal rights to both s.e.xes, and, as far as lies in its power, ever will and must combat the same.

To the influence of the Christian Church upon social conditions we must in the first instance ascribe that, notwithstanding all advances of culture, the mental development of the female s.e.x has been systematically kept back through all these tens of centuries. And not only for the reason that the Christian religion considers woman as a creature inferior to man, owing to the legendary eating of the apple by Eve ("Satan," says St. Augustine, "considered the man to be less credulous and approachable"), but also--and possibly foremost of all-- for the reason that the Christian Church knows very well that in woman, intellectually undeveloped, and therefore easy to be led, and ready to lend a willing ear to priestly promptings, it possesses its most powerful ally, and knows that it would lose that powerful support as soon as women, by a thorough mental training, by an elevating education adapted to their condition of mind and of fortune, would be taken away from clerical influences.

As a contrast to the lying statement, which falsifies the historical facts, that the Christian religion has raised the condition of woman, the Christian Church offers to woman nothing but serfdom. And it is the first duty of those women who combat for right and liberty to unite in the fight against religious obscurity, against the powers of darkness and the suppression resting on the Church, that revolution of the mind for which the most elevated thinkers of all time have suffered and fought, and to whose deeds alone we owe all advances in the mental freeing of humanity and all accomplishments of the awakening consciousness of justice.

Vienna, Austria.

Irma Von Troll-Borostyani.

My Dear Mrs. Stanton:--I thank you very much for the book which I have received and shall consider with interest. I respond at once and heartily to the inquiry with which you have honored me. I consider the Bible the most wonderful record of the evolution of spiritual life which our race possesses. The sympathetic justice displayed by the Christ when he said, "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone," will be the inspiration of the future for man and for woman alike.

With cordial remembrance of the past and hope for the future,

I am

Sincerely yours,

Hastings, London, England.

Elizabeth Blackwell.

Since it is accepted that the status of woman is the gauge of civilization, this is the burning question which now presents itself to Christendom. If the Bible had elevated woman to her present status, it would seem that the fact could be demonstrated beyond question; yet to-day the whole Christian world is on the defensive, trying to prove the validity of this claim. Despite the opposition of Bible teaching, woman has secured the right to education, to speak and to print her thoughts; therefore her answer to these questions will decide the fate of Christian civilization.

In Genesis the Bible strikes the key-note of woman's inferiority and subjection; and the note rings true through every accepted and rejected book which has ever const.i.tuted the Bible. In the face of this fact, the supreme effort of the Christian Church has been to inculcate the idea that Christianity alone has elevated woman, and that all other religions have degraded and enslaved her. It has feared nothing so much as to face the truth.

Women have but to read the Bible and the history of Christianity in conjunction with the sacred books and the histories of other religions to discover the falsity of this claim, and that the Bible cannot stand the light of truth. The Bible estimate of woman is summed up in the words of the president of a leading theological seminary when he exclaimed to his students, "My Bible commands the subjection of women forever."

In an address to the graduating cla.s.s of a woman's college in England, Mr. Gladstone, in awarding the diplomas, said: "Young women, you who belong to the favored half of the human race, enormous changes have taken place in your positions as members of society. It is almost terrible to look back upon the state of women sixty years ago, upon the manner in which they were viewed by the law, and the scanty provision made for their welfare, and the gross injustice, the flagrant injustice, the shameful injustice, to which in certain particulars they were subjected. Great changes are taking place, and greater are impending." For centuries England has been the light of the Christian world; yet what an indictment is this against Christian England by the greatest living defender of the Bible and the Christian religion.

This one statement of Mr. Gladstone at once refutes the claim that the Bible has elevated woman, and confirms the idea of the president of the theological seminary. Add to these declarations the true condition of women to-day, and the testimony that the Bible bears against itself, and the falsity of the claim that it has elevated woman is at once established. If Mr. Gladstone acknowledges the "gross, flagrant and shameful injustice" to woman sixty years ago in Christian England, what can be said of woman's condition six hundred, or sixteen hundred years ago, when the Bible held the greatest sway over the human mind and Christianity was at the zenith of its power, when it was denied that woman has a soul, when she was bought and sold as the cattle of the field, robbed of her name, her children, her property, and "elevated"

(?) on the gibbet of infamy, and on the high altar of l.u.s.t by the decree of the Christian priesthood?

If it can be proven that during the last thousand years the Christian clergy, with the Bible in their hands, have pointed out or attempted to remove one single cruelty or wrong which women have suffered, now is the opportune time to furnish such proof. Now, to-day, when woman herself is rising in her mental majesty, and when her wrongs are being righted, Christianity is dead in the strongest brains and the most heroic hearts of Europe and of America; and now, when the myth and the miracle of Bible teaching have lost their hold on the minds of people, this is the very age when the position of woman is more exalted than it has ever been since Chrisianity {sic} began.

If even the claim that the Bible has elevated woman to her present status were true, when the light is turned on to the social, domestic and religious life of the Christian world, this achievement reflects no credit on Bible teaching. After nineteen hundred years no woman's thought has ever been incorporated into the ecclesiastical or civil code of any Christian land.

Monogamic marriage is the strongest inst.i.tution of the Christian system; yet all the men of the Old Testament were polygamists; and Christ and Paul, the central figures of the New Testament, were celibates and condemned marriage by both precept and example. In Christian lands monogamy is strictly demanded of women; but bigamy, trigamy, and polygamy are in reality practised by men as one of the methods of elevating women, Largely, the majority of men have one legal wife; but a.s.sisted by a small per cent. of youths and of bachelors, Christendom maintains an army of several millions of courtesans. Thousands of wretched women are yearly driven to graves in the potter's field, while manhood is degraded by deception, by drunkenness and by disease; and the blood of the innocents cries out against a system which thus "elevates" woman.

The Bible says that "a tree is known by its fruit;" yet this tree is carefully pruned, watered, and tended as the "Tree of life" whose fruit, in the words of Archdeacon Farrar, "alone elevates woman, and shrouds as with a halo of sacred innocence the tender years of the child." The Bible records that G.o.d created woman by a method different from that employed in bringing into life any other creature, then cursed her for seeking knowledge; yet G.o.d declares in the Bible: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." "Because thou hast rejected knowledge I will reject thee." "Add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge," and knowledge is the savior of the human race.

Ever since Eve was cursed for seeking knowledge, the priest with the Bible in his hands has p.r.o.nounced her the most unnatural, untrustworthy and dangerous creation of G.o.d. She has been given away as a sheep at the marriage altar, cla.s.sed with the ox and the a.s.s, cursed in maternity, required to receive purification at the hands of the priest for the crime of child-bearing, her body enslaved, and robbed of her name and of her property.

The ownership of the wife established and perpetuated through Bible teaching is responsible for the domestic pandemonium and the carnival of wife murder which reigns throughout Christendom. In the United States alone, in the eighteen hundred and ninety-seventh year of the Christian era, 3,482 wives, many with unborn children in their bodies, have been murdered in cold blood by their husbands; yet the Christian clergy from their pulpits reprove women for not bearing more children in the face of the fact that millions of the children who have been born by Christian women are homeless tramps, degraded drunkards, victims of disease, inmates of insane asylums or prisons, condemned to the scaffold, or bond slaves to priests or to plutocrats who revel in wealth at the expense of women whom it is claimed that the Bible has "emanc.i.p.ated and elevated."

"Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." This declaration of the Bible puts the brand of infamy upon every woman who ever bore a child; and this, it is claimed, elevates the Mothers of the Race. The wife who places her destiny in the keeping of the father of her children bestows upon him the wealth of her affection, who is to bear the blood and the name of her husband to conquests yet undreamed of, and to generations yet unborn, is by Divine decree made a fountain of iniquity. Would not men and women rather pluck their tongues out by the roots than brand with infamy the mothers who went down into the valley and the shadow of death to give birth to them?

Place the Bible Trinity of "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" beside the Homeric trinity, "Father, Mother and Child," and prove that the Bible has elevated woman. The Homeric conception of woman towers like the Norway pine above the noxious growth of the Mosaic ideal. Compare the men and the women of the Bible with the stately figures culled from the temple of Pagan antiquity. Zipporah denouncing Moses as a "b.l.o.o.d.y husband," Abraham sending Hagar and his child into the desert and pocketing twice over the gains from his wife's prost.i.tution; Lot and his daughters; Judah and his daughter-in-law, Onan; Yamar, the Levite, and his concubine; David and Bath-sheba; Solomon in the sewer of sensualism; Rahab, Aholibah, Mary of Bethlehem, and Mary Magdala.

Place these by the side of the man and the woman, Hector and Andromache, of the "Iliad," who called upon the immortal G.o.ds to bless their child of love; the virgin Isis with her son Horus; the Vedic virgin Indrance, the mother of the savior-G.o.d, Indra; Devaki and her Divine child, Chrishna; Hipparchia, Pandora, Protogenia, Cornelia, Plotina, and a host of the n.o.ble and virtuous of Pagan history. Prove by comparing these with the position of woman in Christendom that woman owes all that she is to the Bible.

Compare Ruth of the Bible with the magnificent Pagan, Penelope, who refused the hands of kings, was as true to her love as the star is to the pole, who, after years of waiting, clasped the old wanderer in rags to her heart, her husband, her long-lost Ulysses; yet this Pagan woman lived ten centuries before the laws of Moses and of Christ were promulgated. While there are millions of Penelopes in Christendom, there are other millions of women, after centuries of Bible teaching, who lie outside the pale of motherhood, and even outside of the pale of swine-hood. Under Bible teaching the scarlet woman is "anathema, marantha," while the scarlet man holds high place in the Sanctuary and the State.

The by-paths of ecclesiastical history are fetid with the records of crimes against women; and "the half has never been told." And what of the history which Christianity is making to-day? Answer, ye victims of domestic warfare who crowd the divorce courts of Bible lands. Answer, ye wretched offspring of involuntary motherhood. Answer, ye five hundred thousand outcast women of Christian America, who should have been five hundred thousand blessings, bearing humanity in your unvitiated blood down the streams of time. Answer, ye mental dwarfs and moral monstrosities, and tell what the Holy Bible has done for you.