Page:Woman's Position According to the Bible.pdf/2

 modern times is due to civilisation and not to religion may be proved by examining the position assigned to women in the Bible, and by tracing the results of Biblical teaching on the community. We shall find that the position assigned to her by the earlier portions of the Bible is degraded in the extreme; that in the later portions it is still the position of a slave, though the slavery is somewhat softened—the New Testament being written in times less uncivilised than the old; that the laws which enslaved the married woman were the direct outcome of Bible teaching, and that the gradual and still incomplete enfranchisement of women has been the result of a struggle of justice against Christianity. In fact the position of women in any community may be taken as the gauge of its civilisation; as justice takes the place of physical might, women is more and more recognised as possessing equal rights with man.

Even now woman's position in England is inferior to that of man. The girl's education has been a mere pretence, and only lately have educational opportunities been placed within her reach. Woman's wage is lower than the wage paid to man for similar work. In marriage, until lately, her position was that of a minor. Her privileges, so much insisted on by opponents of female enfranchisement, are bought with the price of obedience. The outward respect to women is shown to a class, not to the sex; the "gentleman" who shows the most charming courtesy and deference to a "lady", speaks with sharpness to his maid-servant when he is in a bad temper, and with insulting familiarity when in a good. The respect for female purity is, again, only respect for the purity of a class, and the vaunted chastity of the "lady" is guarded and paid for by the prostitution of her poorer sisters. This position of woman is strictly biblical, and the enfranchisements of man from superstition and of woman from serfdom walk hand-in-hand.

The keynote of the part assigned to woman in the Bible is in the second and third chapters of Genesis. Eve is created as an after-thought out of one of Adam's ribs—having a mere bone for origin; she falls under the serpent's temptation, and then herself becomes the tempter of her husband, thus bringing into the world sin and death. Paul alleged her creation and fall as reasons for her subordination to man. "The man is not of the woman; but