Page:Woman and the Bible.pdf/25

21 testify that she is the grandest character in Bible history. When King Ahasuerus, the husband of Vashti, ordered her to appear before the drunken king and his drunken courtiers Vashti asserted her womanhood, and refused at the risk of her life.

All honor to the noble Vashti! She who defied destiny, who set customs and laws at naught, who refused to yield the sacred rights of her womanhood to a brutal husband, even though he was a king. Little is said in the pulpit about Vashti, while Esther, who was an intriguing, infamous woman, is canonized in pulpit platitudes, and in song and story.

Eve and Vashti were the founders of the "Woman's Rights" movement in this world.

These two Bible women are held up by the clergy as terrible examples of disobedient and ungodly women.

Yet, after 1900 years of preaching the doctrine of silence and obedience to women, the example of all other Bible women is a dead letter and the example of Eve and Vashti is being followed by more women today than all the characters in scripture, and the fact is admitted that woman was never so elevated as she is today. All honor to Eve and Vashti! They did not live in vain.

Hannah is immortalized because she "made a little coat for her son Samuel." There are millions of women today not only making coats for their little sons, but furnishing the goods and making whole suits for worthless husbands and grown sons.

Dorcas made clothes for the poor. Millions of women today are making clothes for the poor and the rich at such starvation prices that they are forced to sell their virtue for bread. Peter, it is written, raised Dorcas from the dead and then she died again.

In this Dorcas was an unusual woman, but it is hardly probable that there is a poor, weary,