;"[28] and
in Corinthians: "Man is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the
glory of the man."[29] According to which every sot of a man may hold
himself better than the most distinguished woman;--indeed, it is so in
practice to-day. Also against the higher education of women does Paul
raise his weighty voice: "Let the woman learn in silence with all
_subjection_. _But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority
over the man, out to be in silence_;"[30] and again: "Let your women
_keep silence_ in the churches; _for it is not permitted unto them to
speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience_, as also saith the
law. And if they will learn anything, _let them ask their husbands at
home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church_."[31]

Such doctrines are not peculiar to Christianity only. Christianity being
a mixture of Judaism and Greek philosophy, and seeing that these, in
turn, have their roots in the older civilization of the Egyptians,
Babylonians, and Hindoos, the subordinate position that Christianity
assigned to woman was one common in antiquity. In the Hindoo laws of
Manu it is said regarding woman: "The source of dishonor is woman; the
source of strife is woman; the source of earthly existence is woman;
therefore avoid woman." Beside this degradation of woman, fear of her
ever and anon reappears naively. Manu further sets forth: "Woman is by
nature ever inclined to tempt man; hence a man should not sit in a
secluded place even with his nearest female relative." Woman,
accordingly, is, according to the Hindoo as well as the Old Testament
and Christian view, everywhere the tempter. All masterhood implies the
degradation of the mastered. The subordinate position of woman
continues, to this day, even more in force in the backward civilization
of the East than among the nations that enjoy a so-called Christian
view-point. That which, in the so-called Christian world, gradually
improved the situation of woman was, not Christianity, but _the advanced
culture of the West struggling against the Christian doctrine_.

Christianity is guiltless of woman's present improved position to what
it was at the start of the era. Only reluctantly, and forced thereto,
did Christianity become untrue to its true spirit with regard to woman.
Those who rave about "the mission of Christianity to emancipate
mankind," differ from us in this, as in other respects. They claim that
Christianity freed woman f