ses of
worship and instruction in the Christian assemblies of Corinth. This
judgment is accepted, by those who hold to the unreal Bible, as forclosing
the case of woman versus man in the vocation of the ministry, in this land
and age as in all lands and ages. We saw lately the action of this theory
over in Brooklyn. Though she had the gifts and graces of a Lucretia Mott,
though her preaching were blessed as that of a Miss Smiley, though woman's
temperament seems peculiarly fitted for the inspirational influences of
the pulpit, yet Nature's ordination must be disowned because Saul of
Tarsus thought it unseemly for a woman to speak in meeting! He thought it
unseemly also, as he tells us in the same letter, that woman should appear
unveiled in public assemblies; in which you do not seem to consider him an
authority. Why should you defer to him in the one opinion and disregard
him in the other? Both opinions formed part of his education as a Jew of
the first century of our era; as which he frankly confessed that he
regarded woman as inferior to man. We do not consider the Jewish
physiology and psychology of that age binding on us; and St. Paul's
opinion on such a matter falls to the ground with it.

II.

_It is a wrong use of the Bible, for the purposes of theology or religion,
to give its language any other meaning than that which similar language
would have under similar circumstances._

People of sound minds do not read poetic language in other books as though
it were prose. They do not take words thrown off at white heat; crowd
them, all molten with feeling, into the mould of a Gradgrind
understanding; force them to take the form of such matter-of-fact minds;
and then, when the emotion is cooled down, and the fluent fancies are
reduced to stiff, hard prose, say--"there, that is the exact meaning of
this language!" Fancy Shakespeare's impetuous, tumultuous riotous imagery
treated by such 'criticism!'

Yet that is the sort of treatment which many learned pedants call
'expounding the Bible!' It is with the greatest difficulty that the
Western mind can rightly read the Eastern's language. We miss the rich
aroma of their nectared speech, and find only the grounds left. And we
take these grounds for the true original beverage of the gods! Out of such
residuum of poetry, when the poesy has exhaled, we make our spiritual
food! Poetry petrified into prose--is the real explanation to be offered
of many an absurdity