er rights; but in doing so, let her not forget her duties. The
Bible says nothing at all about the former, and very much about the
latter. Let her remember that she is the complement of a man, and hence
that what is most feminine about her is most interesting to man and
useful to the world. God made man and woman of one flesh, yet unlike.
And who can point out any fundamental inferiority or superiority between
them? The only superiority lies in the superior way in which each
discharges peculiar trusts and responsibilities. It is in this light
alone that we see some husbands superior to their wives, and some wives
superior to their husbands. No sensible person would say that a girl is
superior to her brother because she has a greater aptness for
mathematics than he, but because she excels in the queen-like attributes
and virtues and duties peculiar to her own sex and belonging to her own
sphere,--that sphere so beautiful, that when she abdicates it, it is
like being expelled from Paradise; for, once lost, it can never be
regained. That education is best even for a great woman,--great in
intellect as in soul,--which best develops the lofty ideal of womanhood;
which best makes her a real woman, and not a poor imitation of man, and
gives to her the dignity and grace of a queen over her household, and
brings out that moral beauty by which she reigns over her husband's
heart, and inspires the reverence which children ought to feel. Do we
derogate from the greatness of women when we seek to kindle the
brightness of that moral beauty which outshines all the triumphs of mere
intellectual forces? Should women murmur because they cannot be superior
in everything, when it is conceded that they are superior in the best
thing? Nor let her clutch what she can neither retain nor enjoy. In the
primeval Paradise there was one tree the fruit of which our mother Eve
was forbidden to touch or to eat. There is a tree which grows in our
times, whose fruit, when eaten by some, produces unrest, discontent,
rebellion against God, unsatisfied desires, a revelation of unrealized
miseries, the mere contemplation of which is enough to drive to madness
and moral death. Yet of all the other trees of life's garden may woman
eat,--those trees that grow in the boundless field which modern
knowledge and enterprise have revealed to woman, and which, if she
confine herself thereto, will make her a blessing and a glory forever to
fallen and afflicted humanity.