teristics were
united, and were in equipoise. He was not the Son of the Man, but the
Son of Man. It was not manhood, but humanity, that was made divine
in him. Humanity has its two sides: one side in the strength and
intellect of manhood; the other in the tenderness and faith and
submission of womanhood; man and woman, the two halves of one thought,
make up human nature. In Christ, not one alone, but both were
glorified. Strength and Grace, Wisdom and Love, Courage and
Purity,--Divine Manliness, Divine Womanliness. In all noble
characters, the two are blended; in Him--the noblest--blended into
one entire and perfect humanity. The spirit which pervades the world
because of Christ's coming, and of the influence exerted by his
Gospel, opens to woman a faith which has been growing clearer and
brighter for eighteen centuries. By this we do not affirm or imply
that the coming of Christ restored woman to the equality she enjoyed
in the morning of creation, or that his coming removed the curse then
pronounced upon her. If Christ's coming removed a part of the curse,
then it must have removed all, which we know is false; woman still has
sorrow in child-bearing, and man earns his daily bread by the sweat
of his brow. Christ's coming removed the disabilities from woman. He
turned the attention of the world to feminine characteristics, and
shed over them the halo of a divine light. He brought the woman up
as he lowered the glory hitherto attached to characteristics
distinctively manly. Where Christ is loved, the gladiator and
prize-fighter are despised, and a meek and quiet spirit is honored.
The heart is the seat of power more than the intellect. Blessed are
the pure in heart, rather than the great in intellect. Pureness rather
than strength is the ideal of the human heart, since Christ was slain.
While, then, it is true that the worship of Mary is idolatry, and that
the worship given to her is so much taken from Christ, we must not
forget that the only glory of the Virgin was the glory of true
womanhood. "The glory of true womanhood consists in being herself; not
in striving to be something else. It is the false paradox and heresy
of this present age to claim for her as a glory, the right to leave
her sphere. Her glory lies in her sphere, and God has given her a
sphere distinct; as in the Epistle to the Church of Corinth, when, in
that wise chapter, St. Paul rendered unto womanhood the things which
were woman's, and unto manhood