h. Their
prayers and their faith girded the nation with strength, and their
prowess, aided by those who followed their lead, secured victory.]

I.

_The Scriptural Argument_.

To state our faith more definitely, we believe that in Eden woman
enjoyed an equality with man; that she took advantage of her
privilege, and, transgressing the law of God without consulting her
husband, proved treacherous to her high trust, opened the gate of
perdition to the enemy of souls, and brought upon man and the race
the curse consequent upon sin, and the ruin wrought by the fall. In
consequence of this, God pronounced a curse upon her; gave her sorrow
in child-bearing, as he gave to man fatigue in toil; changed the
relations hitherto subsisting between man and woman, and compelled
her to live henceforth in another; to sink her own individuality, and
merge it in that of her husband. This is the language. Unto the woman
he said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in
sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to
thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." This is her portion of the
curse. This portion endures. Man from that moment became ruler. The
wife's desire was to the husband, so that whatever she desires is
naturally referred to him. He became adviser, lawmaker and head. The
right or wrong of God's action it does not become us to discuss. It is
right because God did it. Dispute the right who will, but the curse
lives. The serpent crawls on his belly and eats dust. The wife has
sorrow in conception; her desire is to her husband, and he rules her;
and man, by the sweat of his brow, eats his bread.

But, says some one, did not the coming of Christ change the status of
woman, and place her again on the same equality which she enjoyed
when Adam led the beautiful Eve to her nuptial bower, and found it
impossible to exist without what the poet describes as

"Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self,
Thy wish exactly to thy heart's desire?"

If we have not mistaken the relations subsisting even in Eden between
the original pair, woman was not the ruler even there. Milton has
truthfully said,--

"For well I understand in the prime end
Of Nature her the inferior, in the mind
And inward faculties which most excel,
In outward, also, her resembling less
His image who made both, and less expressing
The character of that dominion given
O'er other creatures; yet when I a