fcICE TWOPENCE.] 
 
 WHAT HAS THE 
 
 BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN* 
 
 BY JOSEPH BARKER. 
 
 IVoman forms one-half of the human race; no sj'-stem there- 
 is entitled to opr highest regard which does not tend to 
 lote her, welfare. Woman is, in some respects, the 
 t important part of our race. She is not only the 
 er and the tmrse, but, to a! ^reat extent, the teacher and 
 p trainer of us all. The humafi being is placed in her 
 ;e at a time when it is most susceptible of impressions; 
 in, like the sapling, it can be bent in any direction, and 
 ' in any form. And nothing can be mote important 
 that she who has to give the first lessons to young 
 iumanity should herself be well taught; and that she who 
 as to mould the youthful character should herself be 
 ghtly moulded. 
 
 Besides, the welfare of woman is the welfare of. man. . 
 J she be elevated, man rises; if she be degraded, man 
 jails; if she be happy, he is blest; if she be wretched, he 
 & undone. The system, therefore, that is best for woman, 
 ^ best for all; the system that ignores or injures woman, 
 should be abhorred by all. 
 
 It is needful, therefore, if we would know the worth of 
 he Bible, that we should ascertain its influence on the cha¬ 
 pter and condition of woman. The clergy are aware of ^ 
 is, and hence their efforts to make it out, that the Bibte 
 pj done so much for the elevation and the happiness of 
 n. They contend that all the advantages which 
 Oman has, in civilised countries, over woman in savage 
 ds, are owing to the influence of the Bible. . “ Among 
 wild men of. our forests and prairies woman is a slave, 
 they, “a beast of burden. She is the same, say t 'ey, • 
 n the. deserts of Africa, and in the wilds of Australia. 
 
 " is a despot, woman is a drudge. She must not e\eu 
 
2 
 
 WIIAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 
 
 eat when he eats, but stand and wait while he devours the 
 meal her hands have prepared, content to take his leavings 
 for her share. But where the Bible has taught its lessons 
 and done its work,” say they, “ woman is respected, loved, 
 and adored: she is enlightened, virtuous, and happy.” 
 
 It is thus the clergy preach. In our opinion, these 
 clerical representations are false. We deny that woman 
 in civilised countries is indebted to the Bible for all the 
 advantages she enjoys over woman in barbarous countries; 
 and we especially deny that the Bible has made woman in 
 any country enlightened, virtuous, and happy. We con¬ 
 tend that there is no tendency in the Bible to exalt woman, 
 or to secure to her those blessings which are necessary to 
 make her happy. That there are certain passages in the Bible 
 that breathe, in some measure, a spirit of kindness towards 
 woman, we allow. For instance: in the law of Moses, men 
 are commanded not to reap the corners of their fields, but 
 to leave them to be reaped by the widow, the fatherless, 
 and the stranger. Men are also forbidden to glean their 
 harvests, or to go a second time over their vines, and 
 olive trees; and, in case they forget a sheaf when gathering 
 in their harvest, they are forbidden to go back and fetch it. 
 The gleanings and the forgotten sheaf are to be left for the 
 widow, the fatherless, and the stranger. So far good; but 
 what does it amount to? Such laws could be of little or no 
 service to women dwelling in cities. They could not 
 be of much service even to those dwelling in the coun¬ 
 try. They might be of none. If the Jewish farmers 
 were selfish, they would, when forbidden to glean over 
 their fields, be all the more careful to leave little to be 
 gleaned. When forbidden to cro back to fetch the for¬ 
 gotten sheaf, they would be all the more careful not to 
 tc rget any. When not permitted to go over their fruit-trees 
 a second time, they would go over them all the more care¬ 
 fully the first. And as the law did not say how large a 
 corner of their fields they must leave unreaped, they might 
 make it as small as they pleased, down to a rod or a yard. 
 And even supposing the farmers not to be so selfishly care- 
 ul, was it any great privilege to tho poor widows to be 
 allowed to scramble for a few scattered ears of grain, or to 
 quarrel once in a life time over a forgotten sheaf? What 
 must be the condition of woman, when the liberty to glean 
 m a neighbour s field is regarded as so great a boon? And 
 w at must be the character of those laws and institutions 
 w k i could contemplate such a condition as the normal, 
 
W1IAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 3 
 
 the permanent, state of woman? Yet this is what the laws 
 aud institutions of the Bible contemplate. The Bible an¬ 
 nounces, first, that the poor shall never cease out of the 
 laud. It indicates, next, that woman shall be the poorest 
 of the poor, the most helpless of the needy. It provides, 
 iu fact, that all the property shall be owned by the men,— 
 that women shall never inherit property, except when the 
 male heirs are all dead. Hence the widow, while afflicted 
 for the loss of her lord, must suffer the loss of property, 
 aud, in consideration of being deprived of the farm, she 
 shall be permitted to glean the scattered ears in the alien¬ 
 ated harvest field. 
 
 “ But there is a law against the oppression of the widow 
 and the fatherless.” Yes, we are aware of it. But what 
 does the law mean by oppression? Was it no oppression 
 to deprive the widow and her fatherless little ones of the 
 1 family estate, in favour of the privileged male heir, reducing 
 1 her and them to beggary, slavery, or starvation? There 
 was a law against oppressing the widow, but, in connection 
 with the other laws of the Bible, it could do little or mo 
 good; and accordingly we find that the widow always was 
 oppressed, and that the very ministers of the law did 
 habitually, even to the time of Jesus, devour widows’ houses, 
 and, by way of compensation, make long prayers. 
 
 Bible teachings in relation to woman must present them¬ 
 selves to minds free from prejudice, as the utterances of 
 ignorant, rude, selfish, and cruel barbarians. In this sad 
 light we imagine they will present themselves to all when 
 carefully and candidly examined. 
 
 1. The Bible always treats woman as man’s inferior. 
 Woman, according to the Bible, was not made for herself, 
 but for man. Man, according to the Bible, was made for 
 himself or his Maker; and if he could have got along com¬ 
 fortably alone, woman would never have been made at all. 
 But it was found, on trial, that it was not good for man to 
 be alone. Yet even then an attempt was made to meet 
 man’s social wants without bringing into existence so dan¬ 
 gerous a creature as woman. So God created various kint s 
 of inferior animals and brought them to Adam; but among 
 them all there was no help meet for man. So Got > as a 
 last resort, made woman, and placed her before him, an s e 
 seemed exactly the kind of creature he wanted. But in ail 
 this no regard is shown to woman; man is the on y oue 
 • whose interests are consulted. And hence the P os . e 
 says, “ Man was not created for woman, but the woman or 
 
4 WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 
 
 \ 
 
 man.” Accordingly woman must be subservient to man’s 
 interests or caprices. Man must be lord, woman a slave. 
 Woman must be at man’s disposal, and be subject to his will 
 or whim in everything. He shall say whether she shall be 
 his wife or concubine; she shall have no say in the matter. 
 Man shall say how many he will have, and how long he will 
 keep them; they shall not be consulted in any thing. The 
 question shall never be, What is best for woman? but, 
 What is agreeable to man? “Man was not made tor 
 woman, but woman for man.” 
 
 This revolting principle runs through the whole Bible. 
 
 “ Thy desire, thy will, shall be subject to thy husband,” 
 says the Bible, and he shall rule over thee.”- Hence 
 woman in the Bible is bought and sold like property. 
 Thus Jacob buys Rachel and Leah with seven years’ 
 service for each. The prophet Hosea seems to get one 
 of his wives for nothing, while he gives for another of 
 them fifteen pieces of silver, and a homer and a half 
 of barley. Even in the ten commandments the woman is 
 put down as property, and ranked with the ox and the ass. 
 Thus we read, “ Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, 
 thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his man-ser¬ 
 vant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass.” It is 
 the pattern after which the inventory of the Southern 
 plantation is drawn up, the “ wife” alone being omitted ; 
 
 “ Houses, slaves, oxen and asses.” There is no law forbid¬ 
 ding a woman to covet her neighbor’s husband, because hus¬ 
 bands were not property ; and besides, wives could not hold 
 property. 
 
 Hence woman is represented in the Bible as having no 
 rights, or next to none. She has duties , but the rights 
 belong to man. Man may take as many wives as he pleases; 
 but no license is given to woman to have more than one hus¬ 
 band. Man may have concubines, mistresses, as well as 
 wives; woman must have no such thing. Man may turn 
 away his wives at pleasure. All that is required of him, is 
 that he shall give them a certificate of their dismissal. 
 Woman is never allowed to turn away a husband. In the 
 J\ew Testament the law of divorce is altered, but the right . 
 is not extended to woman. Her husband may be the 
 meanest, wickedest, the most loathesome wretch in existence, 
 still, she must remain his slave for life. 
 
 2. Woman is insulted by other partial laws. No penalty 
 is inflicted on the husband for being a father; but if a wife 
 ^ecome a mother, she must both suffer a penalty, and pay 
 
WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 5 
 
 a fine; and if she be so wicked as to give birth to a daughter, 
 the penalty is doubled. Lev. xii. Woman, in case of 
 marriage, is required to give proof of her previous chastity; 
 but no such proof is required of man. If .a man happen to 
 simyct his wife of unfaithfulness, however groundless his 
 jealousy may be, he is authorized to subject her to trial; and 
 the trial to which the hapless wife~ds required to submit, is 
 neither more nor less than a legal murder. She is to drink 
 a terrible poison. If the poison do not kill her, she is 
 pronounced innocent; but if it do kill her, as of course, it 
 will, she loses, not only her life, but her reputation also. 
 
 3. But this is not the worst. The Bible authorizes the 
 father to sell his daughter to slavery and concubinage. 
 You have the law in Exod. xxi, 7, 8. If & man sell his 
 daughter to be a maid servant, she shall not go out as the 
 men servants do. If she please not her master, who hath 
 betrothed her to himself, then he shall let her be redeemed; 
 to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power,- 
 seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.” He shall not sell her 
 to a stgange nation; but he may sell her to a brother Israelite. 
 
 4. As we have said, the Bible allows men to have any 
 number of wives they choose, and to take a number of concu¬ 
 bines in addition. And God’s favourites took a terrible ad¬ 
 vantage of this license. Nearly all the, great examples of 
 piety presented in the Bible were polygamists. Abraham 
 had not only his Sarah, but his Hagar. Jacob had four 
 wives. Of Gideon we read: “ He had three-score and ten 
 sons, for he had many wives. And his concubine that was 
 in Shechem also bare him a son.” How many wives David 
 •had is uncertain, but he is likened, by Nathan, to a rich man 
 with exceeding many flocks and herds, while Uriah, the 
 pagan who had but one wife, is spoken of as a poor man 
 with but one pet lamb. We should judge, therefore, from 
 the words of Nathan, that this very pious man must have 
 had some hundreds of wives. Besides all that he had 
 gathered together himself, God is said to have given him 
 the wives of his master, Saul. Solomon, the wise man of 
 the Bible, is said to have had seven hundred wives and thiee 
 hundred concubines, a thousand in all. No fault is found 
 with any of these men for having so many wives. On the 
 contrary, they are expressly justified in their polygamy. 
 Of Abraham we are told that he obeyed God’s voice, and 
 kept his commandments and laws. Gen. xxvi, 5. And 
 of David it is said, “ that he did that which was right in the 
 eyes of the Lord, and turned not aside from anything that 
 
6 WHAT HAS TIIE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 
 
 he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the 
 matter of Uriah, the Hittite.” 1 Kings xv. o. And wha*t 
 higher praise could be given of Solomon, than that he was 
 flic wisest man that ever was, or that ever should be? The 
 New Testament is as far from condemning these wholesale 
 polygamists as the Old. It says not a word in censure of 
 any of them, while some of them it represents as placed 
 high in the kingdom of Heaven. And it is worthy of re¬ 
 mark, that Mahometanism and Mormonism, both of them 
 legitimate and consistent offsprings of the Bible, give their 
 sanction to polygamy. 
 
 5. The Bible presents examples of fearful injustice and 
 cruelty to woman. God is represented as dooming every 
 woman on earth, through all ages, to pain and degradation 
 and death for one offence of one offender. He is represented 
 as drowning all the women on earth, and all their babes, for 
 the violence of the men. He burns up all the women 
 and babes of Sodom with fire and brimstone. He turns 
 Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, simply for looking behind her. 
 He orders the destruction of all the women of Midian; and 
 some twenty thousand wives and mothers are murdered in 
 cold blood, and all their babes along with them, except their 
 virgin daughters, who are reserved for a doom more horrible 
 than death. All the women and children of the Amalekites 
 are butchered for an offence said to have been committed by 
 their forefathers many centuries before. And numbers of 
 other unoffending women are slaughtered in the same way. 
 Achan takes a garment and a wedge of gold from the enemy, 
 and his wife and children are burnt. Jeplitha makes a rash 
 vow, and his youthful daughter is offered as a burnt offering. 
 Saul kills the Gibeonites, and innocent mothers are bereaved 
 of their sons for an atonement. 
 
 6. The Bible adds insult to injustice and cruelty. It 
 abounds with libels on woman, some of them of the most 
 infamous and outrageous character. Woman is generally 
 represented as the offender, and man, poor innocent man, is 
 always the victim. In the story of the Fall, it is woman 
 that hearkens to the tempter, and cats the forbidden fruit. 
 
 Adam was not deceived,” says the heartless Apostle, “but 
 the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression.” 
 tS'iM J ^ ain himself, mean man, must cry, when questioned, 
 
 I he woman that thou gavest me to be with me, she gave 
 unto me, and I did eat.” One of the most infamous libels 
 of all is that against the daughters of Lot. It is too bad to 
 be repeated. But Lot is not to blame; not lie; the horrible 
 
WHAT HAS TIIE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 7 
 
 plot, and the execution of the plot, are all the work of the 
 daughters. He did not even know what he was drinking; 
 how should he? And how should he know what followed? 
 The father is righteous Lot, the daughters monsters. In 
 the case of Joseph, he does not tempt any one; how should 
 he? It is the-wife of his master that tempts him. In the 
 history of Israel, it is not the Hebrews that seduce the 
 Midianitish women; it is the Midianitish women that leave 
 their homes to seduce the vagabond Hebrews. So in the 
 history of Job; Job is all patience; it is the wife that loses 
 her temper and says, “Curse God and die.” And the 
 Queen of Sheba must come from the uttermost parts of the 
 earth to hear the childish talk of a monster polygamist. 
 This same monster polygamist, in his Proverbs, lays all the 
 blame of prostitution on woman. Man is the simple-minded, 
 unfortunate victim; woman is the crafty deceiver. Not con¬ 
 tent with this, the old profligate must libel the whole sex. 
 “I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is 
 snares and nets, and her hands as bauds.” And he adds, 
 “One maw among a thousand have I found; but a woman 
 among all those have I not found.” 
 
 7. The Bible gives us no examples of womanly virtue. 
 It gives us examples of mad devotion to priests, of wicked 
 obedience to husbands, of treachery, cruelty and piety; but 
 not of virtue. 
 
 The Bible inculcates false virtues on woman. It enjoins 
 her to obey the clergy, her spiritual rulers; and we know 
 what the tendency of such injunctions has been from the 
 days of Eli down to the present age. It requires women 
 to obey their husbands in all things, even as Sarah obeyed 
 Abraham, not only telling lies at his bidding, but sacrificing 
 her virtue for his accommodation. Jesus and Paul recom¬ 
 mend life-long celibacy, and church history reveals to us the 
 horrible results of these unnatural counsels. The Bible and 
 Christianity have made nuns, saints, female martyrs, 
 inquisitors, and female slanderers, persecutors, bigots, fana¬ 
 tics, witches, maniacs, and murderers, in abundance; but of 
 noble, intellectual, virtuous, exemplary women they have 
 made none. We have had good women, and even good men, 
 in connection with the church; but they were gocH, not 111 
 consequence of their religion, but in spite of it. There are 
 some men and women so exquisitely organized, that even 
 piety itself is hardly able to pervert them; but we must not 
 give religion credit for all the manly or womanly vntue 
 which it fails to destroy. 
 
8 WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 
 
 Iii Proverbs xxxi., we have the Bible description of a 
 virtuous woman and a good wife, and what does it amount 
 to? Simply this, that she is very industrious, that she is 
 always hard at work, and that, by labouring night and day, 
 she is able to support her husband, and supply the wants of 
 her children as well. We will read from the passage. 
 “Who can find a virtuous woman?” Bad men always 
 think that good women are very scarce. “ Who can find a 
 virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. The 
 heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he 
 shall have had no need of spoil.” He knows she will earn 
 enough to keep him, so that he will have no need either 
 to go to war, or take to the highway. “ She will do him 
 good and not evil all the days of her life. She seeketh wool 
 and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. She is 
 like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar. 
 She riseth also while it is yet night, and gireth meat to her 
 household, and a portion to her maidens.” She works 
 night and day. “ She considereth a field and buyeth it; 
 with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. She 
 girdeth her loins with strength and strengthened her arms. 
 She perceiveth that her merchandise is good; her candle 
 goeth not out by night. She layeth her hands to the 
 spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. She stretcheth out 
 her hands to the poor; yea, she reachetli forth her hands to 
 the needy. She is not afraid of the snow for her household, 
 for all her household are covered with double garments. 
 She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is 
 silk and purple. Her husband is known in the gates, when 
 he sitteth among the elders of the land.” Of course, fifty 
 or a hundred such wives, or one such wife, with a number 
 of concubines under her, would make a man quite rich, and 
 enable him to secure a seat in the magistracy or the legis¬ 
 lature. “ She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth 
 girdles unto the merchants.” The husband must neither 
 make the goods nor sell them. The wife must do all. 
 “ Strength and honour are her clothing, and she shall re¬ 
 joice in time to come. She openeth her mouth with 
 wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness.” Of 
 course, if the husband does nothing else, he will keep his 
 wife in subjection, and teach her how to talk to him. “She 
 looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not 
 the bread of idleness. Her children arise and call her 
 blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many 
 daughters have gotten riches, but thou excellest them all. 
 
WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 9 
 
 Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that 
 feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.” It is said that reli¬ 
 gion increases the value of slaves by making them more 
 submissive and obedient. It does the same with wives, it 
 seems. 
 
 Such is the Bible character of a good woman and a 
 perfect wife. The qualities commended are just the quali¬ 
 ties for which a vulgar, low-minded, Southern planter, would 
 commend a slave; and for which an idle Indian would 
 commend a squaw. The slave-holder feels no shame in 
 letting his slaves support him in idleness. He boasts of 
 what they can do, of the amount of wealth they produce 
 for him, with the same unconsciousness of dishonour as that 
 exhibited in the passage before us by the idle husband, 
 enriched by the labours of his wife. So with the Indians of 
 the Western prairies. They feel no shame when walking 
 or riding at their ease, whilst their squaws trudge wearily 
 along, sweating beneath their load of furs, or their heavy 
 sack of grain. True, these Indians never shrink from the 
 chase, or hang back in time of war. They will not, like 
 the Bible husband, make the industry of their squaws an 
 excuse for neglecting the hunt, or avoiding the battle. The 
 Indian is bad enough, but it would be too much to expect 
 the savage to be as bad as the saint. Still, substantially, 
 you have the same characters, the same pictures of life, 
 and the same selfish standard of womanly excellence, in 
 the harem of the Bible saint, on the plantation of the 
 Southern slaveholder, and in the wigwam of the Indian savage. 
 And with a description like this before them, men can have 
 the senselessness to talk of the obligations of woman to the 
 Bible. 
 
 8. The Bible and Christianity have been fearfully pro¬ 
 ductive of wars. They have kept the nations in deadly 
 strife for centuries together. And some of the wars they 
 have caused have been destructive beyond conception. 
 Ecclesiastical writers themselves tell us, that such was the 
 destruction of life caused by the crusades, that there was 
 scarcely one man left to seven women. And those ruinous 
 wars took off not only husbands and fathers, but sons and 
 children. Whole armies of boys were formed and marched 
 °ff to perish of disease and starvation, far from the eyes o 
 their desolate mothers. The clergy thrived amid those i is- 
 orders. They bought the estates of the crusaders tor a 
 trifle, and revelled at once in boundless wealth and ounc ess 
 licentiousness. In other holy wars woman has been 
 
10 WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 
 
 tortured; dishonoured, and destroyed, or spared alive, with 
 broken heart, to languish out a weary life in want and 
 cureless sorrow, in untimely widowhood and cheerless 
 desolation. 
 
 9. The Bible has always favored slavery, another curse 
 which has always fallen most heavily on woman. It has 
 favored slavery in its worst forms. The Jews were author¬ 
 ised to buy up all the nations of the earth, for bond-men 
 and bond-women, and to have them as a possession, as pro¬ 
 perty, and to transmit them as an inheritance to their chil¬ 
 dren for ever. They were further authorized to buy up 
 their poor neighbors, men and women, and hold them in 
 bondage for six years at a time, and, in many cases, for life. 
 And slavery has never ceased to flourish under Bible in¬ 
 fluences. It flourishes under its influences still. And in 
 the most religious country of Protestant Christendom, woman 
 still sees her husband and children torn from her side, or 
 tortured in her presence, or is herself made an article of 
 merchandise for the most revolting) purposes, her womanly 
 instincts and sympathies ignored, and turned to occasions 
 of the most fearful suffering. 
 
 10. But let war and slavery be forgotten, and polygamy 
 alone be remembered. Will any one contend that woman 
 can be happy where this vice prevails? If woman is to be 
 happy, she must have a happy home. Even man must find 
 the principal part of his happiness at home, or find it not 
 at all. If man has a happy home, the troubles of the market 
 or the forum, the work shop or the farm, afflict him little. 
 The mariner, tossed on the waves, can smile at the tempest, 
 when he knows there is a safe and quiet haven into which 
 he can run, where he and his bark can ride or rest in safety. 
 So with the man buffeted with the storms of commerical or 
 political life; what cares he? His peaceful, happy home— 
 his home of love—is ever at hand, where he can hide him¬ 
 self from the storm, and screen himself from harm. But 
 ■wo to the man who has no home, or but a home of strife and 
 hate, when worldly ills befall. Yes; a happy home is much 
 even to man ; but to woman it is every thing. Let her home 
 affections and delights be blighted, withered, and her all is 
 gone. And will any one contend, we ask again, that 
 woman s hope, and joy, and love, and confidence, can flourish 
 m the dungeon dwellings of the polygamist? Impossible, 
 i he tendency of this vice, to destroy the comfort of domestic 
 life, is sufficiently portrayed in the Bible. Take the family 
 of Abraham. The two wives quarrel, and the first wife beats 
 
WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 11 
 
 the second. And the children quarrel, and the first wife is 
 jealous of the second wife, and jealous of her sou, and says, 
 “Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this 
 bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, Isaac.” And 
 she insists on the expulsion of the hapless secondary wife, 
 and her helpless child, forthwith. And Abraham, for fear 
 his elder wife should be vexed to madness, turns them out, 
 with a scanty supply of bread and water, to wander in the 
 wilderness. And the banished wife and child must suffer 
 all the anguish of torn and bleeding hearts, with all the 
 misery of starvation super-added. 
 
 We have next the family of Jacob. Here are four wives, 
 all jealous of each other, as they were sure to be, and four 
 kinds of children, as jealous of each other as their mothers. 
 And the old polygamist father makes a pet of one and spoils 
 him, and the elder all unite against the marred, conceited 
 pet. And they cast him into a pit, to destroy him; but 
 bethinking themselves that they might make a little money 
 by selling him for a slave, they take him out again, 
 and dispose of him to some travelling merchants for twenty 
 pieces of silver. The old man is heart-broken, and fears 
 that the fate of his son will bring down his gray hairs with 
 sorrow to the grave. 
 
 Take next the family of David. Of the sorrows of his 
 wives we have no information, but from the history of the 
 children we may be assured their lot was anything but a 
 happy one. The son of one wife falls in love with the 
 daughter of another wife, and lures his sister into his power 
 by pretending sickness, and then commits a crime, the most 
 atrocious that man can perpetrate on woman. Absalom, 
 the injured young woman’s brother by the same mother, 
 kills the unnatural offender. The news of the incest and 
 murder among his children drives David almost to distraction. 
 Absalom flies, but by and by returns and forms a plot to 
 seize his father’s crown, lest it should go to some half brother 
 by another wife. The kingdom is torn by civil war, and 
 Absalom perishes. Fresh family quarrels arise, and fresh 
 troubles to the polygamist father, and endless hidden sorrows 
 to the afflicted mothers. Other revolting deeds are done in 
 this pious family, which it would hardly be becoming in un¬ 
 godly people to describe. 
 
 How the monster Solomon fared at home, we may 
 from the miserable story of his experience as given in e 
 book of Ecclesiastes. Though rolling in wealth, and hying 
 in times of peace, he comes to the conclusion, that a is 
 
12 WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 
 
 vanity and vexation of spirit.” He thinks life is not worth 
 having, and that the dead have the advantage over the living, 
 and that he that has never been at all has the advantage 
 over both. “ Wherefore I praised the dead which are 
 already dead, more than the living, which are yet alive. 
 Yea, better is he than both they which hath not yet been.” 
 This weariness of life was the natural result of wholesale 
 polygamy and concubinage. The wretchedness of woman 
 under such revolting family arrangements must have been 
 extreme. 
 
 11. How is woman treated now, in our land of Bibles 
 and Churches? She is denied the opportunity of obtaining 
 a suitable education. In no country of Europe, and in no 
 state of the American Republic, is woman allowed to share 
 the same educational advantages as man. If she would 
 emancipate her mind from superstition, if she would master 
 the elements of science, and acquaint herself with the higher 
 kinds of literature, and especially if she would distinguish 
 herself as a scholar, an artist, or a philosopher, she must 
 make the most prodigious efforts, and surmount the most 
 stupendous and appalling obstacles, and only secure tole¬ 
 ration by successes almost superhuman. Public sentiment 
 —pious public sentiment— will not even allow her to in¬ 
 dulge in those natural exercises, those agreeable amusements, 
 which are necessary to her healthy physical development. 
 She may pray, and listen to brimstone sermons, and walk 
 leisurely and reverently to church and back, hymn book and 
 prayer book in hand, with eyes that see not the beauty 
 around her, and ears that hear not either the song of birds, 
 or the sounds of life from other animals; but as for freedom 
 of thought, freedom of speech, independence of soul, large 
 and liberal views, and true womanly virtue, these are all 
 lorbidden, on pain of present obloquy, and of future eternal 
 damnation. 
 
 12. She is not even allowed a fair chance of supplying 
 her daily wants by honest labor. To many of the occupa¬ 
 tions, for which she is specially adapted, she has no access. 
 When permitted to labor, she must have only half the wages 
 gi\ en to man for the same kind of labor. She is excluded 
 tiom her right of inheritance in most Christian countries. 
 Every son, every grandson, and even every nephew is pre¬ 
 ferred to her. Even the widowed mother must stand aside, 
 while her eldest son takes possession of the family mansion 
 and the paternal estate. If there be no male heirs at all, the 
 
 aug iteis may inherit; so the Bible enacts, and our Bible 
 
WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 13 
 
 statesmen acquiesce. In marriage she is deprived of her own 
 property, unless she has the precaution to secure herself by 
 some special deed, signed by her intended husband. It is 
 so even in the United States. In many of the countries of 
 Europe, woman is robbed and insulted at the same time. 
 The husband is made to say in the marriage service of the church 
 —“ With my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly 
 goods I thee endow”—when, in truth, he is endowing her 
 with none of them, but taking hers instead. She even loses 
 control of her own person in marriage, and becomes a slave. 
 The husband can take her where he pleases, give her what 
 accommodations, or subject her to what deprivations, he 
 pleases, and use her or abuse her as much as he pleases. He 
 can force her into the field to toil like a slave, or keep her 
 a prisoner at home. He is not allowed to poison her, or to 
 kill her at once with violence; but he can torture her to 
 death in ways more cruel. Even her gifts and earnings are 
 her husband’s. Her children are her husband’s, and he can 
 take them from her side, and drag them to the antipodes. 
 The laws of marriage and the laws of slavery are much the 
 same, so far as woman is concerned. 
 
 13. These partial and cruel laws give rise to numberless 
 crimes and fearful sufferings. Because a man by marriage 
 obtains control over a woman’s property, women possessing 
 property are sought after by unprincipled men, and after 
 being deceived, and robbed, and ruined, are cast aside with 
 broken hearts, and blasted hopes, to languish out their days 
 in utter wretchedness. Parents frequently claim the right 
 to barter their daughters, giving youth, and beauty, and 
 tenderness, to wrinkled age, and loathsome depravity, in ex¬ 
 change for a name and position. Women generally are 
 kept in ignorance. The mysteries of nature and the laws 
 of life are studiously concealed from them, and they aie 
 occupied or bewildered, instead, with the fictions of a gloomy 
 fanaticism. They are not even allowed to understand the 
 peculiar diseases to which they are liable. The priests 
 find it convenient thus to keep the minds of women in the 
 dark. They are enabled thus to control them and use them 
 for their holy purposes. Hence you will hardly find an 
 intellectual woman in ten thousand in orthodox circles, or 
 in communities where religion is the ruling power. « 
 few there are, are treated with contempt by the clergy am 
 their adherents. A strong-minded woman is a term o 
 reproach wherever the Bible has been allowed to form tne 
 public sentiment. 
 
14 WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 
 
 14. Woman is unjustly treated in other respects. That 
 is an unpardonable offence in woman, which is only a trifle 
 or an amusement in man. That which banishes woman 
 from society, is not even censured in man. That which 
 dooms a woman to despair, tends rather to improve the 
 prospects of a man. The seducer is courted, the seduced 
 abandoned. The deceiver is flattered, his victim undone. 
 Even parents abandon their marred and ruined children. 
 
 15. The prevalence of prostitution is a proof how little 
 woman is respected; how fearfully, how cruelly, she is 
 wronged. The investigations made into the origin and 
 causes of prostitution show, that, whatever Solomon may 
 say to the contrary, prostitution is chargeable mainly on man 
 —that here, also, woman is more sinned against than sinning. 
 The degradation is not voluntary on the part of woman, but 
 forced on her by man’s injustice, unfaithfulness and cruelty. 
 And the Bible has shown no tendency to diminish this 
 mournful vice. It tends rather to increase it, as well as to 
 aggravate its evils. It keeps man and woman in ignorance 
 of those natural laws which alone can check indulgence and 
 fit people for wise self-government. Out of two thousand 
 prostitutes, in the city of New York, whose history was 
 ascertained, it was found that nineteen hundred and forty- 
 five were children of believing parents, had been piously 
 brought up, and were themselves Christian believers at the 
 time of the investigation. There were but sixty-five the 
 religious sentiments of whose parents were unknown. And 
 in no case did it appear that the parents of the unfortunates 
 were unbelievers. Those States of the Union in highest 
 repute for Puritanical piety—such as Connecticut, Rhode 
 Island and Massachusetts—furnished the greatest number 
 of those hapless creatures; while those States most noted 
 for liberal views, furnished the fewest. 
 
 16. Orthodox Christians do nothing for the salvation of 
 those unfortunates. What is done is done by heretics and 
 unbelievers. The clergy can do nothing. Their doctrines 
 and ceremonies are powerless, or powerful only for evil. 
 The clergy and their pious orthodox supporters have no 
 desire to lessen the evil, unless they can bring the victims 
 into the church, and make them strictly orthodox, both in 
 faith and manners; and that they cannot do. So they do 
 nothing except helping to hinder others from doing any¬ 
 thing. They will not hear of palliatives. They do not 
 wish offenders to offend less, unless they can be wholly and 
 at once reformed according to the vicious and unnatural 
 
WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 15 
 
 standards of the church. Nor do they wish the physical 
 evils of prostitution to be abated; they rather wish them to 
 be aggravated. Their principle is, “ If people will sin, the 
 more they sin the better, and the worse they suffer the 
 better. The extremes of guilt and misery are the only 
 means to bring them to repentance.” Hence all that is 
 done, almost all that is attempted, to abate the evil, is the 
 work of unconverted, unperverted people. The pious 
 orthodox are too pure to attempt half measures, or even to 
 attempt anything by rational means. They oppose, denounce, 
 and persecute rational, humanitarian reformers. Nay, so 
 holy are our clergymen and church members, that they 
 would dread the entrance of a reclaimed sister amongst 
 them, though known to be thoroughly reformed. It is not 
 virtue that they want, but respectability. It is not men’s 
 welfare that they seek, but their own advantage. 
 
 17. We may know how women are respected by the 
 clergy and the churches, from the treatment which Frances 
 Wright, Ernestine L. Rose, Lucretia Mott, and other intelli¬ 
 gent and philanthropic women have received at their hands. 
 Because they ventured to think for themselves, and assert 
 their moral independence, they were insulted, derided, 
 slandered, persecuted, mobbed, and permitted to escape 
 with their lives only because the spirit of humanity among 
 the irreligious would not allow them to put them to death. 
 Virtue is nothing, intelligence is nothing, beauty, talent, 
 and eloquence are nothing, noble bearing, refined manners, 
 learning, wealth, and rank are nothing; all that can exalt, 
 adorn, and dignify woman is nothing, in the eyes of the 
 pious zealot, the Bible fanatic, if she refuse to bow to 
 clerical authority, or to pander to clerical selfishness and 
 pride. 
 
 18. Of course the clergy and their pious friends pretend 
 great respect for female devotees. They laud them in their 
 sermons, and flatter them in their social intercourse. “ Oh! 
 the dear, good creatures! Flow much is the #ause of God 
 and of the blessed Redeemer indebted to their zeal and 
 devotion! They were last at the cross when the Saviour 
 suffered; they were first at the sepulchre when the Saviour 
 rose. They build and adorn our churches, and grace our 
 congregations. They teach in our Sabbath schools at home, 
 and accompany our missionaries to the heathen abroad. 
 They distribute our tracts, and collect oui’ funds; and 
 everywhere prove themselves the most untiring, the most 
 vigilant, the most successful aids of the blessed gospe . 
 
16 WHAT nAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 
 
 Oh! nobly do they repay the infinite obligations under 
 which the gospel has laid them.” Such are the strains in 
 which woman is lauded by ministers of the gospel. But 
 what are such praises worth? What is their meaning? 
 What is their object? Do they show that woman is really 
 respected and honoured by the clergy; that she is the 
 object of that reverence and devotion with which she is 
 regarded by the truly enlightened and truly noble man? 
 Just the contrary. Those clerical commendations of women 
 are so many insults. They reveal, not reverence or devo¬ 
 tion, but ignorance, fraud, and selfishness. They are the 
 commendations which the slaveholder gives his obsequious 
 slaves, or the huntsman his serviceable hounds. So Russian 
 aristocrats commend their serfs. So white Americans 
 commend their coloured neighbours, when they keep their 
 places. Even Know-nothings will tolerate a foreigner if he 
 will hand over to them his property, and work for them 
 without wages. Even savages are willing to have women 
 as drudges, and willing to commend them if they are servile 
 enough. But is this doing justice, or giving honour, to 
 woman? 
 
 19. We grant that woman is more respected and better 
 treated than formerly; but it is not because the world is 
 more pious, but because it is more enlightened and scepti¬ 
 cal. It is infidelity, humanity, not Christianity, that is ele¬ 
 vating the character and improving the condition of woman. 
 Our Puritan forefathers were more pious than we, as the 
 clergy know; yet their treatment of woman was cruel in the 
 extreme. In proportion as they exceeded us in piety, they 
 exceeded us in their insolence and inhumanity to woman. 
 It was our very pious forefathers that fined, and banished, 
 and murdered the beautiful, the eloquent and noble Anne 
 Hutchinson and her interesting children. It was our pious 
 Puritan forefathers that imprisoned innocent Quakeresses, 
 stripped them naked to the waist, dragged them at the 
 cart tail, and with horsewhips flogged them on their bare 
 bodies, till their tender flesh hung in shreds, and their inno¬ 
 cent blood streamed reeking to the ground. It was our 
 very pious and orthodox Puritan fathers that hanged 
 the noble Quakeresses on Boston Common, and that showed 
 a zeal for God that would have sacrificed every intelligent 
 and high-minded woman on earth, if suspected of heresy or 
 unbelief. It was those same pious Puritans that fined a 
 woman for kissing her child on the priest’s high day. It is 
 because the piety of our age is diluted with rationalism that 
 
WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? IT 
 
 woman is treated less insolently and cruelly now; and it is 
 because piety is not entirely supplanted by rational views, 
 that woman does not receive all the respect and enjoy all 
 the happiness to which she is entitled. 
 
 20. It is worthy of remark that those religious sects 
 which have gone farthest in conceding to women their rights, 
 are those which are little more than nominal believers, 
 such as the old fashioned Quakers, and modern Unitarians. 
 Both these denominations are in reality infidels. An infidel 
 is one who rejects the authority of the Bible—who acknow¬ 
 ledges only the authority of reason. And this is what the 
 Quakers and Unitarians do. The great authority with the 
 Quakers is the light within; which we call reason. And 
 reason is the sole authority of the consistent Unitarian. 
 When men become rationalists both in name and deed, they 
 treat woman as their equal. They do not respect them¬ 
 selves less, but woman more. 
 
 21. And those persons who, in different lands, protest 
 against the wrongs inflicted on woman, and demand for her 
 a better lot both mentally and morally, are mostly rational¬ 
 ists, or heretics and unbelievers. No other classes can con¬ 
 sistently demand the needful reforms. The Christian must 
 go against his Bible if he would plead for woman’s rights. 
 Hence all who protest against the wrongs inflicted on 
 woman, are denounced as infidels by the clergy. And the 
 clergy, ignorant as they are in other respects, generally 
 know whether a movement is Christian or infidel in its 
 bearings. 
 
 22. And all the improvements in modern legislations with 
 regard to woman, are in opposition to the Bible. The laws 
 which recognise woman’s right to divorce, her right to 
 property, her right to complain of a husband’s injustice, or 
 of a father’s despotism, are all antiscriptural, and are attribut¬ 
 able to the sceptical and philosophical tendencies of the 
 age. 
 
 23. Again, woman cannot be happy without the proper ex¬ 
 ercise of her unbounded affections. She must love and be 
 beloved. She must marry, and marry a man whom she can 
 love, and from whom she can confidently look for returns o 
 love. But the Bible makes no provision for this recipro¬ 
 cal affection. The Bible knows nothing about love in its 
 highest forms. The writers of the Bible did not understan 
 the subject. They seem not to have known of the existence 
 of that mutual, unbounded, and self-sacrificing affection, 
 which enlightened and virtuous people of the presen ay 
 
18 WHAT HAS T1IE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 
 
 call love. The idea of mutual affection, the reciprocal love 
 of pure and equal minds, as constituting marriage, and a« 
 essential to the purity and happiness of domestic life, seems 
 never to have entered their minds. They were selfish and 
 brutal in their affections. Even Paul had no idea of the 
 nature of true marriage, or of the higher forms of conjugal 
 affection. The only object of marriage, in his idea, was the 
 prevention of irregular indulgence; and the only thing 
 which could justify marriage, in his judgment, was un¬ 
 governable brutal appetite. And the ideas of Jesus seem to 
 have been no higher. Of that strange endearment, that re¬ 
 ciprocal enchantment, that mutual adoration, that exalted 
 and rapturous devotion, embodying all the elements of per¬ 
 fect friendship, with something infinitely higher and happier, 
 inspiring worship and imparting bliss extatic and ineffable, 
 leaving in the soul no void, no lack, no longing, but filling 
 and overflowing it with pure and infinite delight, they never 
 dreamed. Yet without this perfect, infinite, reciprocal 
 affoction, with all its rest and all its raptures, woman lives 
 in vain. 
 
 24. Of course woman can never be satisfied with divided 
 affection. The true, the normal woman loves but one, and 
 seeks not to be loved by more than one; but she expects, 
 as a matter of course, that that one will love her with an un¬ 
 divided heart. Polygamy, to her, is hateful and horrible 
 as death. She loves home; she values it infinitely: 
 but the dwelling of a polygamist is no home to the true and 
 normal woman; it is a dungeon. To an enlightened, vir¬ 
 tuous, noble-minded woman, the Bible stories of polygamal 
 heroes and polygamal harems, are disgusting and revolting 
 beyond measure. To be captured by such a monster, and 
 lodged in such a harem, and subjected to its revolting indig¬ 
 nities, would be almost as bad as tho fabled tortures of 
 Christian damnation. 
 
 2o. Again: woman wants constancy in hormate, and must 
 have it, or be wretched. She changes not, and can endure 
 no change in her adorer. And whore love is true, and its 
 conditions right, no change takes place, except such change 
 as that from the bud to the open blossom, and from the 
 fragrant blossom to the delicious fruit. Divorce is for blind 
 and brutal lovers. 
 
 26. Woman cannot be happy unless her children are 
 happy. Her children’s sorrows and her children’s joys are 
 hoi own. She loves her offspring with the same unbounded 
 anection with which she loves her worthy and devoted hus- 
 
WIIAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 19 
 
 band. A mother’s love is proverbial; it has been so from 
 the earliest ages of which we have memorials. That a 
 woman should forget her child has been ranked among the 
 things impossible. A woman mourning for the loss of her 
 child is the emblem of the ancients for the last extremes of 
 grief. Even the lower animals show a wild and unbounded 
 affection for their offspring. A bear bereaved of her 
 whelps is inconsolable; her rage is uncontrollable; and wo 
 to the hapless man that meets her in her fury. Even the 
 common hen, a proverb for pusillanimity on other occasions, 
 is furious when her chicks are threatened, and will assail 
 the most formidable foes in their defence. There is a horrid 
 tale on record of a man who, when wrecked, took the plank 
 from his own son, willing to savo himself by his own child’s 
 death. We hope the story is false; but some believe it is 
 true. No such revolting story could be true of woman. 
 She dies for her child. 
 
 History abounds with touching stories of a mother’s un¬ 
 bounded and undying love. Whon the Rothsay Castle 
 Steamer was wrecked, a woman was on board with her 
 babe. While the waves were washing over the deck, she 
 took off her shawl, and wrapped it round her babe, and care¬ 
 fully bound the little one to her breast. As wave after 
 wave dashed over her, drenching her with its waters, she 
 clung the faster to her hold, and the faster to her babe. At 
 last a heavier swell broke over the wreck, and mother and 
 babe were washed into the deep. Still, even when drown¬ 
 ing in the troubled waters, she was seen to raise her babe 
 above the billows, and with her last breath heard to cry, 
 “My child! my child!” 
 
 The child is dearer to the mother than she is to herself. 
 No system, therefore, can make woman truly happy—happy 
 as she ought to be—that subjects her children to indignity 
 aud sorrow. Yet this the Bible system does. It subjects the 
 child to the priest, and makes him a spiritual slave. It 
 subjects him to the tortures of the theological drill, and 
 stretches his soul on the rack of orthodox piety. It 
 frowns on his childish mirth and pleasures, and threatens 
 his innocent sports with damnation. It hangs thehea\ens 
 with black, and wraps the earth in gloom, and fills all space 
 with malignant devils, or more malignant Gods. It agitates 
 the youth with unearthly fears, and tortures him with 
 cruel anxieties. It bewilders his understanding, paralyzes 
 his judgment, and entangles him in endless perplexities-. 
 It teaches the mother, so the orthodox expounders tell us, 
 
20 
 
 WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 
 
 that her children are naturally and totally depraved; that 
 they come into the world, as Wesley expresses it, half brute 
 and half devil; that they are objects of God’s wrath, and 
 legitimate heirs of hell. It encourages the father to beat 
 them,—to beat them with a rod,—and not to let his soul 
 spare for their crying. It makes gloom, and tears, and 
 poverty, a duty, and enjoins these things on pain of damna¬ 
 tion. Yet it inculcates, at the same time, joy, and confi¬ 
 dence, and thankfulness; thus demanding contradictions and 
 impossibilities. Hence misery, or hypocrisy—nay, misery 
 find hypocrisy, are made a necessity, and nature is set 
 against nature, and humanity against humanity. Life is 
 made a suicidal war. Faith is set against reason, and 
 reason against conscience, and conscience against right, and 
 i ight against law, and the mind is racked with infinite anta¬ 
 gonisms. A smile, a jest, a humorous word, may damn yon, 
 yet murder, and the gallows may carry others direct to 
 paradise. No greater calamity can befall a child than to 
 become the subject of an orthodox concern for religion. j 
 The perplexities and terrors of the disordered mind are 
 truly maddening. And the grief of the devoted, anxious 
 mother, forced to stand by and witness the sad ao-ony of 
 her distracted child, knows no bounds. Even pious mothers 
 often find it as much as they can bear to see the sufferings 
 ot their children under an orthodox concern for the salva- 
 tion of their souls. How great and grievous then must be 
 he distress of a sensible, unperverted mother, to see a child 
 thus tortured! 
 
 26. The enlightened mother loves science, and art, and 
 culture, and beauty; and rejoices in the intellectual develop¬ 
 ment, and lofty aspirations, of her children. But these the 
 C ° ndem . ns * Irue > peopte generally respect them and 
 covet them in the present day; but that is because the 
 B b e is no longer sole dictator. Science is anti-Christian. 
 
 me 1 nfiTil> 18 h T ? res y^ unbelief. Art and refinement 
 ‘ e ^fidelity. Even health, and beauty, and wealth and 
 powe r , are anti-Christian, and life itself is only valued by 
 e consistent samt, as a means of preparation for death. 
 
 ' ihe ® ler gy tell U3 that polygamy was universal 
 among the Pagans This, however, is not true. It was 
 
 H™moL a Tl S M < l Je ' VS ’f’ diti6COmmou 6tiU »“ong the 
 lorn the RiWp T ' ammedau , 6 ’ who deri '° their religion 
 l I 0 7 co t e m ^ ble; T u Ut p amon S, the <>eeks and Roman3it B WM 
 th D U? T he Romftu law forbade polygamy while in 
 the Bible you have neither law nor cotS LaTnst U 
 
WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 21 
 
 Among the ancient Teutons, the fathers of the mightier 
 portion of our modern civilised nations, woman was treated 
 with peculiar respect. “The old Teutonic tribes,” says 
 Mrs. Child, “ had always been remarkable for the high con¬ 
 sideration in which they held their women, and the respect 
 with which they treated them. They habitually consulted 
 them in all the affairs of war and government. The best of 
 the Romans acknowledged that with regard to the dignity 
 and purity of women, the sickly civilisation of their own 
 country was keenly rebuked by the more healthy tone of 
 their barbarian conquerors. Yet the Romans were far in 
 advance of the Bible worthies. The introduction of this 
 element of respect for woman into the Christian Church 
 at an early period, had a very important and beneficent in¬ 
 fluence upon Christianity in the Western world.” Again, 
 says Mrs. Child, “ Teutonic tribes married but one wife, and 
 fully acknowledged the equality of men and women both in 
 matters religious, and in matters political. The Romans 
 prohibited polygamy by law. How far the Romans had 
 advanced beyond Asiatic [Bible] ideas on the subject* is 
 indicated by a remark of Cato, the Censor, who lived two 
 hundred and thirty-two years before Christ. He was accus¬ 
 tomed to say, ‘ They who beat their wives or children, lay 
 sacrilegious hands on the most sacred things in the world. 
 For myself, I prefer the character of a good husband to 
 that of a great Senator.’ ” 
 
 28. Much is said about the tender and delicate regard of 
 Jesus for woman. For myself, I see no signs of it in his 
 history. I see signs of the contrary. According to the 
 Gospels, he did not treat even his own mother and sisters 
 with respect. He treated them rudely, heartlessly, cruelly. 
 He called the poor Syrophcenician woman a dog. He allowed 
 one woman, if the horrible story is to be credited, to 
 wash his feet with her tears, and wipe them with the hair 
 of her head. A man that had any delicacy of feeling, would 
 sooner drown himself than allow a woman so to degrade 
 herself. A man that in our day should allow a woman to 
 wash his soiled feet, and wipe them with the hair of her .head, 
 would be branded as infamous for ever. Even death itself 
 would hardly be deemed atonement sufficient fdr such an 
 offence, for such an outrage upon womanly delicacy. • 
 
 29. The tendency of the Bible to encourage injustice and 
 cruelty towards woman, may be seen in the writings of 
 Wesley. He recommends that the first lesson which young 
 husbands should teach their wives should be, to know their 
 
22 WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 
 
 place as their husbands inferiors —to regard their husbands 
 as their lords and masters—to yield obedience to their hus¬ 
 band’s commands; and he recommends husbands, if their 
 wives do not obey them promptly, to enforce obedience by 
 suitable correction. No wonder the wife of the Methodist 
 tyrant ran away, choosing rather to starve than to live in 
 such bondage. 
 
 30. The clergy quote the words of Paul, that in Christ 
 Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female; and 
 tell us that Christianity makes the sexes equal; whereas 
 nothing can be more false. Christianity does not make men 
 and women equal either in the church, the family, or the 
 State. In the church, a woman is not permitted to speak, 
 or even to ask a question. In the family, she is to obey 
 her husband, as the church obeys Christ, in all things. In 
 the State, she is left to the spirit of the age; for Christianity 
 does not demand for her a single right, or ask for her a 
 single favour. And the practice of the church, so far as the 
 sceptical spirit of the age will permit, is in accordance with 
 Christianity. A woman is not allowed either to preach, to 
 exhort, or to pray, aloud, in the orthodox churches. They 
 may teach in Sabbath schools; carry round theological trash 
 in the shape of tracts; collect for missionary societies; tease 
 husbands, brothers, neighbours and children, into compliance 
 with church demands; raise funds for the minister; get up 
 line parties for him; pamper and caress him, and applaud 
 his sermons, and damn his enemies, and do any other kind 
 of ecclesiastical drudgery: but they must never think of 
 equality with male members of the church, on pain of dis¬ 
 honour and excommunication. Still less must they study 
 science, or make themselves familiar with liberal books, or 
 question the authority of the priesthood, or modify their 
 creed. And if, through the force of truth, they should 
 become unbelievers, they are given up at once to shame 
 and sure damnation. It is bad enough for a man to be an 
 unbeliever; but for a woman to disbelieve, is the sin that 
 is not only unpardonable, but utterly inexcusable. In short, 
 woman may be a slave in the church, and if she is a willing 
 slave, working continually for the aggrandizement of the 
 church and clergy, she shall be praised and flattered; but if 
 she aspire to anything better than slavery, she is hated, 
 shunned, and damned. 
 
 31. The Bible abounds with obscenities—obscenities, 
 many of them, peculiarly offensive to pure-minded and high- 
 minded women. We cannot give the passages; decency 
 
WHAT IIAS THE BIBLE DONE FOB WOMAN? 23 
 
 forbids; but in no book have I met with stories, descriptions, 
 and allusions, calculated more rudely and painfully to shock 
 a modest and cultivated woman, than some in the Books of 
 Moses, the Song of Solomon, and the Prophets. Even the 
 New Testament is not free from revolting obscenities. It 
 is melancholy to think that the delicate hands of woman 
 should be employed in circulating a book containing such 
 indecencies. This terrible fact is itself a proof how much 
 the Bible and the clergy can do for the corruption and 
 degradation of woman. 
 
 32. Woman’s virtue is secure—first, in proportion to her 
 intellectual development; and, second, in proportion to her 
 independence. When woman is ignorant, dependent, poor, 
 she readily becomes the victim of the base, the rich, the 
 powerful. And the Bible favours both ignorance and poverty, 
 credulity and servility, and thus renders the ruin of millions 
 inevitable. Secularism favours the intellectual cultivation, 
 and the physical independence, of woman, and thus helps 
 to promote her virtue and happiness. 
 
 33. The Bible gives no sufficient rules for the conduct of 
 
 men and women in the marriage state. There are a hundred 
 matters of importance to the happiness of husbands and 
 wives, parents and children, not once touched either by the 
 Old Testament or the New. There are a hundred duties, 
 not one of which is enjoined. There are a hundred errors, 
 against not one of which the husband or the father, the wife 
 or the mother, is warned. Hence numberless marriages are 
 unhappy. Hence hopes, bright as the morning, give place 
 to gloom and despondency, dark as the night. Hence 
 millions that should have passed their days in joyousness, 
 languish in misery, or die in their prime. And millions of 
 children are born with worthless constitutions, with bodies 
 and minds unfitted for the duties and pleasures of life. t 
 And because the Bible is regarded as a perfect rule of duty, 
 the evil is looked upon as incurable, and generation after 
 generation grope their way through the murkiness and 
 misery of vice, to untimely and unlionoured graves. Nay, 
 public sentiment is so corrupted and perverted through 
 belief in the perfection of the Bible, that those who see the 
 evil and perceive the remedy, are deterred from interfering 
 by the dread of public reprobation.* . 
 
 And all this while the clergy, blind leaders of the blind, 
 rave about the blessed influences of the Bible, and about 
 
 * A tract touching on some of these subjects may be looked for by and by — J. 15 • 
 
24 WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR WOMAN? 
 
 woman’s obligations to its teachings. Thus men put dark¬ 
 ness for light, and light for darkness; call evil good, and 
 good evil. But shall it be so for ever? Will day never 
 dawn on the night of the soul? It dawns already. The 
 night is past; the morning breaks; and the sun of truth 
 already appears on the horizon. The condition of our race 
 is not hopeless. The bigot and the brute, the fanatic and 
 fury are not to rule mankind for ever. Truth is asserting 
 her rights, and virtue is rising to dominion; and man and 
 woman, after many ages of darkness, and gloom, and sorrow, 
 shall be enlightened, happy and free. 
 
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 No. 3.—WHAT HAS THE BIBLE DONE FOR 
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