The Woman's Bible Part 75

Truth makes her way slowly but surely, because the eternities are hers. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the greatest liberator of our time, has, with magnificent courage, pressed into humanity's Thermopylae, and turned the light on the superst.i.tions which have visited cruelties and wrongs on woman, and this, too, under a system which claims to extend "great consideration" to the Mothers of the Race. O women of Christendom! will ye not seek the truth? Leave the priestly mendicants who demand your devotion and your dollars, leave to their religion the heathen women on the banks of the Yangtse-Kiang and the Ganges, and turn your eyes to millions of your enslaved, toiling, struggling sisters in Christendom whom it is claimed the Bible has elevated; and remember that these are the victims upon whom the "glad feet" of the Gospel have been trampling for two thousand years.

Versailles, Ky.

Josephine K. Henry.

The Christian theory of the sacredness of the Bible has been at the cost of the world's civilization. Whether we regard the work as custodian of the profoundest secrets of the "ancient mysteries," a spiritual book trebly veiled, or as the physical and religious history of the world in its most material forms, its interpretation by the Church, by the State, and by society has ever been prejudicial to the best interests of humanity. Science, art, inventions, reforms of existing wrongs, all, all have been opposed upon its authority. That even the most enlightened nations are not yet out of barbarism is due to the teachings of the Bible.

From "Thou shalt not make any graven image, or any likeness of anything in heaven above, the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth," down to "A woman shall not speak in church, but shall ask her husband at home," the tendency of the Bible has been to crush out aspiration, to deaden human faculties, and to humiliate mankind. From Adam's plaint, "The woman gave me and I did eat," down to Christ's "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" the tendency of the Bible has been degradation of the divinest half of humanity--woman. Even the Christian Church itself is not based upon Christ as a savior, but upon its own teachings that woman brought sin into the world, a theory in direct contradiction, not alone to the mysteries, but to spiritual truth. But our present quest is not what the mystic or the spiritual character of the Bible may be; we are investigating its influence upon woman under Judaism and Christianity, and p.r.o.nounce it evil.

Matilda Joslyn Gage.

There is nothing tending to show that the women spoken of in the Bible were superior to the ones we know. There are to-day millions of women making coats for their sons; hundreds of thousands of women, true, not simply to innocent people falsely accused, but to criminals. Many a loving heart is as true to the gallows as Mary was to the cross. There are hundreds of thousands of women accepting poverty and want and dishonor for the love they bear unworthy men; hundreds and thousands-- hundreds and thousands--working day and night, with strained eyes and tired hands, for husbands and children--clothed in rags, housed in huts and hovels, hoping day after day for the Angel of Death. There are thousands of women in Christian England working in iron, laboring in the fields and toiling in the mines. There are hundreds and thousands in Europe, everywhere, doing the work of men--deformed by toil, and who would become simply wild and ferocious beasts, except for the love they bear for home and child.

We need not go back four thousand years for heroines. The world is filled with them to-day. They do not belong to any nation, nor any religion, nor exclusively to any race. Wherever woman is found, they are found. There are no women portrayed in the Bible who equal thousands and thousands of known to-day. The women of the Bible fall almost infinitely below, not simply those in real life, but the creations of the imagination found in the world of fiction. They will not compare with the women born of Shakespeare's brain. You will find none like Isabella, in whose spotless life, love and reason blended into perfect truth; nor Juliet, within whose heart, pa.s.sion and purity met like white and red within the bosom of a rose; nor Cordelia, who chose to suffer loss rather than show her wealth of love with those who gilded dross with golden words in hope of gain; nor Miranda, who told her love as freely as a flower gives its blossom to the kisses of the sun; nor Imogene, who asked, "What is it to be false?" nor Hermione, who bore with perfect faith and hope the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her heart; nor Desdemona, her innocence so perfect and her love so pure that she was incapable of suspecting that another could suspect, and sought with dying words to hide her lover's crime.

If we wish to find what the Bible thinks of woman, all that is necessary to do is to read it. We shall find that everywhere she is spoken of simply as property--as belonging absolutely to the man. We shall find that, whenever a man got tired of his wife, all he had to do was to give her a writing of divorcement, and that then the mother of his children became a houseless and homeless wanderer. We shall find that men were allowed to have as many wives as they could get, either by courts.h.i.+p, purchase, or conquest. The Jewish people in the olden time were, in many respects, like their barbarian neighbors.

Anon.

The Bible, viewed by men as the infallible "Word of G.o.d," and translated and explained for ages by men only, tends to the subjection and degradation of woman. Historical facts to prove this are abundant.

In the dark days of "witchcraft"--through centuries--alleged witches were arrested, tried in ecclesiastical courts, tortured and hung or burned at the stake by men under priestly direction, and the great majority of the victims were women. Eve's alleged transgression, and the Bible edict in the days of the reputed Witch of Endor, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," being the warrant and Divine authority for this awful slaughter of women.

In the days of chattel-slavery in our country, the slave-laws, framed by men only, degraded woman by making her the defenseless victim of her slave-master's pa.s.sions, and then inflicting a cruel stab, reaching the heart of motherhood, by laws which made her children follow the condition of the mother, as slaves; never that of the father, as free women or men. The clergy became slaveholders and defenders of slavery without loss of priestly position or influence, and quoted "Cursed be Canaan" as their justification.

The Lord gave the Word, great was the company of those that published it.--Old version of the Bible, 68th Psalm.

The Lord giveth the Word, and great is the mult.i.tude of women who publish it.--Revised version of the Bible, 68th Psalm.

Here is "a reform" not "against Nature," nor the facts of history, but is true to the Mother of the Race, to her knowledge of "the Word," to her desire to promulgate it, to her actual partic.i.p.ation in declaring and proclaiming it. And true to a present and continuous inspiration and influx of the Spirit, it is giveth, and not "gave," in the past.

And this one recognition of woman as preacher and Apostle forbids the a.s.sertion that woman is degraded from Genesis to Revelation.

The light of a more generous religious thought, a growth out of the old beliefs, impelled the learned "Committee on Revision" to speak the truth in regard to the religious character and work of women, and they have exalted her where before she was "degraded."

This revision is also prophetic of this era, for never were women doing so excellently the world's work, or, like Tryphena and Tryphosa, prophesying the light still to come.

Catharine A. F. Stebbins.

The general principles of righteousness and justice laid down in the Bible have elevated the race in general, the mothers included, and have aided in securing reforms for women, as well as for other cla.s.ses. But the specific texts of Saint Paul enjoining subjection upon women have undoubtedly been a hindrance.

Alice Stone Blackwell.

1. In my opinion the teachings of the Bible have advanced woman's emanc.i.p.ation.

Look at the freedom of the Jewish women of the Old Testament--of Miriam, Deborah, Abigail, Ruth and Esther. In comparison, where were the Gentile women who knew not G.o.d?

2. The teachings of the Bible, particularly the New Testament, have dignified the Mothers of the Race. Christ was very severe to the men who were sinners, he called them Scribes and Pharisees and hypocrites, and p.r.o.nounced, "Woe be unto you." He even whipped the money changers out of the temple. But no rebuke to woman ever fell from his lips save the gentle one to Martha, that she cared too much for her home and her nice housekeeping. Christ's mission meant the elevation of womanhood.

Compare Christian countries with the heathen countries, and see how Christianity elevates and heathenism degrades womanhood.

I have studied the questions in the Indian Territory in our own United States. Under the influence of the Christian missionaries the Indian woman is an important factor in Church and State. Where the Gospel of Christ is not preached the women are slaves to the men. In their long tramps they do not even walk beside their husbands, but follow behind like dogs. I am aware that small ministers still preach foolishness, defining "woman's sphere," but the real Biblical Christianity elevates womanhood.

Sarah M. Perkins.

My Dear Mrs. Stanton:--I regard the Bible as I do the other so-called sacred books of the world. They were all produced in savage times, and, of course, contain many things that shock our sense of justice. In the days of darkness women were regarded and treated as slaves. They were allowed no voice in public affairs. Neither man nor woman were civilized, and the G.o.ds were like their wors.h.i.+pers. It gives me pleasure to know that women are beginning to think and are becoming dissatisfied with the religion of barbarians.

I congratulate you on what you have already accomplished and for the work you are now doing. Sincerely yours,

Eva A. Ingersoll.

In reading some of these letters and comments I have been deeply impressed with the difficulty of subst.i.tuting reason for superst.i.tion in minds once perverted by a false faith. Women have been taught by their religious guardians that the Bible, unlike all other books, was written under the special inspiration of the Great Ruling Intelligence of the Universe. Not conversant with works on science and higher criticism, which point out its fabulous pretensions, they cling to it with an unreasoning tenacity, like a savage to his fetich. Though it is full of contradictions, absurdities and impossibilities, and bears the strongest evidence in every line of its human origin, and in moral sentiment is below many of the best books of our own day, they blindly wors.h.i.+p it as the Word of G.o.d.

When you point out what in plain English it tells us G.o.d did say to his people in regard to woman, and there is no escape from its degrading teaching as to her position, then they shelter themselves under false translations, interpretations and symbolic meanings. It does not occur to them that men learned in the languages have revised the book many times, but made no change in woman's position. Though familiar with "the designs of G.o.d," trained in Biblical research and higher criticism, interpreters of signs and symbols and Egyptian hieroglyphics, learned astronomers and astrologers, yet they cannot twist out of the Old or New Testaments a message of justice, liberty or equality from G.o.d to the women of the nineteenth century!

The real difficulty in woman's case is that the whole foundation of the Christian religion rests on her temptation and man's fall, hence the necessity of a Redeemer and a plan of salvation. As the chief cause of this dire calamity, woman's degradation and subordination were made a necessity. If, however, we accept the Darwinian theory, that the race has been a gradual growth from the lower to a higher form of life, and that the story of the fall is a myth, we can exonerate the snake, emanc.i.p.ate the woman, and reconstruct a more rational religion for the nineteenth century, and thus escape all the perplexities of the Jewish mythology as of no more importance than those of the Greek, Persian and Egyptian.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

"THE WOMAN'S BIBLE" REPUDIATED.

At the twenty-eighth annual convention of the National-American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, held in Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., in January, 1896, the following, was reported by the Committee on Resolutions:

"That this a.s.sociation is non-sectarian, being composed of persons of all shades of religious opinion, and that it has no official connection with the so-called 'Woman's Bible,' or any theological publication."

Charlotte Perkins Stetson moved to amend by striking out everything after the word "opinion."

Anna R. Simmons moved, as an amendment to the amendment, to omit the words "the so-called Woman's Bible, or."

This was followed by a long and animated discussion, in which the following persons partic.i.p.ated:

Frances A. Williamson, Helen Morris Lewis, Annie L. Diggs, Carrie Chapman Catt, Rachel Foster Avery, Henry B. Blackwell, Laura M. Johns, Elizabeth U. Yates, Katie R. Addison, Alice Stone Blackwell and Rev.

Anna Howard Shaw, speaking for the resolution; and Charlotte Perkins Stetson, Mary Bentley Thomas, J. B. Merwin, Clara B. Colby, Harriette A. Keyser, Lavina A. Hatch, Lillie Devereux Blake, Caroline Hallowell Miller, Victoria Conkling Whitney, Althea B. Stryker, and Cornelia H.