"This implies," says a distinguished commentator upon Holy Writ, "that
the woman was a perfect resemblance of the man, possessing neither
inferiority nor superiority, but being in all things like and equal to
himself."

Thus it was in the beginning. But, in process of time, men, glorying in
the physical strength in which they excelled women, refused to recognize
as its equivalent the peculiar qualities and faculties possessed by
women which were lacking in themselves. And overlooking the importance
of the duties which the mothers of mankind were discharging, they plumed
themselves upon their own prowess, and concluded that women and all else
were made only to minister to their pleasures. Reason and justice were
obliged to succumb to the strong arm, and women were forced into a
subordinate position.

If the Creator, in the arrangements of his plans, designed that women
should be inferior to men in intellect and freedom of action, then, in
regard to one-half of the human family, God worked by the law of
retrogression, producing Eve, an inferior, from Adam, a superior being;
which is clearly contrary to the law of progression, and contrary to the
general plan of his creation; and, if this be true, the laws of
progression and retrogression were to alternate perpetually. Is this
supposition of inferiority in the case of woman consistent with what we
know of God's method of working, as given in the history of the
creation? Let us recapitulate the whole briefly, and see.

1. He created inanimate matter. 2. He brought vegetable life into
existence. 3. The inhabitants of the waters were created. 4. "The cattle
after their kind." Still ascending, God said: "Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness. So God created man in his own image, in the