[Footnote I: Gen. vi, 6.]

[Footnote J: Clarke on Exodus xxi, 7.]




CHAPTER V.


New Testament Teachings.

In this enlightened age, the sentiment of the Rabbi Eliezer, that the
law should be burned rather than delivered to women, would be execrated
by the right-minded of every Christian country. But was such a sentiment
any farther from right, either in theory or practice, than are those
held and openly avowed by some of the advocates of the theory of the
inferiority of women; who, while asserting that these inferior creatures
are, by the constitution of their minds, incapable of comprehending the
meaning of a law, yet hold them equally accountable with men--who are
supposed to understand all about it--for any violation of that law? If,
indeed, there is any difference made in the punishment of delinquents,
the greater severity is most frequently meted out to the woman.

Those who insist on the absolute, unqualified subjection of women to the
opposite sex, and place them in a subordinate place in the Christian
Church, persistently quote the writings of St. Paul as authority for the
position which they take. We apprehend that the great apostle to the
Gentiles is as wrongfully misapprehended and misrepresented by certain