God. He can build up a woman; and as he builds her up he builds up
himself. She is also a builder. She builds up a home, or degrades it.
If woman is honored in a home, she makes it honorable.

At the outset she was man's equal: perhaps she may have thought
herself to be superior to him--more refined, of better material. She
forgot her place, and ignored her sphere, and lost all. She was not
created as things were, out of nothing. She was meant to be something
better than a _thing_; and she must be something better than a thing,
or she is nothing. She was not formed as Adam was, out of the dust of
the earth. Had she been, perhaps she would not have disliked dust so
terribly. She is a part of man's life. This describes her mission. The
life of a woman who does not care to be a man's toy or ornament, but
desires rather to be his helpmeet,--supplying all he needs, as he
supplies all she needs,--is but the continuance, the flowing out and
flowing on of man's higher life, into the flowers of love, which
decorate the home, and make that chosen retreat the very portals of
heaven.

As man feels that in woman he finds the complement to himself, and
almost his other self, woman finds in man the same complement to
herself, and recognizes in him the ruler of her life, her friend,
her lover; and happy is she if she finds in him her husband, who
rightfully assumes his rights and his sovereignty.

3. "_God brought her unto man_." Woman is God's first gift to man.
She must never occupy a second place. In the heart she holds a first
place, or she holds none at all. The moment she holds a secondary
place she is ruined. It is in her power to hold the first place. To do
this, she must prize it; make sacrifices to keep it; almost, at times,