mutual relationship so intimate and vital that the existence of
neither is absolutely complete except with reference to the other.
But there is this difference, that the relation of woman is,
characteristically, that of subordination and dependence. This does
not imply inferiority of character, of capacity, of value, in the
sight of God or man; and it has been the glory of woman to have
accepted the position of formal inferiority assigned her by the
Creator, with all its responsibilities, its trials, its possible
outward humiliations and sufferings, in the proud consciousness that
it is not incompatible with an essential superiority; that it does
not prevent her from occupying, if she will, an inward elevation of
character, from which she may look down with pitying and helpful
love on him she calls her lord. Jesus said, 'Ye know that the
princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that
are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among
you; but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your
minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your
servant, even as the Son of man came, not to be ministered unto, but
to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.' Surely woman
need not hesitate to estimate her status by a criterion of dignity
sustained by such authority. She need not shrink from a position
which was sought by the Son of God, and in whose trials and griefs
she will have his sympathy and companionship."

There is a comforting aspect to this discourse, after all. It holds out the
hope, that a particularly noble woman may not be personally inferior to a
remarkably bad husband, but "may look down with pitying and helpful love on
him she calls her lord." The drawback is not only that it insults woman by
a reassertion of a merely historical inferiority, which is steadily
diminishing, but that it fortifies this by precisely the same talk about