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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 673. The Church and Women
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The Church and Women
Amongst the heathen woman is the down-trodden slave of man. She is kept working hard, and bears all the heavier burdens, while he walks by her side with musket, club, or spear. If she offends him, he beats or abuses her at pleasure. The girls have to toil and slave in the village plantations, to prepare all the materials for fencing these around, to bear every burden, and to be knocked about at will by the men and boys.
Oh, how sad and degraded is the position of Woman, where the teaching of Christ is unknown, or disregarded though known! It is the Christ of the Bible, it is His Spirit entering into Humanity, that has lifted Woman, and made her the helpmate and the friend of Man, not his toy or his slave.1 [Note: John G. Paton: An Autobiography, i. 146.]
2. The elevation of women through the coming of Him, who was Himself “born of woman,” has left with them henceforward a peculiar power of efficient ministration. Such ministrations began even in the earliest gospel days, during the sojourn of our Saviour on earth. In fact all the great principles of the Christian life and the Christian Church, and this principle among the rest, were foreshadowed in the records of that biography. We may omit, if we will, the mention of Anna, the pious prophetess “of the tribe of Aser,” as belonging rather to the end of the Old Dispensation than to the beginning of the New; and also of Mary, the mother of our Lord, and “her cousin Elisabeth,” as standing apart in a sphere of their own. But when we turn beyond the period of Christ's infancy and youth, to the beginning of His active work, we find Him punctually aided by the devoted sympathy and service of women. They followed Him from place to place; they practised self-denial for His sake; they found their happiness in diminishing His toil and supplying His wants. No word is recorded in the New Testament as ever having been spoken against our Lord by a woman; many a man, but never a woman.
When St. Luke describes our Lord as going “throughout every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God,” he proceeds to say not merely that “the twelve were with him,” but likewise “certain women.” Three are specified; and it is added that there were “many others,” who, with those three, “ministered to him of their substance.” This was in Galilee, the scene of numerous journeys and of much active work. From thence “many of them” followed Him into Judæa, at a time when the Apostles were full of fear, and still the description given of them at the cross is that they were “ministering.” From the cross to the grave they “followed” Him, and even at the grave itself we see in them the same spirit of serving. It might have been supposed when the great stone was placed at the door of the sepulchre, and when evening came on, that all occasion, all possibility, of “ministering” was over. But such was not the view of these women. When they went away from the sepulchre, it was still to do Him honour. They bought and prepared sweet spices for the embalmment of the body. Can we fail to see in this an anticipation and prophecy of that service by women which became a distinguishing mark of the Christian Church?
The idea and place of woman have been slowly and laboriously elevated by the Gospel: and their full development has constituted the purest and most perfect protest, that the world has ever seen, against the sovereignty of force. Now it is nowhere written in Holy Scripture that God is knowledge, or that God is power, while it is written that God is love: words which appear to set forth love as the central essence, and all besides as attributes. Woman then holds of God, and finds her own principal development in that which is most Godlike. Thus, therefore, when Christianity wrought out for woman, not a social identity, but a social equality, not a rivalry with the function of man, but an elevation in her own function reaching as high as his, it made the world and human life in this respect also a true image of the Godhead.1 [Note: W. E. Gladstone, Studies on Homer, ii.]
3. If we turn to the Book of Acts, with the illustrations of it supplied by the Epistles, we find this service appearing in a more systematic form. As regards the women mentioned already, even they are seen once more, just after the Ascension, in company with the Apostles. And when they are lost to view, others become prominent in efficient ministrations.
It is in connexion with the life of St. Paul that we should expect the fullest notices of such ministrations by women as were characteristic of the earliest Church. With St. Paul everything takes a wider range; and we begin to see more clearly the place which women are destined to occupy in relation to the social life of Christendom. Lydia, Priscilla, the daughters of Philip, all did useful service in the Church. Damaris might fairly be adduced as an example of bold confession of the faith, such as women have often made when men have faltered. Chloe and Appia, Euodia and Syntyche, are mentioned by name among the women who were directly or indirectly associated with St. Paul in promoting the cause of the gospel at places as widely separated as Corinth, Colossæ, and Philippi. And in the Epistle to the Romans we find a catalogue of names of women which almost startles us, when we think of the early period to which this document belongs. The salutations in the sixteenth chapter, incidental as they are, give us much information as to the facts of the case. The number of female fellow-workers who are mentioned there by name, and with a distinct reference to their Christian co-operation, is remarkable.
“What Nature originally decreed,” Meredith said once, “men are but beginning to see, namely, that women are fitted for most of the avenues open to energy, and by their entering upon active life they will no longer be open to the accusation men so frequently bring against them of being narrow and craven.”1 [Note: J. Moffatt, George Meredith, 40.]
However strong may have been the prejudice against a woman becoming captain, and taking her place upon the bridge, nobody could object to her becoming first mate; and it is as first mate that woman has rendered the most valuable service. A few, like Fanny Burney and Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, may have become skippers; but we could better afford to lose all the works of such writers than lose the influence which women have exerted over captains whom they served in the capacity of first mate. It was a saying of Emerson's that a man is entitled to credit, not only for what he himself does, but for all that he inspires others to do. To no subject does this axiom apply with greater force than to this. It would be a fatal mistake to suppose that the contribution of women to the republic of letters begins and ends with the works that bear feminine names upon their title-pages. Our literature is adorned by a few examples of acknowledged collaboration between a man and a woman, and only in very rare instances is the woman the minor contributor. But, in addition to these, there are innumerable records of men whose names stand in the foremost rank among our laureates and teachers, yet whose work would have been simply impossible but for the woman in the background. From a host of examples that naturally rush to mind we may instance, almost at random, the cases of Wordsworth, Carlyle, and Robert Louis Stevenson.2 [Note: F. W. Boreham, Mushrooms on the Moor, 193.]
The woman singeth at her spinning-wheel
A pleasant chant, ballad, or barcarole:
She thinketh of her song, upon the whole,
Far more than of her flax; and yet the reel
Is full, and artfully her fingers feel
With quick adjustment, provident control,
The lines, too subtly twisted to unroll,
Out to a perfect thread. I hence appeal
To the dear Christian Church-that we may do
Our Father's business in these temples mirk,
Thus swift and steadfast,-thus, intent and strong;
While, thus, apart from toil, our souls pursue
Some high, calm, spheric tune, and prove our work
The better for the sweetness of our Son_1:1-17 [Note: E. B. Browning.]