Christian woman

“ And the holy christian religion has augmented that grace of the woman, and as such the christian woman has a much greater influence, as is evident in centuries of the greatest Christianity, when women were more respected, more highly-regarded and more socially influential. ”

“ I ought to understand them because my grandmother, mother, and all my female relations were women, and I am a woman myself, but I don't. For the most part women are good hearted creatures, but they fail in judgment when you strike them on religion. The true Christian woman believes in the infallibility of her preacher. He defines her sphere and duty and she proceeds to walk therein. Her sphere is silence and subjection, and her duty is to devise catch penny devices to bring in the shekels and lay them on the altar of the Lord. ”

“ Is there not something extremely charming in the highly lady-like sentiments and expressions of a Christian woman, as contradistinguished from those of a gentleman? He, with all his urbanity, is apt to show the smallest possible vein of testiness, or, at least, the clouded look of high-bred sense of honor. ”

“ Bible women are not models for the women of today.
The thought that possesses me is this: What can women see in the Christian religion for themselves? I can see why some men might be Christians because they can secure place, power, profit and title, but what there is in it for women is more than I can divine. Then for men, there is a Bible promise of being made angels in heaven. ”

“ But how entirely has our religion reversed all this, and rendered her life a blessing to herself and to society. And as Christianity has done so much for woman, she ought in return to do much for Christianity. Every thing that can render life desirable, she owes to Christ. Think for one moment of the hole of the pit from which Christ has taken you! Think of what would be your present condition, had it not been for the Christian religion! ”

“ No system of philosophy has ever yet worked out in behalf of woman the practical results for good which Christianity has conferred on her. Christianity has raised woman from slavery and made her the thoughtful companion of man; finds her the mere toy, or the victim of his passions, and it places her by his side, his truest friend, his most faithful counselor, his helpmeet in every worthy and honorable task. ”

“ Not long ago a Christian woman of fine feeling and great sincerity complained bitterly of the moral debasement which is put upon her sex in the bosom of the Church: “It would be impious audacity for a woman to aspire in the Church even to the position of the lowest sacristan.” ”

“ IT is one of the glittering fictions of the Church that to her civilization is due,* and that it is to her benign influence and direction alone that woman has been advanced to her present position in the social scale; that without the Bible and the Church the status of woman in Christian countries would be lower and her lot harder. ”

“ Sir, pardon, I pray you, a poor friar for expressing himself in a manner conformable{129} to the habit he wears, and to the rule he obeys. I may describe the person of a Moorish woman, a heathen, because, if God has made it beautiful, it is the only thing we can praise about her; since her soul is wrapped in the darkness of error. But you, yourself, have called your uncle’s betrothed a Christian woman ”

“ Women of the noblest and wealthiest families, surrounded by the seductive allurements of worldly pleasure, renounced them all. Undismayed by severe edicts against the new religion, they appeared before the magistrates, and by pronouncing the simple words, 'I am a Christian,' calmly resigned themselves to imprisonment, ignominy and death.' Could such women have had their minds occupied by the foolish vanity of ornamental apparel? No! Christianity struck at the root of all sin, and consequently we find the early Christians could not fight, or swear, or wear costly clothing. ”

“ So long as ministers stand up and tell us that as Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of the woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women can look at the Hindoo, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage. Observe to-day the work women are doing for the churches. The church rests on the shoulders of women. Have we ever yet heard a man preach a sermon from Genesis i:27-28, which declares the full equality of the feminine and masculine element in the Godhead? ”

“ But one of the most important causes of the religious differences of the sexes, remains yet to be told. It is the character of the christian religion, and its peculiar suitability to the whole female nature and economy. It may boldly, without fear of contradiction be asserted, that never since the foundation of the world, has there been propagated a religion so consolatory to woman in all her sorrows and difficulties—so liberal in promises—so congenial, in fine, with all the undefined wants and longings of her heart, as the Religion of Christ. ”

“ Our ideal mothers and wives and sisters are not very inferior to the conception of the highest Christian womanhood, and the very fact that some of them achieved high excellence in deeds and character without the exalting influence of Christianity makes me to admire them so much more. ”

“ I have said, that women, above all created beings, have cause for gratitude. Deprived of the benefits of the Christian dispensation, woman has ever been, and will be ever the most abject, and the most degraded of creatures, oppressed in proportion to her weakness, and miserable in proportion to her capability of suffering. Yet, under the Christian dispensation, she who was the first in sin, is raised to an equality with man, and made his fellow-heir in the blessings of eternal life. ”

“ The very nature of woman makes her susceptible to religious impressions. Her lively imagination, her quick sensibilities, and her ready sympathy enable her readily to give Christ, the personification of every manly attribute and the embodiment of every virtue, a welcome to her soul.
It is possible for woman's spiritual nature to so marry Christ, that her physical nature can, without a great sacrifice, forego the joys of earthly companionship. Hence some women mated with a brute of a man, shine as Christians, and make excellent mothers. Woman as a Christian is a helpmeet indeed and in truth. ”

“ First, what you as Christian women ought to be. Secondly, how you can help each other to be so. On the first point I would ask you to remember the glory and dignity of womanhood. You get this dignity from Jesus Christ, who was born of a woman, and who said, "Whosoever shall do the Will of God, the same is My brother, and My sister, and My mother." ”

“ No doctrine of the so-called Christian church has been so fondly cherished and so faithfully preserved as has that of the subjection of women. Woman’s glorification under the Christian system has been exactly commensurate with her obedience to man. No offering from her to the Almighty is so acceptable as unrestrained reproductive energy. ”

“ But, thanks to the religion of Jesus, her disabilities have in Christian lands been removed. Woman was the crowning workmanship of God, and she has received the crowning blessings of Christianity. By the blessing of Christianity, the intellectual and spiritual powers of woman are encouraged. The world is often dazzled by her genius, astonished at her resources, and subdued by her spirit. ”

“ Where the emotionalism of women grows more pronounced is in matters of religion and love. There is a vague correspondence between her attitude to the one and to the other, in outwardly Christian countries, I mean. She often finds in religion a curious philter, both a sedative and a stimulant. Religion is often for women an allotrope of romance; blind as an earthworm she seeks the stars, and it is curious that religion should make so powerful an appeal to woman, considering how she has been treated by the faiths. ”

“ The Christian religion has done everything it could to heap ignominy upon woman: head-coverings in church, practical tolerance of male infidelity, kingly repudiation of queens, compulsory child-bearing, and a multiplicity of other injustices. The Proverbs and the Bible in general are filled with strictures on "a brawling woman", [Pg 39] "a contentious woman"; when man is referred to, mankind is really implied. Yet woman has kissed the religious rods. ”

“ And it seems peculiarly appropriate that woman, who doubtlessPage 4 owes to Christianity most of the domestic consideration and social advantages, which in enlightened countries she regards as her birthright, should be the bearer of these blessings to her less favored sisters in heathen lands. If the Christian religion was a Gospel to the poor, it was no less emphatically so to woman, whom it redeemed from social inferiority and degradation, the fruit for ages of that transgression which "brought death into the world, and all our wo." ”

“ The influence of Christianity tended at once to elevate and to narrow the position of women. It elevated her position, for, while the pagan ideal of life is essentially masculine, the Christian ideal is in part feminine. Justice, energy, strength, are the pre-eminent qualities of the pagan ideal; and mercy, love, gentleness, and humility, of the Christian. The coincidence of the characteristics of Christianity with the characteristics of the female heart resulted in the elevation of woman. ”

“ In that chapter of the Bible where the relation between man and woman is stated, it is thus said, with quaint simplicity: ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.’ Woman the helper of man, not his toy,—not a picture, not a statue, not a work of art, but a HELPER, a doer,—such is the view of the Bible and the Christian religion.
“It is not necessary that women should work physically or morally to an extent which impairs beauty. ”

“ I mean the actual faiths, not their original theory; one must take a faith as one finds it, not as it is supposed to be, and in the case of woman the Christian religion is but little in accord with the view of Him who forgave the woman taken in adultery. ”

“ “I wrote what I did because, as a woman, as a mother, I was oppressed and heartbroken with the sorrows and injustice which I saw, and because, as a Christian, I felt the dishonor to Christianity.” ”

“ The Christian man honours woman as no other man does. As he grows into the stature of Christ, woman’s lot is always happier. Compare woman’s status in pagan, Mohammedan, and barbarous lands, with her status in Christendom. ”

“ Their efforts have been seen in determining the general character of the Christian world. If any age has been peculiarly spiritual, or any people more than ordinarily devout, it was because woman was there true to the holiest impulses of her nature. Point me to the most prosperous era of the institutions of Christianity; shew me a sect, who honor the Sabbath, or who sustain most liberally the ministers of Christ, and I am confident that 44then and there the female sex will be found most active in defence of the holy day, and of sanctuary privileges. ”

“ To deny women such a privilege is contrary to the Christian spirit of equality, and a serious obstruction to pure gospel light. We (male and [pg 320] female) are all one in Christ Jesus. Gal. 3:28. In the kingdom of grace man and woman are on an equal footing so far as concerns the work of God. To explain some texts that seem to prohibit women from laboring in the gospel and to prove positively to you that women did so labor in the morning light of the church, we will transcribe an article written by Bro. ”

“ To-day no reputable Christian nation tolerates slaves.
2. The elevation of womanhood. Wherever Christ's ideas of the sacredness and value of womanhood have penetrated, women have risen to a place of power. Christ found woman the plaything and drudge of man or worse and has lifted her up to be a queen in the home and a powerful influence in society. To a gentleman who asked a woman in Turkey what her life was like she replied, "Our life is hell." Let her answer stand for the life of millions upon millions of women and girls where the purity and love of Christ are unknown. ”

“ The call, however, for woman’s work in America during the past twenty years seems to us to have been peculiarly urgent, and yet we think the majority of the noble Christian women in our churches have, up to this time, seen only dimly the demands upon them in this regard. ”

“ To prove this claim she directs attention to the status of woman in several non-Christian countries, and compares the degradation and hardship she there endures to the position of woman to-day in America, England, and France.
2d. The Church claims the credit of originating and sustaining the various steps of progress by which woman has been elevated. She claims to have originated and to sustain the idea that woman is man's equal, and to recognize her as such in the Church. ”

“ From the birth of the Church, out of the womb of Fear and the fatherhood of Ignorance, it has taught the inferiority of woman. In one form or another through the various mythical legends of the various mythical creeds, runs the undercurrent of the behef in the fall of man through the persuasion of woman, her subjective condition as punishment, her natural vileness, total depravity, etc.; and from the days of Adam until now the Christian Church, with which we live specially to deal, has made Woman the excuse, the scapegoat for the evil deeds of man. ”