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 classes of believers now, as he was by the Jews at the memorable time when he was brought before Felix.  Paul, therefore, must “answer for himself in the things whereof he is accused.”

In I Cor. xi, 3-5, he says to the Church at Corinth:  “But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.  Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoreth his head.  But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered, dishonoreth her head.”  Here is a positive direction given to a woman, as to the manner of her procedure when she either prayed or prophesied in public, and not a prohibition of either act, as we might expect from the rendering given by many divines.

Christ is the head of the man, because he is the first-born from the dead—­the Redeemer of mankind—­and because “he was before all things, and by him all things consist.”  Having made provision for the life of the world, he is therefore entitled to the love, devotion, and fidelity of man.  Christ is also mentioned under the figure of the vine, of which his people are the branches.

Man is the head of the woman, because he was before her; and because, being physically stronger, he has been constituted her protector.  A man, therefore, is to love his wife ever as himself, with an unselfish intensity, only to be compared with the love which Christ bears to his Church; and the wife is bound by the same sacred law to be, in heart and practice, undeviating in her love and fidelity to her husband.