“Her rash hand, in evil hour,
  Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate! 
  Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat,
  Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe
  That all was lost.”

  MILTON.

THE GLORY OF MOTHERHOOD.

To understand the tragedies of the present, it is essential that we re-read the tragedies of the past.  Too many, in forming their opinions of what should be, ignore in their calculations what has been, and what must be.  Those who are dissatisfied with the position assigned to woman, must recall the fact that God’s decrees are unchangeable.  We may resist them, but we cannot destroy them.  They were in existence, before our birth; they will survive our dissolution.  It is for us to recognize God as Ruler as well as Creator, and adjust our views, our lives, and our labors in accordance with an infinitely wise system, formed in the counsels of an eternity past, and running on to the eternity of the future.

If we speak of Woman as God Made Her, of Woman as a Helpmeet, we find a warrant for it in the Word of God.  In Eden she was God’s ally.  When she fell, she became, in sin, the ally of Satan.  The truth may be unpalatable, but it is the truth.

In considering woman as a mother, we stand on the hill-top of the past.  Before us lies a valley, stretching on from the ruin wrought in Eden by sin, to the restoration wrought in the world by Christ.  During these ages of wickedness, of sorrow, and of crime, woman felt the curse heavy upon her.  She was made to feel that the woe pronounced upon her was a fact; and yet, during all these ages of trial, there was a gleam of hope shining into her soul, because God said, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall bruise thee on the head, and thou shalt bruise him on the heel.”  Thus there came to woman, who had the first encounter with the wily enemy of the race, the hope of a triumph over, and a subjugation of this enemy, through her offspring.  It is an instinct of a boy to crush the head of a snake; but you cannot readily get a girl to do so:  she will run from the beast so identified with her sorrow.  The reason for this is explained in the prophecy of Eden.  In a mystical sense, Christ, the deliverer foretold in Genesis, the eminent seed of the woman, was to bruise the head of the “old serpent, the devil,” that is, destroy him, and all his principalities and powers, break and confound all his schemes and ruin all his works, crush his whole empire, strip him of his sovereignty and authority, of his power over death, and his tyranny over the bodies and souls of men.  Here, then, was a purpose worth living for and suffering for.  True, Satan, or the serpent, is to bruise his heel, or wound his human nature; but there is no promise of his triumph.

It is not difficult to discover how this hope must have thrilled the heart of Eve with joy.  Her life was not to be a failure.  Though clouds might rest upon her, it was impossible to shut out the fact that the star of hope was soon to rise, and to usher in the dawn of a glorious day.