There was hardly a man among the Nestorians who did not beat his wife when the missionaries commenced their labors.  The women expected to be beaten, and took it as a matter of course.  When the men wished to talk together of anything important, they usually sent the women out of doors or to the stable, as unable to understand or unfit to be trusted.  In some cases, says the author of “Woman and Her Saviour,” this might be a necessary precaution; for the absence of true affection, and the frequency of domestic broils, rendered the wife an unsafe depositary of any important family affair.[A]

[Footnote A:  Woman and her Saviour, pp. 18 and 19.]

In Paraguay a female child is described by Southey as lamenting, in heart-breaking tones, that her mother did not kill her when she was born; and Sir A. Mackenzie declares that there is a class of women in the north who performed this pious duty towards female infants, whenever they had an opportunity.  But wherever Christ is known and loved, the daughter is a gift of God as well as a son.  Woman owes to her Saviour all she has of joy in time, as well as all she has of hope in eternity.  Though she does not obtain the headship, though her sorrow and her pain are not removed, though her desire continues to be to her husband, and though the rule of the husband continues in every well-regulated home, yet woman is elevated to become a shareholder of the pleasures of the home, of the honors and emoluments of life, of the riches obtained by toil, and of the enjoyments derived from culture.  Woman in the Christian home is the soul, the pride, the ornament, and the helper.  Through Christ she obtains a recognition, so that when we speak of man we mean the race, men and women, for these become the two halves of one thought, so that no especial stress is laid on the welfare of either, but the development of one is secured by the development of the other.  To such an extent have the disabilities been removed from the sex, that a leading writer has been compelled to admit, that “in our own country, women are, in many respects, better situated than the men.  Good books are allowed, with more time to read them.  They are not so early forced into the bustle of life, nor so weighed down by demands for outward success.  They have time to think, and no traditions chain them, and few conventionalities, compared with what must be met in other nations.  Doors swing open to them, and they are invited to walk the fields of literary and artistic success, and whatever tends to the development of their higher nature is freely placed within their reach.”

2. The trials of motherhood deserve notice.  We have seen the hopes that came to Eve, and beheld their realization in and through Christ.  The trials were born of sin.  Eve’s eldest child, Cain, possessed a narrow, selfish nature.  He was a tiller of the ground.  Abel was a keeper of the sheep.  The first born met this curse in the soil.  The second born looked forward to the restoration.  In process of time Cain brought of the fruit of the ground.  Tradition has it that he brought what was left of his food, of light and tempting things, flax or hemp seed.