were in equipoise.  He was not the Son of the Man, but the Son of Man.  It was not manhood, but humanity, that was made divine in him.  Humanity has its two sides:  one side in the strength and intellect of manhood; the other in the tenderness and faith and submission of womanhood; man and woman, the two halves of one thought, make up human nature.  In Christ, not one alone, but both were glorified.  Strength and Grace, Wisdom and Love, Courage and Purity,—­Divine Manliness, Divine Womanliness.  In all noble characters, the two are blended; in Him—­the noblest—­blended into one entire and perfect humanity.  The spirit which pervades the world because of Christ’s coming, and of the influence exerted by his Gospel, opens to woman a faith which has been growing clearer and brighter for eighteen centuries.  By this we do not affirm or imply that the coming of Christ restored woman to the equality she enjoyed in the morning of creation, or that his coming removed the curse then pronounced upon her.  If Christ’s coming removed a part of the curse, then it must have removed all, which we know is false; woman still has sorrow in child-bearing, and man earns his daily bread by the sweat of his brow.  Christ’s coming removed the disabilities from woman.  He turned the attention of the world to feminine characteristics, and shed over them the halo of a divine light.  He brought the woman up as he lowered the glory hitherto attached to characteristics distinctively manly.  Where Christ is loved, the gladiator and prize-fighter are despised, and a meek and quiet spirit is honored.  The heart is the seat of power more than the intellect.  Blessed are the pure in heart, rather than the great in intellect.  Pureness rather than strength is the ideal of the human heart, since Christ was slain.  While, then, it is true that the worship of Mary is idolatry, and that the worship given to her is so much taken from Christ, we must not forget that the only glory of the Virgin was the glory of true womanhood.  “The glory of true womanhood consists in being herself; not in striving to be something else.  It is the false paradox and heresy of this present age to claim for her as a glory, the right to leave her sphere.  Her glory lies in her sphere, and God has given her a sphere distinct; as in the Epistle to the Church of Corinth, when, in that wise chapter, St. Paul rendered unto womanhood the things which were woman’s, and unto manhood the things which were man’s.”

Mary’s glory was not immaculate origin, nor immaculate life, nor exaltation to Divine honors.  She has none of these things.  Hers was the glory of simple womanhood.  The glory of being true to the nature assigned her by her Maker, the glory of Motherhood; the glory of a meek and quiet spirit, which is, in the sight of God, of great price.  For all women there is something nobler than to be recognized as the queen of heaven.  Let woman be content to be what God made her, to fill the sphere God appointed for her, in unselfishness, and humbleness,