Woman’s work is defined by her Creator to be a work of charity.  She is a helpmeet.  A gift she came to man.  Her life is a constant giving up of rights and privileges for the happiness of others.  She waits on man not for pay, but for love.  She ministers to him in sickness and in health.  It is not the deed, but the spirit which sanctifies the deed, that makes it lovely.  Compel her by force, by fear, or by rewards, to do what she performs because of love, and you destroy all the beauty of the action, and convert the ministering angel into a menial, the God-appointed woman into a brutalized slave.  God made her a gift, and the law of her life is in giving.  She fulfils the functions of her life by living in harmony with the law of love.  The woman, described with such inexpressible tenderness by Luke (vii. 37-50), attracts attention by this feature.  She came to Christ while he was reclining at table.  She had sinned.  Still she loved.  Here were Christ’s feet hanging over the table’s edge, while Christ reclined.  As he was talking, behold this woman bending over them, her hot tears raining on them, and she busy wiping off the tear-drops with her hair, and kissing them, anointed them with costly ointment.  She loved, and therefore evidenced it by deeds.  Her love, blossoming into action, won Christ.  He saw that she loved.  Perhaps love had led her astray at first.  No matter.  Love she possessed, and love she desired to lavish on some object worthy of her regard.  That object she discovered in Jesus.  She took her alabaster-box of precious ointment, and went after him.  She enters the Pharisee’s house; it may have been the house where she had fallen.  The Pharisee seemed to know her character, and so he said, “This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him, for she is a sinner.”  Christ did not at once recognize the suspicion, but supposing the case of the two debtors, and having obtained from Simon the declaration, that the one would love most who was forgiven most, turned upon him the force of the logic, by saying, “Seest thou this woman?  I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet, but she both washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head.  Thou gavest me no kiss; but this woman, since the time I came, hath not ceased to kiss my feet.  My head with oil thou didst not anoint; but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment.  And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”

Let woman’s work be regarded as a work of charity by man, and the larger portion of women will be satisfied.  The servant finds pleasure in service, when the obligation is recognized as a debt not to be paid for in money.

No wife would do what she is compelled to perform, or suffer what she is compelled to endure, for her board and clothes.  It is when man refuses to give her more than these, she revolts.  Man never won woman to leave her single life and her home comforts to enter his house as a helpmeet by a consideration of the work to be done.  It was not in the contract.  He talked then of love, of companionship, of help.  The other was in the bond by mutual consent, but it was regarded as beneath their notice to talk about it.  Her nature yearned for love, and lives on love.