INTRODUCTORY.
Ithas long been in our mind to write this book, in which we seek to set forth the beautiful lives of representative women of the Bible. There has been much written about prophets, kings and priests, about our Lord and His Apostles, about scenes, of different types of character, customs and manners of Oriental life, but so far as we know, nothing has been written about the womanhood of the Bible. We believe a study of these lovely Princesses of God will be both profitable and instructive.
That we may have a suitable background for our pen pictures of these Daughters in Israel, and also, by way of contrast, show what the Bible has done for womanhood, let us briefly take a glance into countries where the Bible has been a sealed book, for the position of women among the Hebrews has always afforded a pleasing contrast with that of their heathen sisters. The position of Jewish women is just what we would expect among a people who were indebted for their laws to the Creator.
It has always been Satan’s shrewdest trick to degrade motherhood, and to cause her to be treated with contempt, knowing that she it is who stands at the fountain head of the race, and her hand always shapes the life and forms the civilization, hence the universal oppression of womanhood in all heathen lands.
The effect of religion (for all nations worship something) upon the people affords overwhelming evidence of its origin. In all heathen lands the people are exceedingly religious. In India alone they worship 360,000,000 gods, but they know nothing about morality. Their religion offers no light in life and no hope in death. The condition of women in India is indescribable. If a man speaks of his wife he never says“wife,” but “family”; and if away, he never speaks of going home, but he is going to his house. There is no home life, as we look upon it, in all that heathen land. Women are considered by the Hindus as a thing that exists solely for their use. She is given away like a lifeless thing to the man who is to be her husband, but who does not consider her his equal. He is commanded by his religion to “enjoy her without attachment,” and never to love her or put his confidence in her. Some women are set apart religiously for the use of the men of all classes and castes. They are consecrated and “married” to the idols in the temples, and are brought up from their girlhood to live as prostitutes. Hindoo sacred law reaches its climax of cruelty and degradation in the rules it lays down for the control of a woman after her husband has died. She may be young and beautiful, she may belong to a wealthy and powerful family; it matters not; custom is as relentless as death in its weight of woe to crush her completely down.
One of the Hindoo sacred books says: “It is unlawful for any man to take a jewelless woman,” whose eyes are like the weeping cavi-flower; being deprived of her beloved husband, she is like a body deprived of the spirit. She may have only been a betrothed infant or a child of a few years. It makes no difference. The Shasters teach that if a widow burns herself alive on the funeral pile of her husband, even though he had killed a Brahmin, that most heinous of deeds, she expiates the crime. For long centuries widows have been a literal burnt offering for the redemption of husbands.
Another law is laid down after the following fashion: “On the death of their attached husbands, women must eat but once a day, must eschew betel and a spread mattress, must sleep on the ground, and continue to practice rigid mortification. Women who have put off glittering jewels of gold must discharge with alacrity the duties of devotion, and neglecting their persons, must feed on herbs and roots, so as barely to sustain life within the body. Let not a widow ever pronounce the name of another man.”
There are, in India, twenty-three millions of widows, of these fourteen thousand are baby widows under four years of age, and sixty thousand girl widows between five and nine years of age. Nearly one-fourth of the whole number of widows are young. Besides, there are many millions of deserted wives, whose condition is as bad, and in some cases worse, than that of the widows. The lives of many millions of these poor women are made so miserable that they prefer death to life, and thousands commit suicide yearly.
And all these helpless women have never heard the message of salvation from God’s Holy Word.
It so happens in these days of missionary work among the heathen that now and then the light of the Gospel finds its way into these benighted hearts. Such was the case of a Brahmin widow, who had lived in the home of her uncle, but, for a fancied offence, was beaten and turned into the street naked. She was a woman of commanding manner and appearance, such as few suffering widows possess. She was tall, elegant of bearing, and attractive. Her story, in short, is this: “I was married when only five years of age. I soon became a widow, and then my father and mother took care of me, though I was kept secure in their home. My father and mother died, and since I was fifteen years of age I have been with their relatives, who let me work in the fields and earn an honorable living. Then my mother’s own brother came along, and persuaded me to come to his house. I hoped for kindness, but I have been their slave from that day.”
When asked whether she had been led astray, she replied, “I might have been, and sat with jewels on my neck and arms, with a frontlet on my brow, and gems would have bedecked my ears had I yielded to the machinations of my uncle and the desires of his friends to betray me into a life of glittering slavery! Because I would not, I am in rags, and now turned homeless into the streets.”
Such is the suffering of women in India. And the saddest of all is, the only heaven they look for after this world, is aplace where they can be their husband’s servants. Sad and terrible is their state!
The condition of womanhood in China is but little better. In fact she is unwelcome at her birth. If she is suffered to live, she is subjected to inhuman foot-binding. The feet are supposed to merit the poetical name of “golden lilies.” But how sad it is to discover that such a result is produced by indescribable torture, and that the part of the foot that is not seen is nothing but a mass of distorted or broken bones!
This binding process commences when the girl is about six years old. There is a Chinese proverb that says, “For every pair of bound feet has been shed akongfull of tears.” And yet, the most important part of a Chinese girl’s dress is her tiny shoe of colored silk or satin, most tastefully embroidered, with bright painted heels just peeping beneath the neat pantalets. Missionary ladies tell us how they themselves have seen three strong women holding a little girl by force to compel her to submit to this awful torture. It is not an uncommon thing for a mother to get up in the night and beat a poor child of seven or eight for keeping her awake by her stifled sobs from the terrible pain produced by the bandages. Through the weary summer days, instead of romping and enjoying the fresh air and sports with brothers, the poor little girl will lie, restless with fever, upon her little couch, and when the cold nights of winter come, she is afraid to wrap her limbs in any covering, else they grow warm and the suffering becomes more intense.
At last the much desired smallness is obtained, the feet are deformed for life and she is greatly admired by all her friends. If she is not betrothed until she is ten or more years of age, one of the first questions is, “What is the length of her feet?” Three inches is the correct length of the fashionable shoe, but some are only two.
But this has respect only to those girl-babies who are suffered to live. The horrors of heathenism permits the new-born girl baby to be disposed of. There is outside the city walls of Fuchan, China, a structure of stone without doors, butwith two window-like openings. This well-known and frequently visited building is the baby tower—not a day nursery for the care of the infants of the poor, not an orphanage where the little waifs are clothed and fed and educated, but a place where girl-babies can be thrown and left to die. In larger cities, such as Pekin, carts pass through the streets at an early hour of the day and gather up the babies abandoned to the streets by their inhuman parents.
Women in the common walks of life are the slaves of their husbands. The wife rises early in the morning, does the housework for the day, and prepares the morning meal for her husband, who always eats it by himself while she serves. Having finished her own meal, after her husband has eaten his, she cleans up the dishes, and then hastens to the fields to toil all day under a burning sun. The husband, meanwhile, spends the day in sleeping, or gambling, or when opportunity occurs, in thieving or marauding. Sometimes, frequently indeed, the women are carried off by other tribes while out in the fields, and are only released at a price, varying with the excellencies of the woman in question. And yet, if any one were to offer to relieve these women of their work, their offer would be rejected, for this life of toil is what they have been brought up to and trained in, and they know of nothing better. They especially like to be in the fields by themselves, for then they are alone, and are free from the hated presence of man (curiously enough they are said to hate their men), and surely no one would grudge them their liberty.
In dark Africa, where lives one-sixth of the heathen population of the globe, human sacrifice is something awful. And the saddest of all is, the victims are mostly from the ranks of women. Of the languages and dialects, five hundred have never been reduced to writing. What scenes of horrors are locked up in oblivion among these wild tribes of that dark land. Almost daily, the numerous wives of the rulers, as they die, are buried alive in their graves, being compelled to hold the dead bodies of their husbands on theirlaps, until they themselves are relieved by death. The witch doctors annually slay thousands of innocent women. Among the Masai, a woman has a market value equal to five glass beads, while a cow is worth ten of the same.
Woman’s life in the harem of the Mohammedan is but little better. The code of morals is a very loose one, and the degradation of women beyond our pen to describe. The women of the harems are divided into three classes: The Rhadines, or legitimate wives. The Ikbals, or favorites, out of whose ranks the Rhadines are chosen, and Ghienzdes or “women who are pleasing to the eye of their lord,” and who have the chance to advance to the rank of Ikbals. If the wife of a Turkoman asks his permission to go, and he says, “go,” without adding, “come back,” they are divorced. If he becomes dissatisfied with the most trifling acts of his wife, and tears the veil from her face, that constitutes a divorce. In the streets, if a husband meets one of his numerous wives, he never recognizes her, or ever introduces her to a male friend. A Mohammedan never inquires after the female portion of the household of his friend. The system is full of cruelty and despotism. In Mohammedan countries women suffer from the low opinion held of them by men. The prophet said: “I stood at the gates of hell, and lo! most of its inhabitants were women!” And yet, strange to say, while the religion of Islam denies that woman has a soul, it teaches a sensual paradise.
In fact, in all nations where the Bible is unknown, woman is the slave of man’s lust. She is a drudge or a toy, whose reign is as short-lived as her personal charms. She may not be trusted out of sight of her guardians, though the masculine members of the family are anything but choice in their associations. Indeed, in some countries a woman can not visit even her own mother without being carried in a palanquin or guarded by slaves.
One of the strangest, saddest sights we ever saw was at Mersina, in the Levant. Passing a field one day there were six native women (noble in form and of beautiful olive complexion)hoeing what looked to be cucumbers, while a step or two in their rear stood a negro, a full-blooded Nubian, with a long stick, like an ox-goad, in his hand, evidently their master.
In Ceylon, when it was proposed by a missionary to teach women to read, one native said to another, “What do you think that man is talking about? He wants to teach the women to read! He’ll be wanting to teach the cows next!”
Such is the disrespect in which women are held by heathen people. Five words describe the biography of women in all lands where the Bible is not known: Unwelcomed at birth; untaught in childhood; uncherished in widowhood; unprotected in old age; unlamented when dead.
Such, in brief, is the treatment of womanhood in lands where the Bible is a sealed book, and truly, in comparison with their heathen sisters, women living under the blessed teachings of Christianity are “clothed in white raiment.”
But, perhaps, we ought not to think it so very strange that men who dishonor God, and who want Him blotted out of their thoughts, should abuse God’s best gift to man. This much we know, that God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created Hethem. And God blessedthem, and God said unto them, “Have dominion over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” When the Pharisees, in their malignity, framed the question, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?”—a problem beset with many difficulties, our Lord very promptly asked a counter question, “What did Moses command you?” Instead of entering into their vexed question, He appeals at once to the law and the testimony, and requires them to recite the provision made by Moses for such cases; not as settling the difficulties, but as presenting the truestatus quaestionis, which was not what the Scribes taught or the Pharisees practiced, but what Moses meant and God permitted. They said, “Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away.” QuicklyJesus replied, “For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept.” The substance of our Saviour’s answer was, Moses gave you no positive command in the case; he would not make a law directly opposite to the law of God; but Moses saw the wantonness and wickedness of your hearts, that you would turn away your wives without any just and warrantable cause; and to restrain your extravagancies of cruelty to your wives, or disorderly turning of them off upon any occasion, he made a law that none should put away his wife but upon a legal cognizance of the cause and giving her a bill of divorce. “From the beginning,” that is, in the very act of creation, God embodied the idea of equality. Capricious divorce is a violation of natural law.
What a beautiful picture Solomon gives us of womanhood. “Her price,” he says, “is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.” After the grace of God in the soul, a good wife, one planned on the Divine model, is the Lord’s best gift. To the husband who has such a woman to stand at the head of his home, nothing can measure her value. His heart rests safely in her integrity. He has no need to add to his wealth by spoils, for she will do him good and not evil all the days of his life. She is industrious. She not only works into comfort the wool and flax that are at hand; she seeks to add to her store from the outside world. She does not ask to be kept in idleness. She worketh willingly with her hands. Not content to be a consumer, she becomes a producer. Not satisfied with home production, she brings suitable comforts and luxuries from afar into her home. She is careful in the use of her time. She is not feebly self-indulgent. She riseth while it is yet night to look after her domestic affairs. She is a business woman, knowing the laws that underlie the rise and fall of real estate. She considereth a field, and buyeth it. Then with her hands she planteth a vineyard.
She does not produce inferior goods, neither is she cheated in a bargain. She perceiveth that her merchandise is good. She loves to share her husband’s business burdens, that he may share her society; and they twain are one in service and one in recreation. Like our Lord, she delights not to be ministered unto, but to minister. She is benevolent. Being a recognized producer, she has the luxury of giving of her own means to the poor. She provides well for her household, keeping her dependents in comfort, and even in luxury. As the Revised Version puts it, “She maketh herself carpets of tapestry.” Her own clothing is of the best.
The husband of such a wife has the gentle manners that belong with such a home, and he can but succeed in life. He is known and honored among the best in the land. As her business grows, her products become finer and more expensive; and as she puts them upon the market, her profits increase. This woman is clothed with strength and honor. She has no anxiety about the future. She knows that though her beauty may fade, and her social charms become a thing of the past, her strength and honor will become richer and more glorious as the years go by. “In her tongue is the law of kindness.” She is too busy with her own affairs to look after those of her neighbors. In heathen countries it is a great disgrace for a woman’s voice to be heard in the presence of men. Where women are held back from the real interests that concern them and for which they have so often proved themselves fully qualified, what else could take up their active minds but the pettiness of gossip?
Such are the beautiful tributes paid to women by Solomon, the wisest of men. Nor are the prophets behind in acknowledging the worth and quality of women. Eight hundred years before the Christian era, the prophet Joel wrote, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in thosedays of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” In the Christian dispensation, the daughters as well as the sons were to be filled with the Spirit of God, and the Spirit would use their lips in the declaration of His truth as certainly as the lips of men, and Paul defined prophecy to be speaking “unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort.” It has been one of the devices of the evil one to padlock the lips of that half of the race who are most loyal to God and who have the most helpful knowledge of human nature.
Aside from all these high social and spiritual relations of the Hebrew women, they had a legal status. The rights of the Jewish wife were carefully guarded. Her husband was not allowed to go to war for a year after they were married; and though the eastern institution of polygamy was not utterly prohibited, yet it was so restricted that it must not in any way invade the rights and privileges of the wife. If a husband became jealous of his wife’s fidelity, the legal presumptions were all in her favor. The husband was not allowed to inflict summary punishment; but she was subjected to an ordeal which could by no possibility work injury to her, unless through the guilt of her own conscience or the interposition of divine Providence.
As a mother, the Jewish woman must be honored by her children. As a daughter, she had rights and an inheritance. If the wife or daughter uttered rash and foolish vows, the husband or father had a right to disannul them, provided he did it from the day it came to his knowledge. Even the Gentile woman taken captive by a young Israelite warrior must have been surprised to receive treatment so strangely different from that received by captives in her own country, or even among modern nations who profess to be civilized. Her captor could not offer her an insult; she must be taken, not to a prison, but to his home, where she must neither be abused nor outraged, but treated with patient consideration; and she could not be taken, even as a wife, until a full month had elapsed, during which he might secure her affections or reconsider his determination. And if after her marriage shewas discontented and made herself disagreeable, she could never again be held as a servant, but must be allowed to go free. Widows, who in heathen lands have been degraded and sometimes murdered or burned, were to be treated with the utmost tenderness. They shared in the tithes, and were admitted to the public festivities. They had a right to glean in the fields and gather up the forgotten sheaves, to gather which the owner was not allowed to go back. Injustice against widows was treated with fearful punishment. “Thou shalt not take the widow’s raiment to pledge” (Deut. xxiv, 17), was a benevolent law which can not be paralleled in any modern code. The command to lend to an Israelite in his poverty was imperative, but no pledge of raiment could be exacted from a widow.
Thus in a variety of ways was the Lord pleased to manifest his kindness and compassion for the fatherless and the widow, and in consequence womanhood was honored and honorable in the Jewish nation, beyond anything known in the heathen world. From the vile and degrading orgies of heathenism the women of Israel were exempt. They feared the Lord, and at his hand received blessings and mercies without number.
Thus it is seen that Hebrew women had rare privileges. They tower like desert palms above the women in pagan lands. In her home she is honored and respected. In India a woman eats her first and last meal with her husband on her wedding day. In the Hebrew home her children are like “olive plants” round her table. In China they may kill their little daughters by the thousands. She has legal rights in her Hebrew home. In all Mohammedan lands a man has the same power over the life of his wife that he has over the life of his horse.
What makes this difference? We answer, It is God’s thought of womanhood, for there was nothing in the Hebrew men to bring about such thoughtful consideration. There were periods in the history of the Hebrew nation when they departed from God, and sank into the vices of the heathensaround them. It was during these periods that womanhood was degraded to that of their pagan sisters. There were times when the Hebrews had taken on heathen manners to such an extent as to regard it a disgrace for a rabbi to recognize his wife if he met her on the street. It was commonly said that he was a fool who attempted the religious instruction of a woman, and the words of the law had better be burned than given to a woman.
So it was not Hebrew manhood that saved the daughters of Israel from the suicidal injustice practiced among the heathens, but the sure Word of God. Under its wise provisions and recognized equality they became prophetesses, leaders of armies, and judges. And they taught a pure morality, trained their children according to principles of justice and righteousness, and lived in expectation and hope of the coming of the Messiah in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed.
And above all, Christ was the true Friend of womanhood. No teacher in any age of the world or in any land ever taught woman as He did, when He came that glorious morning to Jacob’s well, or in the house of Simon the Pharisee, when the sin-stained woman of the street, who had unobserved entered the banquet hall, and taken up her position at the feet of Jesus, and there poured out the great sorrow of her heart in a paroxysm of humble and grateful love, and bathed His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, anointing them also with ointment, when He personally addressed her and said, “Thy sins are forgiven.” How beautiful is all this, and how grandly these women showed their gratitude and appreciation by following Him and ministering unto “Him of their substance.” They were last at the cross and first at the tomb, and first to publish the Saviour’s resurrection.
From that day to this, women owe their spiritual elevation and their opportunities of usefulness to the recognition Christ gave them in His ministry. In all places untouched by Christian light they are not sure that they have souls. Wherethe light shines clearly they have equal rights with the men by whose side they are privileged to labor for God’s glory. This being so, how ought they to love God, and in every way possible, spread the light of Christianity through all the earth. We would say to every woman who loves her Lord, the field is wide enough, and opportunities present themselves in every passing hour, therefore, if you have a message which will help and bless some struggling soul heavenward, tell it.
With these brief, introductory words, we come to our subject proper. And should you, dear woman, whom we seek to glorify in the following pages, be blessed and comforted in the unfolding of God’s love towards womanhood, and your own faith take a firmer hold upon the Father’s thought of you, do not, after reading this book, put it away in your book-case, but place it in the hands of some tempted, discouraged, struggling soul, and thereby let others become sharers of the same helpful words, and, possibly, in so doing, you may not only save precious souls, but add many stars to your own crown of life.
As ever, respectfully,THE AUTHOR.
Albany, N. Y.