OCR Text |
Show Too Late, By Nineteen Centuries v OUR private opinion is that the Bishop of Albany, so to speak, put his foot into it when he -lefused to permit Mrs. Grannis to speak in his cathedral, and backed his refusal by quoting quot-ing from St. Paul. When St. Paul made that or-, der he was not speaking as an inspired saint; he was not propounding any spiritual law; but was merely as a crabbed old bachelor dictating a church organization. When the Bishop of Albany quoted that absolute law, he was ignoring both S history and the emancipation of nineteen cen-es. cen-es. At, the time Paul spoke, woman was a slave,, subject to man's' will. Allthat ,a4man had,, to do was to write on a piece of parchment to-1' his wife that she was divorced and hand it to her, and the business was done. Women were not educated, and the average man was a tyrant and treated woman always as an inferior. And still, we suspect, that even St. Paul permitted women to sing in church; even as Solomon had women singers; even as Miriam led the stately anthem that celebrated their deliverance from Egypt. This decree of the Bishop of Albany is all the more harsh because spoken in the United States, for it is in direct antagonism to the spirit of our institutions. And then think for a moment what this lady's office is and what was to be the nature na-ture of her theme. She is President of the National Na-tional League for the promotion of purity. Is that a proper thing to snub? No doubt Bishop Doane is a devout Christian, and that his daily prayer is that he may serve his Master faithfully. But he is a man merely, and it is strange that in all his study, the thought has never come to him that one of the chief triumphs of his creed has been the emancipation of women, and through that the exalting of man, and the superior enlightenment enlight-enment of men where women 1 re thus emerged from the ancient slavery and taken their place by man's side In the hour of His earthly dissolution dissolu-tion the Messiah bent to speak to His mother; to a woman was given the first message of His resurrection; in all His earthly history there can be found no words of His toward women, but words of tenderness. Did Bishop Doane think in the life-time of Julia Ward How that it was wrong to permit her to speak in church, or in any other place where the very foremost men ! H congregate? H Does not both sacred and profane history ring ' with the names of women, who were a light to ; H the world? H Has not the building up of this free land been H due as much to her women as her men? Not in H public of course, but in bearing the burdens of re- H deeming the wilderness, and making the home the alters out from before which has emerged H all that has made our nation great? No eccles- IH last ever ought to say of women, what the Mas- H ter never could have been made to say, while H on earth. H |