OBJECTIONS – NATURAL.

“In the still air the music lies unheard;

In the rough marble beauty hides unseen;

To wake the music and the beauty, needs

The master’s touch, the sculptor’s chisel keen.”

                                                          – Bonar.

     IT is objected that a woman in the pulpit is out of her place; that nature never designed her to be a minister of the Gospel.

     With classical literature, the old heathen ideas about woman’s true position have come down to us.

     Aristotle said: “The relation of man to woman is that of the governor to his subject.”

     It is urged that woman is naturally unfitted for the duties of a minister of the Gospel; that Nature by its inexorable laws stands in the way of her ordination; that she is physically disqualified for the ministerial office.

     If this is so then there is not the slightest necessity for closing the pulpit against her. It requires no legislation to keep sheep from plunging into the river, or fish from invading the land.

     “One thing we may be certain of,” says John Stuart Mill, “that what is contrary to women’s nature to do, they will never be made to do by simply giving their nature free play. The anxiety of mankind to interfere in behalf of nature, for fear lest nature should not succeed in effecting its purpose, is an altogether unnecessary solicitude. What women by nature cannot do it is quite superfluous to forbid them from doing. What they can do, but not so well as the men who are their competitors, competition suffices to exclude them from; since nobody asks for protective duties and bounties in favor of women; it is only asked that the present bounties and protective duties in favor of men should be recalled. If women have a greater natural inclination for some things than for others, there is no need of laws or social inculcation to make the majority of them do the former in preference to the latter.

     “Whatever women’s services are most wanted for, the free play of competition will hold out the strongest inducements to them to undertake. And, as the words imply, they are most wanted for the thing for which they are most fit; by the apportionment of which to them the collective faculties of the two sexes can be applied on the whole with the greatest sum of valuable result.”¹⁸

     No special legislation, either by church or state, is needed to give to women their proper place. Leave them as free as the men are, and they will instinctively find their true place. If a woman’s true position is that of wife, she will not hesitate to accept it if the right man makes the offer. But there are more women than men in the United States. Why may not some of these become ministers of the Gospel if God calls them to the position and they are duly qualified for it?

     That some women possess the physical ability to preach is no longer a question; it is a demonstrated fact that they have this ability, for some women do preach, and do successfully the most exhaustive labors of a preacher – hold protracted meetings.

     What does an ordained preacher do that is a greater draft upon the physical powers than preaching, and especially holding revival services? Some women have engaged in callings that tax the physical powers more than preaching and administering the sacraments.

     They are successful physicians and lawyers.

     Lowell, one of our popular American poets, writes:

“They talk about a woman’s sphere

          As though it had a limit;

There’s not a spot in earth or heaven,

There’s not a task to mankind given

          Without a woman in it.”

     The vocation of a soldier would seem to be one for which women are specially unfitted by nature. Yet whenever they have undertaken it, they have met with, at least, the average success of the men.

     Deborah won more honor than Barak in the battle which they fought under her direction.

     In the battle fought by Xerxes against the Greeks, which decided the destiny of Europe, the only branch of his army that drove the enemy, was that commanded by Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus. Herodotus, styled the father of History, speaks of an army of female warriors, called “Amazons,” who were by no means deficient in the qualities of good soldiers. After they settled down, he says, they “retained their ancient mode of living, both going out on horseback to hunt with their husbands and without their husbands, and joining in war, and wearing the same dress as the men.”¹⁹ By their rules “no virgin was permitted to marry till she had killed an enemy.”

     The Athenians based their claims to precedence over the other tribes of Greece, among other things, on the fact that they “performed a valiant exploit against the Amazons, who once made an irruption into Attica from the river Thermidon.”²⁰

     It was a Greek Amazon of more recent date that the poet, Bryant, represents as singing:

“I buckle to my slender side

          The pistol and the scimitar,

And in my maiden flower and pride

          Am come to share the tasks of war.

And yonder stands my fiery steed,

          That paws the ground, and neighs to go,

My charger of the Arab breed, –

          I took him from the routed foe.”

     Stanley speaks of the Amazons of the King of Uganda, and says: “What strikes us most is the effect of discipline.”²¹

     During the Hundred Years’ war between France and England there came a time when it seemed as if France must perish from among the nations. The English had possession of most of the large cities. The French King, Charles VI. had died, and the Parliament of Paris had recognized Henry VI. of England as “King of England and France.” The rightful heir to the French throne was regarded as an indolent and frivolous prince. What remained of the French army was disheartened and demoralized. Orleans, the chief city still in possession of the French, was closely besieged by a powerful army.

     At this juncture a peasant girl of sixteen announced that she was called of God to deliver the kingdom. She was unlettered, modest, industrious, and deeply pious. Her neighbors believed and respected her. To one of the French Knights who went to see her, as she was trying to find someone to take her to the King, she said: “Assuredly, I would far rather be spinning beside my poor mother; for this other is not my condition; but I must go and do the work because my Lord wills that I should do it.”

     “Who is your Lord?” demanded the knight.

     “The Lord God,” replied the maid.

     “By my faith,” said the knight, “I will take you to the King, God helping.”

     She was furnished with a coat of mail, a lance, a sword, and a horse – in short with the complete equipment of a man-at-arms.

     She rode on horseback four hundred and fifty miles, with a suitable escort, in eleven days, through a country, occupied here and there by the English, and everywhere a theatre of war.

     The King received her, though some of his offices were greatly displeased at seeing more confidence placed in a peasant girl than in experienced warriors.

     She was examined by the Chancellor of France, the archbishop of Rheims, five bishops, the King’s counsellors, and several learned doctors. The examination lasted a fortnight. Addressing one of them, a learned doctor, she said:

     “I know not A. nor B.; but in our Lord’s Book there is more than in your books; I come on behalf of the King of Heaven to cause the siege of Orleans to be raised, and to take the King to Rheims that he may be crowned and anointed there.”

     The doctors decided in Joan’s favor.

     They reported that, “After a grave inquiry there had been discovered in her nought but goodness, humility, devotion, honesty, simplicity. Before Orleans she professes to be going to show her sign; so she must be taken to Orleans; for to give her up without any appearance of evil on her part would be to fight against the Holy Spirit, and to become unworthy of aid from God.”

     She was then examined by three of the greatest ladies of the Kingdom as to her life as a woman. They found in her “nothing but truth, virtue and modesty.” “She spoke to them,” says the chronicle, “with such sweetness and grace that she drew tears from their eyes.”

     She excused herself to them for the dress she wore, though the sternest doctors had not reproached her for it. “It is more decent,” said the archbishop of Embrun “to do such things in man’s dress, since they must be done along with men.”

     She went to Orleans at the head of a small but enthusiastic band of troops.

     The population received her with “joy as great as if they had seen God come down among them.” “They felt,” says the journal of the siege, “all of them recomforted and, as it were, disbesieged by the divine virtue which they had been told existed in this simple maid.”

     The English were defiant. To her summons to depart and return to their own country they replied with coarse insults. A fierce battle was fought. Joan placed a scaling ladder against a rampart and was the first to mount. She was wounded between the neck and shoulder. She felt faint, but prayed, and pulled out the arrow with her own hand. A dressing of oil was applied to the wound, and she retired and was continually in prayer.

     The French were becoming tired and discouraged, and showed signs of retreating. She resumed her arms, mounted her horse, waved her banner, and rushed forward to the battle. The French took courage, the English were struck with consternation and fled. The next day they retreated and the siege of Orleans was raised.

     In many other movements Joan was successful. At length the King, Charles VII., of France was crowned at Rheims.

     “Anger is cruel and wrath is outrageous, but who can stand before envy?”

     Many in authority who should have been her friends, secretly plotted against her, so that her counsels were disregarded, and at last she was betrayed into the hands of the English, who burned her alive at the stake. She met fate with the same heroic devotion that had characterized her life. Two of the Judges who had condemned her to that cruel death, as she ceased to live cried out: “Would that my soul were where I believe the soul of that woman is.”

     And the Secretary of the King of England, on returning from the execution, said: “We are all lost: we have burned a saint.”

     It is true this is an extraordinary case.

     But who shall say that, in these days, when the world has so nearly led the church into captivity that God would not, if his spirit could have free course, raise up matrons and maidens to drive back the hosts of hell, and lead on the army of believers to glorious victories?

     On whatever shoulders God is pleased to place the epaulettes man should not dare pull them off.

     All these examples certainly prove that some women may possess the physical strength and endurance, and the courage to discharge all the duties of an ordained minister of the Gospel.