Genesis 2:18-25 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.… Let us pay particular attention to this language. Probably we have imagined the statement to mean that God would provide for man one who should be a helper to him, and whose nature and character would be suitable to his. Well, the words do mean this; but they mean also something more. Correctly rendered they would run thus: "I will make him a help as over against him"; or, "so as to meet him": that is to say, "I will create for him one who shall tally and correspond with him as his counterpart." And the expression seems to point to that oneness in diversity, to that moral, intellectual, and spiritual adaptation of one to the other, — which exists between the woman and the man. Why were the man and the woman not created apart, as the animals were, and afterwards brought together? Because Adam was to be the inclusive head of the human race: all were to be derived from him; he was to be the fountain from which every stream should flow. Therefore it was necessary that woman should not have an independent, but a derived existence — an existence derived from the federal head of the human race. As St. Paul says, "Man is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man." I. Now in commenting upon the passage, let us take this as the thought which rises first before the mind — THAT IT WERE WELL IF THE RELATION BETWEEN THE TWO SEXES, AND EVERYTHING BEARING UPON THE MARRIAGE TIE, WERE LOOKED UPON AS BEING SOMEWHAT SERIOUS MATTERS. Of course no sensible man would speak in an unnaturally solemn tone about them. He would throw bright and cheerful colours upon the subject of courtship and marriage. He knows that this entrance into life ought to be characterized by joyousness. But yet, underlying the joyousness, there should be, we venture to think, for Christian people, a sense of seriousness and responsibility. Young women, for instance, should understand and value the influence which they exert in the world; whereas, too often, in their intercourse with the other sex, they condone worthlessness of character for the sake of showy and attractive qualities. And as to men, if they would see the relation of the sexes in the light which this narrative of Genesis throws upon it, the), would be more characterized than perhaps they are by chivalrous respect for womankind. They would honour a woman because she is a woman. II. Our second thought CONNECTS ITSELF WITH THE SUBJECT OF WHAT IS COMMONLY CALLED "WOMEN'S RIGHTS." Now let us see our way clear in this matter. We do not suppose that the great end of woman is to get married: many say so and think so; but so do not we. Still less do we wish to be understood as implying that a woman is justified in regarding herself, or that others are justified in regarding her, as having in any considerable degree failed of the object of her existence, if circumstances should lead her to remain in a single condition. Yet whilst holding the view of the essential and independent dignity of womanhood, we lament over that mismanagement of human affairs, which necessitates in so many human beings a life of celibacy; and we trace up to the fact of the immense and most disproportionate preponderance of women in our modern civilization, the existence of many of the evils which are sapping the foundations of our social prosperity. "Well," you may say, "there is the fact: you cannot alter it." No: I know that we cannot alter it; but we can try to make the best of it. Recognizing that there are, and that as matters now stand there ever must be amongst us large numbers of unmarried women, we would do all we could to make it possible for them, or at least for many of them (for some do not require it), to attain to a position of independence by means of their own honest exertions. This, at the very least, is our duty. But do we fulfil it? Of course we do not. I need not say that in the case of the educated classes, and in the case of those who come immediately below them, the way to independent subsistence for women is barred and blocked up by innumerable obstacles, that the sleepless dragon of popular prejudice guards most of the avenues of access to the golden fruit of honourable success, and that those few women who, as the pioneers of the advance of their sex, contrive by persistent energy to break through the circle of iron that encompasses them, are only too likely to acquire an unattractive and unfeminine hardness, from the very strength of the effort which enables them to force their way. There is something here which is wrong, and wants amending. Our social arrangements necessitate celibacy for hundreds of thousands who, probably, would not embrace that condition by choice. And then we frown upon their efforts if they struggle to maintain — might they be permitted to do so — an independent foothold upon our common earth. One last thing more let me say, and this of the same general character with what I have already ventured to advance. I have no manner of sympathy with the cackle and clatter we sometimes hear about the relative excellencies of the two sexes — about the superiority of one or the inferiority of the other. To me the idea that a woman wants only a "clear stage and no favour," wants training, and education, and suitable circumstances, in order to develop as big a brain and as vigorous a muscle as man, and so to be able to cope with him in the struggle of life — to me such a thought is unutterably repulsive. The great charm of a woman is that she is diverse from man: not a man in a lower stage of development. She is the complement of the man: her nature, her disposition, her powers, supply what is lacking in his. The two together make a completed orb: apart they are only segments of the circle. But in order to stand in this relation to each other, it is obvious that they must not be alike, but diverse. I believe with our great modern poet, that "woman is not undeveloped man, but diverse." Nay, and I believe that the sexual differences of character, and disposition, and faculty, and nature generally which exist upon earth, will be found — of course in a certain modified form — to exist in the kingdom of heaven. (G. Calthrop, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. |
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