THE WEAKER VESSEL. I. MONG the most manly men that have ever lived all of us will acknowledge that St. Paul ranks first: "Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God,”—not the first, as he says, but the last; not the chief, but the least; and yet one (and he does not blink the assertion, but says it right out) who laboured more abundantly than all the other apostles. Of the numerous touching and honest pieces of writing that have been handed down to us, so quiet and subdued, yet proud and defiant in its truth, the very best and most masterly is that wherein St. Paul recounts his labours-how that he was in perils often by his own countrymen, by the heathen, and among false brethren, on land and in the sea, in chains or without, beaten, scourged, hungry, and yet labouring on for his one great purpose-obedience to his call from God, and love for his fellow-man. Nothing is further from empty boasting than the terrible list of sufferings that he endured which he has given us. The truth that he speaks sanctifies the speaker; and yet, with a touch of pathos that goes to our very souls, he suddenly checks himself, and says, "I speak as a fool;" as if he were to say, "Why should I record these things? -enough that the Spirit within me did them." That passage well read-and it occurs once as a lesson, and once as an epistle, in the Church service-should move half the congregation to tears-that is, the half that is listening to exhortation, and offering up prayer, and not looking at its neighbours. Everything is good, The iron is good Now it is a good thing to be manly. just so far as it carries out its purpose. when strong; the steel, when hard and tough; the horse, when it is willing, brisk, and full of mettle; the cow, when it gives milk; the ox, when it runs well to meat, and is generous in flesh, and answers its food-giving purpose; the sheep, when it does the like, and grows long or short wool, whichever the farmer chiefly desires. The dog is good when he is staunch, faithful, watchful; the man is to be admired when he is bold, upright, manly-when he lives as under a promise to do duty; the woman is good so far as she is womanly she is so much the better as she is more womanly; so much the worse as she is less. So is it with a manly man. What is a coward—a shifty man, untrustworthy and uncertain, a lie in act, if not in word-worth? Very little. He enters a descending scale when he begins to be minus manhood. Being a man, he must be one in the good sense of the word, or he is to be discarded and avoided; and people had better keep him at a distance, or else take the consequences. Remembering, then, how full of manhood was St. Paul, it will, perhaps, be somewhat of a blow to many women who have been seduced by the Woman's Rights question for the supremacy of their sex to find that he calls woman "the weaker vessel." He does so also in a way that can call forth no denial on the part of the men; for he appeals to husbands to honour and cherish their wives on that account. Not that woman possesses qualities which man does not : far from it; but he speaks of her as one who is not quite up to man's standard, as one whose strength is much smaller, as one to be pitied as well as to be guarded, and to be honoured as the weaker vessel." 66 One must strongly suspect that those ladies who battle hardest for equality of the sexes must wrinkle their brows and shake their ruffled feathers in indignation when they read St. Paul. When it is remembered that, of every two 66 'very clever women," one at least is touched with a latitudinarianism trenching on pure deism, the reason is almost patent why they reject St. Paul and the Old and New Testament writers. Woman, in the Old Testament, is relegated to a much lower rank than she really holds with us; in the New Testament, although she is commended, she is always treated as the help-meet for man, equal in responsibility, but certainly inferior in worldly authority. I think that they who would wean and seduce woman from her true position are her greatest enemies. Friendly in intention they may be; but, as an injudicious friend is often a very great enemy, so are these injudicious friends of woman her worst enemies. Let us for a while look at woman as she is painted by great authors, premising that, when we can, we will, out of fairness, prefer the words of women authors to those of men. The beauty and goodness of woman-and let us take them first-are everywhere acknowledged by the poets, and those who have, as I believe, most insight into humanity. We must hardly trust those poets who wrote in the spring-time of youth, because the elation that they felt, and the elasticity of their feelings when they approach the subject, make them beside themselves, and, what is most important to us, sometimes beside the truth. Lord Byron wrote an epitaph in which he elevated a Newfoundland dog above a man, and in his address to the Ocean he talks about it (in not the best of grammar by the way) as also superior to man, and "sending him howling to his gods." Now that may be very good poetry in some persons' ideas, but it is very great nonsense or rank materialism in the opinion of others. The great ocean is a wonderful work of God, but it is also the servant of man. Considering this, we may pass over in a poet who has written very much against woman, and who has made her the toy of the hero of his cleverest book, any of the superlative praises which his lordship has bestowed upon her. Two far greater poets than Byron abound with praises of woman—these are Shakspere and Milton. It is the latter who makes her the “last best gift” of God. "O fairest of creation! last and best Of all God's works! creature in whom excels But Milton, as everybody knows, asserts the pre-eminence of Adam, although he sees only in the unfallen Eve, “in all her gestures, dignity and love." With his own wives Milton was evidently not slow to assert his own worth and mastery; nor do we think for a moment that the great poet and defender of the people of England was wrong. The women drawn by Shakspere have had more than one book devoted to themselves, which they fill very worthily. Never indeed was there more sweetness or beauty drawn than he has portrayed. His Roman matrons, his English wives, are as beautiful, as pure, and chaste as his maidens; and no reality can exceed the ideals of Imogen, Cordelia, Portia, Helen, and Desdemona. One is at a loss to say which of his pictures is the most beautiful; and he constantly tells us, in indirect ways, how much he honours and loves woman. As a man is honourable and good, says he, so will he Scorn to treat a woman lawlessly ;" and in his prose he incidentally sets off the generosity of a good woman with a few touches which seem perfectly magical. "She is," he writes, "so free, so kind, so apt, of so blessed a disposition, that she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested.” Nor is she only good, but she loves good; and, let us say it, and thank Heaven for it, there are very few women so crossed by sin or corrupted by the world that they do not rather love good in man than evil. 66 "Falsehood and cowardice Are things that women highly hold in hate," writes the great William of Stratford; and, after speaking of her in every noble way, and gifting her with every gentle quality and loving power, we may apply to woman, as he C |