Transcriber's Note: Spelling has been harmonized, punctuation and printer errorscorrected.
Consecrated Womanhood
Five hundred copies of this
edition have been printed
from type in the month
of August, 1903
by the Gilliss
Press
To those who have long lamented theprevailing tendency in Christianchurches to deny to women the honorsand responsibilities of sacred offices andduties, such a sermon as "Consecrated Womanhood,"written by an American clergymanis like a breadth of fresh air in Neapolitanchurch-buildings that have never knownthe beauty of sunlight, and the atmospheresof which have grown heavy through the centurieswith the oppressive weight of suffocatingincense.
The preacher opens his discourse with thestatement that "the Bible honored womanwhen every other book was blind to the truedignity of her character." Scholars differ,and little is certain when we go back far[Pg 8]enough in the ancient writings of our race.But I think there can be no doubt that in allthe earliest literatures of which we haveknowledge, the thought of the world wasmore favorable to the development of womanlyindependence, than in later compositions,especially such as have come frompatristic and monastic sources. Certainly wefind the great Greek tragedians unfoldingtheir noblest ideals in the character of anAlcestis, and expressing through the lips of anAntigone their loftiest conceptions of virtue,and their purest and bravest ethical teachings.The Jews did not stand alone, as this eloquentsermon clearly shows, in honoringwoman; but the Old Testament is devoid,as its most careless reader cannot but see, ofall that wretched admiration for femininefe