about the emancipation of women has its roots here in the New
Testament. We are not to forget either that prerogative means
obligation, and that the elevation of woman means the laying upon her
of solemn duties to perform. I wonder how many of the women members
of our Churches and congregations deserve such a designation as that?
We hear a great deal about 'women's rights' nowadays. I wish some of
my friends would lay a little more to heart than they do, 'women's
duties.'
And now, lastly, the final lesson that I draw from this eulogium of an
otherwise altogether unknown woman is that she is a model of
Christian service.
First, in regard to its measure. She 'laboured much in the Lord.'
Now, both these two words, 'laboured' and 'much,' are extremely
emphatic. The word rightly translated 'laboured' will appear in its
full force if I recall to you a couple of other places in which it is
employed in the New Testament. You remember that touching incident
about our Lord when, being '_wearied_ with His journey, He sat
thus on the well.' 'Wearied' is the same word as is here used. Then,
you remember how the Apostle, after he had been hauling empty nets
all night in the little, wet, dirty fishing-boat, said, perhaps with
a yawn, 'Master, we have _toiled_ all the night and caught
nothing.' He uses the same word as is employed here. Such is the sort
of work that these women had done--work carried to the point of
exhaustion, work up to the very edge of their powers, work unsparing
and continuous, and not done once in some flash of evanescent
enthusiasm, but all through a dreary night, in spite of apparent
failures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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