After quoting familiar passages from both the Old and New Testament referring to woman, your divine opens by saying: ‘The general drift of these passages is obvious. Woman was designed to be a helpmeet for man.’ To this we have nothing to object. We, too, say that God made woman a helpmeet for man, finding it not good for him to be alone. But God said nothing of her being inferior, or subordinate, when he brought her to Adam—nothing of her being intended to fill an inferior position or discharge particular or inferior duties. She was made a helpmeet for man, not his subject and servant, but his assistant, companion and counselor. Not a helper in any particular sphere or duty, but in all the varied relations of life. Not to be always the frail, clinging, dependent vine, which falls helpless with the oak when it is riven by the thunderbolt, but to take the place, _if need be_, of the sturdy oak at her side when so riven, and bear upon her shoulders all the burdens which as true helpmeet and companion fall to her lot. Not to be an idle drone in the hive, but a sharer with him in all his head and his hands find to do. Not a helpmeet in the domestic relation merely, but also in the government of the earth and in the councils of the nation. It was not to _him_ but to _them_ that God gave power and dominion over the whole earth. He next goes on to show why woman was to occupy a subordinate position, and of all the arguments brought forward by our opponents I never read a more weak and flimsy one than this. Because Adam was first formed and then Eve, she was therefore to be subordinate. But where is the proof of this? Do we find in all nature that the things last formed were inferior and subordinate to those first created? Again, that ‘Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.’ Now, will the reverend gentleman tell us which he deems the greater sin, to commit a wrong after being misled and deceived by promises of great good to follow, or to commit the same wrong without such promises or deception, and with the eyes wide open to the wrong? In any court of the present day, the extenuating circumstances would be considered and the former held the less guilty of the two.