“You seem to place a great deal of dependence on the Bible. The Bible is aginst the idee. The Bible teaches man’s supremacy, man’s absolute power and might and authority.” “Why, how you talk,” sez I. “In the very first chapter the Bible tells how man wuz turned right round by a woman, tells how she not only turned man round to do as she wanted him to, but turned the hull world over. “That hain’t nothin’ I approve of; I don’t speak of it because I like the idee. That wuzn’t done in a open honorable manner as things should be done. No, Eve ruled by indirect influence, the gently influencing men way, that politicians are so fond of. And she brought ruin and destruction onto the hull world by it. “A few years later when men and wimmen grew wiser, when we hear of wimmen rulin’ Israel openly and honestly, like Miriam, Deborah and other likely old four mothers, things went on better. They didn’t act meachin’ and tempt, and act indirect.” He sithed powerful and sot round oneasy in his chair. And sez he, “I thought wimmen wuz taught by the Bible to serve and love their homes.” “So they be. And every true woman loves to serve. Home is my supreme happiness and delight, and my best happiness is found in servin’ them I love. But I must tell the truth, in the house or outdoors.” Sez he faintly, “The Old Testament may teach that women have some strength and power. But in the New Testament in every great undertaken’ and plan men have been chosen by God to carry them through.” “Why-ee!” sez I, “how you talk! Have you ever read the Bible?” He said evasively, his grandmother owned one, and he had seen it in early youth. And then he went on in a sort of apologizin’ way. He had always meant to read it, but he had entered political life at an early age where the Bible wuzn’t popular, and he believed that he had never read further than the Epistles of Gulliver to the Liliputians. Sez I, “That hain’t Bible, there hain’t no Gulliver in it, and you mean Galatians.” Well, he said, that might be it, it wuz some man he knew, and he had always heard and believed that man wuz the only worker that God had chosen. “Why,” sez I, “the one great theme of the New Testament—the salvation of the world through the birth of Christ—no man had anything to do with. Our divine Lord wuz born of God and Woman. Heavenly plan of redemption for fallen humanity. God Himself called woman into that work, the divine work of saving a world, and why shouldn’t she continue in it? God called her. Mary had no dream of publicity, no desire of a world’s work of suffering and renunciation. The soft air of Galilee wropped her about in its sweet content, as she dreamed her quiet dreams in maiden peace—dreamed, perhaps, of domestic love and happiness.