When Paul in his first burning letter told the Corinthian congregation that their women should be silent in their churches, he is not, it seems to me, giving a message which in those terms applies to the world to-day. If a woman has anything that is worth saying she has a perfect right to say it in church. In any denomination in which religious observance is not ecclesiastically formal she will be allowed that privilege. By an interesting peculiarity of mind on our part she may be permitted to do so upon Wednesday evenings, when our early prejudice still prevents her speaking on Sunday. What is the truth of the teaching of Paul in this matter? The Christians of Corinthian times had already begun to suffer from persecution. They were already despised and distrusted. Men had come to speak ill of them. Paul's injunction concerning the silence of women in churches was simply an injunction against their doing those things which in the thought and habit of those times were associated generally with looseness of character. Fine Corinthian women did not speak in public. A woman who would consent to speak before a group of men of Corinth of that day would by that fact have proclaimed herself a woman of loose morals. Paul's injunction is that, in this desperate struggle Christian women should do nothing which could possibly bring them into disrepute. The lives of Christians must be above suspicion. This message is certainly as true to-day as it was in the time of Paul and Corinth. Whether or not a woman speaks in church to-day has no bearing whatever upon the question. The question is how she speaks and what she says. If her life gives force to her message and her message contains God's truth she is entirely free to speak. In similar fashion we have changed most beautifully the message which we have come to love, as the Mizpah message: "The Lord watch between thee and me while we are absent one from the other." We have absolutely transformed and glorified the message. It was once the calling down of the wrath of Jehovah upon one or other of two herdsmen if either of them should fail to comply with the agreement to remain within his own boundary. These men whose herdsmen were constantly stealing each other's cattle agreed to separate because they could not live in unity. They set up a heap of unhewn stone, and called upon God to guard and to see that neither of them passed beyond the boundary of the other. What was once a threat between warring herdsmen has become a binding link between Christian brothers. No longer do we call upon the Lord to guard in our absence lest our enemy encroach upon our domain. Now we call upon him to bind our hearts together so that neither time nor circumstance can bring division between us. The menace of a herdsman's wrath has become one of the tenderest messages of Christian love.