Bible -- Commentaries; Bible -- Feminist criticism; Women in the Bible
The children of Israel according to their tribes, represent the
ranging characteristics or parts which make up the soul of self-
consciousness. They are the "chosen people" because when the
soul sees with its spiritual insight as well as with its sensuous
outsight, it can, if it will, choose between the two as guides. Their
experiences in the wilderness are what we are passing through to-day;
for there is now a people who have made this choice and are following
the higher leader in their work for the human race, which is the only
satisfactory way of working for themselves. But this leader--spiritual
perception--cannot put the soul in possession of its promised land--a
higher state of existence or quality of self-consciousness. It sees the
higher and leads in its direction; but understanding of fundamental,
therefore unvarying and always applicable, principles is necessary for
that realization which Is the attainment of the higher, or its
possession.
Moses' death before crossing Jordan illustrates this limitation, which
is also the limitation of earnest reformers to-day. They can see for us
and point out that which awaits them; but they can never take those
others "into the land." They must travel on their own feet.
Joshua, as the leader after Moses, is the personification of this
understanding. He is Moses' sepulchre, for Moses is buried in him.
Spiritual insight develops understanding which is its continuity. Hence
the continuation of experiences under Joshua the "Saviour" through whom
the soul takes "possession" of its higher state. In the "wilderness" of
transition from the old to the new, mistakes occur which mar their
consequences. In this illustration of the Pentateuch, Miriam "speaks
against" Moses, is stricken with leprosy and "set without the camp,"
and the people cannot journey till all is "brought in again."
Woman's intellectual development after ages of repression, has
resulted with many of the sex, in an agnosticism which, at first
liberal, has grown to be a dogmatic materialism. She "speaks against"
spiritual insight and its revelations. In forsaking her dogmas and
creeds she has forsaken religion. She is to be "brought in again"--
brought to see that religion is of the soul and is individual; while
dogma and doctrine are from the sensuous out-side alone. The one tends
to true freedom, the other generates bondage. Broadly, women of to-day
are of two classes; those who are still held by the conservatism of
creeds, and those who have gone to the other extreme through the
exhilaration of intellectual activity. Both classes must meet upon a
common ground, recognition of fundamental principles and effort to
apply them--before the New Testament can become the practical ethical
standard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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