A rule that has been followed rudely through all centuries, and is followed to-day with far greater approach to perfect obedience. Maternity was to be God's method of working out the problem of changing the innocence of ignorant savagery to the holiness of enlightened civilization. To this end, the more delicate and complex organism of the womb-man must be cared for by the strength and steadiness that could find full play because that subtler task was not demanded of it. In commenting on chapter iii., which contains the account of the Garden of Eden and the eating of the apple, they say: "As out of this allegory grow the doctrines of original sin, the fall of man and of woman the author of all our woes, and the curses on the serpent, the woman and the man, the Darwinian theory of the gradual growth of the race from a lower to a higher type of animal life is more hopeful and encouraging." The Christian doctrine is more hopeful and encouraging still. It reveals the growth of the race from a low type of animal life to the perfect life of the soul. We do not need to go back to the garden where our first parents dwelt, to look for the substantiation of the eternal truth of this whole wondrous story. Amid the landscape of the civilization of the noblest country that the world possesses, we have the drama repeated. In the work of Anne Hutchinson, Ann Lee, Frances Wright, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Stanton, Susan Anthony, Ellen Dietrick, Lillie Blake, and their fellow- commentators, we have re-enacted the Temptress and the Fall. Woman first aspired. She stretched forth her eager hand to seize the good, and in so doing snatched the evil that grew beside it. The woman in Eden had not learned what maternity taught her later--that she could point the path, but could not lead in entering it. Wherever woman has forgotten this hard- won but glorious lesson, she has been the most dangerous of guides. The conscience, that intellect of the soul, woke first in woman. By her obedience to its voice, the faith that worketh by love had its perfected work, and the promise that was given to her was fulfilled in the birth of Christ. A Creation story without a gospel is chaos without gravitation, primal darkness without the sun. Forward to divinity in human form woman was able, through obedience, to point mankind. Backward to divinity in human form she points again, until humanity itself shall become divine. If she loses the final vision, or substitutes her own, she can neither point nor guide. No wonder woman has been a mystery to the church. No wonder a witch was not allowed to live, while a wizard might; she was more dangerous. No wonder Paul was perplexed by the woman question. No wonder monks fled to the desert. Christ has spoken the final words of woman, "Thy faith hath saved thee." From the anguish of His cross he said: "Woman, behold thy son!" "Behold thy mother," and the beloved disciple "took her to his own home from that hour."