With Eastern nations the veil was the sign of retirement, of domestic life, and it was assumed by wives when they were in the street or in a public assembly. In heathen and barbarous countries it was also deemed a sign of woman's subjection and inferiority. The Hebrews were the first people to attain any truly spiritual conceptions, and they began to have a commensurately higher idea of the possibilities of woman's nature and work. When Christian women, in their new-found freedom, would have thrown aside the veil, just as Christian men, in their new-found reverence for God, would have repudiated the heathen wife, Paul said to them both that Christian liberty was individual,--it changed the character, not the sex relations. In arranging for church discipline, he advised that men should uncover the head, and women should wear the veil. But he said, in reference to that veil, that "woman should have _power_ on her head, because of the angels." The angels are spoken of in the New Testament as veiling their faces in the very presence of the Creator. In that truer symbolism of Christianity, man was to uncover his head in token of reverence to God and acceptance of the responsibility of the guardianship of the earth. Woman was to cover her head in token of her acceptance of man's guardianship and of her dominion over his heart, to which she had revealed God's will. Paul adds: "For as the woman is of the man, so is the man also of the woman; but all things are of God." This relation was one of the mysteries that Paul said he did not comprehend, nor could he, till the lessons he taught should work out their results, and might serve as commentary.