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the wand of judgment, the sceptre of au- |
thority, and the sword of war, belong
properly to his hand, and to his alone.
Business, politics, outward enterprise,
learning and science, are all comprised in
his legitimate domain. Woman, on the
other hand, finds her true orbit, as we have
already said, in the quiet retreats of pri-
vate and domestic life. Her highest glory
and greatest power are comprehended in
the sacred names of wife and mother. She
is not indeed shut out from society, in a
wider view. On the contrary, she is fitted
to exert the largest influence in the social
sphere, strictly taken, as distinguished
from that of business and science; but it
is always under her domestic character
only, and in virtue of her peculiar consti-
tution, as representing the individual side
of the world's life, rather than that which
is general and universal. The moment she
affects to overstep this limit, by the per-
sonal assumption of public and general
functions, in which she can have no part
properly, except through the medium of
the other sex, she makes herself weak, and
forfeits her title to respect. The popular
platform, the rostrum, the pulpit, are in-
terdicted to her nature, no less than the
battle-field and the crowded exchange.
All public primacy is unsuitable to her sex;
nor is it easy to see, certainly, how the
"monstrous regimen of women," as de-
nounced by the old Scottish Elijah in his
memorable Blast," should not be as fair
an object of indignation and scorn, when
seated on the throne, as it is felt to be in
all inferior stations.* Christianity here is

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"Who would not judge that body to be a monster," says Knox, "where there was no head eminent above the rest, but that the eyes were in the hands, the tongue and the mouth beneath in the belly, and the ears in the feet? No less is the body of that commonwealth, where a woman beareth empire; for either doth it lack a lawful head, as in very deed it doth, or else an idol is exalted instead of the true head. An idol I call that which hath the form and appearance, but lacketh the virtue and strength, which the name and proportion doth resemble and promise. I confess a realm may, in despite of God-he of his own wise judgment so giving them over unto a reprobate mind-exalt up a woman to that monstriferous honor, to be esteemed as head. impossible it is to man or angel to give unto her the properties and perfect offices of a lawful head; for the same God that denied power to the hand peak, to the belly to hear, and to the feet to

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always deep, and at the same time true to nature. Let your women keep silent in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church." So again: "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, was in the transgression."

The order of society, springing as it does from the sexual relation first of all, imperiously requires that the opposition in which it holds should be sacredly regarded and preserved, throughout the whole economy of life. All that serves to neutralize it, or to thrust it out of sight, should be reprobated as an agency unfriendly to the best interests of the human race. Civilization and culture, morality and religion, while they call for the free intercourse of the sexes, as polar sides of one and the same social constitution, call no less clearly at the same time for their constant distinction and separation in all that pertains to inward character and outward life. They need a different education. The accomplishments which adorn the one are not those that most become the other. is not without reason, that they are required to distinguish themselves in their outward dress. "Doth not even nature its f teach you," says the apostle, that if a man have long hair it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a g to her for her hair is given her for a cvering." All confusion of the sexes, al removal of the lines and landmarks that show the true and proper boundary between them, is a crime against society of the most s ous order. For either sex to forsake its own sphere, and intrude into that which belongs of right only to the other, the it should be even in the most trivid thing merely, is ever something revolting to all reason and taste. To be unsexly, in cos

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see, hath denied to the woman power to co mund man, and hath taken away wisdom to a ULT, and providence to foresee, the things that be procs able to the commonwealth."-First Blast.

tume, habit, spirit or occupation, is to be at the same time unnatural and immoral.

This opposition and distinction, however, as we have already seen, are intended only to make room for the more perfect union of the two interests thus flung asunder. It is because they are different in this way, and in proportion also as the difference is understood and respected, that the sexes are capable of entering into the intimate union, which lies at the ground of our whole human life. Physically, psychologically, and morally, man shows himself to be at all points what woman is not. The one is the opposite of the other. But for this very reason, the relation is one also of reciprocal want and supply. Neither section of the race is complete in its own nature, while the defect which exists on each side is met with its proper complement precisely in the comparative advantage of the other. Humanity is the unity of the two sexes; which, as such, accordingly can never rest in one apart from the other, but must seek continually the full conjunction of both, as original, necessary component sides of its proper constitution. In the nature of the case, it can never be satisfied with such conjunction, except under the most inward and spiritual form as the power, ultimately, of a single individual life. The sexes are made complete only in and through each other; and this necessarily by such a union only as extends to their whole constitution, physical and spiritual, embracing thus the entire inward life full as much as that which is exhibited outwardly in the sphere of flesh and blood. Each is needed to fill out and complete the personality or moral nature of the other, no less than its material organization. The qualities of man's spirit require to be softened and refined by communion with the milder nature of woman; as she on the other hand needs the strength and firmness of his more universal life, on which to lean as the stable prop of her own. The personality of man s enriched and beautified through woman, on the side of nature; the personality of woman is consolidated and perfected hrough man, on the side of the idea.

In this view, of course, the union which he case demands, cannot overthrow, but must serve rather to establish in full force, he order we have already found to hold

between the two sexes in their personal constitution. It is emphatically the fact of this order, involving as it does a certain primacy on the one side and a corresponding subordination on the other, that makes it possible for the union to take that vital, fundamental form that is here required. Two strictly co-ordinate personalities could not be expected to flow thus into the power of a single life. It is because woman has her true and proper centre at last in man, and not in herself, that it is possible for the sexes to become not simply one flesh, but one mind also and one soul. Her consciousness thus poised upon the personality of man, is brought to such harmony, and freedom, and active force within itself, as it could never be advanced to in any other way. All this implies no sort of dishonor or degradation. It is simply the necessary form of our general human life itself, whose perfection demands this distinction · of sexes as something which, to be real at all, must hold in such proportional relation and no other. It is precisely the strength and glory of woman, to be thus dependently joined to the personality of man, as the vine is carried upwards by clinging to a trunk more vigorous and rough than its own, which it serves at the same time gracefully to ennoble and adorn. Marriage is, indeed, in this view, more significant and necessary, we may say, for woman, than it can be held to be for man. It is the appointed and regular process of her full emancipation from the power of sense and nature, over into the sphere of a firm and enduring spiritual independence. She needs it to make her own personality, whether as intelligence or will, sufficiently central and deep,. to sustain itself as it should against the force of the surrounding world. It is by the mighty energy of love in this form that she comes at last fully to herself, and is enabled to bring into clear revelation the true wealth of her nature. In a deep sense thus we may apply to the case that mystic word of the apostle: "She shall be saved (dià rɛzvoλovías) by child-bearing." Connected as it is immediately with the thought of her moral weakness, as exemplified in the fall, (1 Tim. ii. 14, 15,) it seems to refer not obscurely to the like mystic word of the curse pronounced against her, Gen. iii. 16, in consequence of that catastrophe. Tho

relation which is made the fountain of her deepest sorrows, under the iron reign of sin, becomes itself the well-spring of her salvation, through the law of "faith and charity and holiness" revealed in Jesus Christ. So profoundly true again is that other declaration: The head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man;" or as we have it in another place: "The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church." (1 Cor. xi. 3; Eph. v. 23.) So intimately close is the union for which the sexual distinction opens the way, and in which alone it comes finally to its true meaning.

those who are under its power. In this form, it is the sexual appetite or instinct, a purely natural tendency, which has for its object the preservation of the race, as the instinct of hunger is designed to secure the preservation of the single individual. It is the power of the general nature over its own constituent factors or parts, by which these are urged to seek, each in the other, the full sense of their proper bearing, and thus to constitute, in the way of reciprocal appropriation, a living union that may fairly represent both.

But nature here, as elsewhere, is required to lose itself always in the power of a higher life, in which its action shall no longer be blind and unfree, but the product of the spirit itself in its own true form.

On this union, the primitive and most fundamental form of human fellowship, depends not simply the perpetuation of the race, but the entire problem besides of its social and moral history. It is by means of it, in the first place, that the generic or universal life of man is brought to assert its proper authority over against the life of the individual singly and separately considered. The individual is forced to feel that he is no complete whole in himself; that his nature can be true to its own constitution only by passing beyond his single person, and seeking its necessary complement in another; that in one word, to be a true and full man at all, he must enter into communion with his race, and make himself tributary, in a free way, to the high ends for which he has been placed in the world. This subordination of the single life to the general, is of such vast consequence to the entire plan and structure of the moral world, that it must be secured by an invincible guaranty in the constitution of the world itself. It is curious and instructive to see accordingly, how the law of society, lying as it does at the foundation of all ethics, is here made to take root, as it were, "in the lowest parts of the earth;" illustrating, on a grand scale, the proposition affirmed in the beginning of this article, that all morality has its basis in nature, and is to be regarded as genuine, only as it shows itself to be in very truth the efflorescence of this lower life, bursting upwards into the ethe-love finds its suitable home. 7: real region of the spirit.

As the sexual relation extends to the whole person, the union for which it calls can never be complete, except as it is made to embrace this in its full totalay, under a strictly central and universal form. It must be a union of mind and will, process of mutual apprehension, and recip rocal personal appropriation, in the farthest depths of the soul. In no other form can it be truly normal, and answerable to the high purposes it is designed to serve. The sexual tendency, ethicised in this way, and sublimated into the sphere of personality, becomes lore. This is always in its very nature something no. and spiritual, springing from the w having regard to the inmost person. S.. in the case before us, it is in the fund sense also sexual. It rests throughout e the distinction of sex, and regards the spirit only as beheld and apprehend under such modification. Hence the imate power of beauty, as constituting the side of either sex to the eye of La other, the outward image and exp of the inward life in its sexual f. 17. true beauty, of course, in this vi back upon the spirit, while at the s time its proper revelation is to l in the outward person. A sexua that includes no regard to bat necessarily be immoral, as fallingthat high spiritual region, in w

The bond by which the sexes are thus drawn together is lodged, in the first instance, deep in the physical constitution of

animal nature, in such case, is st
prevail over the human. It t
love, not to overthrow absoluicy
the power of mere sense, but s

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cover it at every point with its own superior presence, that it shall not be permitted to come into separate view.

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Love, as now described, includes in itself always a regard to the sexual character as such; and so far, there is truth and force in the observation of Sterne, that no man ever loves any one woman as he should, who has not at the same time a love for her whole sex. This, however, is only one side of the subject. Love, to be complete, must be also strictly and distinctly individual, determined towards its object as a single person to the exclusion of all others. The single plant is only a specimen of its kind, the particular animal a copy of the tribe to which it belongs. But it is not thus in the human sphere. The individual man is vastly more than a passing exemplification simply of the generic life that flows through his person. prehends in himself an independent specific nature, that can be properly represented by no other. His individuality is always at the same time personal, and as such something universal and constant; as on the other hand his personality is always individual, taking its special complexion from the living material nature out of which it springs. Every such individual personality is a world within itself, existing under given relations to other worlds of corresponding nature around it. No two of these are exactly alike, and all by these differences fall short of the measure that belongs to humanity as a whole. This is constituted only by the society and union of the individual personalities into which t falls, joined together morally, not with ndiscriminate conjunction, but according o specific reciprocal correspondence, in he way of inward want and supply. The general law of moral association then being such, it must extend of course in ull power to the primary and fundamenal union which we have now under conideration. It lies in the very conception f love, as already explained, that it hould concentrate itself upon the spirit, s revealed under a sexual form; but to do his fully, it must be carried by inward lective affinity towards its object as a articular person. It is not simply the eneral attraction of sex, that can satisfy s demands; it requires besides that this ttraction shall lodge itself in the presence VOL. II. NO. IV. NEW SERIES.

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of a specific personal life, which is felt to be such as the necessary complement of its own nature. Under no other form can the union here in question be regarded as moral. It is not every woman that is adapted, physically or spiritually, to be a help-meet for every man; but as the sexes are formed for each other in a general way, so each individual of either sex may be said to be formed for some corresponding individual of the other; and it is of the highest consequence, of course, for themselves and for the race also, that they should be able to find and know each other in the confused wilderness of the world's life.

We may go so far as to say, perhaps, that in a perfectly normal state of the world, this pairing and matching of individual natures would be so complete as to exclude, in every case, all possibility of different choice. Each would be for each, by absolute singularity of mutual suitableness and want, in such a way as to shut out the whole world besides. Of course, our actual life, disordered as it is by sin, cannot be expected or required to conform strictly to this rule of ideal perfection. But still it should include at least an approximation towards it; and it must be regarded as defective, in proportion precisely as it is found to fall short of such high measure. In a state of barbarism, but small account comparatively is made of individual personality, in the commerce of the sexes; which however is simply itself an expression of the barbarous life to which it belongs, showing it to border close on the merely animal existence below it, in which, as there is no personality, so there is no room also for the idea of love in any form. The savage takes his wife very much as a specimen simply of her sex, just as he selects his dog, in the same view, to accompany him in the chase. It is remarkable, too, that in such low stage of moral development, the individual nature itself stands out to view, for the most part, only under dim and indistinct lines. It is the sense of personality in the end, that advances the single life to its legitimate rights and claims, investing it with clearly marked distinction under its own form, and challenging towards it in this way the attention and respect it is entitled to receive. We are furnished here accord

ingly with an unerring standard of civilization and social culture, which in the case before us especially is always of plain and easy application.

The sexual union, representing thus the general relation of the sexes to each other on the one hand, and involving the elective personal affinity of individual natures on the other, mediated throughout by the sacred power of love, comes to its proper expression in the idea of marriage; whose nature, at the same time, is defined and explained by the whole analysis through which we have now passed. This is simply the true and normal form of that commerce and communion, in which the distinction of sex comes at last to its full sense, as the necessary completion of humanity, and the primitive basis of all history and society. The attributes that belong of right to this union, are the true and proper attributes also of marriage; which is not therefore something joined to our nature, as it were, from abroad, and in the way of outward order or device, whether human or divine; but should be considered rather as part of our nature itself, a simple fact in its organic constitution, without whose presence it must cease to exist altogether.

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Marriage of course, then, is the process of reciprocal appropriation, by which the sexes, according to their original destination, become one, and so complete themselves each, in the power of a single personal life. In the nature of the case, this double appropriation is required to extend to the entire being of the parties concerned in the transaction; for the sexual difference is such, as we have already seen, that each side of the relation requires the opposite, not in part only, but in full, to make itself complete. This implies, at the same time, a corresponding act of selfabandonment on each side, in favor of the other, as the necessary condition of full mutual appropriation in return. Each yields itself up to be the property of the other, in the very act of embracing this again as its own property. So as regards the merely natural and outward life. The parties are made "one flesh." This is of right, however, only in virtue of the inward spiritual embrace, by which the personality of each is brought to rest in that of the other, by the deep mysterious

power which belongs to love. The case, in its own nature, admits of no compro mise or reserve. Marriage calls solemnly for the gift of the whole being, on the altar of love, and can never be fully satisfied with any sacrifice that is less full and entire. In proportion as the relation comes short of such inward, central community of soul and life, it must be regarded as an imperfect approximation only to its own true idea.

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There is a difference indeed in the form of this mutual self-surrendry on the part of the two sexes, corresponding with the order of their general relation as already noticed. As the united person constituted by marriage is required to centre ultimately in man, it follows that the union calls for the largest measure of such free sacrifice on the side of woman. For this. also, she is happily disposed by her whole constitution. Love is emphatically the element of her life. She needs the oppor tunity of going fully out of herself in this way, in order that she may do full justice to her own nature. There is nothing t life, accordingly, more deep, and beautifa and full of moral power, than the devoting of woman's love. It goes beyond all thi is possible, under the same form, on the side of the other sex. The perfection a marriage, so far as she is concerned, turn on the measure in which she is prepare to make herself over, in body, mind, ar outward estate, without limit or reserve 1 him whom she has chosen to be her bed The husband is not required to quit h self, exactly to the same extent and in th same way. He may not resign the see of his more central and universal ch ter, by which precisely he is qualità te become the personal bearer of the unte| life involved in the marriage bond. A this, however, gives him no right to 1 cise his independence in a selfish way. lays him under obligation only to make ba self over, in this character, to the p sion of his wife, answering thus, with ma unbounded fidelity and truth, the fo bounded measure of her confidence truth. "So ought men to love wives as their own bodies; he that by his wife, loveth himself."

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The idea of marriage, as now preset'tclearly excludes, not only all promi concubinage, but also all polygamy s

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