1 Corinthians 14:34-35

d. This Church order must not be disturbed by the garrulity of their women, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 .

“Paul,” says Calvin, (note 1 Corinthians 11:5,) “attends to one thing at a time.” Truly said; for as in 1 Corinthians 11:3-16 he regulated the praying and prophesying of the gifted women, so here he prohibits the garrulity of the ungifted commonalty of the sex. It was not given to Orientalism, but to our Teutonic races, to assign to woman her higher place. The Indian brahmin, the Jewish rabbi, the Greek poet, and the Roman senator, alike spoke of her with contempt, and prescribed silence as her cardinal virtue. Their penalty was to lose the blessings that cultured womanhood does now, and can still more abundantly, confer upon man. St. Paul treats the sex with the severity accordant with its then character; but no vision is vouchsafed him of woman’s better future. The Spirit, however, in persistently bestowing upon woman the gift of prophecy, clearly indicated a gracious hope. Acts 2:18.

How the rabbins crushed woman with false exegeses of the Old Testament let the following quotation show, given by Wetstein from Kidduschim, folio 29, 2: “Whence is it proved to us that a mother may not be held to teach her own son? Because it is written in Deuteronomy 5:1, ‘Ye shall teach, and ye shall learn,’ the verbs being in the masculine. Whoever are commanded to learn are commanded to teach: whoever are not commanded to learn are not commanded to teach. That a woman is not commanded to teach herself, whence is it proved? From Deuteronomy 11:19, where it is said: ‘And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.’ Whence, also, is it proved that others should not teach a woman? Because it is said, Deuteronomy 11:19, ‘Ye shall teach them to your sons; it is not said, also your daughters.’ Megilla, fol. 23, 1. The wise men say: ‘Women should not read in the law for the sake of the honour of the synagogue.’ Bloomfield quotes Bammidhar rabba, sec. 9, fol. 204, 4, “A certain matron asked Rabbi Eleazar, ‘Wherefore were the Israelites, who committed but one crime about the golden calf, punished with a threefold penalty?’ Rabbi responded: ‘Women ought to know nothing but the distaff,’ as in Proverbs 31:19. The same rabbi also spake thus: ‘May the words of the law rather be burned than placed in the hands of women!’”

So the old Roman in Valerius Maximus, 1 Corinthians 3:8: “What has a woman to do with public haranguing? If our ancient customs prevail, nothing.” So the Greek Euripides: “For a woman silence, sobriety, and indoors, are a beauty.” Callistratus says, “The ornament of trees is foliage; of sheep, wool; of horses, the mane; of men, the beard; of women, silence.” A very extended anthology of such admonitions to women can be quoted from old eastern literature. The philosophy was the same as slavery taught in regard to negroes: keep them in ignorance and degradation, and then make that ignorance and degradation a ground of reproach, and a reason for still-continued ignorance and degradation.

The character of the women of Christian congregations in eastern Europe in the fourth century, under such a regimen, may be estimated by the following passages from Chrysostom: “Then, indeed, the women, from such teaching, kept silence; but now there is apt to be great noise among them, much clamour and talking, and nowhere so much as in this place. They may all be seen here talking more than in the market or at the bath. For, as if they came hither for recreation, they are all engaged in conversing upon unprofitable subjects. Thus all is confusion, and they seem not to understand that unless they are quiet they cannot learn any thing that is useful. For when our discourse strains against the talking, and no one minds what is said, what good can it do them?” Of present eastern women Dr. Anderson, on Oriental Churches, gives (vol. ii, p. 277) the following specimen describing an American missionary lady’s meeting with seventy or eighty females: “The chapel was nearly full of women, all sitting on the floor, and each one crowding up to get as near her as possible. They were very much like a hive of bees. The slightest thing would set them all in commotion, and they resembled a town-meeting more than a religious gathering. When a child cried it would enlist the energies of half a dozen women, with voice and gesture, to quiet it. When some striking thought of some speaker flashed upon the mind of some woman, she would begin to explain it in no moderate tones to those about her, and this would set the whole off into a bedlam of talk, which it would require two or three minutes to quell.”

Of the Palestinian women of the present day Mr. Thomson says: “Oriental women are never regarded or treated as equals by the men. This is seen on all occasions; and it requires some firmness to secure to our own ladies proper respect, especially from menservants. They pronounce women to be weak and inferior in the most absolute terms, and in accordance with this idea is their deportment toward them. Even in polite company the gentlemen must be served first. So the husband and brothers sit down and eat, and the wife, mother, and sisters wait and take what is left. If the husband or the brothers accompany their female relatives anywhere, they walk before, and the women follow at a respectful distance. It is very common to see small boys lord it over both mother and sisters in a most insolent manner, and they are encouraged to do so by the father. The evils resulting from this are incalculable. The men, however, attempt to justify their treatment of the women by the tyrant’s plea of necessity. They are obliged to govern the wives with the utmost strictness, or they would not only ruin their husbands, but themselves also. Hence, they literally use the rod upon them, especially when they have, or imagine they have, cause to doubt the wife’s fidelity. Instances are not rare in which the husband kills the wife outright for this cause, and no legal notice is taken of the murder; and, in general, the man relies on fear to keep the wife in subjection, and to restrain her from vice. She is confined closely, watched with jealousy, and every thing valuable is kept under lock and key; necessarily so, they say, for the wife will not hesitate to rob her husband if she gets an opportunity. There are many pleasing exceptions, especially among the younger Christian families. But, on the whole, the cases are rare where the husband has not, at some time or other, resorted to the lash to enforce obedience in his rebellious household. Most sensible men readily admit that this whole system is a miserable compensation to mitigate evils flowing from the very great crime of neglecting the education of females; and, during the last few years, a change has taken place in public sentiment on this subject among the intelligent Christians in Lebanon and the cities along the coast, and a strong desire to educate the females is fast spreading among them.” The Land and the Book, vol. i, p. 187.

What Teutonic Christianity will do for woman we do not predict. It will never cause her to cease to be woman; but as her sphere enlarges she may very possibly bring some things within the circle of gracefulness and modesty which were once rightly held a shame for women (1 Corinthians 14:35) to attempt. Even now women in the Lyceum are able to address an admiring audience in full accordance with the sense of a most fastidious propriety. And no women in modern times present more perfectly the ideal of female modesty than the women of that sect which has always had its female preachers the Friends.