The True Woman | Page 3

origin of man is proclaimed, and his work, "to fill earth and subdue it," is placed before him. In the second chapter, the relation of the sexes is given, and the nature of marriage is explained. What arrests the attention most surely is the resemblance that exists between the experience of our first parents and of their descendants, or between Adam and Eve and ourselves. The "It is not good for man to be alone," spoken by God in Eden, embodies a truth which has lived with the ages, and sets forth an experience felt by every son of Adam. The words "I will make for him a helper suited to him," is man's authority for the faith, that somewhere on the earth God has made a helper suited to him, whom he will recognize, and who will return the recognition. For in all true marriages, now as in Eden, the man and woman do not deliberately seek, but are brought to one another. Happy those who afterwards can recognize that the hand which led his Eve to Adam was that of an invisible God. Man knows that it is not good for him to be alone. Separated from woman's influence, man is narrow, churlish, brutal. Woman is a helper suited to him. With her help he reaches a loftier stature; for love is the very heart of life, the pivot upon which its whole machinery turns, without which no human existence can be complete, and with which it becomes noble and self-sacrificing.
Woman's origin is thus declared:--
"And Jehovah God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. And of the rib which he took from the man God formed a woman, and brought her to the man. And the man said, This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. This shall be called Woman, because from man was she taken. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be one flesh."[A] Woman was taken out of man. It is man's nature to seek to get her back. He feels that a part of him is away from him, until he obtains her. Long years before he sees the woman whom he feels God designed to be his wife, if he be a Christian, believing that she is on the earth, he prays for her weal.
[Footnote A: Gen. ii. 21-24.]
"_Taken out of man!_" How significant these words! Man, without woman, wants completeness--physically, mentally, and spiritually. First, physically. The fact is noticeable that short men often marry tall women, and tall men marry short women. Nervous men marry women who are opposites to them in temperament. This is not a happen so, for that which so often to the unreflecting mind seems unnatural and absurd, to the thinking soul appears as an evidence of God's provident care. Second, mentally. Man desires in his wife that which he lacks. A bookish man seldom desires a wife devoted to the same branch of literature, unless she works as a helpmeet. In taste and in sentiment there must be harmony without rivalry. They must bring products to the common garner, gathered from varying pursuits and from different fields of thought. In music the same law rules. Man, from his very nature, finds in woman a helper in song. Their voices blend in harmony, and give volume, symphony, and variety to the melody produced. Jenny Lind married her assistant, because in sympathy they were one. He was essential to her womanly strength, and without her, he was a mere cipher in the musical world. Together they were a power, felt and acknowledged.
A man full of thought and of genius requires for a wife, not only one who can understand his moods and enjoy his creations, but one who is content to take care of the home, and, perhaps, to manage the business affairs; while many a woman of genius and ability links her fortunes with a plain and appreciative husband, who gladly affords her every means in his power to work in her special sphere. When the wife refuses to act thus wifely, because of her talent, the happiness of the home is imperilled, and the children suffer quite as much, comparatively, as they do in those manufacturing neighborhoods where the wife forsakes the home for the shop, and gives up the vocation of woman to do the work which belongs to man. God made them male and female. He fitted each for separate duties, not for the same duties. Each fills a sphere when each discharges the duties enjoined upon them by their Creator and by society. Wonderful women there are;