Esther 1

Esther 1:12

WOMAN’S RIGHTS IN THE HOMEEst_1:12THIS general theme of “Woman’s Rights” has not been selected simply for the sake of attracting women to these services, as you have long been here in great numbers, but because the general subject is one most worthy of attention, one in which the Bible itself takes great interest.Preachers are wont to address any number of sermons to men; sometimes to men only, and quite often to young men. I wonder why we have been so partial to the stronger sex. The sisters are oftener at church, more attentive to the Word, and deserve discourses addressed specifically to them. It is no wonder that the little girl, who went to some “Women’s Rights” meetings, and listened to the oratory of the seniors of her sex, came away feeling that they were neglected indeed, and made up her mind to observe and see how the preachers behaved regarding the matter. It was not long ere she returned from church indulging righteous wrath, and said, “Mamma, I do not see why our preacher cannot be fair. He is always saying ‘Amen’, and I think a part of the time, at least, he ought to say ‘Awoman’.”That is my purpose for this evening to say “A-woman”, and so far as able, compel my sex to consider her and her rights.I wish Ahasuerus were yet alive, and here present, that I might say to him some things he ought to have heard; but it is enough that his tribe is not yet extinct.

There are too many men that despise all the rights of women, calling in question anything on their part that can possibly cross the masculine will, and so long as this is true our subject is apropos.There are some of the greater rights of women in the home that we wish to mention this evening.TO PROTECT HER OWN PERSONThat is a woman’s right. If lascivious Herodias cares to appear in scant dress and dance before Herod and his bloated lords, that is her own business, and the responsibility is hers as well; but when Vashti declines to do the same, no man, not even her husband, the king, has any moral right to require it.

The genuine modesty of this woman ought to send our applause back across the centuries. One of the most sacred things to woman is her sex, and the man who despises that, and seeks only the satisfaction of his own lust, or the favor of his coarse comrades, is degraded himself; and no virtuous woman is under obligation to regard his will or obey his word.It is claimed by some of our social purity workers that there are men, not a few, who are content to live on the enforced sale of a wife’s shame. I never knew but one such, and the sight of him used to stir in me all the mingled contempt and rage that one ought to feel in seeing the noble name of man worn by such a thing.There are other points at which women have a right to protect their own persons.The Scriptures say, “As the Church is subject unto Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands in every thing” (Ephesians 5:24), and there are not a few men who seem to be familiar with this passage and base their prerogatives upon it, who are purposely ignorant of the passage that follows, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it”.We have gone into homes where a weak woman shook with fear at the approach of the man she had sworn to love, simply because, in his selfishness, he regarded not her personal rights, nor gave any consideration to her sufferings of mind or body. I know of no martyrdom so terrible as that where woman is wedded to what she supposed to be a man, but what she has discovered to be a fiend.There is much on this subject that we should like to say; but it is perhaps better suggested than elaborated, and so we pass the matter with the repeating remark, that it is woman’s right to protect her own person.TO QUEEN IT IN HER OWN PALACEEvery woman’s home is her palace, however humble. It is, or at least it ought to be, the place of her throne. There she has special authority.

We do not say she is the head of the house. The Scriptures themselves oppose that modern woman-man-nishness which we see sometimes to our disgust.

Nothing unsexes her so much as to seek to be the “boss”, employ herself with budgets of commands, and watch with imperial mien to see if they are executed. The true woman is willing to be counselled by, and is pleased to obey her husband, if he is fit for his office. She rejoices in him as the head of the house, provided he has a head of his own, with any hard sense in it; but, as some one has remarked, “Even so, she is the neck of the home, and a wise husband lets her turn him about very much.”There is a good story told of a Scotchman, who, at the marriage altar, insisted upon changing the clergyman’s service, whereby he could promise to obey his wife, instead of the usual formula. The clergyman was loathe to accept the alteration, but finally consented. A few years later John met him in the streets, and reminded him of the formula under which he entered into the marriage contract, and said, “Ye were nair disposed to let me, but I was right, as ye can see now, since I’m the only man in the hale town that auns his own huse.”“Husbands, love your wives” and you will cease commanding. Take counsel with them and the happy courtship days will come back.

It is their right to give counsel as well as accept it, and it is no more your right than theirs to give commands.There are not a few questions that come up in the administration of every well regulated home touching which wisdom is with women. Perhaps the most serious problem of every model house is that of influencing for good, properly educating the minds and expanding the hearts of the God-given children.

In that whole question, the average woman knows more in a minute than man could learn in a month, and I feel with Dr. Gifford, “that the husbands of this day have largely made scapegoats of their wives upon whom to lay the sins of the children, and ‘have them carried out of their sight.” While there is no defense of that, some of us are still grateful for the fact that when as boys, growing up with teasing sisters and trying brothers, and having our good temper often put to a test, our fathers used to say, “Here, mother; come to your children”, and she came, and under her hand things were set to rights.The sound-minded mother makes the most serious impression upon the children, physical, mental and moral; and it is no fool’s trick for a husband to commit his own children so largely into their mother’s keeping. The world would be poorer, and darker today, if Mrs. Luther had had less to do with Martin’s training; if Mother Wesley had turned over Charles and John to their father’s hand; if Mother Washington had enjoyed less liberty in educating George; if Mrs. Spurgeon had died when Charles first saw the light; if Mrs. Adams had had less to do with the education of John Quincy; if Mrs.

Beecher had not practiced her Puritan principles upon Henry Ward; if Mrs. Breckenridge had put those three prominent preachers, her sons, in another’s hands; and so we might go on naming almost every great man of the past or present, and saying, as one said of John Quincy Adams, “I know now who made you what you are, for I have just read your mother’s biography.”When Mrs.

Wesley was dying, she turned that calm Christian face to her children, and said, “Dears, when I am gone, sing a song of praise unto God.” There was never a better occasion for the long-meter doxology than the life and counsels of such a mother as God had given.TO CONTROL HER CONDUCT BY HER OWN It is hers to think and act for herself. She is capable of both. The time is passed when men arrogate to themselves the claim of all the brains. Our sisters in college have too often swept the prizes from us; in trade, have shown us how to be shrewd; in professions, have proven their genius.You know it was told of Senator Ingalls, that one of his colleagues in the house, seeing him in a meditative position, punched his associate and said, “See, Ingalls is thinking.” “No,” replied the comrade, “he only thinks he is thinking”, but the man who so regards woman will yet wake to his error. She is thinking. She has a right to think, and if civilization continues, that right will yet be regarded the world around; and as they think, they act.Dr.

Henson once said, “The fantastic featherhead fool that some people call the modern woman is a trial to the eyes”; still, the genuine new woman, the woman who is the product of our latest civilization, and our highest Christianity is an individual for whose sweet-tempered independence God ought to be praised. She thinks for herself.

She acts for herself. She ought so to do, or else man ought never for one moment charge her with sin. Sin, and its opposite, righteousness, can only be predicated of the independent person.There is a saying in the Talmud that puts to shame some of our modern mannish conceptions. It runs like this: “Woman was made out of a rib taken from the side of a man; not out of his head to rule him; not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be his equal; from beneath his arm to be protected; from near his heart to be loved.”Finally, it is a woman’s right in the home,TO FREELY ENJOY HER If there is one thing of which my sex is guilty that makes me ashamed, it is that oft discovered opposition to woman’s Christian convictions. If I were asked what is the chief agent of evil among the unchurched women of our cities, what the mightiest influence in keeping wives from accepting Christ, uniting with the church and engaging in Christian service, I think I should be compelled to answer, “Godless men.”You will find in half of the unchristian houses the wife is a secret disciple who would joyfully speak her convictions and accept the Lord’s commission of service, if her husband would willingly consent. Some men seem to think it an evidence of their superiority to show themselves “boss” about the business of religion, and it is not an unusual thing for me to meet a woman who says, “My husband says I shall not attend church”.

That is a “bossism” concerning which even vile men ought to blush, and regarding which good men are righteously indignant. When in passing the streets, you see a big boy bullying a little one, you find it hard to refrain from taking a hand, and when one becomes familiar with the conditions in a home and discovers that the husband is that same big boy, grown up to one hundred sixty or seventy pounds, and possibly to forty of fifty, years, and now bullies his wife, your sense of outrage is only intensified.Then there are husbands who are too cultured to assume any such positions, but who slyly give the wives to understand that they do not want any religion in the home.

Their opposition is more often expressed in a look than by language, and a curl of the lip than by a cross-fire of words. The methods of these are more humane, but not more tolerant, scarce more kind even than those of their bullying brethren.We do not say that a man should be indifferent to his wife’s convictions, any more than he should be indifferent to anything else that affects her life, but we do find it impossible to lend anything of sympathy to any man, angel or devil who opposes what he himself knows to be right; and that many of these know the wife’s convictions to be right, there is no question.Some years ago, a poor, disconsolate, discouraged woman came to the pastor’s study and told him how her husband had said that she should not again attend the church services. The pastor went to visit him in consequence, and on the second visit, he confessed that he knew Christianity to be right, was convicted of sin himself, and had only opposed his wife because he had been unwilling to let Jesus Christ convert him, and had rather desired to let the devil’s bidding be done in his life.In Chicago we baptized a sorrowful household, a sister of the one deceased, and also the bereft husband. Their acceptance of Christ was not that joyful experience through which so many pass, but a tearful turning about from the way in which they had been walking, and the occasion of their sorrow was this, that the dear woman who had died, had a year before begged to be baptized, and they had rather opposed than approved.The darkest hour that can ever come into your life, my brother, if you be in love with your wife, will be the hour when you follow her corpse to the burial and bid her good-bye, while memory reminds you that you suppressed, by spoken or silent opposition, her convictions of right, cheated her out of the privilege of confessing Jesus Christ, and rendered it impossible for her to offer herself in service to the One she so much loved.Such action is also the more inexplicable in view of what Christ has done for women. I once read, “The World Through a Woman’s Eyes”, by Miss Ackerman, and unless one is dead to all the finer sentiments of human life, he must hate with intense hatred the heathenism that debases, disregards, and destroys women in China, Japan and Africa; and love with larger and larger affection the Lord Jesus Christ, whose truth has put her upon the pedestal of honor, virtue and happiness she enjoys in Christian lands. Every particle of pleasure, pure and simple, into which the younger and older women in any country can come, is only possible because of what Christ has said and done.

Is it any wonder that they should love Him? The most amazing marvel is that any woman could be content to lead a Christless life.In some measure, this may account for the fact, to which Dr.

Talmage has somewhere called attention, “that woman is in the vast majority in our churches”; “three-fourths”, he says, “of our church-members are women.” I doubt that; but nobody doubts their majority. He continued, “So God puts them to be the chief agents in bringing this world back to God. I may stand here and say the soul is immortal. There is a man here who will refute it. I may stand here and say, ‘We are lost and undone without Christ.’ There is a man here who will refute it. I may stand here and say, ‘There will be a judgment day after a while.’ Yonder is some one who will deny it!

But a Christian woman, in the Christian home, living in the faith and constancy of Christ’s Gospel, nobody can refute that. The greatest sermons are not preached on celebrated platforms, they are preached with an audience of two or three, and in private home life.” The one argument that breaks down the barrier, overcomes natural stubbornness and sweetly subdues the spirit of many a man, is his Christian wife.The story is told of an elevated railroad man, who said to the man standing out on the platform, “Did you see that, mister?” pointing to a window where three little children, in their night-dresses were kneeling at a trunk, and over them the mother was bending. “Yes”, added the man, “I did.

What does it mean?” “Well, sir, it means this, that those babies are about to go to bed, and before they go, she teaches them to pray for me. Yes, sir, and she brings them there every night so that I can see them, and,” he added, as a half sob stifled his words, “she has told me what she tells them to say.” “What?” inquired the auditor.“Well; sir, you may think me foolish, that I’m so overcome, but I guess you are a married man and a father, and you know. My train goes by just at nine, and at that moment she brings the little ones up to that trunk and she makes them kneel down there, with their hands clasped, and their faces toward Heaven, and she tells them to pray.” “For you?” asked his companion. “Yes, sir; you are right; they pray for me. They pray that papa will be good and kind and sober, and bring home all his money, and give his heart to Christ.” The big guard’s voice trembled, but he continued with an effort, “I’m rough and tough, and all that; but I love her, and them, and they are the only ones on this earth who can keep me straight. Bless her, if ever I’m a Christian, it will be her—God’s angel— who saved me. Good-night, sir”, and the man left the train, but went knowing how tender was the heart of the guard, touched, not by theology, not by preaching from the pulpit, not by a study of the Word of God from a printed page, but from his knowledge of that living epistle, her he loved, even his wife.You men who are without salvation tonight, and have Christian wives, should recognize their rights to entertain their Christian convictions, and should despise not their efforts to bring you to the salvation that is in the Son of God, so that when the train of time shall have stopped and you step off of it into eternity, the home that you had here will be translated and transfigured there, and eternity will be none too long for you to experience this holy joy.