1 Timothy 5

1 Timothy 5:6

THE SPECIAL OF WOMEN 1 Peter 3:1-6; 1 Timothy 5:6. DR. TALMAGE, when he was yet alive, said, “There are men who conclude that because man was made first and woman afterward, that woman was an incident in the universe, a sort of side issue.” He might have added that inasmuch as she was made from a mere rib from a man’s side, her secondary station was thereby suggested. But there is a positive argument which any woman suffragist would never forget, and the force of which even dexterous men would pause to deny, namely this—the order of creation in the Bible is from the lower to the higher, from grass to a man.God’s later work is in every instance His better work, and if that be true, man is not the climax of creation, but woman, for she was the last Divine endeavor.Again, it is more honorable to be made from the rib of a man than from the mud of the earth, hence women orators have the best of the argument.But whether one holds to the evolution theory or to the more biblical explanation of a direct creation, the one fact confirmed by either and each of them is voiced by Jesus when He said,“Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female, “And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh”? (Matthew 19:4-5). If that statement be accepted as absolutely accurate, then our question is answered. If they are one flesh, women are as much tempted as men, and by nature would yield to exactly the same temptations; but by breeding, education, domestic and social environment, their temptations become different and special.I have chosen to apply our first text toTHE OF Youth is a hungry thing: its appetite for meats is not greater than its lust for emotional excitement. It pants for pleasure as the hart pants after the water brooks.Girlhood has a natural love of pleasure. That fact invites no condemnation whatever. It is a pure result of human health and a natural expression of life in excelsis. The lamb is quite as frisky as the kid, although sheep are the Bible symbols of saints, and goats equally so of sinners. And the wholesome, high-minded girl has within her very physical, mental, and emotional nature the same gleeful spirit—leaping for expression—that plays in the heart and life of her vicious contemporary.

Jane Adams is right in reminding us that this very force will either lift up and transform those who are really within its grasp, and set them in marked contrast to those who are either playing a game with it or losing it for gain, or else this beneficent current will carry them in wrong channels and take them to death and destruction when it should have carried them into the safe port of domesticity. He is an unwise father, and she is an unwise mother, who seeks for ever to suppress the emotion, and curb, and possibly destroy, the natural expression of adolescence.

The Apostle does not say that she that loves pleasure is doomed thereby—let us not misinterpret him; he says, “She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth”; by which he means, of course, makes it the end and object of living.The danger is in abnormal development. The trouble is not that she loves pleasure; the trouble is that godless men and women, knowing that fact, have come to traffic in it. That is the explanation of dance halls and low theaters. The dance hall and the theater are not, and never were, a necessity born of youth’s love of pleasure. On the contrary, they represent solely the greed of gain. They were organized, not so much to meet a demand of the physical being, as to cultivate an appetite, and then fill the purse by feeding the same.It is a positive amazement to hear men speak of the drink-house as a social and physical necessity.

The social life of the saloon was never acceptable to any living mortal until his nature had first been vitiated; and it never catered to a natural appetite, but to a manufactured one. Not one boy in ten thousand is born with a lust for liquor; ninety-nine out of every hundred have been brought into such a lust by the vendors of beer and other intoxicants.

It exists, then, not to meet the necessity of its patrons, but to provide the luxuries for its owners; and as young men often take their first fatal steps in the saloon, so the majority of girls more often have their first suggestions of evil in the devilish dance-hall and the sensual show-house.If pleasure loving, then, is natural, pleasure living is peril. We have in this day some professed philosophers whose opinions are popular enough, who make up that crowd of near-eloquent, who are for ever discoursing upon living according to the natural bents of life. They are the fellows that have favored affinities instead of marriage; defended the saloon as the poor man’s club room; discoursed eloquently about the dance hall as the social center for the tenement house district, and the cheap theater as the school of art for the submerged; and all that, and all that!Why don’t they go the limit and say, “Since greed is a natural passion, gambling is to be the commercial order; since lust is a natural passion, pure love is to be abrogated; since anger is a natural passion, murder is but slightly immoral, if at all, and may be justified.” God pity the young woman who ever gives ear to such philosophies, or ever gives her thought over to the domination of such devilish suggestions. For awhile she may be going the giddy round, and it may look to the world as if she were having a good time; but the invariable end for her is written into the Apostle’s speech, “She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth”.Our second text looks more largely toTHE MARITAL It is addressed to women who live in the married relation, and the Apostle speaks particularly of three things—illicit love, foolish pride, and failing religion.Illicit love! “Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands”. Society is not as badly smitten today in its youth as it is in its adult life. The recklessness of the girl in the dance hall does not so much menace the state and nation as does the more covered, yet accomplished, flirtation of wives and mothers who have forgotten the biblical law of subjection to their own husbands.To be sure, the frivolities of the former make possible the fickleness of the latter; and the man who finds his helpmate in a dance-hall or ball-room, should not even be surprised when in later life she develops other affinities. He took her from the school of deception, where the black arts were at the head of the curriculum, and that which was begun as a comedy will terminate as a tragedy, and neither the solemn ritual of the Episcopal service, the sacred vows voluntarily assumed, nor the earnest prayer of the performing preacher can save the happiness of the contracting parties.Bobby Burns, when he was ready to plight his troth to Mary Campbell, met her at the brook Ayr. They bathed their hands in the water and put them on the boards of a Bible and took their solemn vows. On the cover of the Old Testament of that Book to this day is Robert’s hand-writing, and the very words of Lev 19:12, “Ye shall not swear by My Name falsely, * * I am the Lord”.And on the cover of the New Testament, in his own writing, the words of Mat 5:33, “Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths”.But Bobby went his way in dissoluteness and must have broken the heart of the girl who gave him her hand under the spell of so holy a promise.And yet, dissoluteness upon the part of a man is certainly not worse than that upon the part of the woman; and when the day comes that she forgets to obey Peter’s injunction, to “be in subjection to your own husbands”, and adopts an illicit love, attempt deception as she may; and though she seek by every art of feminity to keep up the outward appearances of loyalty, the day of judgment is at hand; domestic affection is slain, the evidences of the true home are undermined, and destruction will speedily sit before its hearth in full possession of the whole house. This is one of the temptations of marital life.But Peter speaks of another:Foolish pride!“Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel”. From time immemorial most ministers have treated this Scripture as if Peter objected to the braiding of the hair, or to the wearing of jewels of gold, or to the putting on of apparel. Not at all; Peter is not saying you should not do these things. He is saying you should not be foolish enough to imagine that they are your chief adornment when you have put them on. It may be possible that the woman who braided her hair in that time was like the woman who blondeens hers now. The very act was a hint of her character. If so, then Peter would enjoin against it. And in that day, as in this, the way a woman wears her jewels is but a hint of what she is at heart, and the way she puts on her apparel is almost a positive proof of her purity or impurity. I passed a girl in the street.

She had on a long and flashy black coat, and a white dress under it. The combination was striking to say the least. She had on a black and white hat that was a marvel of modern creative genius—or folly. It was set on the back of her head in order that nothing might escape her vision. She had a pure white dog at-the end of a black chain, and every fellow she passed turned and looked and made remark. The two nearest me, as she went by, said, “My, what a beautiful dog!” And positively they were not to be blamed.

The meaning of her whole makeup was unmistakable, and any woman who puts up her hair after such a manner, puts on her jewels after such a manner, and puts on her apparel after such a manner as to make her a passing mark, should not be surprised if she receives insult; and, as a rule, she is neither surprised nor displeased.But that is not the most insiduous and objectionable feature of feminine pride. Any sin that is sufficiently stamped is more harmless in consequence.

Positively the modern style of woman’s dress, approved now by the largest circle of the sex, raises the question as to whether much social sanity remains. Take the abbreviated skirt, as an instance. Respect for the American woman has been depreciated by her adoption of this French importation. I am not saying that the woman of this day should be forced back to the long skirt of forty summers since; but I am saying that when a woman cannot sit down in a street car or even in the holy sanctuary without exposing the nether portion of her body, she is coming powerfully near the transgression of the Divine law, “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man” (Deuteronomy 22:5). We have long had a saying that “one might as well be out of the world as out of style.” If this folly in woman’s dress goes much further, we will soon have a new one—“One might as well be in hell as in the style.”I know the folly of trying to bring the world to do the right thing. I might as well argue with the flesh and the devil, for these three are commonly classed together in Scripture.

But it would seem that Christian women need the injunction of the Apostle, for after all our squirming and twisting and arguing and explaining away our Bible, still we have it in plain language and we cannot get away from it.“I would that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair or gold or pearls of costly array; but, which becometh women professing Godliness, with good works”. We cannot help putting the question asked by the writer, “Is any woman’s apparel modest that exposes her person like the apparel of some church women does?

Is it any use for a woman to claim and profess ‘purity’ whose scant apparel is shockingly suggestive of impurity, or costly array destructive of good works of Godliness?” Shamefacedness does not spell “brazen facedness”. Will any question the truth of what the “Christian Standard” once said:“It is no more probable that the time is coming when it will be learned with amazement and sorrow of more than one professed Christian that the Holy Spirit was not joking when He prescribed the kind of dress the Godly should wear. There may be some serious dress accounts to settle in the day of the great Assize Court.”Falling religion! It calls upon them to reveal“the hidden man of the heart, m that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price”. The daughters of this generation can say what they like about the queer looks and homely appearance of the Puritan mothers, but we ask in all candor whether they expect to equal in character or in desirable accomplishments Harriet Newell, who gave herself to the redemption of India; Elizabeth Harvey who left her bright New England home for the life of Bombay, and the darkened heathenism, that she might illumine it; or Mrs. Lennox who breathed her last at Smyrna and cried as she faced her end, “Oh, how happy!” Or Mrs. Sarah D. Comstock, who sacrificed that she might save Burma, and who, when she gave up her children that they might come to America to be educated, kissing them, said, “Oh, Jesus, I do this for Thee.” Or even the mothers of the Wesleys, the Spurgeons, the Dwight Moodys, or the mothers of our Washington, our Jefferson, and Clay.It is an excellent thing that women have such character as to command respect under any and all environments, and such a religious purpose as to incite reverence in even Godless men.I stood in the chapel of Helen Chalmers in the most abandoned part of the city of Edinburgh, and I said as I looked upon the fearful surroundings, “Do you come here to hold services at night?” “O yes,” she said. “And do you never meet with an insult while performing this Christian: service?”To which she answered, “Never.” That young woman who has her father by her side, walking down the street with armed police at each corner, is not so well defended as that Christian woman who goes forth bearing in her very appearance the sign of the Cross, carrying in her heart the Word of God, and in her hand the Bread of Life.After all, the Apostle has struck the adornment that makes a woman the most blessed and safe in this world and gives promise of the next. It is that incorruptible apparel “of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price”.THE OLD TIME EXAMPLE “For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands”. The ancient woman’s example! As Sarah was an ensample to the women of Peter’s day, so the Godly mothers of yesterday are an ensample to the daughters of this hour. When I speak of “yesterday” I do not mean that all good women are in their graves; God forbid. But I do mean that the generation which gave us birth, however much we may have surpassed them in intellectual attainments, are yet our ensample in moral character and Christian accomplishments. One week I was called to visit three such women, members then of this body of believers, each of them upon a bed of affliction, and each perhaps nearing the end by reason of age. I speak of Mother Mears, Mother Russell and Mother Daniels. The mention of these names puts the spirit of reverence upon every youthful woman of this congregation who ever came into contact with them; and if she have a virtue left, compels her to say, “Let my last days be like theirs, so far as character and righteous conduct are concerned.” Deborah’s description is applicable here, “Mothers in Israel”, ensamples to younger women they were.Their adornment has been of the diviner sort.Trusting in God, they have“adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: “Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are”. I went once upon a time into a house, the fortunes of which represented millions, and met there the mother and daughter. When the dinner was over and the evening had passed, and I was at my home, I was compelled to say, “That young woman was well dressed and good looking and an excellent conversationalist; but the true adornment of that house was in the mother’s quiet spirit, evident character and unquestioned accomplishments.And just as there is many a lad who thinks his father is an old fogy because he does not speak first class English, notwithstanding the fact that that father’s truer education is the outcome of sixty summers and his accomplishments have made the lad’s blessings possible, so there is many a lass or youthful married woman who laughs at the old time ideas of the grandmother in the home, when for her own sake she should be sitting at her feet, and learning of her how to be clothed in the incorruptible apparel “of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price”.I believe, as Dr. Talmage said, that such accomplishment is a certain product of allowing Christ to take full possession of the soul, remembering, “He would be your Friend in every perplexity, would comfort in every trial, would defend in every strait. And I do not ask you to bring, like Mary, the spices to the sepulcher of a dead Christ, but to bring your all to the feet of a living Jesus. His Word is peace. His look is love.

His hand is help. His touch is life. His smile is Heaven. O come then, in flocks and groups! Come like the morning light tripping over the mountains. Wreathe all your affections on Christ’s brow; set all your gems in Christ’s coronet; let this Sabbath hour rustle with the wings of rejoicing angels and the towers of God ring out the news of souls saved.”“This world its fancied pearl may crave, ’Tis not the pearl for me; ’Twill dim its luster in the grave, ’Twill perish in the sea. But there’s a pearl of price untold Which never can be bought with gold; O that’s the pearl for me.”