and if they made Eve listen to the serpent, gave Mary as a bride to the Holy Spirit.  In other nations it has been the same down to our day.”  In this extract, the Jewish nation and the Bible are referred to in the same tone that we refer to Mahommedans and to the Koran.  Is not this tendency perceptible elsewhere?  In looking at woman, we ignore the Bible, and God, and history, and talk of her as though the past had no influence with the present and future.  The Bible, God, and history have to do with the present and the future, and whoever studies history has been compelled to recognize the truth.  This same writer was compelled to declare, “It is the destiny of man, in the course of the ages, to ascertain and fulfil the law of his being, so that his life shall be seen, as a whole, to be that of an angel or messenger.”  This is his destiny, because it is God-given.  Hence man was the bearer of good tidings all along the past.  Prophets were generally men.  Christ was a man.  The apostles, Christ’s chosen standard-bearers, were men.  The powers in the moral and spiritual world are men.  All that is great in history, all that thrones one nation upon a mountain height and buries another in the fathomless grave of infamy, comes from man.  The ages were dark, because of the lack of a man.  Christ came, and the apostolic age became the noontime of the world, not because of what the race did for themselves, but because of what was done for the race.  If a nation sinks, because the man who has the brain, the wisdom, the power from God, is wanting, who shall build up a people in hope, inspire them with grand resolves?  It will rise and prosper when the man comes.  Christ was a necessity, because infinite work was to be performed.  Is he not a necessity now?  Is it not a man in Christ, and with Christ, who is ever the worker on the earth?  Christ speaks through the gospel, and “the key” of the moral universe is still upon his shoulders.  This hope and dream came to Eve way back there in the confines of the wilderness, and so incidentally as well as actually, she became identified with it, and rejoiced when she could declare, “I have gotten a man from the Lord,” whom she believed to be the “promised seed.”

Notice, to Eve, as to woman now, a baby was more than a little child; she saw in him all the possibilities of a man, who was to become a foe worthy to meet the enemy of her soul.  Her faith in this child to be born was similar to our faith in the Child that was born in Bethlehem.  Hence her joy when she exclaimed, “I have gotten a man from the Lord.”

It will seem to many as singular that there should be no mention of the daughters born of Eve.  The generations or names of men are given, but not of the daughters.  Even there and then the custom now prevalent in the East found its origin.  No account is made of the birth of a daughter in that land.  Congratulate a man upon the accession to the family of a daughter, and the father will hide his shame with difficulty, and exclaim, “O, that God had given me a son!”