“Whomsoever else you deceive, whomsoever else you injure, whomsoever else you leave unaided, you must not deceive, nor injure, nor leave unaided according to your power any woman whatever, of whatever rank.  Believe me, every virtue of the highest phase of manly character begins and ends in this, in truth and modesty before the face of all maidens, in truth and reverence or truth and pity to all womanhood.”

Can we doubt or question this, we who worship Him who came to reveal the true man quite as much as to reveal the only true God—­the real manhood beneath the false, perishable man with which it is so often overlaid by the influence of society and the world?  Look at His attitude towards women, ay, even Eastern women, who had not been ennobled by centuries of Christian freedom and recognized equality of the sexes, but who, on the contrary, belonged to a nation tainted to some degree with that Eastern contempt for women which made a Hindu answer the question of the Englishman, perplexed by the multiplied of Indian gods and sects, “Is there no point of belief in which you all unite?” “Oh, yes,” the Pundit replied, “we all believe in the sanctity of cows and the depravity of women!”

These Eastern women, therefore, had much to enslave and lower them; but see how instantly they rose to the touch of the true Man, just as they will rise, the women of to-day, to the touch of the true manhood of your sons, if you will train them to be to us such men as Jesus Christ was.  See how He made women His friends, and deigned to accept their ministry to His human needs.  Many severe rebukes are recorded from His lips to men, but not one to a woman.  It was a woman, ay, even a degraded woman, who by her kisses and her tears smote the Rock of Ages and the water of life flowed forth for the world, who won for the world the words:  “He who hath been forgiven much loveth much,” and the burden of guilt is changed into the burden of Love.  It was to a woman He first gave the revelation of life, that He first revealed Himself as the Water of Life, and first uttered the words, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”  It was women who remained faithful when all forsook Him and fled.  It was a woman who was the last to whom He spoke on the cross, to a woman that the first words were spoken of His risen life.  It was a woman He made His first messenger of the risen life to the world.  Nothing in the life of the true Man on earth stands out in more marked features than, if I may venture to use the words, His faith in women, as if to stamp it forever as an attribute of all true manhood, that without which a man cannot be a man.