By William Lyon Phelps

Although women are necessary to the welfare, progress and success of the Church, and although they are tireless workers in Church and Sunday School and tireless listeners to tiresome preachers, they seldom receive compliments from the pulpit. On the contrary: women are more often preached at than praised. Paul, who knew less about women than about anything else, was the first Christian minister to make the vain attempt of putting "woman in her place"; and many modern pastors, with no more knowledge, and considerably less ability, have embarked on the same fruitless and perilous enterprise. Women have been denounced from the pulpit for their hair, their hats, and their gowns; a subject of which the only man qualified to speak is not a clergyman, but a tailor.

It is high time that some preacher showed a little chivalry; and I, an amateur instead of a professional, will now do so. Women who read this sermon will find something to their advantage.

I like the retort made by a woman novelist to a critic. He: "Most women have no sense of humour. " She: "Well, what of it? Most men have no sense at all." If this be true, it might be historically accounted for by the child’s version of what happened in the Garden of Eden. "God made Adam and he was very lonely, so God put him to sleep, took out his brains and made a woman."

"Hope not for mind in woman," said the poet Donne; but when he wrote that, he was not looking for mind.

Fashions change, manners change, the idea of beauty in anatomy, architecture, and in all the arts changes, but characteristics of the ideal man; modesty, amiability, gentleness have always characterised the ideal woman.

Clever young women who think the surest way to popularity is through shock, would do well to remember that the essentials of character are the same in all times and places. I remember, in a once famous farce called A Trip to Chinatown, a dialogue between a pretty girl whose facial charm was exceeded only by her audacity, and an unscrupulous man of the world. She asked him several questions: "You find me beautiful? fascinating? Brilliant? You like to be with me?" To all of which enquiries she received an emphatic affirmative reply. Then she asked, "And you would like to marry me, would’t you?" "Not for gold or precious stones."

If an honest man is the noblest work of God, a good woman is the finest.

It is a rather curious fact that in the Old Testament the most famous women are villains, and in the New Testament the leading woman characters are saintly. I need only mention Jezebel and Delilah: Athaliah, more terrible than an army with banners; after these sinister persons, come Jael the murderer, and Deborah who glorified the cowardly deed; even the lovely and charming Ruth excelled chiefly in what is a second-rate virtue, obedience. But the New Testament women are immortal in their spiritual beauty. Mary the immaculate mother of Jesus; Mary Magdalene, the reformed harlot; Martha and her sister Mary, the first representatives respectively of low and high church; the woman of Samaria who spread the news of the living water; the sick woman who touched the hem of Christ’s garment; the poor widow who contributed all her fortune and her heart with it; the woman who was content with crumbs from the Master’s table; the woman who publicly blessed Christ’s mother; the women who followed Him to the cross, stayed there, and were the first to visit the tomb.

In addition to these, the work of Peter and of Paul could not have been successful without the support of woman. Women were just as necessary to the early church as they are now.

I do not understand why the fact that more women than men go to church should be regarded as counting against its value. The fact itself is more damaging to the men who stay away than it is to the church; but why should an assemblage of persons where women predominate connote intellectual inferiority? One minister complained to another that he could not get men to come to his services; and asked for his advice. The other said, "Why last Sunday I preached to an enormous audience composed entirely of men." It was in the county jail.

The truth is that the proportionate worth of any undertaking is usually indicated by the excess of women over men who are interested in it. Firstclass music is surely not despicable; at orchestra concerts the women vastly outnumber the men. Art exhibitions are not for silly and stupid people; there are ten women to one man who show their interest by attendance. On the other hand, at a prize-fight the men still outnumber the women; and at a cock-fight I am informed there are scarcely any women at all, and those few disguised in men’s clothes; so that their presence and support will seem natural.

It is often said that the interests of women are petty; that they read in the newspapers only the Social Column and the Fashion Page. Even if this is true, men’s interests are hardly on a grander scale; for men will read with avidity five columns in fine print consisting of details connected with upper-cuts, left hooks, and side-stepping.

Women love religion, music, art, and poetry because they instinctively know that those things are immortal, whereas forms of government, politics, stock quotations, are ephemeral. Women do not have to be told that music and all forms of imperishable beauty are interesting; they know it. There is an instinct in women that leads them infallibly to choose and possess the best things in life.

If you wish to interest the average man in some enterprise, you must show him there is something in it making for his personal material advantage, or at all events for the practical welfare of the community; but the average woman will respond to an appeal based on beauty or nobility.

It used to be said by those opposed to granting political privileges to women, that in war they were anyhow inferior; for war was exclusively man’s business. But since the days of Florence Nightingale – and even Lytton Strachey’s adroit wit has not been able to darken her fame- we know that man has succeeded in making war the business of women. Women do go forth to the scene of battle; but instead of going out to destroy, they go out to heal and restore. The Red Cross, the Hospital Nurses, illustrate how women, by crucifying themselves, have saved men.

In The Princess, Tennyson, although old-fashioned and over conservative, was eternally right in insisting on the natural fact that woman and man are different. "Woman is not lesser man," but quite another thing. Thus the attempts of women to resemble men are as vain as they are silly. Why on earth should a woman want to be like a man? Yet Tennyson, in a few lines that should be read at every marriage-service, said that men and women must learn from each other.

Men should acquire sympathy and tenderness without losing virility; women should acquire understanding and the unprejudiced breadth of outlook that is born only of intelligence.

Women ought to cultivate their mental powers; much more than they do now. It is a true indictment against women that giving them the vote in national politics has produced no appreciable effect – which means that they have manifested no intellectual independence. There is no reason women should vote the same ticket as that voted by their husbands and fathers; let them think for themselves.

They have not, in the main, taken the privilege of the ballot seriously. They ought to qualify for citizenship by hard and faithful study of public questions. The League of Women Voters has done much; but there are more men today who can tell why they vote a certain ticket than there are women.

In his gossipy poem, Old Pictures in Florence, Browning makes a comparison between the perfection of Greek art and the imperfection of the human mind. He says that because Greek art is perfect, it reached its goal; it was finished; it therefore cannot develop. The human mind is faulty and clumsy, but it is alive: it has within its imperfections the principle of eternal development. Therefore when we look at perfect Greek statues, we should not repine because our bodies are so far short of the ideal human frame; we should rejoice, because with all our imperfections, nay because of our imperfections, our minds have something finer than any form of perfection – the principle of development.

Too many women are worried or despondent about minor matters, while they regard serious defect with complacency. It is of course important that they should look as well as possible, and dress as becomingly as their means will allow; but these are not the most serious considerations. Many women (and men) are keenly concerned about their looks and their clothes; am I looking my best tonight? are my clothes right? When really they should ask themselves, have I got any brains? and if not, how shall I supply this deficiency?

Every one, says Browning, looks at a perfect statue, and soliloquises, "Ah, I wish I looked like that!" a vain and impossible wish. It is difficult, by taking thought, that is, by worrying about it, to add a cubit to one’s stature, or to change the curve of one’s nose, or to acquire sudden wealth; but every one can improve in mind and character.

The Pope said of Pompilia that she was just as truly an angel living on earth, dressed in her street clothes, as she was in heaven, clad in radiant garments. Innocence in love, beauty of aspiration, cleanliness of heart, often increase facial beauty. Byron, who had had sufficient experience of light women, reserved his highest tribute for carefree innocence and noble impulses.