Mary was curious tonight as to what the preacher would say on "The Woman of the Future." The Methodist Church had been a pioneer in the modern Feminist movement, having long ago admitted women to the full ordination of the ministry.Craddock, however, had been known for his conservatism in the woman movement.He abhorred the idea of woman's suffrage as a dangerous revolution and the fact that he consented to treat the topic at all was a reluctant confession of its menacing importance.
With keen interest, the girl saw him rise at last.A breathless hush fell on the crowd.He walked deliberately to the edge of the platform and gazed into the faces of the people.
"I have often been asked," he slowly began, "where I get my sermons." He paused and laughed."I'll be perfectly honest with you.Sometimes I get them from the Bible--sometimes from the book of life.The genesis of this talk tonight is very definite.I found it in the liquid depths of a little girl's eyes.She asked a simple question that set me thinking--not only about the subject of her query but on the vaster issues that grew out of it.She looked up into my face the other night after my call for volunteers for the new mission we are beginning in the slums of the East Side, and asked me if the girls were not going to be given the chance to do something worth while in this church's work.
"I couldn't honestly answer her off-hand and in my groping I forgot the child and her question.I saw a vision--a vision of that broader, nobler future toward which human civilization is now swiftly moving.
"I say deliberately that it is swiftly moving, because the progress of the world during the last fifty years has been greater than in any five hundred years of the past.
"The older I grow the stronger becomes my conviction that theproblems of the age in which we now live cannot be solved by masculine brain and brawn alone.The problems of the city and the nation and the great fundamental social questions that involve the foundations of modern life will find no solution until the heart and brain of woman are poured into the crucible of our test.
"They talk about a woman's sphere As though it had a limit: There's not a place in earth or heaven, There's not a task to mankind given, There's not a blessing or a woe, There's not a whisper yes or no, There's not a life, or death, or birth That has a feather's weight of worth Without a woman in it!
"The difference between a man and a woman is one that makes them the complementary parts of a perfect unit.God made man in His own image--male and female.The person of God therefore combines these two elements unseparated.The mind of God is both male and female.In man we have the strength which lifts and tugs and fights the elements.This is the aspect turned primarily toward matter.In woman we have the finer qualities of the Spirit turned toward the source of all spirit in God.The idea of a masculine deity is a false assumption of the Dark Ages.God is both male and female.
"I used to wonder why Jesus Christ was a man, until I realized that the Incarnation expressed the depth of human need.God stooped lower in assuming the form of man.The form of the divine revelation through Jesus Christ was determined solely by this depth of human need----"For half an hour in impetuous eloquence, in telling incidents wet with tears and winged with hope, he held his listeners in a spell.It was not until the burst of applause which greeted his closing sentence had died away that Mary Adams realized that another landmark had toppled before the onrushing flood of modern Feminism.The conservatism of Doctor Craddock had yielded at last to the inevitable.He, too, had joined the ranks of the prophets who preach of a Woman's Day of Emancipation.
And yet it never occurred to her that this fact had the slightest bearing on her personal outlook on life.On the contrary she felt in the spiritualelation of the triumphant eloquence of her favorite preacher a renewal of her simple religious faith.At the bottom of that religion lay the foundation of life itself--her conception of marriage as the supreme and only expression of woman's power in the world.
She walked back to her home on the Square, in a glow of ecstatic emotion.
Surely God had miraculously saved her this night from the wiles of the Devil! No matter what this eloquent discourse had meant to others, it had renewed her faith in the old-fashioned woman and the old- fashioned ways of the old-fashioned home.Her vision was once more clear.She was glad Jane Anderson had come to put her to the test.She had been tried in the fires of hell and came forth unscorched.
She stood beside her window dreaming again of the home she would build when her Knight should stand before her revealed in beauty no words could describe.The moon was shining now in solemn glory on the white- shrouded Square.Temptation had only strengthened the fiber of her soul.She knelt in the moonlight beside her couch and prayed that God should ever keep her faith serene.She rose with a sense of peace and joy.God would hear and answer the cry of her heart.The City might be the Desert--it was still God's world and not a sparrow that twittered in those bare trees or chattered on her window-ledge in the morning could fall to the ground without His knowledge.God had put this deathless passion in her heart; He could not deny it expression.She could bide His time.If the day of her deliverance were near, it was good.If God should choose to try her faith in loneliness and tears, it was His way to make the revelation of glory the more dazzling when it came.
She drew the covering about her warm young body with the firm faith that her hour was close at hand, and fell asleep to dream of her Knight.
