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48 & her that the time has not yet come for me to resign; whereas she had felt most strongly that I ought to do it for my own sake. No, my dear, instead of my resigning and leaving those half-fledged chickens without any mother, I think it my duty and the duty of yourself and all the liberals to be at the next convention and try to reverse this miserable, narrow action. Y Anthony, 2:855. 1. Ida Harper made no reference to a date for this text that survives only as she edited it. The mention of three weeks since the vote against ECS suggests a date a week later than shown here. The similarity between the views expressed here and those in the previous letter to Clara Colby suggest this earlier date. ••••••••• 13 • ECS to the Editors, CRITIC 1 26 West 61st Street, New York, 29 Feb. 1896. To the Editors of The Critic:— On January 25th you printed a communication, signed Annie Bronson King2 (Oxford, England), in which the writers of “The Woman’s Bible” are attacked. They have published Part I., comprising comments on the Pentateuch, and are now busy on Part II., extending to the Book of Ezra. Our critic thinks that the women who compose the Committee are not fitted for the work they have undertaken.3 She says:— While the great scholars of Europe, the Oriental linguists, the anthropologists, the students of the monuments and the manuscripts, have been adding patiently, year after year, to the store of the world’s knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, their discoveries have been almost wholly ignored in the teaching which has been given to the great mass of the American people. Sometimes this learning has been drawn upon in the pulpit, but it cannot be denied that there has been no attempt to diffuse it by Sunday-school or Bible teaching. Had these women received that better understanding of the Bible which the patient toil of the nineteenth-century scholar has brought us, theirs had never been compiled. To appreciate what these learned scholars have done; to have gathered 10 february 1896 ^ 49 statistics for an intelligent opinion on this wide-spread ignorance of the American people,and with one glimpse of the comments on the Pentateuch to measure the capacity of the thirty women on the Revising Committee,altogether argues such varied and remarkable ability that we fain would urge Miss King to join us and infuse into our counsels the needed wisdom. She need not be ashamed of such coadjutors. The Committee consists of six authors of very good books, of a dozen public speakers, of three editors of well-established papers, of three Reverends, who graduated at theological seminaries with honors. It is fair to suppose they were well versed in historical data and Biblical criticism. They were ordained and established as pastors over congregations and have preached acceptably for many years. The capacity of the Committee is equal to the work proposed, which is simply to comment, in plain English, on the few texts relating to woman, and to ascertain her status, as a factor, in the Scriptures. As she is mentioned in only one-tenth part of the Old and New Testaments, the work is by no means Herculean.Moreover,as we accept the last version of 1888,the result of the labors of wise men in different centuries, there is no necessity of our being scientists,linguists,archaeologists learned in monuments and manuscripts.4 Reading the Book with our own unassisted common sense, we do not find that the Mother of the race is exalted and dignified in the Pentateuch. The female half of humanity rests under the ban of general uncleanness. Even a female kid is not fit for a burnt offering to the gods. Women are denied the consecrated bread and meat, and not allowed to enter the holy places in the temples. Woman is made the author of sin, cursed in her maternity, subordinated in marriage, and a mere afterthought in creation. It is very depressing to read such sentiments emanating from the brain of man, but to be told that the good Lord said and did all the monstrous things described in the Pentateuch,makes woman’s position sorrowful and helpless. The wife of the Scotch peasant, sitting in her cottage door, reading her Bible in the twilight hour, suggested a new trend of thought to the Bishop who asked her if she enjoyed the good...

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