Satan has always manifested a peculiar hatred for woman. Just why, it is hard to say. It is quite possible that it is because she has superior qualities to man. The enemy, no doubt, realizes that she is really the more game fighter of the two. That if he does get her, it is no trick at all to get the man. In fact, that if he can capture the woman, she will capture the man! That she possesses instincts that are far and away more sensitive and dependable than man has, and that these instincts normally are in deadly opposition to evil, and can detect it, and sense it, where man is totally blind to it. That she will instinctively take alarm and fly, or hasten her loved ones away from hidden wickedness, snares and danger; whereas, man, without her assistance, will walk, stupidly, blindly, like the simpleton that he is, right into the ruin set for his feet.
All of this has a tremendous significance, when one considers that when Satan set out to tempt the human pair in the Garden of Eden, he seemed to realize, with diabolic cunning, that it was possible for him to get the man, easily enough, but that even then, he might fail to get the woman. And that if he did fail to get her, it was a stand off as to whether she would win the man back, or whether he, Satan, would be able to keep him in bondage. As a consequence, he totally ignored the male of the species, and subtly directed his shrewd assault on the female. Watching for an opportunity when she was alone, he donned the most attractive garb that was then known. He took the form, not of the serpent that we know today, but of that which the creature by that name possessed in the day when creation was young. That creature was able, apparently, to talk, was beautiful attractive, and in some sense, no doubt, a companion of mankind. Under the guise of this charming creature, Satan approached the woman.
He made no frontal attack on her, but with a subtle finesse that commands our utmost respect for his wisdom and shrewdness, he attacked her faith in the great Creator who had brought her into being and placed her in the beautiful garden where she found herself. He artfully insinuated that God was purposely prohibiting her and her husband from tasting the fruit of a certain tree, because God knew, so Satan alleged, that it was eminently calculated to make them wise, and thus, if they ate, they would invade God’s own domains of wisdom. He artfully planted a half-truth, that was more deadly than any whole lie could be, in the heart of the woman. Her natural instincts of danger were lulled to rest, she entertained the doubt as to God’s goodness, and also as to His truthfulness. She allowed herself, gently flattered, cajolingly induced, with the promise of wisdom and seductively encouraged by this great author of all lies, all murders, and all evil generally, to disobey God’s direct command!
The deed was done! Satan had captured the woman! Did he reason rightly when he had decided that if he could get her that it would be easy enough to get the man? He did! For, there was apparently no effort made by the enemy to capture the man. After the woman had fallen victim to his subtle snare, she, as Satan felt sure she would, led her husband without an effort, into the same sorry mess! From that day to this, the condition of womanhood of the world, has been a very accurate index of the condition of mankind.
No history anywhere records the ascent of mankind, by leaving the female human in bondage, degradation or ruin. As long as womankind remains ruined, mankind struggles in vain against the same shackles of ruin that encompass his sex-partner. If she sins, she invariably drags him into sin with her. If her ideals are low, his are never any higher. If she is a slave she always succeeds in making it slavery for two, instead of for herself alone. If she damns herself, she also damns him just as effectively. Strong though he is, he has little or no strength on the side next to her. Created from one of his ribs that, when it was his, imprisoned his heart-beat, she continues, though a complete entity now, herself, in imprisoning, controlling, and entirely dominating that same heart-beat. The womanhood of the race, holds in her hands, the destiny of the race! She cannot affect the destiny of the race, except by changing her own destiny. When she rises in morals, man rises with her. When she advances in ideals, the male of the species follows. Like the governor of an engine when tightened, the speed of the wheels is accelerated, when loosened, it is retarded, so with womankind. When she tightens the moral and idealistic thumb-screws of her own sex, the wheels of the progress of mankind are accelerated, but when she loosens them, those wheels automatically are retarded.
After her fall in the garden, Satan proceeded to further degrade womankind. Among the pagan nations she rapidly deteriorated. Soon, instead of mating in pairs, as the Creator had intended, man, exercising his brute strength, whipped as many females into his harem, as he could control. The best days that Greece, Rome, Egypt, Chaldea and pagan Asia or Europe ever knew, saw nothing but slavery for women. When a man tired of a woman he frankly kicked her out of his harem, and she wandered about in the world of slaves, adding a trifle more corruption to an already putrid mass. When their women died, there was little or no mourning; men simply “girded up their loins,” and forcibly took one from a less powerful neighbor, or slew an enemy and led that enemy’s women to his own stockade, or traded frankly with a friend for his eligible daughters. Slavery began first by enslaving the women captives taken in war. From that, to male slavery was only a step. Pagan womanhood, held in disgusting slavery, naturally worked the further doom of their masters, the men, and through their own children, trained thus, fastened the shackles upon the female sex, the more firmly. The only faint streak of light in the manner that paganism treated its womankind, was the taking of a legal wife, because of the desire of men to have an heir, who could legally inherit the goods of his sire, and thus take precedence among the numerous progeny. This led to the arrangement of the legal wife, who headed, after a fashion, the more or less numerous harem of women who constituted the female belongings of any individual. To this legal wife was accorded a little better treatment than was the lot of the rest. To her was given a trifle of decent attention, when her lord and master was so disposed. But even this legal wife, had few rights that any man was bound to respect, and she was shunted hither and thither, according to the mood of her marital owner.
Among the Hebrews the lot of womanhood was almost ideal, when compared to that of the women of outside paganism. But even among the Israelites there was vast room for improvement. Polygamy obtained, and concubinage was rampant. Divorce was easy, and while adultery was severely punished, nevertheless, under strange and peculiar rules of so-called religious devotement, there was a species of adultery that was winked at, and altogether too generally practiced. By the time that Christ came, even the New Testament admits, that of a certain crowd that stood before Him, vehemently accusing a certain woman taken in adultery, that when He shot a test at them, not one from the oldest to the youngest was able to abide its rigor. Of that crowd, there seemed not to be one that was not as guilty as the woman.
As paganism degenerated into heathenism, the lot of womanhood declined with it. Marriage became merely property holding. A so-called wife had the same rights that a dog, or a horse, or a weapon had. As long as she ministered to his gratification, and dragged herself to the menial tasks that fell to her lot, she was tolerated by her husband. When she did not, she was murdered or turned out to die as useless, or traded off to some other man who was not prosperous enough to possess anything better. The custom of borrowing, exchanging, and stealing wives was everywhere practiced.
From the first queenly stand that was given to woman in the dawn of creation, by her husband’s side, partner with him in the equal share of the vicissitudes of human existence, down, down, the devil had degraded her, to the lot of a miserable cast-off slave, fit only for vilest purpose, and doomed to starvation, suicide, or murder, when her dreary life was done. That is what womanhood owes to the devil. One would think that every woman in all the broad land would rise up and combat satanic machinations, with all her female fury. >From a beautiful queen in a gorgeous garden, Satan had led her to a filthy diseased hovel, lorded over by a brutal male who beat her, kicked her, hated her and finally murdered her!
There can he no manner of doubt, but that the advent of Jesus Christ saved womanhood. Not only saved the souls of those who accepted and believed on Him, but brought the whole human race to see, at least wherever the gospel light has spread at all, that woman’s place is not at man’s feet, but is at his side. That she is his equal. That she is a “help-meet” to him. That her almost supernatural instincts are for his, as well as her own, protection. That she is, with counsel and affection, to lead him, as much as he with strength and manly wisdom is to protect, cherish and support her.
Despite the cavilings of Modernism, and the mawkish drivel that evolutionists constantly spew forth, sober history will apprise anyone who will read and heed, that Christianity saved the womanhood of the race. There was no civilization worthy of the name, until a Christian civilization came into being as a result of the teachings of Jesus Christ. And while that civilization is many leagues behind either Him or His teachings, nevertheless it has caught enough of His spirit, and listened intently enough to His glorious foot-fall, as He walks the centuries, that it has liberated its womanhood, wherever the light of the glorious gospel of the Son of God has even faintly penetrated. Where Christ is known, and honored, and believed in, there is womanhood again, as in the creation’s morning, taking her stand by the side of her man, and walking forth as queen again of the realm of which he is king. Compare, if you will, the condition of womanhood today, among the nations who have known nothing of Jesus Christ, and then again among those who have known something of Him, albeit, their knowledge is sadly deficient. In one you will find her as she is here painted among the heathen, by this writer. In the other you will find her at man’s side, participating as an equal in all things that make for happiness and success in the great human adventure of life. Reader, keep this sentence burning bright in the corridors of your mind: Jesus Christ Saved Womanhood!
It is of the greatest interest to analyze the effect that the degradation of womanhood had upon the human race. It was, in reality, a deprivation to humanity of the female contribution. The attributes of the race are divided between the sexes. Man’s contribution, viewed in a large way, is masterfulness, courage, vigor, power. The qualities that make the warrior, the defender, the subjugator of wild animal life, that tears down the forest, that uproots the soil, that rears the logs, or piles the stone for a cabin home. He is created for the battle, either with wild life, or wilder nature, and now in civilization’s palmy days, for the battle with the hidden forces of earth, sea, sky and air, or the intricate currents of commerce and trade. He loves to conquer. He is made for masterful supremacy! The woman’s contribution to the race is charm, grace, affection, maternity, tenderness. She was never created to be a warrior, but to look into the eyes of her chosen knight with such affection and confidence as to fire all the martial ardor in his soul, and cheer him on as he enters the field of battle, waving a fluttering garment to him from the battlements, and nursing him back to strength, if he returns wounded from the fight. She is not made to defend, but to be defended, inciting her champion to deeds of desperate valor, by her affection and enthusiasm. She is not made to tear down forests, but to care for the man who returns to her side weary with the conflict with wild nature. She piles no stones for a cabin home, but enters it, after it has been builded, and with the charm, touch, taste and intuition that only womanhood knows, makes the rude piles of stone, blossom into a home, with flowers hiding the cold walls, fire warming its interior, and savory food that ministers to the strength of the man who reared the cabin for her. And now in the palmy days of civilization, she is still to be man’s “helpmeet.” For that she was created. The union of the contribution of the man and the contribution of the woman, in holy harmony, makes the complete human, the ideal home, the divine environment, from which springs the new generation.
But paganism, and heathenism robbed the human race of woman’s contribution. She lost her charm, when man enslaved her. Degraded, bullied, bought and sold, hated, kicked out, turned out to die like an old horse, used as a plaything, a puppet, a chattel, deceived, despised, she lost her grace, her charm, her affection, her maternity (in everything but that merely of the flesh), her tenderness, in short, her womanhood. Oh, what a grievous impoverishment that was to the race! Despised by man, she returned the contempt in ten fold measure. Hated, she out-hated her hater! Bullied, she, with intuitive instinct, out-witted her bully! Sold, she damned the man who sold her, as well as the one who bought her! Living, she made willing contribution to a deeper damnation than the race had known before, and dying she left her malignant curse on the children who succeeded her! Oh, how the race is ruined, when its womanhood is ruined!
Compare the godly, sanctified, virtuous, womanhood of the Christian portion of America, England, Germany, or any other nation today, with the best sort of womanhood that pagan Rome, Greece, Egypt, Chaldea Syria, or any other ancient so-called civilized nation ever produced, and the comparison will only be a contrast. Compare a charming sanctified womanhood today with the womanhood of Africa, China, Japan, India, or any other heathen land, and tell us whether Jesus Christ has not saved womanhood! For the ancestry of our sanctified women of today, followed back far enough, will blend into the paganism and heathenism of other lands and other days, before their forebears were touched with the teachings of Jesus Christ. Christianity brought their ancestry out of heathenism!
But the devil isn’t dead, and he has not given up the fight. He hates womanhood as much since woman gave birth to the Son of God, who raised her from the depth of degradation, as he did before that birth took place. He is her sworn foe. He still feels that if he can somehow damn woman he will not need to damn man. Realizing that he cannot expect again to degrade her to the depth of infamy and hellish horror from which Jesus Christ rescued her, he has again brought his amazing subtlety to bear on the situation, and now proposes to induce womankind to advance as far beyond her position as man’s helpmeet, as formerly he degraded her beneath it. He has commissioned three unclean spirits like frogs, to go out into the womanhood of the present day civilization, and induce them to declare their independence of mankind, of conventionality, and of created requirement. In other words, Satan, with his accustomed shrewdness, has again set out to rob the race of the feminine contribution. This time he will inflate her head, and push her beyond mankind; as he formerly submerged her beneath him!
What do we see, then, around us today? A restless womanhood! She will not be a female, she will ape the male! She will de-sex herself! She will wear man’s clothes, cut her hair man fashion, don coat, vest and tie! She will smoke, drink swear, use cuss words, swagger, run the streets at night, play bandit, carouse, climb inaccessible mountains, swim sea-races, hunt big game in the jungles, ride with strange men in automobiles at midnight, drive racing cars at state fairs, execute daredevil curves in flying machines, paint her cheeks like a savage … use lip-stick … display bare arms, bosoms with only a suggestion of covering, bare limbs showing above her knees or with flesh colored stockings, and spiked-heeled shoes, she shows, in place of feminine charm, the lure of the painted savage, instead of grace, the ogling, and the snake-contortion of the “geisha girl” of Japan, instead of affection, sentimental affection, instead of maternity with its happy suggestions of home and children, a board-like angularity, upon which suggestions of clothing cling, and now they have so unsexed themselves, as to become no longer women, but mere sexless, mannikins. They no longer woo mankind, but rush upon him with brazen sentimentality, slobber their kisses on all and sundry, and offer their priceless womanhood to any chance passer-by, who can treat like a lord, and plank down the shekels for dope, drink, coffin nails, and other cabaret excesses, and accessories! “Why shrink from marriage,” they cry, “tomorrow will bring a divorce, and a fresh sex-thrill, the next day!
What does this all mean? It means that the race is again losing the feminine contribution! What a woeful impoverishment that means! This generation is bad enough, but what will the next one be, when this sinful, hectic, devilish crowd of women rear a brood that will go them ten-fold worse at their own game! Where is the charm of womanhood today? Where is her grace? Where can we find in the generation of women in Europe and America today, that real, genuine affection, that characterized the women of the recent yesterdays? Where have the good old fashioned mothers gone? This cigarette-sucking, booze-drinking, half-naked, maudlin, cursing, bobbed-haired outfit, are not our American women, are they? These must be the half-baked imitators of the French prostitutes who started the style they are imitating. They cannot be Americans! We refuse to admit that they belong to this land. But if they do, then woe-betide this country of ours! Over two-thirds of the women on our streets are struck with the modern devil’s craze of emancipation from all conventionality. The sea beaches run mad with half naked sex display. Last summer France and Germany had an orgy of naked sun baths, indulged in promiscuously by both sexes. Our streets, homes and schools are filled with women salaciously unclothed and hair looking like an animated floor mop! What is the significance of all this? That savagery, barbarism and heathendom, from which Jesus Christ lifted the race, is again being entered voluntarily, by the womanhood of today. France in her palmiest days of rottenness, when she was ruled by a royal prostitute, was little worse.
And what is the effect of all this, upon the men. Just what it has always been through the ages. The sexes go up, or go down together. More and more the men are despising the women. Instead of the noble chivalry that was the general characterization of American men of a generation or two ago, there is now an unaffected contempt for the female sex. Marriages are no longer entered as a life arrangement, by countless millions, but as a temporary, and a trifle more respectable way of carrying on what has been previously indulged without the matrimonial mantle. When a change is desired, said marital robe can be dispensed with, our courts furnishing the dispensation at cut rates. Hundreds of thousands live together in quasi-marriage, for weeks, months, or years, without a shadow of legality thrown about their union. If children obtrude into this love nest, they are either slaughtered before birth, or frankly handed over to the tax-payers to rear in the homes for foundlings. In an effort to bring these unwedded millions, who are living hit-or-miss in semi-matrimony, into some sort of legal harness, Judge Ben Lindsey, of Denver, has figured out what he calls a “companionate marriage.” This arrangement, as best we can understand it, is not necessarily to be permanent, is to have no children, (or we suppose, if they do, the state is to take them off their hands) is susceptible of annulment at pleasure, and is apparently a mere plaster of respectability to be applied to the open sore of America’s putrid sexism, that has been exuding its stench, without any thing to cover its nastiness. That it will succeed in curing anything, the Judge does not claim, but will, he avers, make things smell a little less rank. So the modern women are dragging the modern men into the whirlpool of rotten damnation, until there can be frequently found women in America who cannot trust their men out of their sight, lest they shall be vamped by some little half naked, painted, bobbed headed, cigarette smoking vixen who is clerking for them, or taking dictation in their offices, or ready to ride down town, or into the deep woods of a dark night. Hence, in order to out-vamp the vamp, the wife bobs her own hair, bares her arms, shortens her dresses, paints her face, scarlets her lips, and while hubby is basking in the smiles of the little vamp in his office, she vamps the neighbor’s boy, the grocery delivery clerk, or the flashy stranger that dashes up with a Cadillac, then with flowing boot-leg, and private petting galore, she pays her man back in his own coin! Thus the devil damns the women and the women damn the men!
But all this horror of nastiness, might have the silver lining to its darkening cloud, if we were able to turn to the Church of the living God, and there find that, within its sacred portals, womanhood was being preserved in all the sweet sanctity and sober good sense, that God’s women must have in order to be God’s women, at all. But with heart-breaking sorrow, it must be said that with the most hellish subtlety, Satan has invaded the womanhood of Jesus Christ’s Church. With a shrewdness that commands our every respect, and with a finesse that, hateful and devilish as it is, we must doff our hats to, he has captured multitudes of the women in the churches. With worldly styles of dress, many of Christ’s women are now clothed with unabashed effrontery! With bobbed hair and painted cheeks, with penciled eye-brows and hectic lips, they fill the pews, hymn praises to the lowly Christ, who was the poorest of the poor, and flaunt their female lure in the faces of the men within the holy of holies of the Church of God.
But even this, if it were limited to the great denominations, who long since abandoned the ways, customs and sanctities of their fathers, could be tolerated. With breaking hearts, we long ago, gave up the hope that such so-called representatives of Jesus Christ on earth, would ever return with loyal allegiance to the Christ of Calvary, that their humble forebears knew, and with wet eyes we dropped tears on the grave of their former greatness, and watched the finger of God trace the legend “Ichabod” (“The glory has departed!”), over their altars.
But, with what amazement, with what indignant horror, have we seen the same Satanic subtlety at work on the women of the holiness movement! The holiness movement, that last appeal of a flouted, an affronted but long suffering God to the people of the earth, before the Tribulation night shall set in with all its unnamable horrors! That movement that stands stalwart for a genuine new birth, that takes all committed sin out of the heart, and establishes the life in outward righteousness. That movement that strenuously advocates a second work of heart cleansing that burns away the depravity that taints the blood of the human race and fills the heart with perfect love! That movement that eschews worldliness as it would an embrace of the slimy devil as he arises dripping from the nastiness of hell. That movement that closes the door of heaven in the face of the mast moral man or woman on earth, unless he is holy in heart and life. That movement that was started, humanly speaking, by the saintly Fox, the seraphic Wesley, the indomitable Asbury, the devoted Cookman and the golden-mouthed Inskip. That movement that was handed on by such saints as Roberts, of Free Methodism; Henry C. Morrison, of Southern Methodism; Joseph H. Smith, of Episcopal Methodism; and Phineas F. Bresee, of the Church of the Nazarene! Invade the womanhood of that movement! We have always said that it was impossible. But look at the camp-meetings of the holiness movement! Look at the women members of the holiness churches! Here we see the same short skirt that the worldly women wear the same suggestive stockings; dove colored, spike-heeled shoes; the same bobbed hair; the same paint on the cheeks, albeit a trifle less brazenly daubed on; the same scarlet lips; slowly, but surely invading the ranks of the women who profess holiness! The devil has captured some of the holiness women! Now watch them capture the men! Few pastors will cry out against it, because forsooth, some of their own daughters, and possibly the preacher’s wife, are among the off enders! Hence the preacher dare not! He must have peace at home! Few camp-meeting leaders will cry out against it, for the same reason, or because it may lessen the likelihood of being re-called there, or affect the size of their stipend! Oh, the shrewdness of the devil! He knows that if he can plant these things among the women of the holiness movement, he will not find it necessary to do a thing with the men. They will fall for it, because the women have embraced it! Listen, and you will hear them talk loftily about the fact that “preaching about short skirts, and flesh-colored stockings, and spike-heeled shoes, and bobbed hair, is not preaching the gospel!” Listen, and you will hear them say that “I have said my last say, against it!” Why? Well the women have undertaken to dress as the world, and cut their hair that way, and few are the men who have the courage to oppose the women! When the female elects to damn the holiness movement, the men, largely speaking, will accept damnation without a murmur. Adam did, and we are not so much an improvement on him. Listen, and you will hear them say that “It is a custom that has come to stay, and why, then oppose it?” Come to stay, why? Because the women have elected that it shall, and where is the man who dares oppose them? We look for no fight from the men. When the female speaks on the dress question, the male cowers, hides his abashed head, shuts his noble mouth, and the female rules!
This is not an appeal to the men of the holiness movement; they will never rise up, and demand a change from their women folks! The are created so weak on the side next to the female, that they have no courage to oppose what she determines to have! No, this is an appeal to the women themselves! If they cannot be reached, if they cannot be convinced, if they cannot be persuaded, the devil has got the holiness movement, just as he captured the pair in the garden, just as he degraded womanhood for millenniums, and just as he now is causing throughout the world a lost, ruined womanhood to lead a not unwilling manhood to both their damnation and destruction.
Do not our holiness women know that worldliness of any sort, admitted to the holiness churches, means final ruin to the movement? What has been generated through so many tears, prayers, heart agonies, ostracisms, divisions of churches, walkings out under the open sky in order to start again, will be slain in less than a decade by the worldliness of the women of the movement, and this fair and promising movement will be buried as its many predecessors have been, damned by the subtlety of Satan?
Oh, holiness women, you carry with you, light or darkness for the cause of holiness. The men cannot, dare not, do anything. Unless the women of the holiness churches rise up, and condemn, as they well know how to do, the rising tide of sex-display, of worldly dress and immodest behavior, the enemy has the movement on the toboggan slide of damnation! Oh, sanctified womanhood, who will respond? Where is there a Deborah who will lead the poor, dumb, courageless men to an attack on Satan’s devilish subtle worldliness in the holiness ranks? Women alone can undo what women have done to destroy!
Do not our women know that these styles of dress, these suggestive displays of their persons, these boyish bobs, and shingle bobs, and all else that belongs to the ruinous styles of the day, were hatched in the foul nest of prostitute France? Will holiness women follow the styles set by courtesans and strumpets, and these habiliments expect to serve the Lord Christ? Is this holiness? Is this the standard of the holiness churches? Is this entire consecration? Is this death to the world, to take one’s place in the house of God, and join in the holy service of the sanctuary, tricked out like a French prostitute! God in heaven pity us!
Do not our holiness women know that with the loss of your tresses, that feminine charm is gone? That with the display of partially nude bodies all grace and modesty disappears? That a heart that will yield to the seductions of worldly attire, cannot possess the genuine love of God? That their own souls are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity, not merely for cutting so much from the hair on their heads, but for yielding to the world pull of carnality and sin around one, and thus enabling the devil to ruin the best movement in all the world through its womanhood, as he ruined God’s original plan in the garden, through his attack on Eve. Oh, women, awake, awake, start a crusade to retain the holiness movement true to its inception among the fathers, by preaching a rigidly unworldly dress and behavior both for yourself, and all the women of our midst!
Surely the women of the holiness churches know that the two greatest instincts of humanity, as agreed to by all our psychologists, are the food appetite and the sex appetite. If you desire to stir an instinct within a man that, pushed to the extreme will lead him to severest toil, most desperate battle, and even to foulest murder, place an appetizing dinner before a desperately hungry man! In that very thing you have touched upon one of the most powerful passions in the male breast, the appeal of a hungry stomach for food. Deprive a man of this for any length of time, and he is fit for “treason, strategems and spoils!” He will fight, he will intrigue, he will lie, he will even work, in order to satisfy that overwhelming demand for food! The only other passion that stands alongside of this primary one for food, is sex! Conceal it as we may, apologize for it as we like, feign immunity all we please, the stark, cold, unadulterated fact stares us in the face, and that is, that sex passion holds even hand with food passion in the male breast. There is a regular, normal sex-lure that operates between men and women all the time, but when unusual action on the part of the women, or unusual conditions of dress, or semi-dress, or no-dress obtain, one might as well bait a famishing man with a royal dinner, and not expect any reaction, as to expect none in the sex line, when any ordinary red-blooded man confronts women under such circumstances. Nothing but high standards of Christian grace can carry a man through under such conditions, and unless he is sanctified wholly, and got the experience on hand with all its splashes and thrills, he will be subjected to the subtle and fatal temptation that Jesus condemned in Matthew five twenty-eight! Do our holiness women desire to tempt the men, whether outside, or inside the holiness ranks, that way? Is the holiest movement that modern times has ever known finally to be wrecked on the rocks of plain, unvarnished, nasty lust? And are the chief offenders to be the women? Oh, holiness womanhood! Awake, awake! Warn your daughters, warn your sisters, take alarm at what is transpiring in the world about you, rise with all your womanly might, and save the holiness movement from being damned by worldliness on the part of the women, and undue sex attraction on the part of the men. What? Will you allow so wonderful a movement as the holiness churches to be lost, while you sit by and sneer at the message of this leaflet? Then, have we counted in vain even on the women!
Do not our holiness women know that every item of worldly dress is an advertisement to the world, and a frank acknowledgment to yourself, of the fact that salvation is a fraud, Jesus Christ an impostor, the Bible a lie, and the Church a mere ecclesiastical club! Every bobbed haired holiness woman is saying by that act, “salvation is not real, Christ cannot really save, religion is not genuine, the church is a fraud!” Every time a holiness woman dons a short skirt and suggestive white stockings she hangs out an advertisement that all the world can, and does, read, and it says: “I don’t believe the Bible, holiness is just a counterfeit, salvation is a make-believe, heaven is not a reality, and there is no hell!” Women you might just as well carry a couple of boards, one on your bosom and one on your back, stating just what we have quoted above, with your name signed to it, as to bob your hair, dress as the world dresses, wear spike-heeled slippers, show your bare arms and bosoms and suggestive leg wear, and still claim that you are a Christian! Pastor’s wife, daughter, sister, if you can do that, you can damn more souls in a week, than your husband, father or brother can get saved in five years! You might as well adroit that you are a poor wretched backslider, and that the hot thrill of holiness has not visited your heart in many days, for such you are, if you can dress that way! Church member, choir singer, if you can parade your female lure before a congregation in garments that were originally suggested by the soiled women of the gilded hells of France, then you ought to leave the holiness movement this day, and join yourself to the outside crowd that is marching, thus bedizened, to hell, damning themselves, and the men who know them!
But some silly, bobbed headed woman asks: “Is there any Scripture against bobbing one’s hair?” None that we know of that directly forbids it And it is not so much just the cutting of your hair, in itself, as it is that you followed a multitude who hate God, and call our Lord Jesus Christ filthy names, and laugh at religion, and sneer at the Bible, when you had yours cut. Instead of having such a hold on God that a devilish world could not affect you, you were so near the sin line, and so affected by the miasmatic breath that blows from the hell-holes of France, that you immediately fell for it, and are now seeking to defend it. Shame on you! Is there not such a thing as “an eternal fitness of things?” Is there anything but an eternal “unfitness of things” in a holiness woman posing with a hair cut man fashion, a custom first proposed by prostitutes! Go hide your shame in a skull cap, until you can again appear with tresses such as belong on a woman in whom carnality is supposed to be dead, pride crucified, the world a repulsive ash heap, the devil a desperate open enemy, and Jesus Christ a holy husband to your soul!
But some one else pipes up, and says that bobbed hair, and abbreviated garments are here to stay. That, just as shaving men’s faces was once considered to be very worldly, but now is the custom of almost all, so women’s man-like hair cut, and suggestive garments have come to stay, and we might just as well get accustomed to them. We answer that if this be the case, then, for the sake of the religion of Jesus Christ, for the sake of holiness of heart, for the sake of the existence of the last great effort of God to gather out a bride for His Son, don’t let holiness women practice such worldly things, until at least another hundred years have elapsed. By that time we can tell whether the custom that is fraught with so much worldliness and lust has come to stay. Possibly, Jesus will have come before that time and revealed to us all how He desires His bride to be clothed. What must He think of the insane anxiety of His holiness women who have tumbled over themselves, in order to dress like those who have sneeringly declared that He is a bastard, and that His Word is myth, folk lore and legend. That He has no heaven to take His people to, and that there is no hell to shun. What must He think of His so-called folks who have rushed to spend their money having their hair cut like the worst strumpets in the world? For shame, for shame!
Holiness women, do not forget your heritage. You are the spiritual descendants of the Sarahs, the Deborahs and the Hannahs of the Old Covenant. Your line is renewed again in the New Testament in Mary who gave birth to Jesus Christ; Elizabeth who mothered His great forerunner; in Mary of Bethany, who anointed His precious head and feet; in Mary Magdalene, who was last at His cross and first at His empty tomb; in the host of women who in early gospel days, gave their hearts, homes and deepest toil to the cause of the Master. Your line is again renewed in church history, until for faithfulness, devotion, heroism, martyrdom and all else that pleases the heart of the great Christ, woman has led the way, borne the brunt, shared the vigils, preached with life and lip, and handed the cause on to the next age with its banners proudly breasting every gale of opposition! It was largely the women that made the early Methodist movement the greatest revival awakening since the days of the apostles. It was the women who incited the men to start the National Holiness Association, and it was they who made glad contribution to many of its greatest victories! It was a band of women who prayed D. L. Moody through to his baptism with fire, and it was a company of the elect ones of the same sex who held on to God for Sam Hadley until he was sanctified wholly, and he then spread the cause mightily in “Old Water Street Mission.” Hardly a minister in the last century obtained the blessing of full salvation, but that some “Mother in Israel” had a strong hand on the throne for him, as he made the full salvation landing. Sanctified wives have been the mainstay of the courage, devotion, and dogged faithfulness of the holiness pastors from one end of this land to the other. But for them, many a man would have abandoned the field. Their courage and womanly wisdom have won the battle for their preacher-heroes on many a desperate battle ground. Holy mothers have given the ministerial bent to a host of sons, and that many times before those sons were born! Bishop McCabe and Bishop Simpson of the Methodist Church, were both prayed through to the sacred business of soul saving by their godly mothers, before their infant eyes ever saw the light. The women hold the helm of the holiness movement. Missions in foreign lands, which spread the truth of the second work of grace, are mostly “manned” by women. Holiness churches would become extinct tomorrow, if the women abandoned them. Remember then, sisters, your marvelous heritage, and your amazing responsibility.
It is you who must guard the door of worldliness, that threatens to swing wide, and spill its woe and ruin into the only portion of the Christian Church today that has a semblance of life. It is the women who must, within the holiness movement, correct the dress difficulty, shape out of our midst the sex question, and banish the bob; no man dare touch these matters, or speak on these subjects unless the women lead the way: If the cause of full salvation is ruined by these salacious things, if they have come to the churches to stay, it is because the women will it so. And if they will it so, it will be so, for men cower and are sore afraid in the presence of matters the women want.
Women, will you save the day? You can if you will! Again, from the heart of holiness womanhood, can Jesus Christ be born again, as from the heart of Mary, He came at Bethlehem. Again, if the women will it, the holiness movement shall flame and burn with another marvelous awakening, and the coming of the holy feet of Jesus over the eastern hills of eternity shall be illumined by the fires of the greatest revival of holiness that the ages have ever seen! WHERE THERE IS A WILL THERE ARE TWENTY WAYS! Let the sanctified women answer!