Slurs on Women | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 24, 1876

Slurs on Women.

At a recent dinner in New York, at which no ladies were present, a man, in responding to the toast, “Woman,” dwelt almost solely on the frailty of the sex, claiming that the best of them were little better than the worst—the chief difference being in their surroundings.

At the conclusion of the speech a gentleman rose and said, “I trust the gentleman, in the application of his remarks, refers to his own mother and sisters, not ours.”

The effect of this just and timely rebuke was overwhelming; and the maligner of woman was covered with shame and confusion.

This incident serves an excellent purpose in prefacing a few words on the subject. Of all the evils prevalent among men, we know of none more blighting in its moral effect than the tendency to speak slightly of the virtues of woman. Nor is there anything in which young men are so thoroughly mistaken as in the estimate they form of the integrity of women—not of their own mothers and sisters, thank God—but of others whom they forget are somebody else’s mothers and sisters.

Let young men remember that their chief happiness in life depends on their faith in women. No worldly wisdom, no misanthropic philosophy, no generalization, can cover or weaken this fundamental truth. It stands like the record of God himself—for it is nothing less than this—and should put an everlasting seal upon lips that are wont to speak slightly of woman.—Sel.