Tuesday: The Incompatible Principle
WEEK 8
TUESDAY
THE INCOMPATIBLE PRINCIPLE
Amos 9:7; Acts 17:24, 26
A thinker has said:
There is no greater method of reform than this: If alongside of a corrupt practice you lay an incompatible principle, then that incompatible principle will silently work against that corrupt practice and will overthrow it. Thus Christianity laid alongside the corrupt practice of slavery the incompatible principle of the equal worth of each individual before God and silently overthrew it.
Alongside the almost universal practice of the subordination of women to men, the Christians laid the incompatible principle that women can and do receive the highest gift of God, the Holy Spirit; and it has silently worked against that evil practice and is in the process of overthrowing it.
In India, at question time, a Muslim man sent up this question: “In Christianity women are in the lowest degradation; they have no rights of any kind. They are considered an object of scorn. While Mohammed said: ‘To her is due what is due from her.’ Is this no improvement on Christianity?” I could scarcely believe my eyes! I didn’t argue that Mohammed permitted four wives and Jesus founded the home on the loyalty of one man and one woman; I simply pointed to a row of Christian women nurses and doctors on the front row, among them Ida Scudder, the most influential person in the city and a queen through service. I said, “I feel sorry for these poor degraded Christian women.” The crowd roared. The opponents of early Christianity exclaimed, “Heavens, what women these Christians have!” They still have them! And behind their rise is the fact that the highest in God is open to them, and hence the highest in society must be open to them. That is the incompatible principle that is working against every disability laid on women everywhere. And it will win their complete emancipation—is winning their complete emancipation.
If women want to take a pilgrimage in thought to the shrine of their emancipation, let them go back to an upper room where women and men both received the Holy Spirit on the same terms. There woman’s freedom began.
O Christ, we thank you that the silent coming of the Holy Spirit in our hearts is working a silent resolution everywhere. Then evermore give us this Spirit. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My life today shall be the incompatible principle laid alongside all evil.