There is scarcely a passage in the New Testament which has so much taxed the learning and ingenuity of commentators as this. After all that has been written, it remains just as obscure as ever. The meaning which it naturally suggests to the most superficial reader, is regarded by the most laborious critics as the only true one. By iiova-Ca, power, the apostle means the sign or symbol of authority ; just as Diodorus Sic, 1. 47, speaks of an image as "having three kingdoms on its head." The apostle had asserted and proved that the woman is subordinate to the man, and he had assumed as granted that the veil was the conventional symbol of the man's author- ity. The inference is that the woman ought to wear the or- dinary symbol of the power of her husband. As it was proper in itself, and demanded by the common sense of propriety, that the woman should be veiled, it was specially proper in the worshipping assemblies, for there they were in the pres- ence not merely of men but of angels. It was, therefore, not only out of deference to public sentiment, but from reverence to those higher intelligences that the woman should conform to all the rules of decorum. This is the common and only satisfactory interpretation of the passage. Of those who dis- sent from this view, some propose various conjectural emenda- tions of the text ; others vainly endeavour to prove that the word l^Qvaria may be made to mean a veil ; others take the word literally. And as to the last clause, instead of taking the word angels in its ordinary sense, some say it here means the angels, or presiding officers, of the church ; others, that it means messengers or spies from the heathen who came to ob- serve the mode in which the Christians worshipped, and would report any thing they observed to their disadvantage. The great majority of commentators acquiesce in the interpretation stated above, which satisfies aU the demands of the context.
11. Nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.
That is, although there is this subordination of the woman to the man, they are mutually dependent. The one cannot exist without the other. In the Lord. This does not mean that the one is not in the Lord to the exclusion of the other. The apostle is not here speaking of the spiritual equality of the sexes. In Galatians 3, 28 and elsewhere he abundantly teaches