'fhere le not to be dressing as though this world were a paradise, and not, lU! it really ie, full of human want. With outward deportment as to dress, are connected the inwardfeelinga. There is shamejastness, as the word originally was in the Authorized Version. This feeling given to the woman should make her shrink from 1111 impropriety in dress. There is also sobriety, or the feeling that keeps the love for dress within the bounds of reason and religion. The apostle descends to particulars. Women are not to e.dorn themselves with braided hair and gold, or pearls, or costly raiment. It cannot be meant th11t these things are absolutely forbidden. Long hair is an ornament to a woman, and it is natural that it should be braided. Gold is an excellent substance, and c11n be wrought into most beautiful forms. It is God who has given the lustre Lo pearls. Ideas of what is beautiful can be carried to a great extent in garments, as in the garments prescribed for the Jewish high priest. It can only be meant that they are to be duly subordinated by women. They are not to make ends of them, as women of the world do. They are not to vie with one another in the use of them. They are not to be used in the way of gratifying personal vanity, or in the way of ostentation and drawing attention upon them. They are not to be used as though they were essential, being only on the outside, and an uncertain possession which cannot be carried beyond the world. They are only to be sought in connection with, and in due sub- ordin11tion to, inward virtues. This is the thought to which the apostle carries us forward. There is that which becomes a woman professing godliness, i.e. professing to be regulated by the will of God in dress as in all matters. And the will of God will be considered in connection with the state of the world. It is such a world that Christ needed to come into it to save it. Moreover, it is such a world that Christ's servants need to do much saving work in it. And II true Christian woman will not set her heart on what is showy or genuinely beautiful in dress or ornament, but will set her heart on what is more valuable. She will seek to be adorned with the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price. She will seek to be adorned, as the idea is here, with a kindly, benevolent disposition, such as finds its medium in good works. She will consider that the time and money unnecessarily spent upon the braiding of the hair, and gold, or pearls, or costly raiment, is so much taken from her power of performing good works. It must be said that the position of a true Christian woman has its difficulties. Fashion which exercises such a sway is not the expression of pure Christian sentiments. It is to a large extent the expression of worldliness, or the striving after externals. The true Christian woman, then, has it as her task, on the one hand, not to go altogether against fashion so as to be singular and to call attention to her, which would offend her feeling of modesty; on the other hand, to attain to simplicity and inexpensiveness in dress, so as to leave her free for discharging her Christian function as a doer of good works. 2. To be a learner, and not a teacher. "Let a woman learn in quietness with all subjection. But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a man, but to be in quietness." The woman is to be receptive with regard to public teachings. She is to be a learner, not breaking the silence even to the extent of asking a question. For the language here is partly to be explained by what is said in 1 Cor. :xiv. 35, "And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home." The position of the apostle, that a woman is not to be a teacher in the house of God, is very implicit: "I permit not a ;voman to teach." Whatever her qualifications--and some women are better qualified to teach than some men-the apostolic enactment is against her teaching. This enact- ment is grounded in what is natural. It would be reversing the natural order of duperiority for men to sit under a woman as their teacher. It would also be giving woman a publicity from which every one who is unsophisticated and retains her native modesty must shrink. Her natural unfitness set forth in two facts. (1) Eve was created ,.Jttlr .Adam. "For Adam was first formed, then Eve." The apostle regards this fact as emblematic of a headship originally given to the man, which carries with it his exclusive right to be a teacher in the house of God. (2) The woman was first in tha eransgreaswn. " And Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled bath fallen into transgres,ion." We are not to understand that, for introducing sin into the world, she was thrown into a subordination which did not originally belong to her. B:·~ rather the way in which, acting for herself without regard to her husband, she was WOJ'ked upon by the tempter was emblematio of a natural disposition which unfits hor L 'J'lJIOTBY. 1> 60 THE FIRST EPIS1'LE ·ro TIMOTHY. [OH, Ill, 1-16,
for taking a public position. Promise anne.-ced. " But she shall be saved through the child-hearing, if they continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety." So eminent an interpreter 88 Ellicott interprets this of the child-bearing by pre-eminence- woman giving birth to the Messiah-but without good reason. The apostle has been excluding woman from activity in Church life in connection with which there is pub- licity; here he points to her proper destiny as activity in family life. There is reference to the form in which the curse fell upon the woman ; in connection with this is there promise of blessing. There is not excluded from the promise the lower salvation. A mother, laying bold upon this promise, can hope in her danger to be preserved alive, with due submission, as is right in the sphere of temporal blessing, to the disposin<>O of God. There is special reference to the higher salvation. "She shall be saved," shall find the path of her highest well-being, "if they" (there is a change to the class of Christian mothers, or more generally of Christian women, one depending to a certain extent on ill)-" if they continue in faith," i.e. toward Christ," and love," i.e. especially toward the ueedy, "and sanctification," i.e. attention to the rules of personal purity, with such sobriety as shall keep them to their proper sphere.-R. F.
EXPOSITION.