Wm.& Catherine Booth/Salvation Army Issue 26 | 1990 Purchase this issue

ARTICLE TOOLS

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There seems to be a great deal of unnecessary fear of woman occupying any position which involves publicity, lest she should be rendered unfeminine by the indulgence of ambition or vanity.… Who would dare to charge the sainted Madame Guyon, Lady Maxwell, the talented mother of the Wesleys, Mrs. Fletcher, Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Whiteman, or Miss Marsh with being unwomanly or ambitious.… Would that the Lord’s people had more of this ambition.

Well, but say our objecting friends, how is it that those whose names you mention, and many others, should venture to preach when female ministry is forbidden in the Word of God?

If she has the necessary gifts, and feels herself called by the Spirit to preach, there is not a single word in the whole book of God to restrain her, but many, very many, to urge and encourage her. God says she SHALL do so, and Paul prescribed the manner in which she shall do it, and Phoebe, Junia, Philip’s four daughters and many other women actually did preach and speak in the primitive Churches.

We commend the following texts from the New Testament to the careful consideration of our readers.

“And I entreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the Gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellow-labourers” (Philippians iv: 3).

This is a recognition of female labourers, not concerning the Gospel but in the Gospel, whom Paul classes with Clement, and other of his fellow-labourers. Precisely the same terms are applied to Timotheus, whom Paul styles a “minister of God, and his fellow-labourer in the Gospel of Christ” (I Thessalonians iii: 2).

As we have before observed, the text, I Corinthians xiv:34, 35 is the only one in the whole Book of God which even by a false ...