“Whose Daughter Art Thou?”

Biblical history fails to mention the name of the first daughter born to the human family, or to give her father’s name; and in its early narrative, covering a period of over two thousand years, the word daughter is rarely used, except in genealogical records of “sons and daughters.” This omission no doubt had its origin in error of belief regarding woman’s God-given place in the order of creation; for God has no nameless offspring. As the inspired record indicates, He calls His own by name, sets them in families, fixes the bounds of their habitation, establishes their dwelling place, declares their generation, and places the Father’s name “in their foreheads.”

In the annals of the divine Mind there are no errors and no omissions. As the true spiritual order of creation is understood and accepted as the only authentic account of man, it will be seen that in the ascending scale of created beings woman is mentioned last, although it may be more clearly implied that man and woman coexist in the divine Mind; for in Genesis it is written: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” This equality of birthright bestowed by the Father alike on all His children is in accord with the spiritual law of order, harmony, and justice; and man-made theories alone are responsible for the seeming reversal of that law, and the apparent oppression, discord, and suffering it has entailed upon mankind. Readjustment would greatly benefit the race, bring equipoise to all human endeavor, accelerate the coming of the time when war shall cease, and make possible a complete answer to the prayer of the ages, “Thy kingdom come.”

Anticipating though not understanding these expanding race possibilities, a modern biologist has said that “woman stands at the top curve of the human wave from which the superman of the future is to evolve.” The patriarch Abraham nearly four thousand years ago concluded a true line of reasoning when he was considering the choice of a wife for his son Isaac, and could not look with favor upon the “daughters of the Canaanites” among whom he dwelt, but turned his thought to his own kindred in the city of Nahor, in the land of Mesopotamia; for, calling his most trusted servant to him and placing him under oath of faithfulness, he sent him forth to that distant country to bring back a maiden suitable to become the wife of Isaac and mother to the seed of promise.

We are told that this servant with his men and camels, after a long journey from Beersheba across the Syrian desert, came at eventide near to the city of Nahor, and rested outside the city by a well where the women came to draw water. There the servant prayed that the God of his master Abraham would direct his choice, and while the words were still on his lips a damsel “very fair to look upon” went down to the well, filled her pitcher, and came up again. The servant ran to meet her and asked her for a drink. When she had given him this and had drawn water for the camels, the servant, believing that God had answered his prayer, took the jewels he had brought for the chosen one, and said, “Whose daughter art thou?” The maiden, whose name was Rebekah, answered, “I am the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, which she bare unto Nahor.” Then the servant knew that she belonged to the kinsmen of Abraham and went with her to her mother’s house. Here Rebekah was asked whether or not she would go with this servant to become the wife of Isaac, and she answered: “I will go.” Then her mother and brother blessed her, saying: ‘Be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.”

This story of Rebekah not only is the first real romance recorded in the Bible, but it is the first time the “daughter” is given specific consideration. There was nothing extraordinary in the servant’s question, “Whose daughter art thou?” but it showed awakened thought,—the dawn of true womanhood appearing above the horizon of race consciousness and revealing in its calm irradiation some faint idea of the “measure of the stature” of the perfect man in due time to appear, not as “superman,” but as normal man and woman, capable in every way of having dominion over the earth which God provided for their dwelling place.

By faith Abraham had seen many things not revealed to other men of his generation: in his youth he had “looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God;” in mature life he had discerned, when about to sacrifice his son Isaac, that God is the Father of man whose life is spiritual and not material; in riper years he beheld with clear insight that if man was ever to realize his sonship with the Father, woman must unfold in thought the perfect model of God’s creating until the spiritual idea should be manifested to human consciousness as the only reality of being. This glorious consummation may have seemed afar off even to Abraham’s faith perception, but he believed that right thinking and its continuity through many generations of pure descent would bring to the world the Christ-idea,—the perfect type of generic man, the reflection of infinite Mind. In the history of the daughters of our race, Rebekah holds a most distinguished place. She stands at the “top curve” of her generation,—a woman of character and discernment, as well as “mother of thousands of millions,” the chosen woman through whose lineage “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”

Nearly six centuries after the days of Rebekah, two women went down to Bethlehem in the time of the barley harvest; the elder was Naomi, the younger was her daughter-in-law, Ruth, the Moabitess. Ruth went to glean in the fields of Boaz, a wealthy kinsman of Naomi. One day when Boaz went out to look after the reapers, he saw her there gathering the straws that fell from the sheaves, and asked, “Whose damsel is this?” Being told how Ruth, after the death of her husband, had clung to her mother-in-law and had left Moab to come to Bethlehem when Naomi returned, he spoke kindly to her and told his reapers to protect and favor her. Later he married her, and their son Obed was the grandfather of David, king of Israel. Ruth, like Rebekah, marks the summit of race progress for her time, but with greater strength of character, for she is able to make a clear and positive separation between the false and the true, between the idolatry of the Moabites and the worship of the one God of the Israelites. By so doing she realized a larger womanhood, a more spiritual worship, a higher service. She helped to build up the house of Israel, establish the seed of promise in its own land, make the erection of the temple possible, and safeguard the pure descent of “the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star,” that was to be sent to lift human thought above the earthly and sensual into the liberty of sons and daughters of God.

Through tumultuous centuries the longing for the ascendancy of good in human consciousness became so intensified that it took form in an angel of light sent from God to a virgin of Nazareth whose name was Mary, “espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David.” Perceiving the nature of her spiritual visitant and the great possibilities of being bestowed by Mind, Mary said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” In her exaltation of thought she stood revealed not alone as the lineal daughter of Israel: she was one whose spiritual ancestry, antedating all human generation, was coexistent with the Father-Mother of all who by faith should discern man’s true identity with his Maker. Mary’s conception of Jesus as the Christ-idea revealed to human understanding was spiritual; but, on account of the gross materiality of the age, it is written that “Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”

Because Jesus saw the perfect man and woman of God’s creating, he was able to heal the sick, save the sinner, break the seeming law of death, and uplift thought and ideals. It is apparent from the study of the gospels that the women of his time were quick to discern the spirituality of his nature and mission. Upon one occasion when he spoke to a woman of Samaria who had come to draw water at Jacob’s well, saying, “Give me to drink,” and meeting a question from her, he told her of the living water and the true worship, she ran to tell her brethren, exclaiming, “Is not this the Christ?” Mary and Martha and other women felt the benediction of the life sacrifice of Jesus and tried to proclaim it; but the restrictions of the Mosaic law, as well as the customs of the times, narrowed the scope of their influence. Even his disciples scarcely understood him when he said to them: “Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven;” or, again, when he replied to their questionings upon another occasion, “For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother,” clearly showing that all true relations are established upon a basis of spiritual equality.

Paul, too, bound the early Christian women about with conventionalities, which though protective perhaps in his day, have been used by selfish minds ever since as authority for circumscribing the sphere of woman, excluding her from equal political, social, and economic rights, and even denying her equal rights with the father in parentage of their child. Only within the memory of present generations have the colleges opened their doors to the daughters as well as to the sons; and it has seemed to require an avalanche of war such as the world has never before known, to prove to the race that the daughters can be quite as quickly trained for skilled or manual work as the sons; that the women all over the world are just as patriotic as the men, sacrificing, laboring, conserving,—not only for the present generation, but for the sons and daughters of the future. The props of a double standard for morals, privileges, and rights for sons and daughters are being shaken from their false foundations, and divine Principle, establishing justice and liberty, is now being recognized in universal thought as the basis of true world democracy, the only hope for lasting peace, happiness, and prosperity.

In the history of the past it is clearly seen that through ignorance, superstition, convention, and the abuse of power by man, woman has been held in bondage to man-made laws. Only through the general diffusion of knowledge are women learning to think, act, speak, for themselves, and to insist upon a recognition of the fact that God made the earth for His daughters as well as for His sons. The acceptance of this basic truth has been greatly accelerated since the discovery of Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy, in the year 1866, and the spiritual interpretation of the Scriptures which it has revealed, bringing into clearer light woman’s place in the plan of God’s creation and showing to mankind that balance of character as well as balance of world power cannot be permanently established until the feminine qualities of mind and heart are given equal weight in the scale of being with the masculine qualities.

Throughout all her writings Mrs. Eddy has tried to make it clear that the equalization of the sexes was an important part of Jesus’ healing mission, and she has set forth a precedent in the Manual of The Mother Church, Article II, Section 1, in a by-law which says: “The Readers for The Mother Church shall be a man and a woman, one to read the Bible, and one to read Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.” In the explanatory note in The Christian Science Quarterly to be read at the Sunday services, she also says, “The Bible and the Christian Science textbook are our only preachers.” Truth and its interpretation reveal man and woman made in God’s image and likeness as spiritual ideas, demonstrating unity and completeness throughout the universe; and the question, “Whose daughter art thou?” is answered for this and for every age in the prayer our Master taught his disciples, and which covers every human relationship,—”Our Father which art in heaven.”

From his isolated prison on the isle of Patmos, John perceived this real daughter of glorified womanhood as the interpreter of Truth to all mankind, for in Revelation he writes: “And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.” When Abraham’s servant said to Rebekah, “Whose daughter art thou?” he chose for her “a golden earring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands,” typical of woman’s bondage throughout the ages to man-made laws of human relationships. Boaz, the wealthy landowner of Bethlehem, purchased Ruth to be his wife, and “plucked off his shoe” to confirm the bargain, revealing man’s chattel rights and woman’s servitude to material conditions under the Mosaic law.

The Christian world has pictured a halo of light about the head of the mother of Jesus, setting her apart from the material and sensual, and lifting thought to a higher concept of motherhood; the insignia, however, of Mrs. Eddy’s marvelous mission in the world of to-day is stamped upon the books she has left. It is the seal of Christian Science,—a double circle between the lines of which are the words of Jesus: “Heal the sick. Raise the dead. Cleanse the lepers. Cast out demons.” In the center of the circle are placed a cross and a crown, symbolizing to this and to every age the eternality of the truth of being, and showing that those who would be followers of Christ must do the works which he did if they would wear his crown of rejoicing.

Mrs. Eddy’s writings are unfolding the emancipating power of Truth and helping humanity to see the daughter of infinite Love as she appeared to the Revelator’s clarified vision,—clothed with the brightness of all-enveloping spiritual understanding, kindling anew in human thought the fires of living hope and faith, rising to the zenith of power to vanquish oppression and establish for all the sons and daughters of earth their equal rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This “daughter” is not a person, but an eternal idea—the grace of God— dearly seen in the mirror of divine Science as a demonstrable fact in daily life, comforting, healing, transforming, awakening thought until it grasps the limitless possibilities of being, not in some future state, but here in this present hour of material desolation.

With unmistakable emphasis the world is asking: Whose daughter art thou, O woman of to-day, “heir of all the ages”? Seest thou this spiritual idea of womanhood, crowned with the stars of service and self-sacrifice? Gleanest thou, like Ruth, in the barley fields of willing conservation, that the hungry may be fed? Standest thou at the well of living waters as the daughter of Samaria stood at Jacob’s well, ready to give drink to the foot weary travelers along life’s highway? Remember, Jesus said: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,” and on page 570 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy has written: “Millions of unprejudiced minds— simple seekers for Truth, weary wanderers, athirst in the desert—are waiting and watching for rest and drink. Give them a cup of cold water in Christ’s name, and never fear the consequences.”

This is woman’s day of wondrous opportunity; how is it being used by thee? Thirsting for the hidden springs of demonstrable truth, the whole world is crying out in the words of the psalmist: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.” From trenches, hospitals, prisons, and workshops, from desolated kingdoms and ruined homes, that cry is heard, and it must be heeded. Who shall save mankind from its own self-destruction? Upon the watch towers of eternal Principle, the Rock of the ages, stand the daughters as well as the sons as keepers and interpreters of Truth. They have come up from drawing water at the deep wells of spiritual intuition, bearing their pitchers of healing comfort, and crying with Isaiah, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters!” Upon their foreheads, too, is written the “Father’s name,” and as woman knows her peerless, immortal birthright and stands for it, the world will recognize her rightful place in God’s kingdom, find that peace for which it has been blindly struggling all down the centuries, and learn its way back to the open gates of Paradise.