which the Gospel declared, and the subordination of the female sex, which the circumstances of the time rendered imperative, in the most evident interest of the Christian character. He appeals to the historic fact, as he supposed, that woman was created out of man, and to the divine purpose so disclosed, viz., that woman should be a help meet for man. He declares the natural and the religious interdependence of the sexes. He appeals to the general sense of decency, and insists on recognising it as the expression of a divine law. All the while he keeps steadily in view the actual situation of the Church in Corinth.
The Jews were wont to pray covered, as well men as women; the Greeks prayed with bare heads. Corinth was a notorious centre of sexual vice, and of all places there was none in which any relaxation of traditional discipline could be permitted with greater risk to female chastity. The apostle makes a new rule to meet the situation. Men shall follow the Greek practice, women the Jewish; and the
