which she was, in His wisdom and righteousness, subjected, even to fleeing away upon earth. Here, however, she is seen in her title of glory in heaven. The purpose of God is in the Church; but Christ is its great subject; and, in fact, she may be subject to ten thousand vicissitudes here below, for the world is not regulated otherwise than secretly. God may glorify her, but the woman’s place is to be subject; she does not carry on the war, and cannot, in this character. I have already mentioned, elsewhere,[1] that the activity of faith, or its failure, is, in typical scripture, spoken of as the man—the condition of the Church or people of God; for in this sense the Church is the name for a condition of the people of God. This last, being used in a general sense, is represented by the woman.
We have to look, here, at the people of God, as in his own mind or purpose, and therefore glorified in that; yet, as we have said, entering into the detail of consequences, it is in the ministration of it, for it is the man by the woman, not the woman for the man; both have their importance and their place. Hence the woman is seen clothed with supreme authority—the Divine or heavenly splen-
- ↑ Christian Witness, vol. iii. p. 146.
