much of the Apostolic legislation on practical matters has become obsolete, and accordingly we cannot evade the question, whenever appeal is made to Apostolic authority in discussions of practical problems, whether the rulings advanced are really relevant to the cases in debate.
In all questions relating to the intercourse of the sexes there is prima facie a large probability that Apostolic rulings will be irrelevant to modern difficulties, and this for two reasons, which lie on the surface of the New Testament. The apostles were Jews of the first century, and they assumed the prevailing Jewish notions with respect to the relative position of the sexes: the natural inequality of men and women coloured their thought, even when they had risen to the Christian doctrine, that such natural inequality had properly disappeared in the Church. This was one reason; the strength of which will be at once apparent to every reader of the curious passage in which St. Paul legislates for
