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Women were the heads of the families, the children were named after the mother, and not the father, and all the relations to which rights of succession attached were traced through women only. All property was held by women. Moreover, from this headship, women assigned to themselves, or had conceded to them, the social and political power as well as the domestic supremacy.
It followed her to the Sabbath-day catechisings, where she repeated the answers about the federal headship of Adam, and her consequent personal responsibilities, and other technicalities which are hardly milk for babes, perhaps as well as other children, but without any very profound remorse for what she could not help, so far as she understood the matter, any more than her sex or stature, and with no very clear comprehension of the phrases which the New England followers of the Westminster divines made a part of the elementary instruction of young people.
Having no idea of the real spiritual character of the divine ecclesia, they had to content themselves with that national church unity which was still in their power. The clergy, who had long been accustomed to the imperial tie, believed that a national headship was now necessary.
Rival clans strove for the headship of Islam, and their quarrels degenerated into bloody civil wars. In this fratricidal strife the fervour of the first days cooled, and saintly men like Abu Bekr and Omar, Islam's first standard-bearers, gave place to worldly minded leaders who regarded their position of "Khalifa" as a means to despotic power and self-glorification.
This declaration of portentous significance, which was supported by incontrovertible proofs adduced by the avowed enemies of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh themselves, which was made in a country that aspires to the headship of Islám through the restoration of the Caliphate, and which has received the sanction of the highest ecclesiastical authorities in that country, this official testimony which the leaders of Shí’ah Islám, in both Persia and ‘Iráq, have, through a century, sedulously avoided voicing, and which, once and for all, silences those detractors, including Christian ecclesiastics in the West, who have in the past stigmatized that Faith as a cult, as a Bábí sect and as an offshoot of Islám or represented it as a synthesis of religions—such a declaration was acclaimed by all Bahá’í communities in the East and in the West as the first Charter of the emancipation of the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh from the fetters of Islamic orthodoxy, the first historic step taken, not by its adherents as might have been expected, but by its adversaries on the road leading to its ultimate and world-wide recognition.
It may be all very well for those who accept the authority and headship of the man as the foundation of the family and of society, to be filled with bewildered fear at what seems to them to be a quite new assertion of rights on the part of the mothers of the race. But has the family at all stages of growth been founded on the authority of the father?
Tarboe had been for a few months only the reputed owner of the great business, and he had paid a big price for his headship in the weighty responsibility, the strain of control; but it had got into his blood, and he felt life would not be easy without it now. Besides, there was Junia.
The national policy in these instances and others that might be mentioned, is wholly inconsistent with the doctrine of the Redeemer's Headship in its legitimate application, and is the source of many of the evils that in our day corrupt and degrade the Church of England, and that prevent the developement and prevalence of genuine Protestantism throughout the nation.
The standard which they firmly grasped and refused to surrender had its glorious motto, "FOR CHRIST'S CROWN AND COVENANT." The central doctrine of the Redeemer's Headship over the Church and the nations, occupied a first place in all the testimonies emitted in their general meetings, and uttered on scaffolds and fields of blood.
It rose to show the newly-animated pair, Junius Brutus and Barberina his wife, at the breakfast table, with a boar's head of brawn before them, while the Lady Barberina boldly asserted her claims to the headship of the house. Had she not lately been all head? The pathetic reply was, "Would it were so still, my dear. All head and no tongue, like our present meal."
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