Presumptuous Preachers

1 Corinthians 14:34-35 "Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church."

The argument, whether any woman may or may not be a preacher of the word should be primarily one of Scripture. The seeming fitness of some women, by their gifts and graces, to edify the churches by preaching, is then useless and false. When God endows a woman with the ability to understand and teach His Word, it may be safely assumed that he has some wise end in view; he has some area or sphere in which her gifts will come into proper play. But surely it is far from reverent for the creature to decide, against God's Word, that this sphere is the pulpit. God’s wisdom is better than man's. The sin involves the presumption of Uzzah. He was right in thinking that it would be a bad thing to have the sacred ark fall into the dirt, and in thinking that he had the physical strength to steady it, just like any Levite; but he was wrong in presuming to serve God in a way that God had not prescribed. So when men lament the “unemployed spiritual power,” which they suppose exists in many gifted females, as a great loss to the church, they are reasoning with Uzzah; they are presumptuously setting their human wisdom above God's wisdom.

Excerpt taken from an article by Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) titled "Women Preachers (The Public Preaching of Women)" October, 1879. You can read the whole article here.