Pilgrim's progress - Bunyan - XXIII

Required reading
Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example)  - Up to the paragraph that begins: 'Now about this time Matthew and Mercy was married; also Gaius gave his daughter Phoebe to James, Matthew's brother, to wife; after which time, they yet stayed above ten days at Gaius's house, spending their time and the seasons like as pilgrims use to do.'

My notes and thoughts
Today the pilgrims make a stop-over at the inn owned by Gaius after reports that there are robbers on the road.  While there they rescue Feeble-mind from giant Slay-Good and hear about the demise of Mr Not-Right.

As part of the reading for today Bunyan provides a nice little defense of women in the Scriptures: 'Gaius also proceeded and said, 'I will now speak on the behalf of women to take away thier reproach.  For as death and the curse came into the world by a woman, so also did life and health; God sent forth his Son, made of a woman.  Yea, to show how much those that came after did abhor the act of their mother, this sex, in the Old Testament, coveted children if happily this or that woman might be the mother of the Saviour of the world.  I will say again, that when the Saviour was come, women rejoiced in him before either man or angel.  I read not that ever any man did give unto Christ so much as one groat, but the women followed him and ministered to him of their substance.  'Twas a woman that washed his feet with tears, and a woman that anointed his body to the burial.  They were women that wept when he was going to the Cross, and women that followed him from the Cross, and that sat by his sepulchre when he was buried.  They were woment that was first with him at his resurrection morn, and women that brought tidings first to his disciples that he was risen from the dead.  Women therefore are highly favoured, and show by these things that they are sharers with us in the grace of life.'  Contrary to the cries of popular feminist ideology, Biblical Christianity does not oppress women - rather it holds them in high honour!

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.