The Elevation of the Place of Women in Society

One of the results of God's great work which is now going on in the world, will be, to raise and perfect woman's position and character. The darkest page in human history is that of the treatment of woman. Oppressed by man's depravity, injured in her most sacred affections, — the slave of man instead of his companion,— she has bedewed the earth with tears, and has had consolation only in that faith in God, which is appropriate to her confiding nature. But when, in the progress of divine truth, it is understood that man cannot fulfill his own destiny, and is not the completion of himself without her, — in other words, when, by being restored to God, he is restored to himself, — he will also be restored to that which is a part of himself; and will thus perfect, in completed unity, what would otherwise necessarily remain in the imperfection of an undeveloped and partial nature.

And, in connection with the accomplishment of this desirable end, nothing is to be considered as unimportant which in any way tends to secure it. And this leads to the remark, that female education, considered in its religious aspects, is one of the great works of God which will more and more characterize the coming ages. A general conviction on this subject is beginning to he felt; but it must be admitted that the way in which this conviction, and the hopes involved in it, are to be realized, is not well understood. And, accordingly, educational efforts for the improvement of the intellect are out of proportion to those which are designed for the improvement of the heart. What we need now, and what the designs of God upon our race require us to have, are seminaries, in which all necessary sciences and literatures shall be attended to, but in which it shall be understood and taught, at the same time, that the first and indispensable knowledge is that of repentance and salvation through Christ, and of sanctification by the constant indwelling and guidance of the Holy Ghost. In other words, we need seminaries in which the education of the female heart in holiness shall take the precedence of all other forms of education.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 7, Chapter 6.

The Godhead is the Antetype of the Family

The Godhead itself, mysterious and unsearchable as it is, is the fore-shadowing, the antetype of the family. Man is said to be created in the divine image;  but the combined man, which constitutes the family, far more than the solitary man or woman, is the true image of God. And the reason is, "God is love.” And if he is so, then there must have been an eternal Beloved. Otherwise, he would have been the most miserable of beings. Absolute solitude is inconsistent with happiness. What could be more miserable than a being, the very essence of whose nature is love, without an object to meet and to satisfy its unalienable and mighty tendencies? And that object, to meet the ends for which it exists, must be as infinite as the love of which it is the subject.  And if it must be infinite, because nothing short of infinite would be an appropriate object of the divine affections, it must also have been eternal, because otherwise the divine affection, through countless ages, would have had no object at all. And hence, there is, and must be, innate in the Godhead, the infinitely beloved, the Chosen and Anointed of the Father, the Eternal Word, the Immanuel. But this duality of existence, which is constituted into unity by the unchangeable bond of the affections, cannot be perfectly happy except in some object possessing a like infinity of character, which may be regarded, speaking after the manner of men, as "a procession or emanation" from the two. And this re-production of itself, infinite in its nature, perfect in its love and by "an everlasting generation," constitutes and completes the adorable family of the Trinity.

Man, created in the divine image, is male and female; and these two are one. And their united existence, deriving a new power from their union, multiplies and images itself in a third, which is also a part of itself. It is man, therefore, in his threefold nature, — the father, the mother, and the child,— the beautiful trinity of the family, and yet so constituted that in man's unfallen state it would never have suggested the idea of a weakened or discordant unity, — which may be regarded as the earthly representation, the visible, though dim,  shadowing  forth of the divine personalities existing in the unity of the Godhead. The original type is in the infinite; but it is reproduced and reflected with greater or less degrees of distinctness in all orders of moral beings. 

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 7, Chapter 6.