Woman in Sacred History

Woman in Sacred History is a series of sketches by Harriet Beecher Stowe, drawn from scriptural, historical, and legendary sources. The contents group the sketches under Women of the Patriarchal Ages, which include Sarah the Princess and Hagar the Slave, and Women of the National Period, which include Miriam, Sister of Moses and Deborah the Prophetess. The introduction says that the object of the pages will be to show, in a series of biographical sketches, a history of Womanhood under Divine culture, tending toward the development of that high ideal of woman which we find in modern Christian countries.

The text says that Martha was one of those natural leaders whom everybody instinctively thinks of as the head of any house they may happen to belong to, and that her tone toward Mary is authoritative. The text recalls that, as it is said, Samuel ministered before the Lord, being a child, girded with a linen ephod, and that his mother made him a little coat and brought it to him from year to year.