The elder women as mothers. — The same watchful care against all assumption of superiority must also be exercised in his dealings with the Christian matrons of Ephesus.
The younger as sisters, with all purity. — In the case of the younger women, St. Paul adds to his directions respecting brotherly and sisterly regard a grave word, urging upon Timothy, and all official teachers like Timothy, to add to this self-denying, loving friendship a ceaseless watchfulness in all their conversation, so as not to afford any ground for suspicion; for, above all things, the recognised teacher of Christianity must be pure. No one can read and forget the quaint words of advice of St. Jerome: “Omnes puellas et virgines Christi, aut æqualiter ignora aut ægualiter dilige.”