The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1876-03-31
A BROOKLYN ORACLE sPBAKBTH.

A BROOKLYN ORACLE SPEAKETH.
Rev. De Witt Talmage discoursed in
the Brooklyn Tabernacle recently be-
fore an immense throng, directing the
main part of his sermon to the women,
and taking his text from Esther, first
chapter, and ninth to twelfth verses in
elusive.
With the usual dogmatism of minis
ters who are as unlike the teachers and
apostles of olden times as possible, he
exhorts women to copy after the women
of those times, and instead of keeping
pace with men in learning wisdom and
judgment, to remain subservient Esth-
ers to the end of the chapter.
The utter absurdity. of exhorting
women to copy after the "woman who
put her all into the Lords treasury" or
to make "Jeptha's daughter" their
model; or to emulate Ruth cleaning in
the fields of Boaz, can only be equaled
by exhorting the soft-ingered, daintily-
clad, high-fed, pompous teachers of the
religion Of Jesus of Nazareth, of the
present age, to put sandals upon their
feet, gird their loins with skins of ami
mails, and go forth from their lordIy
tabernacles bare-headed, with staff in
hand, and subsist upon locusts and wild
honey, while they "preach the gospel to
every people,"
This divine, who arrogantly elects
himself an oracle of Jehovah and then
hypocritically expresses belief that he
was ''called' to do His work, cannot in
the face of an enlightened world utterly
ignore the part that women have borne
in its history, so he is forced to admit
that God occasionally "calls" woman to
do some great work, but takes issue
with the Supreme Ruler in the matter,
plainly admitting that he thinks He dis
played shocking bad taste, to say the
least of it, when He "called Miriam to
strike timbrel in front of host; an
Isabella to throne; Marie Antoinette
to quell French mob; or Deborah to
stand at the front of an armed battal-
ion," for were not these women wide of
their sphere? and what right had even
the Creator to defeat the ends of his own
creation by allowing these women to
step beyond the charmed circle of home?
But it is when, leaving the biblical ex-
amples, and coming down to the pres
ent time, that the reverend oracle
''comes out strong" Hear him, women
pure and true, who demur while "men
with bloodshot eyes and pestiferous
breath guard ~ the polls, where loaf
erism and beastliness crawl up from the
saloons greasy and foul, and vermin
covered and damned with every pollu-
tion and debauchery, to decide ques-
tions of justice and order and civiliza-
ton" for you. Hear him and decide
whether it were not better for you and
better for your sons, better for the future
prospects of your daughters, and better
for the nation, that you should come,
triple armed with purity, courage, and
justice, and endeavor to stay this reek-
ing tide of corruption which this
preacher so strongly depicts, than to
veil your faces and stink away, that
maudlin virtue and hypocritical cant
falsely called piety, may murmur,
"Vashti has not lost her veil"
When I see a woman struggling for political
preferment, anxious to harangue popular as
semblies, trying to force her way up to the bal
lot-box amid the blasted masculine dema-
gogues who stand with swollen fists and blood
shot eyes and pestiferous breath to guard the
polls, going through the loaferism and beastli-
ness Of popular sovereigns, who crawl up from
the saloons greasy and foul and vermin-cov-
cred, and damned with every pollution and
debauchery, TO decide questions of justice and
order and civilization-when I see such a
woman say, "Ah, what pity Vashti has lost
her veil"
In all the wide world, Brooklyn is the
last place where preachers should have
the unblushing effrontery to counsel
the subjugation of women. The dis
gusting details of the worldwide scan.
dal caused by woman's implicit beliei
in the doctrine that the fhead of the
woman is man" is yet too fresh in the
minds of all to cause the said doctrine
to come with very good grace from 6
Brooklyn pulpit, or to produce a very
pleasing effect upon the world at large
Ozark traitor in Messiah's holy court
Is he who counsels class of persons en-
dowed with reason to submit in al
things to the dictates of others, anC
these Others, according to his own esti
mate, in many instances the vilest o
earth. The utterances of bigoted, un
faithful minister, "what tongue enough
shall execrate ?"
INO0MPREHENsIBLB."