The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1890-01-15
in WOMAN'S BEHALF.
A RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE.

RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE.
ton Brought Under Subsection Through
the Agency of Sin.
At the recent annual meeting of the
Kentucky Equal Rights Association, the
president, Miss Laura Clay, said:
Our principles were not formulated in
preamble or platform; they were sim
ply indicated in the motto we adopted
words of our Lord from the Gospel of
John-"If We abide in my word We shall
know the truth, and the truth shall
make you Free The name we assumed
is the Kentucky Equal Rights Associa-
ton, and the object we avowed in the
constitution is ITO advance, the indus
trial, educational and legal rights of
women, and to secure suffrage to them
by appropriate State and National legis-
lation." Because the right to the bal
lot is the most striking innovation
claimed by us, it is quite common for us
to be known only as woman suffragists;
but the principle we are advocating is
more deep-rooted and wide-spreading
to have voice in the making of the
laws by which she is governed. She
might have this right, and yet be so
subjected by wrongful social customs,
by deficient education, and by false re-
ligious views, that the ballot in her
hands would but weld and tighten the
chains that bind her away from any true
and noble liberty. We claim more than
the ballot for woman: we claim for her
an absolute equality with man in the
right to free enjoyment of every oppor-
tunity that our civilization, the joint
work of both sexes, offers for the devel-
opment of individual capacity. There
is no country in the world in which
the rights of women are recognized as
equal to the rights of men; and this inc
quality has not its root in the law-mak-
ing power; it is more marked in despot-
isms; where the making of laws is in the
power of an autocrat, who is frequently
a woman, than it is in our own country,
where every man is a sovereign, and
only women are subjects. This de-
NAL of the equality of women with men
is not the result of law-making; it only
finds one expression there, and it ex-
presses itself just as strongly in social
customs and false religious views. The
portions of the world that are blessed
by the light of Christian truth have not
far to seek for the explanation of this
inequality. 1t is the result OF sin. When
God made man He made him male and
female, and gave them equal duties,
equal rights, and equal dominion over
the earth. But sin introduced disorder
into the social as we'll as the material
world; and sins most disastrous work
was the subsection of women to
men. Before sin came into the world
there was no hint of the subsection Of
woman to man. Her position is found
in the divine declaration: at is moi
good for the man to be alone; will
make him an helpmeet for him." We
do not see in this a favoritism toward
the masculine half of the race in the
Creator, SO that He formed the feminine
half to subordinate its wishes, its hap
piness or its capabilities to the contfO
and direction and pleasure of the other
We accepted it as divine statement o.
the incompleteness of human nature
while man stood alone; the woman, al
God made her, was its completion, an(
rounded it out to the fullness of divine
intention. In the forming of this com
pliment to himself, however, man ha(
no part, and from the very nature of thu
case he never can have. He may bt
capable of appreciating that something il
, lacking in himself; but the fact that it il
not in himself makes him forever incap
. able of evolving it in another. Man is no
creator; he can but develop the ca
pacities implanted in him by the divine
, hand. Therefore, what man lacked o
. the completeness intended by God, tina
the Creator supplied in'the woman. Al
, she came from His hand WON
an was help for man, meet by
her natural capacities, without being
, constrained or subordinated by him il
. any degree, AS long as the first pal
( walked in the presence of God, and His
will was the woman's only law, she full
filled her beneficent mission with joy
and the man recognized in her his equal
} as bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh
, and made like himself in the image o
, God. But sin overthrow this exquisit,
. harmony; and sorrow, sorrow is tn,
, mournful refrain that preceded thu
prophecy spoken to the woman, which
: foretold that dark consummation of so
, cial disorder: "'Thy desire shall be t,
thy husband, and he shall rule owe
7 thee" But, though sin has debased tn,
woman to seek her law in tn. will o
q man rather than in the will of G cd, ant
? with presumption to rule over the being
S ma de in Gods image, yet sin never ha
g and never can overthrow the divine de
0 cree that it is not good for the man t.
q be alone, or cut the bond that made tn
9 twain one whole in the day OF their ere
8 alton. Woman is the mother of all liv
!. ing, and the stream can not rise highe
g than the fountain. In the darkened i'm
I aginings of mans heart he has though
Q to separate himself from the fate o
}. woman and to rise above her scale; bu
9 it is vain attempt.
] In heather lands, woman is an abjeC
D drudge, but man is sordid savage; i
{ the East woman is frivolous slave, bu
!. man is sensual mean spirited, with hi
own soul dominated by every base an
cruel passion. These are but types {
what the race has produced in the fulfil
s attempt, repeated in every age and e'
9 cry cline, by man to raise himself, bu
j retain woman in subsection. But ami
;, this darkness there is hope, for God di