The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1890-01-10
IN WOMAN'S BEHALF.
A RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE.

Woman the Equal OF Man From the Crea-
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 ye 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
than the right of woman. by the ballot,
to have a voice in the making Of the
laws by which she is governed. She
might have this right, ana 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 lawmak-
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 well 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 declarations: ut is not
good for the man to be alone; l will
make him an helpmeet for him." We
do not see in this 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 it's capabilities to the control
and direction and pleasure of the other.
We accepted it as a divine statement of
the incompleteness of human nature
while man stood alone; the woman, as
God made her, was it's completion, and
rounded it out to the fullness of divine
intention. In the forming of this COM
pliment to himself, however, man had
no part, and from the very nature of the
case he never can have. He may be
capable of approaching that something is
lacking in himself; but the fact that it is
not in himself makes him forever incap-
able of evolving it in another. Man is not
a creator; he can but develop the ca
pacities implanted in him by the divine
hand. Therefore, what man lacked of
the completeness intended by God, that
the Creator supplied in the woman. As
she came from His hand wom-
an was help for man, meet by
her natural capacities, without being
constrained or subordinated by him in
any degree. As long as the first pair
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 Of
God. But sin overthrow this exquisite
harmony; and sorrow, sorrow is the
mournful refrain that preceded the
prophecy spoken to the woman, which
foretold that dark consummation of So
cial disorder: Thy desire shall be to
thy husband. and he shall rule over
thee" But, though sin has debased the
woman to seek her law in the will of
man rather than in the will of God, and
though sin has filled the heart of man
with presumption to rule over the being
made in Gods image, yet sin never has
and never can overthrow the divine de-
cree that it is not good for the man to
be alone, or cut the bond that made the
twain one whole in the day of their Gre
alton. Woman is the mother of all liv-
ing, and the stream can not rise higher
than the fountain. In the darkened inn
aginings of mans heart he has thought
to separate himself from the fate of
woman and to rise above her scale; but
it is vain attempt.
In heather lands, woman is an abject
drudge, but man is sordid savage; in
the East woman is frivolous slave. but
man is sensual, mean spirited. with his
own soul dominated by every base and
cruel passion. These are but types of
what the race has produced in the futile
attempt, repeated in every age and ev-
cry cline, by man to raise himself, but
retain woman in subsection. But amid
this darkness there is hope, for God did
not forsake His creatures in their sins.
Even before their sentence was pro-
the gracious promise was given
the seed of woman should bruise the
head. ITO this end was the
Son of God manifested, that he might