The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1895-06-28
WCMAN's OPPORTUNITY.
Rev. DR.. Talmage Talks Upon
Woman and Her Sphere.
God. Who Makes NO Mistakes, Cut Out
Specific Work for Woman, and It
Did Not Include the
BaII0t-Box.

ans Opportunity" is given out for pub
lication this week by Rev. Il. Dewitt
Talmagc:
God who can make no mistake, made
man and woman for a specific work
and to move in particular spheres
man to be regnant i'm his realm, WON
an 70 be dominant in hers The boun-
dairy line between Italy and Switzer-
land, between England and Scotland,
is not more thoroughly marked than
this distinction between the empire
masculine and the empire feminine.
So entirely dissimilar are the fields to
which God called them, that you can
no more compare them than you can
oxygen and hydrogen, water and grass.
trees and stars All this talk about
the superiority of one sex to the other
sex is an everlasting waste of ink and
speech. A jeweler may have a scale SO
delicate that he can weigh the dust
of diamonds; but where are the
scales SO delicate you can
weigh i'm them affection against
affection. sentiment against sentiment,
thought against thought. soul against
soul, mans world against woman's
world? You come out with your
stereotyped remark that man is SUI
perior to woman in intellect; and then
/ open on my desk the swartby, iron
typed, thunder-bolted writings of
Harriet Martineau, and Elizabeth
browning, and George Eliot. You
come on with your stereotyped remark
about woman's superiority to man in
the item of affection; but ask you
where was there more capacity to love
than in John the disciple-and Matthew
Simpson the Bishop, and Henry Mar
tyn the missionary? The heart of
those men was SO large that after you
had rolled into 1.-two hemispheres there
was still loom left to marshal the
hosts of Heaven, and set up the
throne of the eternal Jehovah. /
deny to man the throne intellectual
/ deny to woman the throne
affectional. No human phraseology
will ever define the spheres; while
there is an intuition by which we
know when a man is in his realm, and
when a woman is in her realm, and
when either of them is out of it. No
bungling legislature ought to at
tempt to make a definition, or to say:
This is the line or that is the line"
My theory is, that if a woman wants
to vote, she ought to vote, and that if
a man wants to embroider and keep
house, he ought to be allowed to en-
broider and keep house. There are
masculine women and there are effemi-
mite men. My theory is that you have
no right to interfere with any ones
doing anything that is righteous.
Albany and Washington might as well
decree by legislation how high
brown thrasher should fly, or how
deep trout should plunge, as to try
TO seek out the height and depth of
woman's duty. The question of ca
pacity will settle finally the whole
question, the whole subject. When
woman is prepared to preach, she will
preach, and neither conference nor
presbytery can hinder her. When a
woman is prepared to move in highest
commercial spheres she will have
great influence on the exchange, and
no boards of trade can hinder her. /
want woman to understand that heart
and brain can overly any barrier that
politicians may set up and that moth
down but the question of incapacity.
i was in New Zealand last year just
after the opportunity of suffrage had
been conferred upon women. The
plan worked we'll There had never
been such good order at the polls, and
Righteousness triumphed. Men have
not made such n wonderful moral sue
cess of the ballot-box that they need
fear women will corrupt it. In all
our cities man has SO nearly made the
ballot-box a failure, suppose we let
women try. But there are some wom-
en-, know, of most undesirable ma
ture, who wander up and down the
CONTEMPLATING no homes of their
own, or forsaking their own homes
talking about their rights, and we
know very well that they them
selves are fit neither to vote nor to
keep house. Their mission seems
merely to humiliate the two sexes at
the thought of what any one of us
might become. No one would want to
live under the laws that such women
would enact, or to have cast
upon society the children that
such women would raise. But I shall
show you that the best rights that
woman can own, she already has in
her possession; that her position in
this country at this time is not one of
but one of congratu-
lation: that the grandeur and power
of her realm have never yet been APP
preciated; that she sits to-day on a
throne so high that all the thrones of
earth piled on top of each other
would not make for her a foot
stool. Here is the platform on
which she stands. Away down below
it are the ballot-box and the congress
sional assemblage and the Legislative
hall. Woman always has voted and
will vote. Our great-grand-
fathers thought they were by their
votes putting Washington into the
chair. No. His mother.
by the principles she taught him, and
By the habits she inculcated, made
him president. 1t was a Christian
mothers hand dropping the ballot
when Lord Bacon wrote, and Newton
and Alfred the Great
and Jonathan Edwards
Numbered of Judgment to come. How
many men there have been in high
station who would have been
to stand the test to which
their moral principle was put, had
Id not been for a wife's voice that
encouraged them TO do right, and a
vife's prayer that sounded louder than |
4 II Il