The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1895-06-29
TALMAGE's SERMON.
Woman's Opportunity In the Homo,
Not In the Ballot-Box.
xnsignincanco OF the Suffrage AZ Compared
with the Work of Training Chill
dren for God-some Plain
Words TO Women.

the following sermon for publication
this week, he being on trip to the
west 1t Is on "Woman's Opportuni
ty," and Is given without text:
God who can make no mistake, made
man and woman for specific worli
and to move in particular spheres
man TO be regnant in his realm, won.
an to be dominant in hers The boun'
dary 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 n scale SO
delicate that he can weigh the dust
of diamonds; but where are the
scales SO delicate you can
weigh in them affection against
affection, sentiment against sentiment,
thought against thought, soul against
soul, mans world against a woman's
! world? You come out with your
| stereotypcd remark that man is su.
! Pcrio- to woman in intellect; and then
! ] open on my desk the swarthy, iron
| typed, thunder-bolted writings OF
, Harriet Martineau, and Elizabeth
browning, and George Eliot. You
come on with your stereotyped remark
n bpnf ypnrpap's Commemorative 60 ,non ~,
the item of affections; but / ask you
where was there more capacity to love
! than in Johnthe 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
J hosts of Heaven, and set up the
throne of the eternal Jehovah. !
/ deny to man the throne intellectual.
/ deny TO woman the throne
afYectional. No human phraseology
( will ever define the spheres; while
! there Is an intuition by which we
know when man is in his realm, and
when woman is in her realm, and
when either of them is out of it No
bungling legislature ought to at
. tempt to make n definition, or to say:
This is the line or that is the line"
My theory is. that IL a woman wants
to vote, she ought to vote. and that If
man wants to ernbroider and keep
house, he ought to be allowed 20 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 a
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 a
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. l
want woman to understand that heart
and brain can overly any barrier that
politicians may set up, and that moth
ing can keep her back or keep her
down but the question of incapacity.
was in New Zealand last year just
after the opportunity Of suffrage had
been conferred upon women. The
plan worked well. There had never
been such good order at the polls, and
righteousness triumphed. Men have
not made such 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-bcx failure, suppose we let
women try. But there are some wom-
en-, / know, of most undesirable ma
ture, who wander up and down the
country-having 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 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
commiseration, but one of congratu-
lation; that the grandeur and power
Of her realm have never yet been ap-
preciated; that she sits to-day on a
throne so high that AL the thrones OF
earth piled on top Vt each other
would not make for her a foot
stool. Here is the platform on
which she stands. Away down below
1t are the ballot-box and the congress.
sionaI assemblage and the Legislative
hall. Woman always has voted and
always will vote. Our great grand.
fathers thought they were by thor
| votes putting Washington into the
presidential chair. No. His mother,
by the principles she taught him, and
by the habits she inculcated. made
him president 1t was Christian
, mothers hand dropping the ballo,