Connecticut western news., 1895-06-20
DOMINION OF WOMAN.
THE GLORIOUS RIGHTS SHE ALREADY
 POSSESSES.

THE GLORIOUS RIGHTS SHE AlREAOf POSSESSES.
 Rev. Dr. Talmase Tavors Woman Suffrage,
 but He Sees Higher Rights For Women 1 Than This-Thc Realm of Home-An Allcgory.
 ST. LOUIS, June 16.-In his sermon for today Rev. Dr. Talmage, who has reached this city on his western tour, discusses subject of universal interest," viz, "Woman's Opportunity text being, ''She shall be called woman," Genesis ii, 2S.
 God, who can make no mistake, made man and woman for a specific work and to move in particular spheres-man to be regnant in his realm; woman to be dominant in hers. The boundary line between Italy and Switzerland, 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 scale so delicate that he can weigh the dust of diamonds, but where are the scales so delicate that you can weigh in them affection against affec- tion, sentiment against sentiment, thought against thought, soul against soul, man s world against a woman's world? You come out with your stereo- typed remark that man Is superior to woman in intellect, and then open on my desk the swarthy, iron typed, thun- derbolted writings of Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Browning and George Eliot You come on with your stereo- typed remark about woman's superiori- ty to man in the item of affection, but I ask you where was there more capa- city to love than in John, the disciple, and Matthew Simpson, the bishop, and Henry Martyr, the missionary?
 The heart of those men was so large that after you had rolled into it two hemispheres there was room still left to marshal the hosts of heaven and set up the throne of the eternal Jehovah. I de- ny to man the throne intellectual; I de- ny 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 either of them is out of it. No bungling legislature ought to attempt to make definition or to say, "This is the line and that is the line" My theory is that if 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 embroider and keep house There are masculine women and there are effeminate men. My theory is that you have no right to interfere with any one's doing anything that is righteous. Albany and Washing ton might as we'll decree by legislation how high 8 brown thrasher should fly or how deep a trout should plunge as to try to seek out the height and depth of woman s duty. The question of capa- city will settle finally the whole ques- tion, 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 pre- pared to move in highest commercial spheres, she will have great influence on the exchange, and no boards of trade can hinder her. Iwant woman to un- derstand that heart and brain can over fly any barrier that politicians may set up, and that nothing can keep her back or keep her down but the question of incapacity.
 Women and the Ballot.
 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 righteous ness triumphed- Men have not made such 8 wonderful moral success of the ballot box that they need fear women will corrupt it. In all our cities man has so nearly made the ballot box failure, suppose we let women try. But there are some women, I know, of most undesirable nature, 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 we'll that they themselves are fit neither to vote nor to keep house. Their mission seems merely to humili- ate 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 posses sion; that her position in this country at this time is not one of commisera- tion, but one of congratulation; that the grandeur and power of her realm have never yet been appreciated; that she sits today on a throne so high that all the thrones of earth piled on top of each other would not make for her footstool Here is the platform on which she stands. Away down below it are the ballot box and the congressional as- semblage and the legislative hall Woman always has voted and always will vote. Our great t-grandfathers thought they were by their votes put ting Washington into the presidential chair. No. His mother, by the princi- ples she taught him, and by the habits she inculcated, made him president. It was a Christian mothers hand drop ping the ballot when Lord Bacon wrote and Newton philosophical and Alfred the Great governed and Jonathan Ed wards thundered of judgment to come.
 How many men there have been in high political station who would have been insufficient to stand the test to which their moral principle was put had it not been for wifeis voice that encouraged them to do right and wife's prayer that sounded louder than the clamor of partisanship? The right of suffrage as we-men exercise it seems to be feeble thing. You, Christian x,or corpo mn to tho hal1ot I.ox apJ xzOY,