The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-06-17
TALMAGES WEEKLY TALK.
AN ELOQUENT DISSERTATION on
"WOMAN's OPPORTUNITY"

He Permitted 10 Do Soft a Man
Wants 10 EmbrOfder, DO House
work and sew, by All Means DO
Not Prevent Him From so Doing.
st. Louis, No, June 16.-In his sermon
for to-day. Rev. DR.. Talmage. who has
reached this city on his western tour. dis
cusses a subject OF universal interest.
viz: "Woman's Opportunity" his text be-
ing: "She shall be called woman" Gen.
2:23.
God. who can make no mistake, made
nan and woman for a specific work ana
TO move in particular spheres-man 20
be regnant in his realm; woman to nc
dominant in hers. The boundary line be-
tween Italy and Switzerland. between En-
gland and Scotland, is not more thorough
" 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.
that he can weigh the dust of diamonds;
but where are the scales so delicate that
you can weigh in them affection against
affection, sentiment against sentiment,
thought against thought, soul against soui,
a mans world against a woman's world.
You come out with your stereotyped re-
marked that man is superior to woman in
intellect; and then I open on my desk the
swarthy. irontyped, thunder-bolted writ
ings of Harriet Martineau, and --,zabetn
Browning, and George Eliot. You come
on with your stereotyped remark about
woman's superiority to man in the item
OF affection; but I ask you where was
there moro capacity tq. love than in John
the disciple-and Matthew Simpson, the
bishop. and Henry Martyr, the mission
airy? 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. /
deny 20 man the throne intellectual. 1
deny to woman the throne affectonal. 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 a woman is in her realm,
and when either of them is out OF
st. No bungling legislature ought to at
tempt to make a definition, or to say:
This Is the line and 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 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 ones
doing anything that is righteous. Albany
ard Washington might as well decree by
legislation how high a brown thrasher
should fly, or how deep a trout should
plunge, as to try to seek out the hight and
depth of woman's duty. The question of
capacity will settle finally the whole ques-
ton, 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 OK
change, and no boards of trade can hinCer
her. / want woman to understand that
heart and brain can overly any barrier
that politicians may set up, and that
nothing can keep her back or keep her
down but the question of incapacity.
/ was in New Zealand last year just af-
ter 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 tri-
umphed Men have not made such won
derful moral success of the ballot-boX
that they need fear women win corrupt
1t. In all our cities man has so nearly
made the ballot-box a failure suppose we
let women try. But there are some wo-
men, / know, of most undesirable ma
ture, who wander up and down the coun-
try-having no homes of their own, or
forsaking their own DEMONSTRATING about
their rights; and we know very well that
they themselves 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 or us might be-
come. No one would want to live under
the laws that such women would enact,
or 10 have cast upon society the children
that such women would raise. But l shall
show you that the best rights that wo-
man can own, she already has In her pos
session; that her position in this country
at this time is not one of confederation
but one of congratulaton; that the gran
deur and power OF her realm have never
yet been appreciated; that she sits to-day
ON throne so high that all the thrones of
earth piled on top of each other would
not make for her a footstool. Here is
the platform on which she stands. A way
down below it are the ballot-box and the
congressional assemblage and the legisla-
tive hall. Woman always has voted and
always VIII vote. our great-grandfatherS
thought they were by their votes putting
Washington into the presidential chair
No, his mother, by the principles she
taught him, and by the habits she incul-
Gated. made him President. 1t was a
Christian mothers hand dropping the bal
lot when Lord Bacon wrote, and Newton
philosophical, and Alfred the Great gov
erned, and Jonathan Edwards Numbered
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 ii not been for wife's voice
that encouraged them to do right, and a
wifes prayer that sounded louder than
the clamor of partisanship! The right OF
suffrage, as we men exercise it, seems 10
be a feeble thing. You, a Christian man,
come up to the ballot-box and you drop
your vote. Right after you comes a lib
ertine or a sot-the offscouring of the
strickland he drops his vote; and his
vote counteracts yours. But if in the
quiet of home life a daughter by her
Christian demeanor, a wife by her indus
try, a mother by her faithfulness, casts
a.