Daily Kennebec journal., 1895-03-04
..woman and Women" J"

''Woman and Women.''
Rev. J. S. Williamson delivered a very
able lecture at the Congregational church,
Sunday, on Woman and Woman In
brief he said:
| Woman has been the conundrum of
history Like anything else capable of
unlimited development, she has come
slowly to maturity. In rude ages among
brutal and coarse men she has been de-
graded TO the place Of slave and play
thing; in ages of culture and refinement
her place has been second only to Deity
itself. The sweetest, holiest. most divine
experiences OF the human spirit are pre-
sented by the words mother, sweetheart
ana wlIe Next to the reverence created
by the knowledge of God is that created
py the presence of good, pure cultured
woman. The power permanency and in
teilectual development Of nation can
readily be determined by the position oc-
cupied by woman.
Whenever God has bestowed a talent,
he has created duty. Talents given to
woman were no more intended to be hid
den in napkin of silly femininity than
those OF man in selfish, criminal indiffer-
ence. God has decreed the place of woman
IN this world by the talents with which
He has endowed her, and she understands
this decree only as she discovers what con-
stltutes her physical mental, social and
spiritual endowment. The progress Of
the race lies in its ability to throw off false
customs and false ends. Hidden in the
nature of woman have been capacities
and powers already hinted at in Elizabeth
Frye, Florence Nightingale, Harriet
Martineau, Caroline Herschel and Others
capacities for intellectual stimulus,
! ministering service and, ,disinterested de-
votion to ideals, which are the guiding
stars of social progress. Woman differs
| from man, not so much in the ends for
which she is to live, as in the tineness of
her being Leaving out of account physi-
cal differences her life is not so different
from man s. as some mems is from others
say David B. Hills from William Lloyd
Garrison's, or Thomas Platt's from
Phillips Brooks. Some people have
holy horror of a woman with a mission.
God and the angels have an infinite pity
for any other. What woman who has
looked through the windows of other lives
into her own soul has not been thrilled by
the STRINGS within her of those qualities
which have marked the lives of the crown
of jewels of her sex. What woman can
realize her God given power to inspire
others, through love for her, to become
their best selves, without seeing the de-
graduation to which she stoops when she
becomes simply the dummy for a dress
maker and milliner? What woman can
think of the power of love over herself and
her posterity, without resolving to make
r.,1I 4 f,,1 Il
tended it should be:
Woman must learn in still wider meas
ure the art of adaptibilty and regard the
changed estimates of herself and the
world, as birthmarks of the new age in
which is to dwell more righteousness than
in the old She must break through the
crust of custom and sentiment which
would make her cipher in the social
progress of the race, or cover her with a
veil of false sanctity which would make
her about as useful and ornamental as an
Egyptian mummy She must enter the
treasure house of the ages, and help the
world to see that material success is
subordinate to mind. She must show the
sin of turning young people out of educa-
tional institutions with no interest in fu
ture intellectual development. She must
not mean the qualification of a thirst for
applause. Furthermore, she must take a
more rational and more Christian view of
her relation to her own sex. Because of
special equipment she is called to
special ministry. Women have more than
man, feelings that are strong, natural
and sacred, and the question of God,
"Where is thy sister, must ever sound
louder than that to man, Where is thy
brother" She makes the dignity of her
sex her own. Any word hurtful to it,
she takes as a personal insult, and so is
hard, intolerant and unmerciful toward
the sins of her sister She must school
herself to forget the offender and see the
sister, then her compassion passes all
clcmency of man for man. Here she en-
ters the experience of Christ, who, know
ing no SIM became sin for us, She must
not in her efforts to be pure forget to be
good.