Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1895-06-22
DOMINION OF WOMAN.
THE GLORIOUS RioHrs SHE ALREADY
POSSESSES.

iTG 0EOhlOOS HiO'7 . Or1E HLhGAOT
POSSESSES.
Rev. DIR. Taimnge Fmvors Woman Suffrage,
but He Sees Higher Rights For Women
Than This-Tle Realm of Home-An
Allcgory.
] ST.. LOUIS, June lG.-m his sermon
| for today Rev. Dr. Talmagc, who has
reached this city on his western tour,
discusses 1t subject of universal interest
viz. Woman's Opportunity"-his text
being. "She shall be called woman, "
Genesis ii, %.
God, who can make no mistake, mado
man and woman for a specific work and
to move in particular spheres-man to
BIO regnant in his realm; woman to be
dominant in hers The boundary limo
between Italy and Switzerland, between
England and Scotland, is not more
+ thoroughly marked than this distinction
between the empire masculine and the
empire feminine. 80 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 tho superiority Of ono
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-
ton, sentiment against sentiment,
thought against thought, soul against
soul, q mans world against woman's
world? You come out with your stereo-
typed remark that man is superior to
woman in intellect, and then I 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
1 ask you where was there more capa-
citySto love than i'll 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
heniispheres there was room still left to
marshal the hosts Of heaven and set up
theSthrone of the eternal Jehovah. 1 de-
nv to man the throne intellectual l 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 i'll his
! realm,e and when woman is in her
realm, and when either Of them is out
Of its. 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 q
man wants to embroider and keep house
he ought to ibe allowed to embroider
isndyleep. house. There are MASCULINE
Won en- and thore are effemimate men.
Ny 'tneory is that you have no rightste-1
interfere with any ones doing anything
that is righteous. Albany and Washing
ton might as we'll 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 capa-
city will settle finally the whole ques-
ton, the whole subject. When woman
is prepared to preach, she will preach,
and neither conference nor presbytery
can hinder her. When woman is pre-
pared to move in highest commercial
spheres, sho will have great influence on
the exchange, and no boards Of trade
can hinder her. I want woman to I'M
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 a wonderful moral success of the
ballot box that they need fear women
will corrupt it. In all our cities man
has 80 nearly made the ballot box a
failure suppose we let women try. But
there are some women, l know, of most
undesirable nature, who wander up and
down the CONTEMPLATING no homes of
their own or forsakirg 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 hunih-
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 l shall show
you that the best rights that woman
can own she already has i'll her posses
sion; that her position in this country
at this time is not one of commisera-
ton, but one of congratulatlon; that
the grandeur and power Of her realm
have never yet been appreciated; that
she sits today on 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 Oh 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-grandfathers
thought they were by their votes put
ting Washington into the presidential
chair. No. His mother, by the princi-
pies she taught him, and by the habits
she inculcated, made him president. 1t
was Christian mothers hand drop
ping the ballot when Lord Bacon wrote