The Bossier banner., 1899-10-19
i WORK FOR WOMEN.
f., Talmage's Stirring Sermon on
"The Queens of Home"
Hcr0ines of the Fireside and the Hat
tlcfield Ministering Angels
What Her Chief Desire
Should BE.
Copyright, Louis Klopsch. 1881
Washington,

In this discourse the opportunities of
usefulness for women are set forth by
DR.. Talmage, and many sympatlies are
stirred and memories recalled. The
text is Solomon's Song 6, s: There are
threescore queens
So Solomon, by one stroke, set forth
the imperial character of a true Chris
tan woman. She is not slave, not
hireling, not subordinate, but queen.
In former sermon l showed you that
crown and courtly attendants and i'm
perial wardrobe were not necessary to
make a queen, but that graces OF the
heart and life will give coronation to
any woman. l showed you at once at
some length that woman's position was
higher in the world than mans, and
that although she had often been de-
MED the right of suffrage, she always
did vote, and always would vote by her
influence, and that her chief desire
ought to be that she should have grace
rightly to rule in the dominion which
she has already won. l began an emu
meration of some of her rights, and now
IeSulHe the subject.
In the first place woman has the spe-
cial and the superlative right of bless
ing and comforting the sick. What
land, what street, what house, has not
felt the smitings of disease? Tens of
thousands of Sickbeds! What shall we
do with them? Shall man, with his
rough hand and clumsy foot, go STUN
bling around the sickroom, trying to
| soothe the distracted nerves and al
| leviate the pains of the distressed pa
tient? The young man at college may
scott at the idea of being under mater
| nal influences, but at the first blast of
typhoid fever on his cheek he says:
| Where is mother?" Walter Scott
wrote partly in satire and partly in
compliment:
| Oh woman, in our hours of ease,
| Uncertain, coy and hard to please,
| When pain and anguish wiring the brow,
| a ministering angel thou!
| l think the most pathetic passage in
all the Bible is the description of the
lad who went out to the harvest field
of Shunem and got sunstruck-press-
ing his hands on his temples and crying
out: "Oh, my head! My head!" And they
said: "Carry him to his mother" And
| then the record is: s.He sat ON her
knees till noon and then died.
In our civil war men cast the cannon,
men fashioned musketry, men cried to
the hosts: Forward, march," men
hurled their battalions on the sharp
edges of the enemy, crying: Charge,
charged" But woman scraped the lint,
woman administered the cordials, wom-
an watched the dying couch, woman
wrote the last message to the home cir
Gle, woman wept at the solitary burial
attended by herself and four men with
spade. We greeted the generals home
with brass bands and triumphal arches
and wild huzzas; but the story is toe
good to be written anywhere, save in
the chronicles of Heaven, of Mrs. Brady
who came down among the sick in the
swamps of the Chickahominy: of Annie
Ross in the cooper shop hospital; o1
Margaret Breckenridge, who came te
men who had been for weeks with theil
wounds uDdressed, some of them frozer
to the ground, and when she turnet
them over those that had an arm lef
waved it and filled the air with theil
; "hurrah!' of Mrs. Hodge, who cam,
: from Chicago with blankets and will
pillows until the men shouted: "Thre,
! cheers for the Christian commission
God bless the women at home;" thel
sitting down to take the last message
; Tell my wife not to fret about me, bu
! to meet me in Heaven; tell her to trail
up the boys whom we have loved S,
we'll; tell her we shall meet again in tn
good land; tell her to bear my loss lik
the Christian wife of Christian sol
dier;" and of Mrs. Shelton, into who's
face the convalescent soldier looked an,
: said: "Your grapes and cologn
cured me"
And SO it was also through all Of ou
!. war with Spain-women heroic on tn
field, braving death and wounds to reae
the fallen, watching by their fever cot
in the West Indian hospitals or on tn
troopships or in our smitten HON
,, camps. Men did their work with she
and shell and carbine and howitzer
: women did their work with socks an
slippers and bandages and warm drink
and Scripture texts and gentle stroking
of the hot temples and stories of ths
land where they never have any pail
Men knelt down over the wounded an
said: "On which side did you fight
Women knelt down over the wounde
and said: "Where are you hurt? Whs
. nice thing can / make for you to ea'
What makes you cry?" Tonight viii
we men are sound asleep in our bet
there will be a light in yonder lof
there will be groaning down that dal
alley; there will be cries OF distress
that cellar. Men will sleep, and wome
will watch.
,, Again, woman has a special right
. take care of the poor. There are hu
Gretls aud thousands of them all oV
:he Iapd, There is kind OF work tn