Newport weekly independent., 1901-08-23
HOME, SWEET HOME.
Or. Talmage Extols It as a Field
 of Usefulness.
A Sermon for the Encouragement of Wives and Mothers--The Spheres of Man and Woman Entire-
 Ky Different
Copyright, 1901 by Louis KIopsch N Y)
 Washington, Aug. IS.

peclally encourages wives and moth
 CTS; text, Genesis 1:27: Male and fe-
 male created He them"
 Tn other words, God, who can make
 no mistake, made man and woman for
 a specific work and to move in particu-
 lar, spheres-man to be regnant in his
 realm, woman to be dominant ill 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 is an everla sting waste
 Of ink and speech. A jeweler may have
 a scale so delicate that he can weigh Che dust of diamonds, but where are
 the scales so delicate that you can
 weigh in them affection, sentiment
 against sentiment, thought against
 thought, soul against soul, mans
 word against a woman's word?
 You come out with your stereotyped remark that man is superior to wom-
 an in intellect, and then l open on my desk the swarthy, iron-typed, thunder
 bolted writings of Harriet Martineau
 and Elizabeth Browning and George Eliot. You come on with your stereo- typed remark about woman's superior lty to man in the item of affection, but l ask you where was there more ca paclty to love than in John he disciple, and Robert McCheyne, the Scotchman, and John Summerfield, the Methodist, and Henry Martyr, the missionary? The heart of those men was so large that after you had rolled into it the hemispheres there was room still left to marshal the hosts of Heaven and set up the throne of the eternal Jehovah l deny to man the throne intellectual. l deny to woman the throne affection al. No human phraseology will ever define the spheres while there is an intuition by which we know when man is in his realm and when a wom- an Is in her realm and when neither of them is out of it. No bungling egisla- ture ought to attempt to make a defi- milton 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 em- broider and keep house. There are masculine women, and there are ef- feminate men. My theory is that you have no right to interfere with any, ones doing anything that is righteous. Albany and Washington 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 or the depth of wom- ans duty. The question of capacity will settle finally the whole question, 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. I want woman to understand that heart and brain can overflow any barrier that politi- cians may set up, and that nothing can keep her back or keep her down but the question of capacity.
 l know there are women of most un- desirable 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 well that they them selves are fit neither to vote nor fit to keep house. Their mission seems to De to humiliate 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 that such women would raise. but will show you that the best rights that woman can own she already has m her possession; that her position in 'nls country at this time is not one or commlseration, but one of congrat- ula tloh; that the grandeur and power or her realm have never yet been ap- preclated; that she sits to-day on a 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. Away down below it are the ballot box ana the congressional assemblage and the legislative hall.
 Woman always has voted and a1- ways will vote. Our great-orandf,- thers thought they were by their votes putting Washington into the presiden- tial chair. No. His mother. by the principles she taught him and by4he she inculcated, made him presi- O