Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1901-08-24

81 this discourse DIR. Talmage eXtols
home as field of usefulness. and
especially encourages wives and
mothers; text, Genesis j., -, Male and
female created he them"
In other words, God, who can make no
mistake, made man and woman for Il
specific work and to move ia particular
sphereS-man TO be reSnant in his realm.
woman TO be dominant in hers. The
boundary line between Italy and Switzer-
land, 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 com
pare 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 everlasting
waste of ink and speech. jeweler may
have a 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. sentiment against senti-
ment, thought against thought, soul
against soul, mans word against Il wo-
mans word?
You come out with your stereotyped re-
mark that man is superior TO woman III
intellect, and then ! open on my desk the
swarthy, iron typed, thunderbolted writ
ings of Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth
Browning and George Eliot. You come
on with your stereotyped remark about
woman's superiority to man in the item
of affection, but | ask you where was
there more capacity to love than in John
the disciple, and Robert McCheyne the
Scotchman, and John Summerheld. the
Methodist and Henry Martyr, the mis-
sionary? The heart of those men was
so large that after you had rolled into 1t
the hemispheres there was room still left
to marshal the hosts of heaven and set
mp the throne of the eternal Jehovah.
deny to man the throne intellectual.
deny 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 in his
realm and when woman is in her realm
and when either of them is out of il. 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 man
wants TO embroider and keep house he
ought to be allowed to embroider and keen
as%azsse. 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 right
eous. Albany and Washington might as
well decree by legislation how high a
brown thrasher should fly or how deep u
trout should plunge as to try to seek out
the height or the depth of wOman's duty.
The question of capacity will settle final
~ 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 prepared to move in highest
commercial spheres, she will have great
influence on the exchange, and no boards
of trade can hinder her. | want woman
TO understand that heart and brain can
overflow any barrier that politicians may
set up and that nothing can keep her
back or keep her down but the question
of capacity.
Woman's Best Rights.
l know there are women of most un-
desirable nature who wander up aud
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 themselves are ill
neither to vote nor fit to keep house.
Their mission seems to be 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 east
upon society the children that such wo-
men would raise. But | viii show you
that the best rights that woman can own
she already has in her possession; that
her position in this country at this time
is not one of commiseratiOn, but one Of
eongratulation; that the grandeur and
power Of her realm have never yet been
appreciated; that she sits to-day on q
throne SO high that all the thrones of
earth piled on top Of each other would
not make for her fUotstoOl. Here is the
platform on which she stands. Away
down below it are the ballot box and the
congressional assemblaEe and the legisla-
tive hall.
Appreciation of Her Rights.
woman always has voted ana al
ways will vote. Our greatgrandfathers
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 ncul-
Gated, made him president. II was a
Christian mothers hand dropping the
ballot when Lord Bacon wrote, and New
ton philosophical and Alfred the Great
governed, and Jonathan Edwards thuu-
dered Of judgment TO come. How many
men there have been in high political sta
ton who would have been insufficient to
stand the test to which their moral prin-
ciple was put had il not been for a wifes
voice that encouraged them to do right
and wife's prayer that sounded louder
than the clamor OF craftsmanship, Why,
my friends, the right Of suffrage, as we
men exercise il, 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 libertine
or a sot, the offscouTing of the street, aud