The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1901-08-20

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18.-In this dis
course DR.. Talmage extols home as a
field Of usefulness, and especially encour-
ages wives and mothers; text, Genesis
j, q, male and female created he
them"
In other words, God, who can make no
mistake, made man and woman for a
specific work and to move in particular
spheres--man TO be regnant 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 han this
distinction between the empire masculine
and the empire feminine. So entirely
dissimilar are tie 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. A 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
aSoAAoI 0OhAB q lou . "OAo oSoA4Sb - W.
mans word?
You come out with your stereotyped re-
mark that man is superior to woman in
intellect, and then l 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 l ask you where was
there more capacity to love than in John
the disciple, and Robert McCheyne, the
Scotchman, and John Summertield, the
Methodist, and Henry Martyr. the mis-
sionary? 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. ]
deny TO man the throne intellectual. ]
deny to woman the throne ai:rcti0ual.
No human phraseolOgy will pV@f define
the spheres while there is an intuition by
which we know when 4 man Is ~ his
realm and when q woman is in hri r:-aln
and when either of them is ont of ii. No
bungliEg legislature ought To attempt to
make Il definition or TO say. This is the
line. and that is the line"
Ny theory is thar if woLlan ANTS TO
vote she ought TO vote and that if Il man
wants to embroider and keep house he
ought to be allowed to enibroider and
keep house. There are masculine women,
and there are effcIainate men. by the
DRY is that you have no right TO interfere
with any ones doing anything that is
righteous. Albany and Washington might
as well decree by legislation how high a
brown thrasher should fly or how deep a
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
ly the whole question, the whole subject.
When q woman is prepared to preach,
she will preach, Inc 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. l 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.
Womnr's Best Rights.
know there are women of most IN
desirable nature who wander up and
down the country having 90 homes of
their W or forSaking their own homes,
talking about their rights. and we know
very we'll that they themselves are fit
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 cast
upon society the children that such wo-
men would raise. But I will 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
congratulatiOn; that the grandeur and
power of her realm nave never yet been
appreciates: that she sits today on a
throne so high that all the thrones of
earth piled on top of each other would
lot make for her q footstool. Here is the
platform on which she stands. Away
dow below it are the ballot box and the
congressional ~assemblage and the legisla-
tive hall
Appreciation of Her Rights.
Woman always has voted and al
ways will vote. Our great-grandfathers
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 in
-culcated. made him president, 1t was
a Christian mothers hand dropping the
ballot when Lord Bacon wrote. and New
ton philosophical. and Alfred the Great
governed. and Jonathan Edwards thun-
edered of judgmen: tu come How many
men there have been in high political sta
ton who world have Eeen insufficient to
stand the ties, To which their moral prin-
cipie w:s pi!t had it rot been for n wife's
Voice that cnenura-r,l them "a do right
and a wifr'> prayer that sounded louder
than the ~c.1n3ar nf craftsmanship Why.
ny friends. tie r:-h; IF suffrage. as we
uen exc.v.S;. i; ~-r.l~ 10 te Il feeble
thing Tnu. q tAe4>tiIh man. come up
10 tie ha...'; Ia. ta! ynu crop your
vote. i.:r'.J after yau comes u hbertine
or Il s0t. t.. uIS,riiiin: nf the street. and
be drops I5~ Haic. ana hrs vote counter
acts yori~ -: r ~ t.' Guiri OF home
life a dar.l;ar by per Christian de-
mcaror. = by her ministry. a mother