The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-08-25
DR. TALMAGE'S SERMON.

SsessSss ssssss sssxSSssG%. ! Washington, Aug. 1s.--In this dis course pr. Talmage extois home as field Of usefulness, and especially en- courages wives and mothers; text, Genesis i, p, Male and female created he them" .t., In other words, God. who can make no mistake. made man and woman for d specific work and to move in particu- lar spheres-man to be regnant in ms realm, woman to be dominant in hers. The boundary line between Italy ana Switzerland. between England; ana Scotland Is not more thoroughly mark ed 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 fhis 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 sentiment, thought against thought, soul against soul. a mans word again a womans word?
 You come out with your stereotyped remark that man is superior to woman in intellect, and then I open on my desk the swarthy. iron typed, thun n1sr- bolted 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 I ask you where was there more capa- { city to love than in John the disciple, and Robert McCheyne, the Scotcnman. and John Summerfield, the Methodist, and Henry Martyr the missionary! The heart of those men was co large that after you had rolled into t the hemispheres there was room stll ieit to marshal the hosts of heaven and set up the throne of the eternal Jehovah. I deny to man the throne intellectual. deny to woman the throne affec'ional. 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 it. No bungling legislature ought to attempt to make a definition O: to say, This is the line, and that IS the line.''
 My theory is that if woman wants 10 vote she ought to vote and that II man wants to embroider and keep bo,,se he ought to be allowed to em- broider and keep house. There are rr1asculine women, and there are effem- mate men. My theory is that you have m right to interfere with any ones doing anything that is righteous. AL bany and Washington might as well 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 woman s duty The question of capacity will settle finally the whole question, the whole subject When a woman Is pre- pared 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 barriers that politi- clans may set up ethat nothing can keep her back or keep her down but the question of capacity.
 Woman's Best Rights.
 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 we'll that they them selves are fit neither to vote nor fit to keep house. Their mission seems to be to humiliate the twos &4xes at xhe thought of what any one ef us might become No one would, want tosllve under the laws that such women would enact, or to have cast upon society the children that such women would raise. hat fAn h.sof fyftf fc that. woman can own she already has ia her possession: that her position in this country at this time is not one of commisseration; 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 a footstool. Here is the platform on which she stands. Away down below it are the ballot box and the congressional asSemblage and the legislative hall.
 Appreciation of Her Rights.
 Woman always has voted and always will vote. our great-grahdfathers thought they were by their votes lut- ting Washington into the Presidential chair. No. His mother, by the E!in- ciples she taught him and by the habits she inculcated, made him President. 1t was a Christian mothers hand drop ping the ballot when LordBAcon write and Newton philosophical. and Alfred the Great governed. and Jonathan Ed wards thundered of judgment to come. How many men there have been in high political station who would have been insufficient to stand the test t. which their moral principles was out had 1t not been for a wifes voice that encouraged them to do right and a wife's prayer that sounded louder than the clamor of partisanshp! Why, my friends. the right of suffrage. as we men exercise it, seems to be a feeble thing. You, Christian man, como u to the ballot box, and you drop your vote. Right after you comes a hber- tine or a sot, the offscouring of the street, and he drops his vote and his vote counteracts yours. But if in the quiet of home life a daughter by her Christian demeanor, a wife by her In- dustry mother by Aer faithftlinesS casts a vote in the right direction. the r nothing can resist 1t, and the inaaaac of that vote will throb through the eternities.
 My chief anxiety, then, is not that woman have other rights accorded her but that she. by the grace of God, rise up to the appreciation of the glorious rights she already possesses. I snslI only have time to speak of one grand and all absorbing right that every Wo-
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