Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1901-09-05
DIR. TALMAGES SERMON
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE BY THE NOTED
DIViNE.
subject: Wonan's sphere - She Should
Rule az a Queen in the Home - Its
Value as IL Field of Usefulness - The
Mothers Influence ON the Nations Life
Copyright 1901.

| Mothers influence ON the Nhtioh i@ie
copyright 1eo!.l
| WASHINGTON, d. C.--In this discourse
DR.. Talmage eXto.s home as field OF use
| fulness and especially encourages wives
and mothers; text, Genesis j, u, "Maie
| and female created He them"
In other words God who can make no
mistake, made man and woman for spe-
| cifc wori, and to move in particular
| spheres man to be regnant i'll 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 dis.
similar are the fields to which God called
| them that you 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 sex is an everlasting waste OF ink
and speech A jeweler may. have scale
| so delicate that he can weigh the dust of
diamonds, but where are the scales SO deli
cate that you can weigh in them affection
| against affection, sentiment against sentl-
ment, thought against thought, soul
against soul, mans word against wom-
ans word?
You come out with the stereotyped re-
mark that man is superior to woman in
intellect, and then | open on my. desk the
swarthy iron typed, thunder-bolted writ
ings of Harriet Martneau and Elizabeth
Browning and George Eliot. You come on
with your stereotyped ranark about wom-
ans superiority to man in the item of at
fection, but l ask you where was there
more capacity to love than in john the
disciple, and Robert McCheyne, the
Scotchman, and John Summerfield, the
Methodist, and Henry Martyr, the mis-
sionary? The heart of those men was so
large that after you had rolled into it the
| there
marshal the hosts of heaven and set up the
| throne intellectual. | deny to woman the
throne affectional. No human phrase
ology will ever define the spheres, while
there is an intuition by which we know
when man is in his realm and when a
woman is in her realm, and when either
of them is out of it. No bungling legisla-
tion 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 a man
wants to embroider and keep house he
ought to be allowed to embroider end keep
house. There are masculine women and
there are effemnate 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 woman's duty.
The question of capacity will settle finally
| the whole question, the whole subject.
| When woman is prepared to preach she
will preach, and neither conference nor
presbytery can hinder her. When wom-
an is prepared to move in highest CONNER
cial spheres, she will have great influence
on the exchange, and no boards of trade
| can hinder her. l want woman to under
stand that heart and brain can overflow
| ,arr hat
and that nothing can keep her back or
keep her down but the question of capac-
| ity
! | know there are women of most unde-
sirable nature who wander up and down
the country, having no homes of their
| own or forsaking their own homes, talk
ing about their rights, and we know very
well that they themselves are fit neither
| to vote nor fit to keep house. Their mis-
sion seems to be to humiliate the two
sexes at the thought of what any one of
us might become. No one would want to
en- would enact or to have cast upon
society the children that such women
would raise. But | 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 congrat-
ulation; that the grandeur and power of
her realm have never yet been appre-
ciated. that she sits to-day on throne so
| high that all the thrones of earth piled on
| top of each other would not make her a
footstool: Here is the platform on which
she, stands. Away down below it are the
ballot box and the Congressional assem-
| blage and the legislative hall.
| Woman always has voted and always
| will vote Our great-grandfathers thought
| they were by. their votes putting Wash
ington into the Presidential chair. No.
| His mother, by the principles she taught
him and by the habits she inculcated,
made him President. 1t was a Christian
mothers hand dropping the ballot when
Lord Bacon wrote, and Newton philoso-
phized, and Alfred the Great governed,
and Jonathan Edwards thundered of
judgment to come. How many men there
have been in high political station who
test to which their moral principle was
put had it not been for wife's voice that
encouraged them to do right and wife's
prayer that sounded louder than the Ga
NOR of partisanship! Why, my friends,
the right of suffrage as we men exercise
Christian man, come up to the ballot box,
and you drop your vote. Right after you
comes lbertine or sot, the offscouring
of the street, and he drops his vote, and
his vote counteracts yours. But if in the
quiet of home life daughter by her
SuiiSllul ueIuedHoI, Nlle Dy ner luuuS-
try, a mother by her faithfulness, casts a
vote in the right direction then nothing
can resist it, and the influence 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. l shall only have
time to speak OF one grand and all absorb
ing right that every woman has, and that
is to make home happy. That realm no
one has ever disputed with her. Men may
come home at noon or at night, and they
tarry comparatively little while but she
all day long governs it, beauties it, sancti-
ies it. 1t is within her power to make
it the most attractive place ON earth. 1t
is the only calm harbor in this world
You know as well as do that this outside
world and the business world is a long
scene OF joste and contention. The man
who has dollar struggles to keep it; the
man who has it not struggles to get it.
Prices up. Prices down. Losses. Gains.
Misrepresentation. Gougings. Under.
selling. Buyers depreciating; statesmen ex-
aggerating. Tenants seeking less rent;
landlords d/nanding more. Gold fidgety
Struggles about Office Men who are in