The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1901-08-23
HOME, SWEET HOME.
DR.. Talmage Extols 1t as a Field
of Usefulness.
A Sermon for the announcement of
Wives and MOthers-The Spheres
of Man and Woman Entire
Iy Different.
Copyright, 1901, by Louis Klopsch. n. Y.)
Washington,

pecially encourages wives and moth
ers; text, Genesis 1:27: male and fe-
male created He them"
In 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 in 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
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 against a wOman's word?
y
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 Eliza beth Browning and George
Eliot. You come on with your stereo-
typed remark about woman's superior
ity to man in the item of affection, but
I ask you where was there more ca
pacity to love than in John the 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.
I deny to man the throne intellectual.
] 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 legisla-
ture ought to attempt to make a def
nition or to say: "This is the line, and
that is the line"
Ny 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 en-
broider and keep house. There are
masculine women. and there are ef
Terminate men. My theory is that you
have no right to interfere with any
ones doing anything that is righteous.
Albany and Washington might 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 wom-
ans 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 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. / want woman
to understand that heart and brain
can overflow any barrier that politi-
clans may set up, and that nothing can
keep her back or keep her down but
the question of capacity.
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
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 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 APP
preciated; 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 anu
the legislative hall.
Woman always has voted and al
ways will vote. Our great-grandfa-
theirs thought they were by their votes
putting Washington into the presiden-
tial chair. No. His mother, by the
principles she taught him and by the
ha bits she inculcated, made him presi
dent 1t was 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 sta
ton who would have been insufficient
to stand the test to which their moral
principle was put had it not been for
wife's voice that encouraged them
to do right and a wife's prayer that
sounded louder than the clamor of
partisanship. Why, my friends, the
right of suffrage, as we men exercise
it, seems to be feeble thing. You,
Christian man, come up to the ballot
box and drop your vote. Right after
you comes ibertine or sot, the Off