Orange County observer. [volume] (Hillsborough, N.C.) 1880-1918, 1901-09-05
WOMIAN'S SPHERE,
DR.. TALMAGE'S SUNDAY SERMON.

DR.. TALMAGE'S SUNDAY SERMON.
She Should Reign as a Queen In the
Home-Its Wide Range Of Useful
. ness. /
copyright 1901
r D. Gin this discourse
fr. Talmage extols home as a held OF use
fulness and especially encourages &c .. H1xie
and female created He them"
In other words, God, who can make no
mistake. made man and woman Tor a spe-
cifc work and to move IN particular
spheres, man to be regnant IN his rea1m,
woman to be dominant IN hers: 1ne
boundary line between ltaly, and .nwl5zei :
land. between England and Scotland, IS
not more thoroughly marked than thus
| 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 tne1n
than you can oxygen and hydrogen, "aeTr
and grass, trees and stars. All tnis taLA
about the superiority Of one sex TO- the
| other sex is an everlasting waste OF INK
and speech. A jeweler may ave g scale
50 delicate that he can weigh the dust OF
dia-nonds. but where are the scales so deli
cate that you can weigh IN them aHectlon
against affection, sentiment against sentl,
ment, thought against thought, SOU
against soul, a mans Woro against q WON
ans word?
You come out with the stereotyped re-
mark that man is superior to woman IN
intellect, and then I open on my desk the
swarthy, iron typed, thunder-bolted writ
ings Of Harriet Martineau and EllzaDeth
! Browning and George Eliot. You come on
with your stereotyped remark about WON
ans superiority to man in the item OF at
lection, but I ask you where was there
more capacity to love than in John, the
disciple, and Robert McCheyne, the
Scotchman, and John Summerfeld, the
Methodist, and Henry Martyr, the mis-
large that after you had rolled into it the
hemispheres there was room still lett to
marshal the hosts of heaven and set up the
throne intellectual. I deny to woman the
throne afectional. No human phrase
ology will ever define. the spheres, while
when a 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-
ton ought to attempt to make a definition
or to say, "This is the line and that Is the
line"
NV 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 and keep
house. There are masculine women and
there are efeminate men. My theory is
that you have no right to interfere with
Albany and Washington might as we'll
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 finally
When a woman is prepared to preach she
will preach, and neither conference nor
presbytery can hinder her. When a 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
any barrier that politicians may set up,
and that nothing can keep her back or
keep her down but the question of capac-
ity.
I 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 homes, talk
well that they themselves are at-naither
to vote nor st to keep house. TheSr .1ais-
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
live under the laws that such WON
d en- would enact or to have cast upon
society the children that such women
. 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 comniseration, but one of congrat.
ulation; that the grandeur and power OF
her realm have never yet been appre.
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
Lord Bacon wrote, and Newton philoso
phized, and Alfred the Great governed
and Jonathan Edwards Numbered Of
judgment to come. How many men there
have been in high political station who
would have been insufficient to stand the
4 put had it not been for a wife's voice tina
encouraged them to do right and a wife
4 prayer chat sounded louder than the ella
4 NOR of partisanship! Why, my friends
the right OF suffrage as we men exercise
1 It seems to be a feeble thing. You, {
I Christian man, come up to the ballot box
i and you drop your vote. Right after 70,
I a Ebertine or a sot, the ofscourins
] OF the street, and he drops his vote, ane
4 his vote counteracts yours. But if in thu
4 quiet of home life a daughter by hel
I Christian demeanor, a wife by her indus
= try, a mother by her faithfulness, casts
vote in the right direction then nothin,
can resist it,, and the influence OF tina
vote will throb through the eternities.
My chief anxiety, then, is not tina
woman have other rights accorded her
but that she by the grace of God rise u,
to the appreciation Of the glorious right
she already possesses. I shall only hav,
time to speak of one grand and all absorb
ing right that every woman has, and tina
!, is to make home happy. That realm n,
one has ever disputed with her. Men ma,
I. come home at noon or at night, and the,
tarry a comparatively little while, but sh
:. al day long governs it, beauties it, sancti
: hes 1t. 1t is within her power to max
I 1t the most attractive place on earth. I
I Is tae only calm harbor in this yuor,d