Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1901-08-29
WOMIANS SPHERE.
DIP. TALMAGE'S SUNDAY SERMON.
She Should Reign as a Queen in the
Home-Its Wide Range of Useful
ness.
lsapyripht 1901

lsopyright ls0l.
WAsuSeToE. D. C-In this discourse
DR.. Talmage exto.s home as a fed OF use
fulness and especially encourages wives
and mothers; text, Genesis i, q, Male
and female created He them"
In other words, God. who can make no
mistake. made man and woman for a spe-
cifc work and to move in particular
spheres, man to be regnant IN his realm,
woman to be dominant in hers. The
boundary line between Itaiy 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 feds to which God called
them that You no more compare them
than you can oxygen and hydrogen, water
aud Grass, trees and starr. All this talk
about the superiority OF one sex to the
other sex Is an everlasting waste OF INK
and speech. A iewe!er may have a scale
so delicate that he can weigh the dust OF
diamonds, but where are the scales so deli
cate that Won can weigh il: them affection
against affection, sentiment against senti-
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 Martineau and Elizabeth
Browning and George Eliot. HoI come on
with your stereoTyped remark about Wom-
ans superiority to man in the item OF al
lection, but l ask You where was there
more capacity to love than in John, the
disciple, and Robert McCheyne, the
Scotchman, and John Summerield, the
Methodist, and Henry Martyr, the mis-
sionary? The heart of those men was so
large that after you had relied into it the
hemisphercs there was room still LETT to
marshal the hosts of heaven and set up the
throne intellectual. deny to woman the
throne atIectional. NO human phrase
oiogy viii 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
ton 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 man
wants to embroider and keep house he
ought to be allowed to embroider and keep
house. There ere masculine women and
there are eIfemlnate men. My theory 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 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. / want woman to under
any barrier that politicians may set up,
and that nothing can keep her back. &C
keep her down but the question OF capac
ity.
| know there are women Of most unde
srab.e 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
lis might become. No one would want to
live under the laws that such WON
society the children that such women
would raise. But [ will shcw 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
her realm have never yet been appre
clated that she sits to-day Oh throne so
high that all the thrones of earth piled on
top of each other would not make her
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
lngton 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 Numbered of
judgment to come. How many men there
have been in high political station who
would have been insufficient to stand the
put had it not been for wife's voice that
encouraged them to do right and q wife's
prayer that sounded louder thin the cla-
NOR of partisanshiD! Why, my friends,
the right of suffrage we men exercise
1t seems to be g feeble thing You,
CHRISTIAN man, come up to the ballot box,
and You drop your vote. Right after you
comes a hbertine or a sot, the O1fscouring
OF the street, and ne drops his vote, and
us vote cOunteracts yours. But if in the
quiet OF home life a daughter by her
Christian demeanor, a wife by her indus
try, mother by her faithfulness, casts
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-
hes it. 1t is within her power to make
1t the most attractive place on earth. 1t
is the only calm harbor in this world
You know well as | do that this outside
world and the business world is a long
scene OF josie and contention. The man
who has dollar struggles to keep it; the
nan ma who has 1t not strugg les to get it.
Misrepresentation. Gougings. Under
selling. Buyers depreciating; statesmen ex-
aggerating. Tenants seeking less rent;
landlords C<nanding more. Gold fidgety.
Struggles about Office. Men who are i"
trying to keep in; men out trying to q
IN. Slips, tunbles. Defacations Panics.
SdldSt1 OptISS. " "OIldL, tLIuIA "Ou Gu
have home and that you may be queen
in it,
Better be there than wear a queens cor
onet. Better be there than carry the
purse of a princess. Your abode may be
humble, but you can by your faith in God
and your cheerfulness of demeanor gid it
with spiendors such as an upholsterer' S
hand never yet kindled
There are abodes in the city humble,
two stories, four plain unpapered rooms,
undesirable neighborhood- and yet there
Is man here to-day who would die on the
threshold rather than surrender it. Why?
1t is home. Whenever he thinks of it he
sees angels of God lowering around it.
The ladders of heaven are let down to this
house Over the child's rough crib there
are the chantings of angels, as those that
sounded over Bethlehem. 1t is home.
These children may come up after
awhile, and they may win high position,
but they will not until their dying day
forget that humble roof under which their