BEY. DR TALMAGR
The Eminent New York Divine's Sun
day Sermon-
Subject: "Woman's Opportunity."
Text: "She shall be called woman."
Genesis ii., 23.
God, who can make no mistake, made man
and woman for a specific work and to move
In particular spheres man to be regnant
In his realm; woman to be dominant in hers.
The boundary line between Italy and Switz
erland, between England and Scotland, is
not more thoroughly marked than this dis
tinction 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 su
periority of one sex to the other sex is an
everlasting waste of ink and speech. A jew
eler 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 against affection, sentiment
against sentiment, thought against thought,
soul against soul, a man's world against a
woman's world? You, come out with. -your
stereotyped remark that man is. superior to
woman in intellect, and then I open on mv
desk the swarthy, iron typed, thunderbolted
writings of Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth
Browning and George Eliot You come on
with your stereotyped remark about woman's
superiority to man in the item of affection,
but I ask you where was there more capa
city to lQve than in John, the disciple, and
Matthew Simpson, the bishop, and Henry
Martyn. the missionary?
The heart of those men were so large that
after you had rolled into- it two hemispheres
there was room still left to marshal the hosts
of heaven and set up the throne of the eter
nal Jehovah. I deny to man the throne in
tellectual; I deny to woman the throne af
fectional. No human phraseology will ever
define the spheres, while there is an intuition
by which Ave know when a man Js in his
realm, and when a woman is in her realm,
and when either of them is out of it. No
bulling legislature ought ,to attempt to
make a definition or to say, "This is the line
and that is the line." My theory is that if a
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
andkeep house. There are masculine wo
men and there are effeminate men. My
theory is that you have no right to interfere
with any one's doincr anything that is
righteous. Albany and Washington might as
well decree by legislation how high a brown
thrasner should flv or how deep a trout
should plunge as to try to seek out the height
and depth of woman's duty. The question
of capacity will settle fina'ly the whole ques
tion, the whole subject. When a woman is
prepared to preach, she will preach, and
neither conference nor presbytery can hinder
her. "When a woman is prepared to move
in highest commercial spheres, she will have
great influence on the exchange, and no
boards of trade can hinder her. I want wo
man to understand that heart and brain can
overfly any barrier that politicians may set
up, and that nothing can keep her back or
jceep her down but the question of incapac-
1 wag in New Zealand last year just after
the opportunity of suffrage had been con
ferred upon women. The plan worked well.
There had never been such good order at
the polls, and the righteousness triumphed.
Men have not made such a wonderful moral
success of the ballot box that they need feai
women will corrupt it. In all our cities man
has so nearly made the ballot box a failure,
suppose we let women try. But there are
some women, I know, of most undesirable
nature, who wander up and down the coun
try having no homes of their own or for
saking their own homes talking about thfir
rights, and we know very well that they
themselves are fit neither to vote nor keep
house. Their mission seems merely to hu
miliate 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
I shall show you that the best rights that
woman can own she already has in her pos
session; that her position in this country at
this time is not one of commiseration, but
one of congratulation; that the grandeur
and power of her realm have never yet been
appreciated; 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
6he 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. Out
great-grandfathers thought they were by
their votes putting Washington into the Pres
idential chair, No. His mother, by the
principles she taught him. and by the habits
she inculcated, made him President. It was
a Christian, mother's hand dropping the bal
lot when Lord Bacon wrote and Newton
philosophized and Alfred the Great governed
and Jonathan Edwards thundered of judg
ment to come.
How many men there have been in high
political station who would have been in
sufficient to stand the test to which their
moral principle was put had it not been for
a wife's voice that encouraged them to do
right and a wife's prayer that sounded louder
than the clamor of partisanship? The right
' of suffrage as we men exercise it seems to be
a feeble thing. You, a Christian roan, come
up to the ballot box and you drop your vote.
Right after you comes a libertine 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, 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 apprecia
tion of the glorious i ights she already pos
sesses. First, she has the right to make
home happy.: That realm no one has ever
disputed with her. JIen may come home at
noon or at night, arm then tarry a compara
tively little while, but she. all day long, gov
erns it, beautifies it, sanctifies it. It is with
in her power to make it the most attractive
place on earth. It is the only calm harbor
in this world. You know as well as I do that
this outside j world and the business world
are a long scene of jostle and contention.
The man whb has a dollar struggles to keep
it; the man who has it not struggles to get it.
Prices up. Prices down. Losses. Gains.
Misrepresentations. Underselling. Buyers
depreciating;: salesmen exaggerating. Ten
ants seeking less rent; landlords demanding
more. Struggles about office. Men who are
in trying to keep in; men out trying to get
in. Slips. Tumbles. Defalcations. Pan
ics. Catastrophes. O woman, thank God
you have a! home, and that you may be
queen in it. I Better be there than wear Vic
toria's coronet, i 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 gild it with splendors such as
ah upholsterer's hand never yet kindled.
There are abodes in every city humble, two
stories, four plain, unpapered. rooms, unde
sirable neighborhood, and yet there is a man
who would die on the threshold rather than
surrender. Why? It is home. Whenever
he thinks of it he sees angels of Crod hover
ing around it. The ladders of heaven are let
down to that house. Over the child's rough
crib there are the ehantingsof angels as those
that Droke joverj Bethlehem. It is home
These children! may come up after awhile,
and they may win high position, and they
may have ah affluent residence, but they will
not until their dying day forget that humble
roof, undeF which their father rested and
their mother sang and their sisters played.
Oh. if you would gather up all tender mem
ories, all the; lights and shades of the heart,'
all banquetings and reunions, all filial, frater
nal, paternal jahd conjugal affections, and you ,
had only just four letters with which to spell
out that height and depth and length and
breadth andmagnitude and eternity of mean
ing, you would. I with streaming eyes and
trembling voice and agitated hand, write it
out in those j four living capitals, H-O-M-E
What right does woman want that 'is
grander than to be queen in such a realm?
Why, the eagles of heaven cannot fly across
that dominion. Horses, panting and with
lathered flanks, are not swift enough to run
to the outpost of that realm. They say that
the sun never sets upon the English Empire,
but I have to tell you that on this realm of
woman's influence eternity never marks
any bound, j Isabella fled from the Spanish
throne, pursued by the Nation's anathema,
but she who is queen in a home will never
lose her throne, and death itself will only ba
the annexation of heavenly principalities.
When you want to get your eraud est idea
- of a queen you do not think of Catherine of
Russia or of Anne of England or Marie
Theresa of Germany, but when yon want to
get vour Grandest idea of a queen you think
of the plain woman who sat opposite your
father at the table or walked with him
arm in arm vlown life's pathway; some
times to the Thanksgiving banquet, some
times to the grave, but always together
soothing your petty griefs, correcting
your childish waywardness, joining in
your infantile sports, listening to your even
ing prayers, toiling for you with needle oi
at the spinning wheel, and on cold nights
wrapping you up snug and warm. And then
at last on that day when sh lay in the back
room dying,; and you saw hertakethose thin
hands with which she had toiled for you so
long, and put them together in a dying
prayer that commended you to the God
whom she had taught you to trust oh, she
was the queen! .; The chariots of God came
down to fetch her. and as she went in all
heaven roe up. i You cannot think of her
now without a rush of tenderness that stirs
the deep foundations of your soul, and you
feel as much a child again as wen you cried
on her lap, and if you could bring her back
again to speak just once more your name as
tenderly as she used to speak it you would be
willing to throw yourself on the ground and
i iss the sod that covers her. crying,
"Mother! mother!" Ah! she was the queen
she was; the queen. Now, can you
tell roe how many thousand miles a
woman like that would have to
travel down before she got to the
ballot box? ; Compared with this
work of training kings and queens for God
and eternity, how. insignificant seems all
this work of, voting for aldermen and com
mon councilmen and sheriffs and constables
and mayors and presidents! To make one
such grand woman as I have described how
many thousands would yon want of those
peoole who go in the round of fashion and
dissipation, going as far toward disgraceful
apparel as I they dare go, so as not t6 be
arrested by the police their behavior a sor
row to the good and a caricature of the
viciou and an insult to that God who made,
them women and not gorgons, and tramping
on. down through a frivolous and dissipated
life, to temporal and eternal damnation.
O woman, with the lightning of your soul,
strike dead at your feet all these allurements
to dissipation and to fashion! Your immor
tal soul cannot be fed upon such garbage.
Gnd calls yon up to empire and dominion.
Will yoa have it? Oh, give to God your
beart ; give t9 God all vour best energies;
give to God all your culture: give to God all
your refinement; give yourself to Him, for
5
this world and the next. Soon all thes
bright eyes will be quenched andthese voices
will be hushed. For the last time you will
look upon this fair earth. Father's hand,
mother's band, sister's hand, child's hand
will no more be in yours. It will be night,
and there will come up a cold wind from the
J ordan and you must start. Will it be a lone
woman on a trackless moor? Ah, no! Jesus
will come up in that hour and offer His
hand, and He will say, "You stood by Me
when you were well; now I will not aesert
you when you are sick." One wave of His
hand and the storm will drop, and another
wave of His hand and midnight shall break
into midnoon, and another wave of His hand
and the chamberlains of God will come down
from the treasure houses of heaven with
robes lustrous, blood washed and heaven
glinted, in which you will array yourself for
the marriage supper of t he Lam b. And then
with Miriam, who struck the timbel of the
Red Sea, and with Deborah, who led the
Lord's host into the fight, and with Hannah,
who gave her Samuel to the Lord, and with
Mary, who rocked Jesus to sleep whiie there
were angels singing in the air, and with
sisters of charity, who bound up the battle
wounds of the Crimea, you will, from the
chalice of God, drink to the soul's eternal
rescue.
Your dominion is home, O woman! What
a brave fight for home the women of Ohio
made some ten or fifteen years ago, when
they banded together and in many of the
towns and cities of that State, marched in
procession, and by prayer and Christian
songs shut up more places of dissipation than
were ever counted! Were they opened
again? Oh, yes, B'isitnota good thing
to shut up the gates of hell for two or three
months? It seemed that men engaged in the
business of destroying others did not know
how to cope with thi3 kind' of warfare. They
knew how to fight the Maine liquor law, and
they knew how to fight the National Temper
ance Society, and they knew how to fight the
Sons of Temperance . and Good Samar
itans, but when Deborah appeared upon
the scene Sisera took to his feet and
got to the mountains. It seems that
they did not know how to contend against
'Coronation" and "Old Hundred" and
"Brattle Street" and "Bethany," they were
so very intangible. These . men found hat
they could not accomplish much against
that kind of warfare, and in one of the cities
a regiment was brought out all armed to
disperse the women. They came down in'
battle array, but, oh, what poor success! for
that regiment was made up of gentlemen,
and gentlemen do not like to shoot women
with hymnbooks in their hands. Oh, they
found that gunning for female prayer meet
ing was a very poor business. No real
damage was done, although there was threat
of violence after threat of violence all over
the land. I really think if the women
of the East had as much faith in God as their
sisters of the West had and the same reck
lessness of human criticism, I really believe
that in one month three-fourths of the
grogshops of our cities would be closed, and
there would be running through the gutters
of the streets Burgundy and cognac, and
Heidsick and old port and Schiedam
save your fathers and your husbands and
your sons first -from a drunkard's grave and
secondly from a drunkard's hell. To this
battle for home let all women rouse them
selves. Thank God for our early home.
Thank God for our present home. Thank
God for the coming home in heaven.
One twilight, after i had been playing with
the children for some time? I lay down on
the lounge to rest. The children" said play
more. Children always want to play more.
And, half asleep and half awake, I seemed to
dream this dream: It seemed to me that I
was in a far distant land not Persia, al-
i though more than Oriental luxuriance
j crowned the cities; nor the tropics, although
more than tropical fruitiulness filled the
i. gardens; nor Italy, although more than
Italian softness filled the air. And I wan
dered around looking for thorns and nettles,
but I found none of them grew there. Ana
I walked forth, and I saw the sun rise, and
1 said, "When will it set again?" and the
sun sank not . And I saw all the people in
holiday apparel, and I said, "When do
they put on workingman's garb again
and delve in the mine and swelter at the
forge?" But neither the garments nor the
robes did they put off. And I wandered in
the suburbs, and I said, "Where do theyi
bury the dead of this great city?" And I
looked along by the hills where it would be
most beautiful for the dead to sleep, and L
saw castles and towns and. battlements, but
not a mausoleum nor monument nor white
slab could I see. And I went into the great
chapel of the town, and I said: "Where do
4k.. !! YITI 11 1 1
j mcpoor worsuip: wnere are me uencnes
on which they sit?" And a voiee answered,
"vve nave no poor in this great city.
And I wandered out, seeking to find the
place where were the hovels of the destitute,
and I found mansions of amber and ivory
and gold, but no tear did I see or sigh hear.
I was bewildered, and I sat under the shadow
of a great tree and I said, "What am I and
whence comes all this?" And at that moment
there came from among the leaves, skipping
up the flowery paths and across the spark
ling waters, a very bright and sparkling
group, and when I saw their step I
knew it, and when I heard their voices I
thought I knew them, but their apparel was
so different from anything I had ever seen I
bowed a stranger to strangers. Bat after
awhile, when they clapped their hands and
shouted, "Welcome! welcome!" the mystery
was solved, and I saw that time had passed
and that eternity had come, and that God had
gathered us up into a higher home, and I
said. "Are we are here?" ant the voices of
innumerable generation answered, "All
here," and while tears of gladness were rain
ing down our cheeks, and the branches of
Lebanon cedars were clapping their hands,
and the towers of the great city were ehim
ing their wekrome, we began to Liuu ai4
sing and leap and shout, 'Home! how
home!" -
Then I felt a child's hand on my fa"? an1
it woke me. Thp children wanted to v
more. Children jal ways want to play m
llOIPERANCE.
. TEE CTT THAT NATURE FILLS.
Praise the eup that nature fills
Brimming to the brink;
Giving health and curing ills.
Blessed, precious drink.
Sing against the fiery bowl
Potent to destroy
Health and home, and heart and son
Every earthly jo v.
Edward Carswel.
SAVED FROM LCNACT. .
Mr. W:lliani Tallack, of the Howard Vs
elation, says, in a letter in the London
Times on "Prisons and Sentences:"
visiting prisons I have again and again ben
assured that coming to jail prevents manj
offenders from going mad; for it is the drink
that chiefly makes them insane. Here thej
get no alcohol, land hence many are saved
from lunacy. Certainly they get better ia
jail rather than worse; and there is no dangei
whatever of cellular separation for short
terms injuring prisoners' minds."
FRANCE AND THE DRINK PROBLEM.
In France, as in every other country, the
drink curse is demanding the increased at
tention of the thoughtful. A noticeable fea
ture of the French press is the discussion of
temperance and allied questions. The Cos
mos, perhaps the ablest scientific journal ia
Frauce. says: "The question of alcoholism
is still the order jof the day." To show the
evil results of the liquor traffic in one phase
alone, it says: "In the insane asylum the in
tellectual decadence of sixteen per cent, of
the inmates i3 attributable to drunkenness;
the number several years ago was but eleven
per cent." Dr. J Legrain, head physician at
the Ville-Evrard j Asylum, in an address be
fore the Congress of th French Public Mor
ality League, recently held in Lyons, spoke
strongly on what he called collective alco
holism; that is, the action of intemperance
on all social and political life. As proving
that, he referred to the fact that in public
houses (saloons)j public meetings were held,
and alcohol seemed to be a necessary ad
junct of all discussion. It was the publican
(saloon-keeper), jwba played an inauspicious
part in elections1, and thus interfered witn
the duty of French citizens. His influence
was also foutHf in the strikes which occurred
and thus drink held in check not only indi
viduals, but also the Government. The
same is t rue in America. M. H. de Rershaut,
who spoke for the press, said that "it (alco
hol) is in a fair way of brutaling the French
race, and which jwitl finish by annihilating
it if measures ot public safety be not taken
against it." The same is true of America,
and the remedy it prescribes for France is the
only remedy fof America to kill it, to for
bid its manufacture and traffic"
A JTjrGES TESTIMONY.
j
In an address before the Ministers' Union,
at Cleveland, 'Judae Logue, of that city, bore
his testimony to
irime. He had
the relation
been Judge
of
of
4rf fho uca hrmiffnt rw-fnrP
leases of intoxicatioii. rhe
drink and
the Tolice
Court for four years, , and during that time
40,000 cases had come before him. "Last
year, be said,
me 4207 weie
smallest number for any year during my
term of office. The year before there were
4950 and previous to that 5380. Four-fifths
of all tre cases brought into court were the
result of intoxication. WhHe tle charge on
which the offence was examined may have
been other than j intoxication, tie evidence
brought out the fact that thC-iiSe of liquor ifl
responsible for all but asma'rl per cent, of the
crime that is committed."
I-
TEMPERANCE NEWS AND NOTES.
New York's reform Police Commissioners
declare that "saloons are not proper places
to frequent." j
Thirty-two Irish 'members of the House of
Commons are directly aud indirectly inter
ested in the liquor traffic
In one year oyer one million dollars' worth
of property was destroyed by the failures of
beer drinking engineers and switchmen.
Miss Eate Lunden has organized Woman's
Christian Temperance Unions of Scandina
vian women in Brooklyn and New York.
Vital force, heat force, motor force, nerve
force and muscular force are all impaired by
the influence of doses of alcohoL Dr. N. S.
Davis. -;
Expert bartenders estimate sixty-three
drinks to the gallon. On this estimate there
were 5,604,062,891 drinks of whisky made in
this country last; year. W. C. T. U. Bulletin.
At a recent important public ceremony, of
which the Duke and Duchess ot Teck were
the central figures, three ladies of the aris
tocracy drank her Majesty's health in cold
water. j
On the cornerstone of the London Tem
perance Hospital, laid by Sir Wilfrid La wson,
is this inscription: "In humble dependence
on Almighty God for euro in the treatment
of disease." j
The report on jtemperance of the General
Assembly of tbe Presbyterian Church con
tained a declaration that the "unfermented
fruit of the vine fulfills every condition ia
observing the- sacrament." Also a recom
mendation that everything be done to keep
drinkers out of Government, State and
municipal offices, and a resolution declaring
that The time has now come to make oar
influence felt directly and with power, .and
voters are urged to vote against the granting