Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1895 — TALMAGE’S SERMON. [ARTICLE]

TALMAGE’S SERMON.

HE DISCUSSES A QUESTION OF UNIVERSAL INTEREST. Favors Woman Suffrace, but Says His Chief Anxiety Is Not for This,bn t that Woman Shall Appreciate the Glorious Sights She Already Possesses. The Queen of Women. Dfc. Talmage, while on his Western tour, preached in St. Louis last Sunday, and discussed -a subject of universal interest, viz., “Woman’s Opportunity,” his text being, “She shall be called womau,” Genesis inra:- — - 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 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 wnich 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 sex is an everlasting 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 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 m.v 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 iu the Item of affection, but I asked you where was there more capacity to love than in John, the disciple, and Matthew Simpson, the bishop, and Henry Martyn, the missionary? 1 The heart of those men was so large that after you had rolled into it two hemispheres there was room stili left to marshal the hosts of heayen and set up the throne of the eternal Jehovah. I deny to mam the throne- intellectual. I deny to woman the throne aflfeetional. No human phraseology will ever define the spheres, while there is an intuition by which we know a man is in his realm, ind when a woman is in her realm, and when either •of them is out of it. No bungling 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 and keep house. There are masculine women, and there are effeminate men. 3Jy theory is that you have no right to interfere with any one’s doing anything that is righteous. Albany and Washington might ns 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 and depth of woman’s duty. The question of capacity will settle finaliy the whole question, 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 woman to understand that heart and brain can overfly any barrier that politicians may set up, and that nothing can keep her back or keep her down but the question of incapacity. Universal Suffrage. I was in New Zealand last year just after the opportunity of suffrage had been conferred upon women. The plan worked ■well. There had never been such good order at the polls, and righteousness triumphed. Men have not made such a wonderful moral success of the ballot box that they need fear women will corrupt it. In all our cities man has so nearly made the ballot box a failure, suppose we let woman try. But there are some women, I know, of most undesirable 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 themselves are fit neither to vote nor to keep house. Their mission seems merely 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 I shall show you the best rights that woman can own *he already has in her possession; 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 she stands. Away down below it are the ballot box, and the congressional assemblage, and the legislative hall. Woman always has voted and always will vote. Ourgreat-grnndfnthers thought they were by their votes putting Washington into the Presidential chair. No. His mother, by the principles she taught him and by the habits she inculcated, made him President. It was a Christian mothers hand dropping the ballot when Lord Bacon wrote, and Newton philosophized, and Alfred the Great governed, and Jonathan Edwards thundered of judgment to come, j How many men there have been in bigb political station who would have been insufficient 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 man, come up to the ballot box, and you drop your vote. Bight after you comes a libertine or n sot—the offsconring 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, * wife by her industry, a mother by her faithfulness, casts a vote'ln the right direction, then nothing enn resist -It, and the influence of that vote will throb through the eternities. Woman and Home. My chief anxiety, then, is hot 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. First, she has the right to make home happy. That realm no one has over disputed with her. Men may . come home at noon or at night and then

tarry a comparati rely little while, bat she all day long governs it, sanctifies It. It ia within her power to make it the most attractive place on eartb. It is the only calm harbor in this world. Yon know as well as I do that this outside world and the business world are a long scene of jostle and contention. The man who 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. Tenants 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. Panics. Catastrophes. Oh, woman, thank God you have a home, and that you may be queen in it! Better be there than wear Victoria’s Oertniet. .JfeefcL ter 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 an upholsterer’s hand never yet kindled. There are abodes in every city—humble, two stories, four plain, utfpapered rooms, undesirable 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 seesangels of God hovering aroundJt. The _ ladders of heaven, are let down to that house. Over the child’s rough* crib there are the cliantings of angels as those that broke over Bethelhem. It is home. These children may come up after awhile, and they may win high position, and they may have an affluent residence, but they will not until their dying day forget that humble roof under which their father rested, and their mother sang, and their sisters played. Oh, if you would gather up all tender memories, all the lights and shades of the heart, all banquetings and reunions, all filial, TraTefnal. patcrnai and conjugal affections, nnd you had only just four letters with which to spell out that height and depth and length and breadth and magnitude, and eternity of meaning you would, with streaming eyes, and tremjbling voice, and agitated hands, write it out iu those four living capitals, H-O-M-E. What right does woman wdnt 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 outposts of that realm. They say that the sun never sets upon the English empire, hut I have to tell you that on this realm of woman’s influence eternity never marks any bound. 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 be the annexation of heavenly principalities.

The Grandest Woman. . When you want to get your grandest idea of a queen, you do not think of Catherine of Russia, or of Anne of England, or Marie Theresa of Germany, but when you want to get your 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 down life’s pathway; sometimes to the Thanksgiving banquet, sometimes to the grave, but always together—soothing your petty griefs, correcting your childish waywardness, joining in your infantile sports, listening to your evening prayers, toiling for you with needle or at the spinning wheel and on cold nights wrapping you up snug nnd warm. And then at last on that day when she lay in the back room dying, and you saw her take those thin hands with which she had toiled for you so long, and put them together in a dying prayer that commended you to tne 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 rose up. 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 when 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 kiss the sod that covers her. crying: “Mother! Mother!” Ah, Bhe was the queen! She was the queen! Now, can you tell me how many thousand miles a wjoman 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 common couueilmen and sheriffs and constables and mayors and presidents! To make one such grand woman as I have described, how many thousands would you want of those people who go in the round of fashion and dissipation, going as far toward disgraceful apparel as they dare go, so as to be arrested by the police—their behavior a sorrow to the good and a caricature of the vicious, and an insult to that God who made them women and not gorgons, and trampding on down through a frivolous and dissipated life to temporal and eternal damnation? O woman, with the lightning of your soul, strike dead at youtr feet all these allurements to dissipation and to fashion! Your immortal soul canwot be fed upon such garbage. God calls you up to empire and dominion. Will you have it? Oh, give to God your heart; give to God all your best enemies; give to God all your culture; give 'to God all your refinement: give yourself to him. for this world and the next. Soon all these bright eyes will be quenched, and these voices will be hushed. For the last time you will look upon this fair earth. Father’s hand, mother’s hand, sister’s hnnd, child’s band, will no more be in yours. It will be night, and there will come up a cold wind from the Jordan, and you roust start. Will it be a lone woman on a trackless moor? Ah, no! Jesus will come up in that Hour and offer his band, and he will say, “Yon stood by me when you were weE; now I will not desert you when you are sick." One wave of his hand, and the storm will drop, and another wave of his band, and midnight shall break into midneoa, and another wave of hi* band, and the chamberlains of God wilt come down from the treasure houses of heaven, with robes lustrous, blood washed apd heaven glinted, in which you will array yourseßf for the marriage supper of the Lamb. And then with Miriam, who struck the timbrel of the Red sea, and with Deborah, who led the Lord’s boat into the fight, and with Hannah, who gave her Samuel to the Lord, and with Mary, who rocked Jeans to sleep while there were angels singing in the air, and with sisters of charity. vtio bound up the battle wounds of the .Crimea, you will, from the chalite of God, drink to thy soul’s eternal rescue. Woman’s Dominion. 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 ot 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. But is it not a good thing to shnt 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 this kind of warfare. They knew how to fight the Maine liquor law, and they knew how to fight the National Temperance Society, and they knew how to fight the Sons of Temperance and Good Samaritans, 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 that 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 meetings 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 recklessness of human criticism, I really believe that in one month three-fourths of the grogshops of our cities would be closed, aud there would be running through the gutters of the streets burgundy and cognac and heidsick and old port and schiedam schnapps and lager beer, and you would 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 ForTiome let all women rouse themselves. Thank God for our early home. Thank God for our present home. Thank God for the coming home in heaven.

The Home Eternal. 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, although more than ori- r ental luxuriance crowned the cities; nor the tropics, although more than tropical fruitfulness filled the gardens; nor Italy, although more than Italian softness filled the air—and I wandered around, looking for thorns and nettles, but I found none of them grew there, and I walked forth, and I saw the sun rise, and I 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 they bury the dead of this* great city?” and I looked along the hills where it would be most beautiful for the dead to sleep, and I 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 the poor worship? Where are the benches on which they sit?” and a voice answered, “Wo have no poor in this great city.” And I wandered out, seeking, to find the place where were the hovels of 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 thq shadow of a great tree, and I said, “What uni I, and whence comes all this?” And at that moment there came from among the leaves, skipping up the flowery paths and across the sparkling 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. But after awhile, when they clapped their hands and shouted: “Welcome! Welcome!” the mystery was solved, and I saw that time had passed, aud that eternity had come, and that God had gathered us up into a higher home. and I said “Are we all here?” And the voices of innumerable generations answered, “All here!” And while tears of gladness were raining down onr cheeks, and the branches of Lebanon cedars were clapping their hands, and the towers of the , great city were chiming their welcome, we began to laugh and sing and leap and shout, “Home, home, homer* Then I felt a child’s hand on my face, and it woke me. The children wanted to play more. Children always want to play more.