The Loup City Northwestern

TALMAGE'S SERMON.

TALK ABOUT WOMAN'S USEFULNESS.

There Are Dangerous Allurements or Trap That Most Lovers Be Avoided -Take "Shall Be Called Woman"- Gen 2:23.

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 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 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, man's world against a woman's world? You come out with your stereotyped remark that a man is superior to woman in intellect, and there on my desk the stereotyped thunder-bolted writing of Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Browning and George Eliot. You retort with your stereotyped remark about woman's superiority to man in the form of affection: but I ask you here was there more capacity to love than in John the disciple-and Matthew Simpson the bishop and Henry Martyn the missionary? The heart of those men was so large that after you had rolled it into two 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. I deny to woman the throne affectional. No human physiologist will ever define the spheres: while there is an intuition by which we know 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 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. My theory is that you have no right to interfere with any one's doing anything that is righteous. Albany and Washington might as well decree by legislation how brown-thrushes should fly, or how deep a trout should plunge, as to try to mark out the height and depth of woman's duty. The question of capacity will settle finally 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 high commercial spheres, she will have great influence on exchange, and no boards of trade can hinder her. I want woman to understand that heart and brain can overdo any barrier that politicians may set up, and that nothing can keep her back or keep her down but the question of incapacity. My chief anxiety 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. First, she has the right to make home happy. That realm no one has ever disputed with her. Men may come home at noon or at night, and then tarry comparatively little while; but she all day long governs it, beautifies it, sanctifies it. It is within her power to make it the most attractive place on earth. It is the only calm harbor in the world. You 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 home and that you may be queen in it. Better be there than wear Victoria's coronet. 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 splendor such as an upholsterer's hand never yet kindled. There are abodes in every city -humble, two stories four plain unpapered 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 sees angels of God hovering about it. The ladders of heaven are let down to that house. Over the child rough crib there are the chantings of angels that broke over Bethlehem. 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 fraternal, paternal and conjugal affections and 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 trembling voice, and agitated hand write it out in those four living capitals. H-O-M-E. 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 of 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 and 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 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 up 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, she was the queen-she was the queen! Now, can you tell me 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 alderman and common councilmen, 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 not to be arrested by the police- their behavior a sorrow to the good and a caricature to the vicious, 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. Oh, woman, with the lightning of your soul, strike dead at your feet all these allurements to dissipation and to fashion. Your immortal soul cannot be fed on such garbage. God calls you up to empire and dominion. Will you have it? Oh, give God your heart, give to God all your best energies; 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 hand will no longer be in yours. It will be night, and there will come up a cold wind from the Jordan, and you will 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 desert you when you are sick." One wave of his hand, and the storm will drop: and another wave of his hand and midnight will 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 the Lamb. And then with Miriam who struck the timbrel 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 while there were angels singing in the air: and with the 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. But is it not a 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 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 were so very intangible. These men found 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 hymn books 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 grog-shops of our cities would be closed, and there would be running through the gutters of the streets Burgundy, and Cognac, and Heidsieck, 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 second, from a drunkard's hell! To this battle for home 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. 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 in Persia, although more than oriental luxuriance crowned the cities; nor the tropics-although more than tropical fruitfulness filled the gardens; nor in 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 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 by 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: "We have 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 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 had clapped their hands and shouted: "Welcome! welcome!" the mystery was solved, and I saw that time had passed and 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 our 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! home!" And then I felt a child's hand on my face, and it woke me up. The children wanted more play. Children always want to play more.