The History of Woman Suffrage Volume I Part 94

Rev. C. P. Lyford, of the Methodist Church, long a resident of Utah, in a letter of February 19, 1881, to _The Northern Christian Advocate_, a Methodist paper published in Syracuse, says:

We read of the stories of India and China, and the wonder of their existence is lost in their antiquity. Mohammedanism, with its 1,200 years of existence, amazes us that it should have obtained such a footing. But here, in our day, surrounded with all the advantages of the nineteenth century, that a people should have come up from nothing; that a man of low family, himself a worthless character, should have come up with a lie in his mouth and a stolen ma.n.u.script in his hand, and be found dictating terms to a strong government, and become an absolute despot in a republic, is the most amazing fact of history. It took the Methodist Church forty years to get a members.h.i.+p of 138,000. Mormonism in forty-four years counted 250,000. It seems incredible, nevertheless it is a fact. In this brief s.p.a.ce of time it has also been able to nullify our laws, oppose our inst.i.tutions, openly perpetrate crimes, be represented in Congress, boast of the helplessness of the nation to prevent these things, and give the Church supremacy over the State and the people. Bills introduced in Congress adequate to their overthrow have been year after year allowed to fall to the ground without action upon them.

Our public men can only p.r.o.nounce against the crime of polygamy; the press can see only polygamy in Utah; the public mind is impressed with only the heinousness of polygamy. Back of polygamy is the tree that produces it and many kindred evils more dear to the Mormon rulers. They do not care for all the sentiment or law against this one fruit of the tree, if the tree itself is left to stand. The tree--the prolific cause of so many and so great evils in Utah, the greatest curse of the territory, the strength of Mormonism, and its impregnable wall of defence against Christianity and civilization, is that arbitrary, despotic, and absolute hierarchy known as the Mormon Priesthood.

Mr. Lyford has partial insight into the truth when he says "back of polygamy is the tree that produces it and many kindred evils"; but in defining that tree as the hierarchy--the priesthood--he has not reached the entire truth. He does not touch the ground which supports the tree. Polygamy is but one development of the doctrine of woman's created inferiority, the constant tendency of which is to make her a mere slave, under every form of religion extant, and of which the complex marriage of the Oneida Community was but another logical result.

When woman interprets the Bible for herself, it will be in the interest of a higher morality, a purer home. Monogamy is woman's doctrine, as polygamy is man's. Backofen, the Swiss jurist, says that the regulation of marriage by which, in primitive times, it became possible for a woman to belong only to one man, came about by a religious reformation, wherein the women, in armed conflict, obtained a victory over men.

In Christian countries to-day, the restrictions on woman in the married relation are much greater than upon man.[208] Adultery, which is polygamy outside of the married relation, is everywhere held as more venial in man than in woman. In England, while the husband can easily obtain a divorce from his wife, upon the ground of adultery, it is almost impossible for the wife to obtain a divorce upon the same ground. Nothing short of the husband's bringing another woman into the house, to sustain wifely relations to him, at all justifies her in proceeding for a separation; and even then, the husband retains control of the wife's property. A trial[209] in England is scarcely ended in which a husband willed his wife's property to his mistress and illegitimate children. The courts not only decided in his favor, but to this legal robbery of the wife, added the insult of telling her that a part of her own money was enough for her, and that she ought to be willing that her husband's mistress and illegitimate children should share it with her.

Milton's "Paradise Lost" is responsible for many existing views in regard to woman. After the Reformation, as women began to waken to literature, came Milton, a patriot of patriots--as patriots were held in those days, a man who talked of liberty for men--but who held man to stand in G.o.d's place toward woman. Although it has been affirmed that in his blindness Milton dictated his great epic to his daughters, and a Scotch artist has painted the scene (a picture recently purchased by the Lenox Library), yet this is one of the myths men call history, and amuse themselves in believing. This tale of blind Milton dictating "Paradise Lost" to his daughters, is a trick[210] designed to play upon our sympathies. Old Dr. Johnson said of Milton, that he would not allow his daughters[211] even to learn to write. Between Milton and his wives, we know there was tyranny upon one side and hatred on the other. He could not gain the love of either wife or daughter, and yet he is the man who did so much to popularize the idea of woman's subordination to man. "He, for G.o.d; she, for G.o.d in him"--as taught in the famous line: "G.o.d thy law, thou mine."

That the clerical teaching of woman's subordination to man was not alone a doctrine of the dark ages, is proven by the most abundant testimony of to-day. The famous See trial of 1876, which shook not only the Presbytery of Newark, but the whole Synod of New Jersey, and finally, the General Presbyterian a.s.sembly of the United States, was based upon the doctrine of the divinely appointed subordination of woman to man, and arose simply because Dr. See admitted two ladies[212] to his pulpit to speak upon temperance; which act, Rev.

Dr. Craven, the prosecutor, declared to have been "an indecency in the sight of Jehovah." He expressed the general clerical and Church view, when he said:

I believe the subject involves the honor of my G.o.d. I believe the subject involves the heads.h.i.+p and crown of Jesus. Woman was made for man and became first in the transgression. My argument is that subordination is natural, the subordination of s.e.x. Dr. See has admitted marital subordination, but this is not enough; there exists a created subordination; a divinely arranged and appointed subordination of woman as woman, to man as man. Woman was made for man and became first in the transgression. The proper condition of the adult female is marriage; the general rule for ladies is marriage. Women without children, it might be said, could preach, but they are under the general rule of subordination. It is not allowed women to speak in the Church.

Man's place is on the platform. It is positively base for a woman to speak in the pulpit; it is base in the sight of Jehovah. The whole question is one of subordination.

Thus, before a large audience composed mainly of women, Dr. Craven stood, and with denunciatory manner, frequently bringing his fists or his Bible emphatically down, devoted a four hours' speech to proving that the Bible taught woman's subordination; one of his statements being that "in every country, under every clime, from the peasant woman of Naples with a handkerchief over her hair, to the women before him with bonnets, every one wore something upon her head in token of her subordination." Dr. Craven's position was fully sustained by many brother clergymen, some of whom enthusiastically shouted "Amen!"

Dr. Ballantine considered the subject too simple for an argument. Dr.

Few Smith, although he admired Miss Smiley, more than almost any other orator he had ever listened to, did not want her or any other woman to permanently occupy the Presbyterian pulpit. Dr. Wilson rejoiced to see so many women crowding in the lecture-room; but Brother See should not take all the glory to himself. He was glad to see the women take so deep an interest in the subject under discussion; but as he looked at them he asked himself, "What will all the little children do, while these women are away from home?"[213]

The Christianity of to-day thus continues to teach the existence of a superior and an inferior s.e.x within the Church, possessing different rights, and held accountable to a different code of morals, when even woman's dress is held as typical of her inferiority. Not alone did Dr.

Craven express this idea, but the Right Rev. Dr. c.o.xe refused the sacrament to the lady patients at the Clifton Springs Sanitarium in 1868, whose heads were uncovered. This same Right Rev. Dr. c.o.xe, in a speech at his installation as first President of Ingham Seminary for young ladies, declared "the laws of G.o.d to be plainly Salic."

Rev. Knox-Little, a High-Church clergyman of England, spent a few weeks in the United States during the fall of 1880. In the course of his stay in Philadelphia he preached a "Sermon to Women," in the large church of St. Clements. The following extract from the report in the Times of that city shows its teachings:

"G.o.d made himself to be born of a woman to sanctify the virtue of endurance; loving submission is an attribute of woman; men are logical, but women lacking this quality, have an intricacy of thought. There are those who think women can be taught logic; this is a mistake. They can never by any power of education arrive at the same mental status as that enjoyed by men, but they have a quickness of apprehension, which is usually called leaping at conclusions, that is astonis.h.i.+ng. There, then, we have distinctive traits of a woman, namely, endurance, loving submission, and quickness of apprehension. Wifehood is the crowning glory of a woman. In it she is bound for all time. To her husband she owes the duty of unqualified obedience. There is no crime which a man can commit which justifies his wife in leaving him or applying for that monstrous thing, divorce. It is her duty to subject herself to him always, and no crime that he can commit can justify her lack of obedience. If he be a bad or wicked man she may gently remonstrate with him, but refuse him never. Let divorce be anathema; curse it; curse this accursed thing, divorce; curse it, curse it! Think of the blessedness of having children. I am the father of many children and there have been those who have ventured to pity me, 'Keep your pity for yourself,' I have replied. 'They never cost me a single pang.' In this matter let woman exercise that endurance and loving submission which with intricacy of thought are their only characteristics."

Such a sermon as the above, preached to woman, under the fall blaze of nineteenth century civilization, needs few comments. In it woman's inferiority and subordination are as openly a.s.serted as at any time during the dark ages. According to Rev. Knox-Little, woman possesses no responsibility; she is deprived of conscience, intelligent thought, self-respect, and is simply an appendage to man, a thing. As the clergy in the middle ages divided rights into those of persons and things, themselves being the persons, the laity, things, so the Rev.

Knox-Little and his ilk of to-day divide the world into persons and things,--men being the persons and women the things.

It should require but little thought upon woman's part to see how closely her disabilities are interwoven with present religious belief as to her inferiority and pre-destined subordination. If she needs aid to thought, the Knox-Littles will help her. Have protests against his blasphemous doctrine been made by his brother clergymen? Not one. Has a single church denied his degrading theory? Not one. He has been allowed in this sermon to stand as the representative, not only of High-Church theology in regard to woman, but as expressing the belief of all churches in her creation and existence as an inferior and appendage to man.

There is scarcely a Protestant sect that has not, within a few years, in some way, placed itself upon record in regard to woman's subordination. The Pan-Presbyterian Council that a.s.sembled in Edinburgh a few years since, refused to admit a woman even as a listener to its proceedings, although women const.i.tute at least two-thirds of the members.h.i.+p of that Church. A solitary woman who persisted in remaining to listen to the discussions of this body, was removed by force; "six stalwart Presbyterians" lending their ungentle aid to her ejection. The same Pan-Presbyterian body when in session in Philadelphia in the summer of 1880, laughed to scorn the suggestion of a liberal member, that the status of woman in the Church should receive some consideration. The speaker referred to the Sisters of Charity in the Catholic Church, and to the position of woman among the Quakers; but although the question was twice introduced, it was as often met with derisive laughter, and no action was taken upon it. A vote of the New England Society of Friends at their meeting in Newport, 1878, proves that as liberal as they have been considered toward woman, even they have not in the past held her as upon a plane of perfect equality. This body voted that hereafter "women shall be eligible to office in the management of the Society, shall sign all conveyances of real estate made by the Society, and shall be considered equal to the opposite s.e.x."

The Congregational Church is placed upon record through laws governing certain of its bodies:

"By the word 'church' is meant the adult males duly admitted and retained in the First Evangelical Congregational Church in Cambridgeport, present at any regular meeting of said church and voting by a majority."[214]

In the Unitarian and Universalist churches, which ordain women to preach and administer the ordinances, these women pastors are made to feel that the innovation is not universally acceptable.

The Methodist Church, professing to stand upon a broad basis, still refuses to ordain its most influential women preachers, and, within the year, has even deprived them of license, though one of them[215]

has brought more converts to the Church than a dozen of its most influential bishops during the same period. To such bitter lengths has the opposition to woman's ordination been carried, that a certain reverend gentlemen, in debating the subject, declared that he would oppose the admission of the mother of our Lord into the ministry, the debate taking on a most unseemly form. The _Syracuse Sunday Morning Courier_ of March 4, 1877, reported this debate as follows:

WOMEN AS PREACHERS.

The subject of permitting women to preach in Methodist pulpits was incidentally, but rather racily discussed at the Methodist ministers' meeting in New York city a few days since. A Miss Oliver--a more or less reverend lady--had been invited to preach to the ministers at their next meeting, and the question was raised, by what authority she was invited? Thereupon Brother Buckley took the floor and gave expression to his dissent in the following terms:

I am opposed to inviting any woman to preach before this meeting.

If the mother of our Lord were on earth I should oppose her preaching here. [Sensation and murmurs of disapproval]. Oh, I do not mind that, I like at the beginning of a speech to find that there are two sides to my question. There is no power in the Methodist Church by which a woman can be licensed to preach; this is history, this is the report made at the last General Conference. It is, therefore, not legal for any quarterly conference to license a woman to preach, nevertheless here is a woman who claims to have such a license, and we are asked to invite her to preach.

A BROTHER: We have the right!

BROTHER BUCKLEY: Oh, you have the right to believe the moon is made of green cheese, but yet have no right to commit the ministers of this city on an unsettled Church question. [Laughter and applause]. The tendency of men--now here is a chance to hiss--the tendency of men to endeavor to force female preachers on the Church, and the desire to run after female preachers, is, as Dr. Finney said to the students at Oberlin, an aberration of amativeness. [Roars of laughter and applause]. When men are moved by women, then by men under the same circ.u.mstances, it is certainly due to an aberration of amativeness. [Applause and more laughter]. For some time the male and female students at Oberlin used to have their prayer-meetings together, but after a time they divided, and the young men complained to Dr. Finney that the Holy Ghost no longer came with equal force. Dr. Finney said this showed amativeness, or that the men were back-sliding.

[Applause].

BROTHER d.i.c.kINSON: As to the talk of amativeness, what about our holiness meetings and seaside meetings, where we go to hear woman, and to be moved by her words and her personality?

[Applause]. Why are there so many women in the Church? It must be amativeness which urges them to go and hear men preach.

[Laughter].

Dr. ROACH: If this meeting has any dignity, has any Christian intelligence, has any weight of character, it ought not to take this action. [Laughter]. What wildness, what fanaticism, what strange freaks will we not take on next? [Laughter and applause].

Brother McAllister and others took part in the discussion, and finally, amid cries of "Motion," "Question," points of order, and the utmost confusion, the question was put, and the meeting refused to invite Miss Oliver to preach by a vote of 46 to 38.

The result was received with e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of "Amen" and "Thank G.o.d" and "G.o.d bless Brother Buckley." The Chair announced that Brother Kittrell will preach next Monday on "Entire Satisfaction," and the meeting adjourned.

Miss Oliver appealed to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in session in Cincinnati, May, 1880, for full installment and ordination. In this appeal she said:

I am so thoroughly convinced that the Lord has laid commands upon me in this direction, that it becomes with me a question of my own soul's salvation. I have pa.s.sed through tortures to which the flames of martyrdom would be nothing, for they would end in a day; and through all this time, and to-day, I could turn off to positions of comparative ease and profit. I ask you, fathers and brethren, tell me what you would do in my place? Tell me what you would wish the Church to do toward you, were you in my place?

Please apply the golden rule, and vote in Conference accordingly.

As answer to this appeal, and in reply to all women seeking the ministry of that Church, the Conference pa.s.sed the following resolution:

_Resolved_, That women have already all the rights and privileges in the Methodist Church that are good for them, and that it is not expedient to make any change in the books of discipline that would open the doors for their ordination to the ministry.[216]

An Episcopal Church Convention meeting in Boston in the summer of 1877, busied itself in preparing canons upon marriage and divorce, thus aiming to reach the finger of the Protestant Church down to a control of this most private family relation. The Diocesan Convention of South Carolina, in the spring of 1878, denied women the right to vote upon Church matters, although some churches in the diocese counted but five male members.

Not alone in her request for ordination has woman met with opposition, but in her effort for any separate church work. The formation of woman's foreign missionary societies was bitterly opposed by the different evangelical denominations, although they have raised more money than the male societies have ever been able to do--even helping them pay old debts--and have reached large cla.s.ses of their own s.e.x whom the male societies were powerless to touch. By thus supplementing men's work, they have made themselves acceptable.

Not only do councils, convocations, conferences, conventions, synods, and a.s.semblies proclaim woman's inferiority, but Sunday-schools teach the same doctrine. A letter from a correspondent of _The National Citizen and Ballot-Box_ (Syracuse, N. Y.), in August, 1880, said:

Our Sunday-schools here have just finished the lesson on the creation and fall of man, and those of us who are capable of feeling, felt keenly the thrusts at woman for her infidelity to G.o.d's laws, and her overpowering influence in dragging man from his exalted position in life into a bondage of sin and death, and that she is to be held responsible for all the acc.u.mulated sins of the ages. One man said that "had not Eve been _lurking_ around where she had no business, the devil would never have tempted her." Another said, "Had it not been for woman, we might to-day be living in ease and splendor," and I listened to hear them say the fallen angel was a woman.

This same doctrine is taught in the public schools. _The Republican_, of Havre de Grace, Maryland, in its issue of August 6, 1880, gave the following report of a speech at that time:

Thus spoke Master Showell at the Berlin (Wicomico County) High-School commencement: "By woman was Eden lost and man cursed.

If you trust her, give up all hopes of heaven. She can not love, because she is too selfish. She may have a fancy, but that is fleeting. Her smiles are deceit; her vows are traced in sand. She is a thread of candor with a web of wiles. Her charity is hypocrisy; she is deception every way--hair, teeth, complexion, heart, tongue, and all. Oh, I hate you, ye cold composition of art!"

Sermons are frequently preached in opposition to woman's demand for equality of right in Church and State. On the Sunday following the Thirtieth Anniversary Woman Suffrage Convention, held in Rochester, 1878, the Rev. A. H. Strong, D.D., President of the Baptist Theological Seminary of that city, preached upon "Woman's Place and Work," saying:

In the very creation of mankind in the garden of beauty, G.o.d ordained the subordination of woman.

This president of a theological seminary, where Christian theology is taught to embryo Christian ministers, said that woman's subordination would be most perfectly seen in the "Christian humility and gentleness and endurance of her character, and in her indisposition to a.s.sume the place or do the work of man," forgetting, apparently, that subordination, humility, and endurance are precisely the qualities which tend to destroy n.o.bleness of character.

The sermon was especially directed against the following resolutions of this Convention, which throughout the country met much clerical criticism and opposition:

_Resolved_, That as the duty of every individual is self-development, the lessons of self-sacrifice and obedience taught women by the Christian Church have been fatal, not only to her own highest interests, but through her have also dwarfed and degraded the race.