Mary was curious tonight as to what the preacher would say on “The Woman
of the Future.” The Methodist Church had been a pioneer in the modern
Feminist movement, having long ago admitted women to the full ordination
of the ministry. Craddock, however, had been known for his conservatism
in the woman movement. He abhorred the idea of woman's suffrage as a
dangerous revolution and the fact that he consented to treat the topic
at all was a reluctant confession of its menacing importance.
With keen interest, the girl saw him rise at last. A breathless hush
fell on the crowd. He walked deliberately to the edge of the platform
and gazed into the faces of the people.
“I have often been asked,” he slowly began, “where I get my sermons.” He
paused and laughed. “I'll be perfectly honest with you. Sometimes I get
them from the Bible--sometimes from the book of life. The genesis of
this talk tonight is very definite. I found it in the liquid depths of
a little girl's eyes. She asked a simple question that set me
thinking--not only about the subject of her query but on the vaster
issues that grew out of it. She looked up into my face the other night
after my call for volunteers for the new mission we are beginning in the
slums of the East Side, and asked me if the girls were not going to be
given the chance to do something worth while in this church's work.
“I couldn't honestly answer her off-hand and in my groping I forgot the
child and her question. I saw a vision--a vision of that broader, nobler
future toward which human civilization is now swiftly moving.
“I say deliberately that it is swiftly moving, because the progress of
the world during the last fifty years has been greater than in any five
hundred years of the past.
“The older I grow the stronger becomes my conviction that the problems
of the age in which we now live cannot be solved by masculine brain
and brawn alone. The problems of the city and the nation and the great
fundamental social questions that involve the foundations of modern life
will find no solution until the heart and brain of woman are poured into
the crucible of our test.
“They talk about a woman's sphere As though it had a limit: There's not
a place in earth or heaven, There's not a task to mankind given, There's
not a blessing or a woe, There's not a whisper yes or no, There's not a
life, or death, or birth That has a feather's weight of worth Without a
woman in it!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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