The True Woman: A Series of Discourses, to Which Is Added Woman vs. BallotFulton, Justin D. (Justin Dewey)
Religion
The True Woman: A Series of Discourses, to Which Is Added Woman vs. Ballot
Fulton, Justin D. (Justin Dewey)
Husband and wife; Women -- Religious aspects -- Christianity; Women -- Suffrage
For woman there is a felt a necessity which should send her forth as a
missionary to those like herself in everything but blessings. Think of
our large factory towns, where women are congregated by hundreds and
thousands. Let it be remembered that there is something unnatural in
all this. Woman was made for man, for home, for love. Separate her
from them all, herd her with her kind, subtract from her the incentive
to endeavor, leave her mind to brood in fancy, to welcome unholy
aspirations and degrading thoughts to her soul, and you leave her to
prey upon herself. Let woman see to it that reading-rooms for women be
established in our factory towns, that their boarding-houses be warmed
and rendered inviting, that the talented be encouraged to exertion,
and that tidiness and neatness be made an incentive for all, and woman
will do a work of immeasurable importance,--a work on which God's
blessing will rest,--and those who toil to accomplish it will obtain
an abundant reward from Him who declares, "Inasmuch as ye did it to
one of the least of these, ye did it unto me."
In the cause of Reform woman's help is needed. From the earliest
commencement of the temperance movement, appeals, arguments, and
expostulations have been addressed by earnest reformers to woman,
because it was felt that on any great social question the power of
woman to help, or to hinder, was all-important. When it is remembered
that woman is the greatest sufferer from the vice of intemperance,
that she regulates the customs of society, it is apparent that she
should seek to abolish bad, and promote good customs. More than others
she trains the young and builds up character, and therefore she
should, by example and precept, implant such habits as may be not
only a safeguard in childhood and youth, but become fixed as moral
principles in those she has reared, when the responsibility arrives;
because of these, we find reasons in abundance why woman must help, or
aid cannot reach the imperilled and undone.
Again: Woman needs help. Addison well said, "Women are either the
best or the worst of human beings." The very feelings which, rightly
directed, prompt her to soar even to the apex of the pyramid of human
virtue, warped from their right exercise, precipitate her to the
lowest and most grovelling depths of human vice. Is woman intemperate,
she differs from man in the gratification of her appetite. He seeks
the social club. Woman seeks retirement, and drinks alone and apart.
Her appetite, from this very cause, becomes unmanageable. Men will
stop drinking, oftentimes, when the open bar is closed. Woman, with
an appetite formed, drinks the more, because she drinks in secret.
Because of this fact, woman is in peril if she form an appetite for
strong drink.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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