Samantha among the Brethren — Volume 7, Marietta Holley [phonics readers TXT] 📗

money and doing more missionary work than the Parent Missionary Society did fifty years ago. And yet men legislate concerning the missionary operations of women, and give them no voice directly in this body.

We bring up the temperance question here against license and in favor of Prohibition, and we pass our resolutions after we have given our discussions, and yet the Methodist Church has the honor of having in the ranks of her membership—(Time called.)

ADDRESS OF REV. DR. JAMES M. BUCKLEY.

Mr. President, while the last speaker was on the floor, a modification of a passage of Scripture occurred to me, "The enemy cometh in like a flood, but I will lift up a standard against him." It is somewhat peculiar that he should begin by making a statement about one of the most honored names in American Methodism, a statement that has been published in the papers, and that nine tenths of this body knew as well as he did. It must have been intended as a part of his argument, and I regard it as of as much force as anything he said after it. But in point of fact the question does not turn upon the person, but upon the principle. I have received an anonymous letter containing the following among other things, "Beware how you attack the holy cause of woman. Do you not know that obstacles to progress are rem-o-o-v-e-d out of the way?" The signature of that letter is ingenious. I cannot tell whether it was a man or a woman, for it reads as follows, "A Lover of your Soul and of Woman." Now, Mr. President, the only candlestick that ought to be removed out of its place is the candlestick that contains a candle that does not burn the pure oil of truth. And I believe, sir, that with the best of intentions the three speakers who have appeared have given us three chapters in different styles of a work of fiction, and it is my duty to undertake to show where they have slipped. The Apocrypha says, "An eloquent man is known far and near; but a man of understanding discerneth where he slippeth." I have no claim to eloquence; never pretended to have any; but I have a claim to some knowledge of Methodist history, to some ability to state my sentiments, and to be without any fear of the results, either present or prospective.

Now, Mr. President, you notice from my friends that if they cannot command the judgment of the Conference they propose to say the women are in, and defy us to put them out. I am sorry that my friend did not take in the full significance of that. And they say that everybody who has a certificate in form is in until he is put out. Why, they do not discriminate between ordinary contested cases and a case where the constitutional point is involved. If these women have a right here, they have had it from the beginning by the Constitution. It is not a contested case as to whether John Smith was voted for by the people who ought to vote for him, or in the right place. Now, they talk of bringing up documents here. I wrote to the Hon. George F. Edmunds, the most distinguished member of the United States Senate, and simply put this question, If a certificate of election in the Senate shows anything that would prove the person unworthy of a seat, would he be seated pending an investigation or not? He did not know what it referred to, and I read it verbatim. I never mentioned the name of Methodist, and I read verbatim from his letter:

"No officer of the Senate has any right to decide any such question, and, therefore, every person admitted to a seat is admitted by, in fact, a vote of the Senate. The ordinary course in the Senate is, when the credentials appear to be perfectly regular, and there is no notorious and undisputed fact or circumstance against the qualifications and election of a senator, to admit him at once and settle the question of his right afterward. But there have been cases in which the Senate declined to admit a claimant holding a regular certificate upon the ground that enough was known to the Senate to justify its declining to receive him until an inquiry should be had. Very truly yours,

"GEORGE F. EDMUNDS."

Now, Mr. President, all this twaddle about the women being in is based upon the pretence that one woman is there now. The certificate shows that they were women, though as yet no action has been taken in regard to them at all. If they were in, they were in with a constitutional challenge. I champion the holy cause of women. I stand here to champion their cause against their being introduced into this body without their own sex having had the opportunity of expressing their opinion upon the subject. I stand here to protect them against being connected with movements without law or contrary to law, and those who wish to bring them in and those who say it is the constitution of the man and prejudice (my friend, Dr. Potts, said prejudice), they are persons, indeed, to stand up here as, par excellence the champions of women! Is it the constitution of the men? Have you read the letter of Mrs. Caroline Wright in the Christian Advocate, one of our most distinguished American Methodist women? She does not wish to see them here. It is the constitution of the woman in that case, and I am opposed to their being admitted until the general sentiment of the women and the men of our Church have an opportunity of being heard upon it.

Now, Mr. President, note these facts.... This is not a fact, but my opinion. I solemnly believe that there was never an hour in the Methodist Episcopal Church when it was in so great danger as it is to-day, not on account of the admission of these women, two of whom I believe to be as competent to sit in judgment on this question as any man on this floor. That is not the question, as I propose to show. I assert freely, here and now, if the women are in under the Restrictive Rules, no power ought to put them out. If they are not in under the Restrictive Rules, nothing has been done since, in my judgment, bearing upon it. I am astounded that these brethren fancy that this question has no bearing at all on the meaning of that rule. That is a wonderful thing. But we affirm that when the Church voted to introduce lay delegation, it not only did not intend to introduce women, but it did intend to fill up the whole body with men. That is what we affirm. If we can prove it, it is a tower of help to us. If we cannot prove it, we cannot make out our case. But our contention is, that the Church did not undertake to put women in, and it did undertake to fill up the capacities and relations of the body with men. Now, look at it. No man goes to the dictionary to find the meaning of the word "layman." There is not a man that can find out the meaning of our Restrictive Rules from the dictionary. No living man can make out the meaning of a word in the Restrictive Rules from Webster's dictionary. You must get it from the history of the Church. Who is the "General Superintendent" by Webster or Worcester? The Methodist Episcopacy is the thing that is protected by the Restrictive Rules. The dictionary does not tell how the Chartered Fund shall be taken care of. Now they talk about laymen. They do not seem, I think, to understand the history of the thing. Some of them do not appear to understand the history of the English language. Why was the word "layman" ever introduced? Because there was a separate class of clergy men in the world, but there was not a class of clergywomen in the world. If there had been, there would have been a term for laywomen and for clergywomen. And the word was invented to distinguish the laymen from the clergymen. Had there been clergywomen, there would have been laywomen. The "laity" means all the people, men, women, and children. A woman is one of the laity, and so is every child in the country or in the Church one of the laity. But when you speak of man acting as a unit he is a layman, but you never say a laywoman. You say: a woman. Abraham Lincoln said, "All these things are done and suffered, that government of the people, for the people, and by the people should not perish from the earth." Now, people, the dictionary says, are men, women, and children. Did Abraham Lincoln mean that any women or children can take any part in the government of the nation? No, no, no! He meant this. When he stood up and delivered his inaugural speech, he said this, "The intent of the lawmaker is the law."

I give them something from one of the greatest lawyers that ever lived to think of awhile—John Selden: "The only honest meaning of any word is the intent of the man that wrote it." At the time that the plan of lay delegation was adopted, there was not a single Conference of the Church on this wide globe, not one that distinguished between the ministry and the laity that allowed women to take any part in its law-making body. Some one will talk about the Quakers. But they deny the existence of the Church, the sacraments of the Church, and make no distinction between the ministry and the laity. Let them get up and show that there was ever one Church in the world worthy of the name that allowed women to make its laws. There is not one to-day. Let them name a Church, let them name one that has allowed women in its law-making body; and yet such is the blinding power of gush that men will say that our fathers all understood it and proposed to put women in. The fact is, that they only proposed to allow them to put us in. As soon as the General Conference adjourned the women made an appeal in a public statement. They were asked to vote for lay delegation, and were told that then they could set the Church right. The opponents appealed to them to vote against it on the ground that it would not make any difference to them. James Porter, Daniel Curry, Dr. Hodgson (Professor Little thinks he was the greatest of them all) wrote a series of articles in the Advocate, and it never occurred to them that the women could come into the General Conference. Lay delegation was only admitted by 33 votes. Had there been a change of 33 votes they would not have come in. Every member of the New York East Conference knows that Dr. Curry's influence was so powerful that he could almost get a majority against it. And they know if any one had set up an opposition to it on this ground, the whole Conference would have voted against the movement, and that if it had not been for Bishop Ames and Bishop Janes, who went to the Wyoming Conference where the majority was opposed to lay delegation, and by their influence there converted my friend Olin and others, he knows that if this matter of the women had been in or understood, the whole Conference would have been against it. It would not have been possible. Dr. Potts says that it is prejudice. Nothing of the kind. Do you know there are 12,000 Methodist ministers that are ciphers all the time except when they vote for delegates? Are you going to presume that when the Church has a multitude of members, that it is going to sit here and change, by an interpretation, a Restrictive Rule, or put in what was never in, and never understood to be in? The Restrictive Rule fills up the ministerial delegates. Every time you put a woman in, you put a man out. This subject has never come up here before. The question is this, Do those Restrictive Rules mean anything? If they do, you cannot put in anything that the fathers did not put in. And if you put in women as lawmakers; if you can read those Rules and put them in there, you can change any one of the Restrictive Rules by a majority of one. And I want to say to you, that if you do it, you will prove to the Methodist Episcopal Church that the sole protection we have against the caprice of a majority of the General Conference