Woman's Christian Temperance Union

“ For this reason men ought to demand that women come into the body politic and bring with them the same moral standard that they hold for themselves in the home, in the Church, in the hospitals, in the great reform movements which are voiced by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and all other endeavors for right- eousness that are always championed by women. ”

“ She found the letter when she returned to the slate-colored house from the regular monthly meeting of the Augusta Simpson Branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. ”

“ Nothing is more suggestive in all the national gatherings of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, that sober second thought of the crusade, than the wide difference between these meetings and any held by men. ”

“ Last spring, when woman claimed the supremacy—the right to hold all the offices in the Woman's State Temperance Society—I contended, from this platform, for the equality of man; the equal rights of all the members of this society. I have claimed everywhere the equality of humanity in Church and in State; God helping me, I here pledge myself anew to Him, and to you all, to be true everywhere to the central principle—the soul of the Divine commandment, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' The temperance cause was not injured by our course at that Convention. ”

“ What we need for women is not more spirituality but more hard common-sense, applied to reform as well as religion. One thing connected with our organization is a matter of pride to all women, namely, that no pecuniary obligation has ever been repudiated by the Woman's Union. ”

“ A change might come—even to them, but if it did not, ought they not to pity other women whose situation was less comfortable than their own? She alluded to the idle lives of young women, to which they were condemned by the customs of society, and said Christianity demanded a useful life from every woman as well as every man. ”

“ Seeing wine on the tables of clergymen and bishops, liquor-dealers and wine-bibbers dignified and honored as elders and deacons in churches, they called on the women to leave all such unholy organizations. Thus besieging legislators for a "Maine Law," demanding purity at the family altar, denouncing the Church for its apathy, and the clergy for their hostility to the public action of woman, this State Temperance Society roused the enmity of many classes, and was the target for varied criticism. ”

“ Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It teaches us that abominable idea of the sixth century—Augustine's idea—that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the priesthood? .... The canon laws are infamous—so infamous that a council of the Christian church was swamped by them. In republican America, and in the light of the nineteenth century, we must demand that our religion shall teach a higher idea in regard to woman. ”

“ But meanwhile, without show or clatter or fanfaronnade of any kind, Religious Women have been submitting, in large bodies, to rules far more general and inexorable than any dreamed of in the world's affairs; have been resigning all of their individuality which could not be brought under strict rule; have been obeying a woman, in union with women ”

“ How can she devoutly subscribe to a theology which makes her the conscientious victim of another's will, forever subject to the triple bondage of the man, the priest, and the law? How can she tolerate our social customs, by which womankind is stripped of all true virtue, dignity, and nobility? How can she endure our present marriage relations, by which woman's life, health, and happiness are held so cheap, that she herself feels that God has given her no charter of rights, no individuality of her own. ”

“ In the temperance reformation, and in the great reformatory movements of our age, woman's powers have been called into action. They are beginning to see that another state of things is possible for them, and they are beginning to demand their rights. Why should this church be granted for such a meeting as this, but for the progress of the cause? Why are so many women present, ready to respond to the most ultra and most radical sentiments here, but that woman has grown and is able to assume her rights? ”

“ The women's temperance movement, begun and carried on by prayer, is as natural in its birth and growth as the oak that springs from the acorn. If God and the God-like element in women cannot help, there is no help. If the pulpit, the press, the politicians, the reformers, the law, cannot bring reform, who is left to do it but God and the women? ”

“ There has been nothing finer done in the way of immediately urgent but far-reaching influence, by the Christian women of America, either before or since. Every one rejoices in the helpfulness of the Woman’s Boards, creating and fostering as they do a mighty interest on behalf of their benighted sisters in heathen lands, and we will not believe the Christian women in our American churches incapable of again inaugurating some similar work, equally worthy of them, toward meeting the inexpressibly urgent moral necessities of their sadly darkened and depressed sisters nearer home. ”

“ The call, however, for woman’s work in America during the past twenty years seems to us to have been peculiarly urgent, and yet we think the majority of the noble Christian women in our churches have, up to this time, seen only dimly the demands upon them in this regard. ”

“ Men, and women, too, ought to look to Marriage with a profounder respect and a higher purpose. It is a holy institution. To degrade it is wicked and brings the most bitter unhappiness. If I should induce a single young woman to look more reverently upon the life-union, to regard it in its moral and religious aspects, and determine to enter it under the sanctions of true religion, and demand a like state of mind in her companion, that they might live to be blessings to each other, I should feel richly remunerated for my labor. ”

“ These things degraded marriage, but the home would be the holiest of spots if the wife asserted her individuality and worked hand-in-hand with her husband, each uplifting the other. Women are robbed of the right of conscience. Their silence and subjection in the church have been the curse not only of womanhood but of manhood. No other human being should decide for us in questions pertaining to our own moral and spiritual welfare. Women are beginning to believe that God will listen to a woman as quickly as to a man. ”

“ Before considering women’s part in the religious life of the country, it has to be remembered that their part in social life has been largely determined by the Church. For centuries the Church was,86 practically, the only civilizing influence, the only restraint upon passion and lawlessness, the only protection of the weak against the strong. ”

“ IT is one of the glittering fictions of the Church that to her civilization is due,* and that it is to her benign influence and direction alone that woman has been advanced to her present position in the social scale; that without the Bible and the Church the status of woman in Christian countries would be lower and her lot harder. ”

“ In heathen and barbarous countries it was also deemed a sign of woman's subjection and inferiority. The Hebrews were the first people to attain any truly spiritual conceptions, and they began to have a commensurately higher idea of the possibilities of woman's nature and work. When Christian women, in their new-found freedom, would have thrown aside the veil, just as Christian men, in their new-found reverence for God, would have repudiated the heathen wife, Paul said to them both that Christian liberty was individual,—it changed the character, not the sex relations. ”

“ So long as ministers stand up and tell us that as Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of the woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women can look at the Hindoo, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage. Observe to-day the work women are doing for the churches. The church rests on the shoulders of women. Have we ever yet heard a man preach a sermon from Genesis i:27-28, which declares the full equality of the feminine and masculine element in the Godhead? ”

“ As regards women, it is only in these times of religious upheaval that the Church recognized their perfect equality with men.
There is nothing in the history of the persecutions that applies more particularly to women than to men. ”

“ These allusions to the aid and encouragement offered to benevolent women in the Catholic Church are not designed to be invidious. Whatever class of religionists conscientiously hold, that there is no [123] safety from eternal ruin but in their church, not only Christian benevolence, but common humanity should impel them to all possible efforts, to gather every human being into their communion. ”

“ Only within the past three hundred years of growing scepticism and loss of power by the Church has either purity or dignity become possible for women; and it is well for us to remember that for over 1500 years of Christianity, when the Church had almost absolute power, it never dreamed of elevating woman, or recognizing her as other than an inferior being created solely to minister to the lowest nature of man, and possessing neither a right to her own person nor a voice in her own defence. ”

“ Yet I was pleased to find that there was no perceptible decrease in numbers, and to learn that the harmony of my flock had not been in any way disturbed by strife and contention.
Amongst the various causes which lead to the peace and prosperity of a Christian church, the example and influence of females deserves a prominent place; it operates silently, yet powerfully, both to repress what is evil and to stimulate to what is good. ”

“ And it is here that we reach what may be called the more public duties of woman. From all duties entirely public she is now, or she may be if she choose, relieved by man. These more public duties of hers are still but the outgrowth of her home life, and more or less closely interwoven with it. They are very important, never to be neglected with impunity. The really unsocial woman is in great danger of becoming also un-christian. Every friend crossing the threshold brings social life into the home. ”

“ The Christian ideas, which have dominated us now for nearly two thousand years, are generally considered to have been favorable to women. In their insistence on the value of the human soul, and on democratic equality, they have doubtless helped to raise the status of women along with that of all human beings. But, as between man and woman, Christianity has given every possible advantage to men, and has added needlessly to the natural burdens of women. ”

“ In the work devolving upon mankind, woman has a distinct mission to fulfil. Society owes to her love, honor, and protection. Every right, social and religious, should be guarded. Associations calculated to secure for her every privilege enjoyed by man, should be formed and supported. Above all else, efforts should be made to lead her to recognize in Christ her Saviour, for Christ in woman is her hope of glory, her joy and strength. ”

“ This is not the time or place to enter upon the great question of woman’s mission. She has her work, and the time is coming when she shall be permitted to do it. God, in His own marvellous way, is, even now, causing the dawn of that blessed day to break, when, rising above prejudice and party spirit, she shall be allowed to take her true place, and be, in the highest sense of the word, a “Sister” to the suffering and the sorrowful; to assert and claim her “rights,” the only rights of which a woman may justly be proud. ”

“ Respect for woman, the much lauded chivalry of the Middle Ages, meant what I fear it still means to some men in our own day—respect for the elect few among whom they expect to consort.
The idea of the radical amelioration of womankind, reverence for woman as woman regardless of rank, wealth, or culture, was to come from that rich and bounteous fountain from which flow all our liberal and universal ideas—the Gospel of Jesus Christ. ”

“ Like the Christians, they demand that one man should be united to one woman, but they teach that the wife ought to be the equal of the husband, and that, in accordance with the particular grace given to her sex by God, she ought to be associated with him in the triple function of temple, state, and family, in such a manner that the social individual which has hitherto been man alone should hereafter be man and woman. ”

“ Hold out to her a key which promises to unlock the hidden and concealed glories of the unexplored future, and woman will be tempted again to forego God's favor and the joys of paradise to grasp or wield it. In every heathen religion women occupied a prominent place. Priestess or prophetess, she stood in all ministerial offices on an equality with man. Christianity rejects the ministerial services of women, and selects for its standard bearers men acquainted with life, filled with religious zeal, and capable of hardy endeavor, assuring faith and martyr patience. ”

“ Women did not hesitate to yield to the Church their freedom of thought and of action, their minds and consciences alike being at the disposal of their ecclesiastical directors; but when the Church taught men to respect their wives, and raised its voice and exerted its influence against the tyranny which placed women in subjection to their male relatives, it was indeed befriending them in a way that hastened the acquirement by them of the real equality which they now enjoy with the other sex. ”