WOMAN versus BALLOT.

Three facts stand in the way of Woman’s being helped by the Ballot,—­God, Nature, and Common Sense.  The purpose for which God made or “formed” woman is clearly avowed in the history of her origin and in the assignment of her duties.

In discussing this question, whether the ballot, and all the immunities growing out of the right to vote, shall be granted to woman, it is essential that we inquire reverently and earnestly, on which side is God.  That the question in its philosophical treatment can only be fathomed by the profoundest intellect, and that it can be embraced, in all its details, only by the most comprehensive knowledge, is but a partial statement of this truth.  The question can only be understood, measured, and gauged by that Being who sees the end from the beginning, and can follow into its infinite ramifications the influence which must result from our actions.  God does understand it.  Being infinitely wise, there can be no new issues, no new facts, or combinations of facts, to influence the decisions of the Omniscient Mind.  It becomes us then to inquire what sphere God assigned to woman.  Having found it, we shall see that Nature and Common Sense unite in making manifest the wisdom in adhering to the Divine Plan.

The necessity of recalling attention to the portraiture of woman as God made her, is the more apparent, when we remember that those who ask the ballot for woman practically ignore the teachings of the Bible and the right of God to rule, and claim by word, as well as by deed, that they have outgrown the wisdom of the past, and have entered upon a stage of progress in advance of old time precedents.  We believe in the rule of God, and in the wisdom of God, and claim that Omniscience is not dependent either upon a morning newspaper, or upon the crude conjectures of a godless Infidelity, for wisdom or light in adjusting means to an end, or in assigning to woman her proper sphere.

Again.  We are impelled to seek wisdom from God, because we seek for it in vain elsewhere.  As to how the ballot is to help woman, even its advocates give us no light.  Whether it is proposed to lighten by its aid the penalties, and do away with the ruin of the fall, we are left in doubt.

If we give to woman the ballot, shall the equality which woman lost, when she ate of the forbidden fruit, be restored, and shall she be made again the equal of man?  Shall the sorrow in child-bearing be removed?  Can housework, or the duties of motherhood, and wifehood, and sisterhood, be met and discharged by the use of the ballot?