The Church has been strangely blind in its attitude toward women, and with many women it will be long remembered with a feeling of bitterness that the Church has been so slow to move.

The Government of the Western Provinces of Canada gave full equality to women before that right was given by the Church.  The Church has not given it yet.  The Church has not meant to be either unjust or unkind, and the indifference and apathy of its own women members have given the unthinking a reason for their attitude.  Why should the vote be forced on women? they have asked.  It is quite true that the women of the Church have not said much, for the reason that many of the brightest women, on account of the Church’s narrowness, have withdrawn and gone elsewhere, where more liberty could be found.  This is unfortunate, and I think a mistake on the part of the women.  Better to have stayed and fought it out than to go out slamming the door.

Many sermons have I listened to in the last quarter of a century of fairly regular church attendance; once I heard an Englishman preaching bitterly of the Suffragettes’ militant methods, and he said they should all “be condemned to motherhood to tame their wild spirits.”  And I surely had the desire to slam the door that morning, for I thought I never heard a more terrible insult to all womankind than to speak of motherhood as a punishment.  But I stayed through the service; I stayed after the service!  I interviewed the preacher.  So did many other women!  He had a chastened spirit when we were through with him.

I have listened to many sermons that I did not like, but I possessed my soul in patience.  I knew my turn would come—­it is a long lane that has no tomato-cans!  My turn did come—­I was invited to address the conference of the Church, and there with all the chief offenders lined up in black-coated, white-collared rows, I said all that was in my heart, and they were honestly surprised.  One good old brother, who I do not think had listened to a word that I said, arose at the back of the church and said:  “I have listened to all that this lady has had to say, but I am not convinced.  I have it on good authority that in Colorado, where women vote, a woman once stuffed a ballot-box.  How can the lady explain that?” I said I could explain it, though, indeed, I could not see that it needed any explanation.  No one could expect women to live all their lives with men without picking up some of their little ways!  That seemed to hold the brother for a season!

The Church’s stiff attitude toward women has been a hard thing to explain to the “world.”  Many a time I have been afraid that it would be advanced as a reason for not considering woman suffrage in the State.  “If the Church,” politicians might well have said, “with its spiritual understanding of right and justice, cannot see its way clear to give the vote to women, why should the State incur the risk?” Whenever I have invited questions, at the close of an address, I have feared that one.  That cheerful air of confidence with which I urged people to speak right up and ask any question they wished always covered a trembling and fearful heart.  You have heard of people whistling as they passed a graveyard, and perhaps you thought that they were frivolously light-hearted?  Oh, no!  That is not why they whistled!