Our New Departure (Brooks)/Chapter 16

God has halved our Humanity into man and woman; and only as the halves are united, of the twain making one, can our Humanity be complete. Herein is the wonderful peculiarity of Christ. In him, "there is neither male nor female." By this, primarily, it was doubtless meant to say that he knows no distinction of sex, as he knows nothing of condition or race, among his disciples, because, in the fellowship of a common faith, and in the equal blessings and privileges of a common salvation, all are one in him. But since he is alike the example of both, the statement must also have been designed somehow to include the idea that as the humanity common to all nations is summed up in him, so not less are the distinctive qualities of the two sexes. He is not simply a perfect man. In character, he is just as much the perfect woman also. How else could he be an example to women?

No human being, either as a man, or as a woman, distinctively, can fitly represent the globular wholeness of our nature. Solely as a man, Christ could not. Only a life perfectly blending man and woman can do this; and this is what Christ—and he alone—does. He is the union of the two sides of our nature,—the consummate flower of its finest and grandest possibilities; not simply a man, but Man,—Humanity come to full expression in all that makes it at once most human and most divine. Analyze him morally, and see—on the one hand, the unconquerable force; the tough, persistent will; "the iron firmness, resisting temptation; the courage and self-possession that never quailed; the integrity that never paltered; the justice that never gave way to any mere sentiment or weakness of feeling;" the vigor, energy and strength that made him always so stout and invincible, so calm and self-sustained,—and on the other hand, the love ​so fond; the tenderness so sympathetic; the tears so ready to flow; "the considerate care which provided bread for the multitude, and said to the tired disciples as with a sister's rather than a brother's thoughtfulness, 'Come ye apart, and rest awhile;'" the shrinking sensitiveness; the retiring modesty, withdrawing from needless observation; the nervous susceptibility to sorrow and pain; the meek and patient submissiveness to a superior will. Here, plainly, are two very distinct sides, or 'poles,' of character; but, save in their union, how could we have had the Life which now stands out at once so noble and massive, and yet so winning and beautiful,—so masculine, and yet so feminine, in our Lord?

And blending thus so marvellously the man and the woman in his human completeness, Christ suggests the natural relations of the two sexes as the complements of each other, and especially illustrates how they are intended to mingle and supplement each other in life, and what is the law of all right character and all best work.

As to Character, we all know what occurs when men are long separated from the tempering and refining influence of cultivated and virtuous women. They grow rough, coarse, boorish, barbarized. In like manner, consequences different, but analogous, show themselves in women when long separated from high-toned and intelligent masculine society. Hence the grave mistake of those who would divide the sexes in schools, colleges, or anywhere—except in prisons. Such results show that God has made them to dwell together, to act and re-act on each other, and that the conditions of best culture are violated when some other arrangement is substituted for His.^[1] And exemplifying the reciprocal influence of the sexes, and the necessity for it, these results as distinctly intimate how the qualities of the two need to be interchanged. As our Lord could not have ​been the Christ he is except as the union of the two, so always. No man is most perfectly a man save as he has, also, something of the woman in him; and no woman is most perfectly a woman save as she includes, also, something of the man. Anything but a perfect character follows in either case, indeed, if the man is so much of a woman as to lose his masculine distinctiveness, becoming only a feminine man, or if the woman, in a like predominance of the man, becomes a masculine woman. Such a product is not simply an anomaly; it is a violation of all the fitness and harmonies of nature, and cannot fail somehow to prove unfortunate, or mischievous, as well as unnatural. What is required is that the exclusively masculine qualities in the man shall be flavored and chastened by those that are womanly, and that the purely feminine in the woman shall be re-enforced and strengthened by those that are manly.

It is at this, as one form of his work, that Christ is constantly aiming in respect to us all; and in no terms, perhaps, can the change which Christianity has wrought, in tempering, refining and ennobling life and law, be better described than by saying that it has thus transfused each of the sexes with something of the qualities of the other,—teaching woman the lesson of self-respect, giving new vigor to her will, new earnestness to her aspirations, a new sense of obligation to her conscience, a larger culture to her understanding, and an increased consciousness of individuality, independence, and distinct accountability to her life,—and infusing a gentleness, tenderness, and purity into the life of man never known before. The same work must still more widely and positively go on, if the regeneration of the world is to go on; and only as it does go on, and men are mellowed and softened with womanly graces, and women catch a masculine self-reliance, individuality and force, can either attain the style of character that fulfils the purpose of their being, or best approach their common model, Christ.

And what is thus true as to Character, is no less true as to Work. In union there is strength; and the greatest strength can be given to any good cause, important ends of any sort can be most quickly or certainly reached, only as man and ​woman mingle and co-operate in the effort. Of what avail would have been all that men could do for the salvation of our republic, had the women of the North been disloyal in our late contest with treason, or had they withheld their sympathy and moral encouragement and support from the loyal side? At the South, it was woman—mistaken, but sincere, impassioned, ready for any sacrifice, that fed the fires of rebellion and gave inspiration and strength to the traitorous struggle; and at the North, it was only because the women were no less true than the men—ready to work,—ready to pray,—ready to say to husbands, sons and brothers, Stay not for us; go, and do your duty for your country's sake,—ready to go themselves to watch and serve in the hospital, to minister in the camp, and to be like angels of mercy even amidst the carnage of the battle-field, that liberty triumphed, and that the Union stands. And this but indicates the universal rule. I remember that, some years ago, the men of New England undertook to build a monument on Bunker Hill. They began with much enthusiasm. Then the money gave out, and they were compelled to stop. Again, after a while, they rallied, and, gathering more means, carried the work a little farther. But soon they had to halt again; and there, above the sacred old battle-ground, the half-finished structure stood for years the shame of our American patriotism, and the especial mortification of all New England. At length, the women took hold, and ere long, men and women working together, the money was raised, and the monument was done.

So always—as the societies and philanthropies, of various names, that are most a success to-day, all over the civilized world, effectually tell. Tract societies, Missionary societies, Bible societies, asylums and charities—who needs to be told how much less all these would be as compared with what they are, if either men or women had undertaken alone to found and to further them? The masculine and feminine forces are co-ordinate. In concurrence they are the powers God has appointed for moving and recreating the world; and only as, concurring, they put themselves as one to it, is any of life's best work most efficiently accomplished. Is it not a fact of suggestive import, that even in the great work ​of the world's redemption God invoked the instrumentality of woman, because man alone could not inaugurate or complete it, and that, "born of a woman," he who was to be the image of God, drawing all men unto him, was her contribution to the sublime enterprise?

Nor, important as both are, is there any ground for legitimate dispute as to which takes precedence in importance. He would be not only a presumptuous, but a foolish man, who, analyzing the character of Christ, should venture to have any opinion, or even to raise the question, as to which of the two sides so manifest in it is the more important. Both are important, equally so—since without either, there could be no Christ. And not less is the presumption, or the folly, of those who, considering the offices to which man and woman have been respectively appointed, dare to debate as if one or the other could have precedence. The distinction of sex runs through all creation, and without either, all would perish. In many particulars,—in all, so far as humanity, and not sex, asserts itself, the uses, needs, and employments of man and woman are either identical, or interchangeable; but that, as man and woman, there are different spheres for which they are fitted,—different duties for which they are designed,—different avocations which they can most appropriately pursue, is evident. This, however, argues no inequality, nor does it intimate that either is more necessary or important than the other. The mother and the father,—the brother and the sister,—the husband and the wife,—he who builds ships, or sweats at the forge, and she who plies the needle,—the toiler in the counting-room, at the bench, or on the farm, and the mistress of the home—who will undertake to draw a line between these, and to say which occupies the prouder or the humbler position, or which acts the part most requisite in the grand economy of life? As well might the sunlight and the air get up a quarrel as to their relative importance! For myself, I confess that I have no words duly to express my disgust at all such discussions, or my sense of their baselessness and impropriety; and especially does it awaken my wonder and disgust, when I hear women so lost to self-respect and a ​just appreciation of the dignity and glory of a true womanhood, as to talk as if what have hitherto been regarded as man's peculiar pursuits and avocations were in any respect more noble or dignified, or more worthy the honorable ambition of an aspiring woman, than those to which, as a woman, she has been appointed. Shame on the man, who, forgetting his wife or his mother, for a moment indulges the thought that woman is not, in every attribute and office, at least fully his peer; and shame even more on the woman, who, in a discontented itching to be something other than she is, dishonors her sex by disparaging its fitting employments, and, croaking as to the ignobleness of her limitations, vainly apes the life of a man, in open or secret rebellion against God for making her a woman.

Denials, it is true, there are of woman's individuality, and discriminations against her rights—though among these, in my judgment, the right to vote is not included—of which, the relics of that condition of bondage and inferiority out of which Christianity has lifted her, woman has just reason to complain, and for the correction of which woman and all fair-minded men should strenuously insist and persistently agitate.

Traditional notions, too, there are, as to what employments woman may fittingly adopt, against which all women, and men in their behalf, have no less reason to remonstrate and rebel. In former years, the lines thus drawn were so restricted that women were not unfrequently compelled to repress themselves in the non-use of special gifts in the exercise of which they might have attained eminence, or to confine themselves to avocations already so crowded as to leave no room for large numbers except to starve, or beg, or sell themselves to sin. Latterly, these lines have been somewhat extended, and women have been overstepping the old boundaries and getting into pursuits and industries that would once have been thought quite improper for them. But there is still too much of the old traditional estimate surviving. The whole world is open for woman just as much as for man, and there is no arbitrary or conventional rule to be set up as to what she may or may not do. Any gift is a Divine call to its use; and to be in the world is to ​have the right to choose how, honestly, to earn our bread. Whatever she can do, therefore, woman may properly feel herself at liberty to do, due regard being had to natural proprieties and constitutional limitations. A man who should strangely get the idea that it is his office to bear children, or to do 'dress-making' or 'plain sewing,' or to keep house instead of his wife, or to do any one of a thousand similar things, we should say, had somehow become morbid or twisted in his estimate of his fitting employment; and whatever fondness or ability he might urge, we should tell him, could better find exercise in something more appropriately masculine. And so, equally, a woman, who should as strangely think herself called to build or to sail ships as her life-calling, or to make roads, to erect houses, to quarry rocks, to run locomotives, to sit in the senate, to plead at the bar, or to do anything else so evidently outside the feminine province, however she might aver a native taste or ability for it, would invite a similar judgment, and could as properly receive like advice. Evidently, as just now said, there is a masculine and there is a feminine sphere. But with only this qualification, founded in nature itself, it is for woman no less than for man to enter the field of all possible employment, and to walk where she will, following the bent of her genius, or electing as she prefers, whether it be to paint pictures or to chisel statues, to compose songs or to sing them, to write or to 'keep' books, to deliver lectures, to set types, to sell merchandise, to count money, to ply the needle, or to do whatever else she will. So that the employment be but honest and useful, it will be its own vindication as becoming and womanly, and will thus sufficiently vindicate her for pursuing it.

But these unjust discriminations and false ideas being corrected, it is for both men and women, sitting at the feet of nature, to see that their respective offices and lines of service have been as wisely appointed as they are distinctly marked; that, as just now remarked, they are co-ordinate, neither having the pre-eminence as assigned to offices more dignified or more important than the other, since both are equally indispensable; and that they are alike most worthy and honorable when, in no spirit of jealousy, and no sour or ​flippant aping of each other, but in a spirit of mutual self-respect and co-operation,—man as man, woman as woman,—they stand each, reverently and helpfully, in the lot God has prescribed, and seek to glorify it by a faithful discharge of the duties it imposes.

Whatever is to be done can best be done as man and woman thus work together. But in nothing are the conjunction and co-operation to which they are so called more needful than in labors for church-interests; and in the New Departure to which we are summoned, if we are to be most efficient as a Christian Church, more account will have to be made of this fact, and more thorough and systematic means will have to be employed to provide for and secure this co-operation. Not that I mean to intimate any intentional neglect of woman hitherto as an element of power in our Church, nor that we have been particularly behind other churches in recognizing the importance of her influence, or seeking to enlist it. I mean only that, with us as with most other churches, there has been no systematic effort in this direction. Like others, indeed, we have had our sewing societies, and fairs, and festivals,—in all of which, of course, woman has been a party. She has had her place, moreover,—in many instances, a most important place,—in the Sunday-school. But, aside from these, she has been left without any special sense of responsibility, because she has been left to feel that there was nothing else for her to do. It is for us, in the time to come, if we would be most and do most as a Church, to amend our methods in this particular; to assign woman equally with man something to do; and to have it understood that, in all things, she is to be systematically an active participant in our Church work.

But how shall this be done? A quite vigorous demonstration has of late been made among us in the direction of a woman ministry; and no small press of influence has been used by some of those favorable to it to induce all women who could be so persuaded to go into the pulpit. Is this to be a part of woman's new work hereafter for our Church? My own very decided conviction is, No. I have great faith in woman, but no faith in a woman ministry. ​Not that I have no faith in woman's right to speak, if she has anything to say, and is moved to say it in public, either in the pulpit or anywhere else. I know not why she may not speak or pray, as well as sing, in public, if she can do it to edification; know not why it is not her province and her right—nay, if she feels so impressed, her duty—to do these things, or either of them, as much as it is, or can be, man's. The power to instruct or to move, either by written or spoken language, is not of sex, but of soul; and the possession of the power is God's warranty for its use. Some of the prayers that have taken me nearest heaven have been the outpouring of woman's devotion; and some of the most eloquent and impressive utterances it has been my good fortune to hear have come burning from woman's heart and brain, in liquid fire from woman's lips. Who shall forbid such women—or any woman who can do it—either the privilege or the right to carry souls to the Father's throne on the wings of their prayers, or to kindle and inspire us with their messages of instruction, or their pleadings for truth and the right, whatever the theme on which they may choose to speak, or the place in which they may prefer to stand? Not I, surely, 'lest haply' I 'be found to fight against God.'

But to speak or to pray in public as convenience suits, or as occasion demands, is one thing; to make the ministry a profession, and to be formally set apart to the pastoral office, is quite another: and, with all deference to my preaching sisters, many of whom it is my privilege to know, and most of whom I hold in high esteem, I am compelled to confess that the propriety of the latter does not by any means seem to me to follow from the rightfulness of the former. To do the former is to follow God's intimations, in a legitimate use of gifts He has bestowed; to do the latter, I cannot but think, is to overlook evident hinderances and disqualifications in woman's very constitution, physical if not moral, and is thus totally to disregard the fitness of things. Every woman choosing the ministry as her life-work deliberately renounces offices for which she was intended, or proposes to accept these offices only to make incidental and secondary the paramount and ​sacred duties which they involve. A woman ministry, therefore, in the sense of adopting the ministry as a profession, is out of the order of nature. It is forbidden by intrinsic impediments and constitutional restraints and limitations. It is, and in the nature of the case always must be, an anomaly. For this reason, it is winning us no respect. It is helping us to no hold on the best and most thoughtful minds—only serving to confirm the false impression that we are an unbalanced and visionary people, given to crotchets, and ready to adopt every vagary that may assert itself, or seem to promise us help to get up a sensation. Despite immediate appearances anywhere, it is doing us no good, having regard to the interests of our cause 'in the long run;' and, whatever special efforts, or spasmodic tendencies, may temporarily do to push recruits into it, or whatever popularity, or supposed legitimacy, ingenious special pleadings and inconsequent reasonings may avail for a while to give it, it can never be otherwise than exceptional, or command the cordial sympathy and support of any considerable number of intelligent people.

These being my convictions, I scarcely need further explain why it is not in the ministry that, looking to our New Departure, I see woman's work for our Church. Neither judgment nor conscience would permit me to encourage a woman to prepare for the ministry; and should one come to me, claiming to be prepared, and asking license, ordination, or installation, neither personally nor officially could I vote, or in any way assist, to give it. At the same time, it seems to me unwise to have any controversy upon the subject. The idea of a woman ministry is one of the numerous extravagances incident to all periods of agitation in respect to important principles, when, in the reaction from old mistakes or abuses, extreme, irrelevant, and therefore false, conclusions are jumped at from premises more or less sound. It belongs to the category of things against which it avails nothing to reason, because they are not matters of argument or reasoning, only of impulse or sentiment,—often of obstinate self-will. It will have its run, as many a similar idea has had, and then pass away. It is self-limited, and therefore self-doomed. Nature is not to be successfully ​defied, whatever transient seemings may be; and, being against it, nature may be trusted, without much ado on our part, in time, to dispose of it.

And, having no faith in the pulpit as a fitting profession for woman, or in its work as her future work for the church, I have no more faith in the policy of her separate action which many of all churches are so ready to invoke, and which, notably, came in among us with our Centenary and has since been organized for permanence. The principle of separation is in effect—though, commonly, not so intended—that of disintegration. As such, it is not a good principle anywhere, if results which unity and consolidation can best produce are desired; and least of all is it a good principle for man and woman in work for the church. Let it be granted that some desirable ends may be gained through woman's separate action which could not be so fully realized without it. So some desirable ends might be accomplished if we should stir our rich men to have their separate action,—and our poor men to have theirs,—and our young people to have theirs,—and our children to have theirs,—and our people of brown hair to have theirs,—and those of light hair to have theirs—and so on, dividing and subdividing through all possible distinctions. No doubt there are those who could be reached and induced to contribute time and money on such a plan of procedure, who could not otherwise be interested. But how it would dishevel and segregate us! What a bundle of fragments it would make us! How it would impair and to a large extent destroy not only our sense of unity, but our spirit of co-operation! And what rivalries and jealousies and cross-purposes it would beget! It may be doubted whether any wise and practical friend of our Church, or of any church, would favor a proposition to organize on any such plan, whatever the immediate products it might promise. But if the principle of separate action for our women be sound and expedient, why not as sound and expedient for all the separate action that can be devised?

It is not separation, but aggregation that we want. The more thoroughly unified and compact we are,—the more ​perfectly and systematically we can be brought to work together, not as many, but as one, the stronger we shall be, and the more we shall be able to accomplish. And true of all others, this is no less true of men and women. It is in the concurrence of the masculine and feminine forces, as was just now said, that God has provided for the power which most moves the world. The more these two forces are conjoined, making common cause, not merely with reference to the general ends to be furthered, but with reference to ways and means, the mightier they become. Any two persons, disposed to work, working together, will accomplish more than they can, working apart; and men and women—if the figure may be pardoned—hitched together, and pulling the same load in the same harness, will do vastly more than if each party insists on having its special load and its special harness. They will pull different sides, in different 'traces'; but it will be the same load, pulled to unspeakably greater effect. What do God's arrangements say to us? He does not set men in one company, and women in another. He puts them together—in families, in churches, in communities, everywhere: assigning them, it is true, to dissimilar duties, with 'diversities of gifts' and 'diversities of operations,' but with one common interest, and with their dissimilar duties only parts of one common work. Who doubts that all the interests involved are thus better served than though they had been organized apart? So we shall be strong in proportion as we can enlist their activity and co-operation on the same principle.

Let me not be misunderstood. I have been heartily glad to see our women alive to the necessity of somehow making themselves actively felt in our Church affairs, and for this reason have counted it a privilege to contribute as I could to the success of what they have undertaken. I do not wonder that they have tired—the earnest, devoted souls among them, of the policy—or rather, of the no-policy—which has prevailed among us, in common with other churches, with regard to them, and that they have been moved, alike by self-respect and by their love for the dear cause which is as much theirs as ours, to their separate organization, since, they had reason to suppose, this was the only way in which ​they could really become participants in our general work. Better, far better such action than none; and if the question to-day were, Shall the women do nothing, or shall they work by themselves as they are trying to do? I would say, By all means, though the principle of separation be not sound, and at the risk of all consequences, let them organize and do what they can. Life is better than lethargy, even though hazards must attend it. But while ready with all my heart to say this, and to thank God and them for whatever good work they have done, I am none the less satisfied that the principle on which they are now proceeding is a false one, certain to divide our sympathies, and likely to fritter our energies and to give rise to emulations, jealousies and misunderstandings not at all favorable to the union in which lies our strength. The question, happily, is not, Shall our women do nothing, or work by themselves? but, How shall we combine our resources, so as to make ourselves most effective? And, convinced that one of the answers to this question is to be found in the wise and thorough consolidation of our masculine and feminine forces, and not in their segregation, I make these suggestions, without any attempt thoroughly to discuss the subject, trusting that attention may be so called to the erroneous principle and what is likely to result from it, as to insure better action.

It seems to me a sad—and in some respects, a most unpromising—thing, that our women should be talking as if they were a distinct element in our Church, and as if it were desirable that they should, as women, show themselves "a power" in it. Is it forgotten that in Christ "there is neither male nor female"? As Universalists, the inquiry of chief interest concerning us is not whether we are men or women, but whether we are lovers of the truth, ready to work for it; and as lovers of the truth, ready to work for it, whether men or women, we should clasp hands, and give ourselves to our Church-work as one work. So far as our women have any definite aims, they are identical with those of our Convention. Why, then, split our work, needlessly multiplying calls for 'contributions,' dividing sympathy, and keeping two sets of machinery in motion? In union lies our greatest strength. Can we not have this ​understood, and cease to parcel off our work as man's and woman's, and be done with these special "woman's" associations, appeals and contributions? Can we not organize and conduct all our enterprises, of whatever sort, as parts of one great whole, equally the concern of all, and showing that not men, and not women, as such, but souls consecrated to Christ, men and women, are the 'power'—and the only recognized power—in our Church? If we cannot, alas! for us. If we can, not only shall we escape most undesirable liabilities to which this separate system exposes us, but we shall secure a sense of unity and a practical co-operation and a harvest of results otherwise impossible.

And seeing nothing for our Church in a woman ministry, and more than doubting the wisdom or permanent usefulness of woman's separate action, I must further add that I have as little faith in any good as likely to come to our cause from the present tendency to constitute our Conventions of woman-delegates. Put into plain terms, this tendency amounts simply to this—a disposition, because men cannot be found willing to leave their business for such duties, to fill up our delegations with young girls and women, who, earnest and excellent in many respects, have little or no interest in the details of our Church-affairs,—have no acquaintance with business and no resources of practical judgment, and are thus destitute of the qualities without which neither dignity nor weight can be given to our representative bodies. It seems plain to me that only evil can come from such a state of things. What we need in this particular is to attract increased attention to these representative bodies, and to give them increased dignity and importance because of the intelligence, position, ripeness of judgment and elevated character of those who compose them. We have committed serious mistakes, and been much at fault, hitherto, in this department of our concerns. The rule, too frequently, has been that any reputable man, 'willing to go,' has been thought to be material suitable enough for a delegate. Our best men we have sometimes had, but not often. It is not so with other churches. As the rule, they send only their best men, and it is a sight well ​worth beholding, to go into some of these bodies in session and see of what material they are constituted. Why should not our bodies be constituted with equal care to bring our wisest and weightiest representatives into them? Our best, our most thoughtful and cultivated, our most practically sagacious and eminent minds are the delegates we want, and that we should insist on having; and if there are women in our churches—as there are—belonging to this class of minds, thoughtful, practical, with a taste for business and a familiarity with our methods and work, with definite opinions and a willingness to express them, and a disposition to attend faithfully to the duties of delegates, by all means let us have them. They will add dignity, and character, and wisdom to our councils. But it can only issue every way in harm to us if women of a different type are sent; and so far as they are sent, and the immature, the flippant, the non-practical, those unwilling or unable to give serious attention to business as business, or incompetent to have or to express intelligent opinions touching the great interests that are, every year, more and more to demand the action of our delegated bodies, the men who ought to be in them will be disinclined to have part in our legislation, and these bodies will degenerate into mere gatherings for talk, worthy of little respect and commanding none.

What, then, is there for woman to do? and how is she, in our New Departure, more generally and more effectively to concur in labors for our Church? These are questions more easily asked, perhaps, than answered in set detail. But even if they were questions of the easiest answer, it would not fall within the province of these pages to answer at length, since the purpose here is to suggest needs, and, if possible, to awaken thought towards their supply, rather than to recommend particular methods in form. It will be enough if any word thus said shall stimulate to reflection upon this subject. Once induce this among our people, and plans and methods will soon follow.

Let it suffice now to remark, by way only of outline and suggestion, that every parish and every church should be organized on the principle of giving every member something ​to do, and in the assignments of labor thus made, women equally with men should be appointed to duty. This will give in every congregation women as well as men for pastoral visitation and counsel,—for looking after the sick and the poor,—for waiting on outsiders whom it is desirable to bring in, and on new comers whom it is desirable to help feel at home, and on the lukewarm and absentees whom it is desirable to stir to better attendance and a new interest;—for soliciting money;—for talking up new and forward movements of whatever sort, and for furthering the common welfare in any way. Women, moreover, as well as men, should be looked to for their help in the Conference Meeting, and the meeting for prayer, and in whatever other work may be attempted to promote and deepen religious life.

Then our State Conventions and our General Convention should recognize women, just as much as men, as among their constituents, in appointing committees, in inviting suggestions, in the distribution of responsible duties for the furtherance of our cause. As an example of what might in this way be done, take the action of our General Convention, at its last session, in respect to the Missionary Box—a source of revenue which others, copying it from us, have made so productive, and which might be made equally productive for us, but concerning the best management of which there has been so much debate. After much discussion, the Convention, whose it is, and whose it should sacredly remain, wisely determined to put it—not into the hands of a separate Woman's Association as had been proposed, as if women were not an integral part of our Church, but into the hands of a committee, a majority of them women, who, in the name of the Convention, are to administer the Boxes in its behalf, and to cause them, through such agencies as may thus be appointed, to pour full streams, twice a year, into its treasury. Who doubts the result, should the women of the committee take vigorous hold of the business? Or, how better could our women be brought into direct and practical co-operation with the Convention, as part and parcel of it? This is mentioned only as one example of what might be done; but the example suggestively covers ​The whole field, and indicates how, be it what it may that our Church proposes, whether educational-work, missionary-work, publication-work, or whatever else, our women may be enlisted, and be made as actually as men, and directly with them, participants in it.

Who can anticipate all that would follow from such a systematic enlistment of our women in all the activities of our Church, from our primary to our superior bodies, and in all the plans that may be proposed—never as an outsider, or as an auxiliary, but in organic identification with them? Imagine a congregation composed altogether of men, or altogether of women, or for the upbuilding of which there was no conjunction of the two in effort! What a different thing it would be from a congregation in which both were working earnestly and sympathetically together! And what is thus true as to the life and strength and prosperity insured to a single congregation or parish, by heartily enlisting women—not to get up side-operations, but to make common cause with their husbands, sons, and brothers for the furtherance of the common welfare, is equally true of a whole denomination. There are some things that men can do best; there are other things that women can do best; unite them, and in proportion as they have the real spirit of work, there is no such thing as failure in any labor to which they put their hands.

Be it ours wisely to heed this lesson, and thus, in this respect, to make the New Departure on which, as to our future, so much depends.