USA > Ohio > The Western Reserve of Ohio and some of its pioneers, places and women's clubs, Vol. II > Part 26
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Whoever is a Christian at all, is the son or daughter of God and Christ's brother or sister. He said so Himself. You never had the privilege of choosing your parents, your brothers and sisters, your uncles and aunts and cousins-not one of them. Whoever they are, whatever they are, they are your relations. You could not help yourself if you would. This is a position of necessity, but it may be, ought to be, more. It may be very blessed, inexpressibly helpful, if the higher rela- tionships of affection and sympathy be added.
Churches are conveniences of local order, armories of gospel truth, divinely instituted clubs of fellowship, hospitals of spir- itual cure, fortresses of moral power. The bond that ties them all is the loving Christ. Then what a structure of affection and copartnership should be built everywhere between all who are trying to serve God and help their kind. Their essential unity is not a thing to be resolved upon and then accomplished. It simply exists already. It merely needs to be acknowledged and honored and applied.
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Then what is unity? Would it be essential for the truest union in good works, that all Christian people should gather under the roof of some vast establishment and be called by the same conventional name? Something might be gained in this way, but more would be lost. Unity between divided families cannot be manufactured by building a great house over their heads. So, too, the best unity among a people is not accom- plished by having all its citizens dressed alike. Similarly, to have all bodies of Christians possess the same forms of worship or government would not unify them. Still less would they be unified by having all truth suppressed among them, except that least amount, without which no one could be a Christian at all. Good things may be carried to unwise extremes. Unbalanced or exaggerated truth becomes error. It is possible to overdo the plan of bringing together people that are agreed and or- ganizing them apart from others. But not one of the Chris- tian denominations exists that does not stand for some im- portant truth, or style of thought, or executive method which might never have been so fully stated or so grandly effective otherwise. Their unity is in nothing human, nothing visible. It is in Christ, their unseen but loving Lord and Master, in Him alone. This makes them one. Whether they realize it, as they might, or struggle to avoid it as they often seem to do, they are one-bits of the circumference of a circle that has its cen- ter in the one Redeemer. This conviction has power to join their sympathies and working forces towards the world's sav- ing and betterment, without starting even the wish of one to swallow up the other. The moment that formal union is sug- gested, the denominations have a similar way of looking at it. "Yes, we must all be one, and we are the one." But unity is not unanimity. All our diverseness is no bar to unity. Rather
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there can be no unity without diverseness. Unity always gives suggestion of a plural. The human body is a unit, but it has every kind of differing members.
Our God is one, more truly, because in another sense He is three. Instruments playing one note in unison can never render orchestral harmony. Yet there is no unity without a unit, and the unit is Christ. Just now we may be thankful that the Christian world is less inclined to magnify its differences. The pressing work upon its hands is exalting its agreements. We actually have today the only organic unity that is most precious or feasible, and that is what Scripture calls the "unity of the Spirit." Ah! if we only had it more decidedly! Our Saviour prayed for that as much as anything, that His disciples might be one.
Will any one undertake to prove that His prayer has been unanswered for eighteen centuries? All the grand union efforts engineered by men and women, or by both together, for human uplift, are the characteristic achievements of our age. Almost every sphere of influence is covered by them. As a rule they are the hands of the churches stretched out to the world around. Their workers are picked men and women trying to follow Christ, and if you kill or maim the churches behind them, you paralyze the sinews of their strength, and you shut the chan- nels of their supply. If we cannot save people eternally from sin, we may save them temporarily from dirt and want, and ignorance, and misery. Character controls condition. Make people better, and you better their circumstances very soon. Heaven is the objective point, but earth is on the way. Not a single talent but may find employ in good Samaritan business, in helping those less favored than we. If even you lose sight for a moment of the great interdenominational movements that
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exhibit the existing unity of Christian effort, there will be enough left right around us in Cleveland to test the unex- hausted vitality of Christian benevolence.
The Young Men's Christian Association, with its special field among us, and the Women's Christian Association, of blessed memory, that has become the Young Women's now. and has not disturbed its identity by the renewal of its youth and the broadening of its purpose, the Bethel Union, with its help to wise discriminating charity, the Women's Christian Temperance Unions in their struggle to check the ravages and repair the results of a gigantic tyrannous evil, the Humane Society, Dorcas Society, the Hospitals and Orphanages, and all the other blessed agencies that represent the union of Christian hearts and the strength of Christian hands not too masculine to be gentle, and not too feminine to be strong and true. If I needed not to remember the discourtesy of praise to the face, I might, in this presence, add another to the growing cluster of sisterly agencies for benefit. There is no excessive hindrance from our ecclesiastical preferences or our theological convic- tions. Those after all are not so difficult to overcome as our social prejudices.
The church was never intended to be a caste institution. Society is healthy as a rule when the life of the church is vig- orous, with something of surplus energy and loving zeal to revo- lutionize the world around it. The peril is in the truce, not in the fight. We lose when we retreat, not when we push on together.
"Take heart! The Master builds again, A charmed life old goodness hath; The tares may perish, but the grain Is not for death.
"God works in all things; all obey His first propulsion from the night;
Wake thou and watch! The world is gray With morning light."
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THE CHURCH AND SOROSIS
Address by Mrs. Mary B. Ingham, at Annual Banquet of Sorosis, April 30, 1894
The uprising of women throughout Christendom is as re- markable now as a quarter century ago. In 1869 and '70 the movement was for the women of the Orient, shut away from the World of Life in harems and zenanas; our effort proving beyond question that we can enrich treasuries faster and surer than men, and add marvelously to evangelizing forces for the redemption of the heathen. In short, the formerly silent two- thirds of the membership of orthodox churches have come to be a power in the world. In 1874 the resistless impulse to the front was in favor of reforms, solving the problem of how to reach the masses, opening sociological questions to the investi- gation of the better half of mankind, whose keen insight and sympathetic touch have uncovered to a surprised generation the cause of sorrow and suffering. Temperance and social pur- ity have been lifted into prominence as never before. For the last decade of the nineteenth century is reserved the gathering of our forces for the promotion of intellectual growth and gen- eral intelligence. Drawing rooms, club rooms, hotel parlors and city halls are filled to overflow with eager writers and de- baters upon every imaginable subject. Besides, in the city of Cleveland are seven secret orders of women, who crowd lodge rooms and upper assemblies with representatives from every walk of life, all pressing to the same goal, knowledge of affairs and a higher mental status. Our schools are astonishingly numerous: schools for physical culture and expression in ges- ture and oratory, schools for learning cookery as a fine art, kitchen and kindergarten classes for children, instruction in
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dress-making and other amateur economics, musical societies, art schools and professional teaching of everything that refines and beautifies. Indeed, the situation as now presented, so uni- versally demanding another mode of passing time than in small talk and following the fashions, even an appropriate fitting for life's discipline, has in it more of the sublime than these eyes have looked upon in the whole twenty-five years. "Truly," Goethe says, "the ever feminine draweth on."
It is impossible for a genuine club member to be frivolous -a thoughtful study of topics begets seriousness. So it must be that the next onward movement-and may it not come in with the twentieth century ?- will be such a religious awak- ening that hundreds of thousands will find Him of whom Moses in the law and prophets did write. It is absolutely essential in these thronging days that we insist upon a culture whose breadth has divine measure. Know you not that eighteen cen- turies past Christ talked with the woman and His disciples marveled at it? When she listens to His voice, her aspirations and endeavors bring forth a betterment of humanity, a looking into the country which is heavenly, and a leading thither all that she can persuade to newness of life. Her song will be sweeter, her utterance richer, her pen more eloquent, and home more attractive to husband, children and friends.
Sorosis has twelve departments, each of which can be made more nearly perfect by Christian thought and unfolding. A woman's Club without Christ would be the aversion of human- kind, an abnormal manifestation and a horror to on-looking angels. Our president, secretary and other ladies in executive relations are active members of evangelical churches; our reg- ular meetings are opened with prayer; deference is shown to every shade of religious opinion; feelings are not wounded by
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acrimonious discussion. That person who has a good heart and is kindly affectioned is always courteous and polite; a blunt, discourteous, un-Christian woman is rarely seen upon this plat- form in these chairs. To be a consistent factor of this sister- hood, our incoming here for rest, for recreation, for social and intellectual advancement, must not interfere with our religious and domestic duties, but harmonize and blend with both. I welcome you all, then, to these enchanting parlors, in the name of the church universal, whose divine head is Christ our Lord.
CAN WOMEN DO IT? Address by Mr. Geo. A. Robertson, at Sorosis Banquet, April 30, 1894
The complexity of modern civilization presents problems that are getting more and more difficult to solve as the years go by. Civilization, when it is reduced to its lowest terms, has little in it to specially flatter the ideal in man or woman. If it consists of anything more than artificial wants and the gratifi- cation thereof, it has not been discovered yet by the most in- cisive political economist.
This is peculiarly an age of shoddy and cheapness, not alone in the machine-made commodities that are intended to gratify the artificial wants, but in the hasty, artificial and fraudulent methods of gratifying the alleged literary and artis- tic tastes of the time.
The savage knows only the natural wants of food, and the rude shelter of cave or wigwam. He lives from hand to mouth, and whatever is beyond this is a step on the upward grade toward civilization, until we reach the last round in the ladder that consists in cherishing a desire for chewing gum and patent medicines.
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We hear so many earnest eulogies by well meaning people of the wonderful advancement of this greatest of all eras, that unless we stop to think quite hard upon the subject, we are pretty certain to be carried away from the facts. We are told that this is an age of cheap books and literature, for instance, and so it is. But even cheapness has its drawbacks. It is said, for instance, that the books that are being printed now will not resist the ravages of time for more than a quarter of a century. I do not now refer to the thought that is in them, for much of that will not live, of course, half that time; but I refer to the very paper on which they are printed. It should be understood that within the last few years some ingenious Yankee discovered that paper could be made out of wood pulp combined with acids, and this is exceedingly cheap. Of course the cheap thing goes, and so that is the paper that is now used for printing all newspapers and most of the books, and about a quarter of a century will be sufficient, as stated, to cause de- composition.
But books are only one of the multifarious things of this age of shoddy that are cheap. Man has for many years been puzzling himself over the invention of machinery to do the work of the human race, and so supply artificial wants in the cheap- est way possible. It never seems once to have occurred to any except the philosopher that no matter how cheap shirts may be, no man can wear more than one at a time, and that no matter how cheap books are it is impossible to read very many in a whole lifetime and that a few digested are much better than many rotting on shelves with the dust upon them.
I have listened with interest on various occasions to elo- quent discourses upon the wonderful advantages to mankind of the many marvelous inventions in machinery of the nineteenth
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century. These discoursers doubtless knew exactly what they were talking about, but the question naturally arises as we read of the sweating systems in our great cities, and the fact that poor women are obliged to make shirts for less than thirty cents a dozen, whether the sewing machine is, after all, so great a blessing to the women who are in the greatest need of being blessed, as the orators have told us.
Then we are told of the wonderful machines by which steel and iron are wrenched from the ore in those human hells, the Bessemer mills and furnaces. It is doubtless all marvelous, but when we see the hungry men assembling by the thousands and almost riotously demanding bread for themselves and their children and asserting that they are not being justly treated, it seems that there is something a little out of joint here also with this great blessing to the human race-machinery.
Looking about on every side it seems that a man has gone about as far as possible in this maze. The boasted civilization of the nineteenth century is in dire need of a Moses. Woman- coming at the subject freshly and from a new point of view- may be that Moses.
The society and the civilization of the day has a greater need. It needs a saviour. It is not a new thought that that coming saviour is to wear skirts or perhaps bloomers.
But whoever the saviour is or may be, he, she or it must be a thinker, and a thinker who thinks.
How few think truly of the thinking few,
How many think they think who never do.
No saviour ever prepared himself or herself for the great work of revolutionizing the world by dilettante efforts spread- ing over the whole range of knowledge, any one branch of which has been found too big for specialists of the most comprehen-
th
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sive type. It cannot be done by getting smatterings from this and that thought. If woman saves society, it must be done by coming at its problems from a new and vigorous aspect of the subject in hand and applying that intuition which is own sister to inspiration to the great work which man has thus far made only a botch and mess of.
Of course what she proposes that is not conventional will be condemned and laughed at. Perhaps the author will be dragged up a new Calvary and given a new crucifix. In fact she is pretty sure to be treated thus if she gives forth any- thing that is likely to accomplish anything worth doing.
Walter Bagehot dilates at length on the thought that there is nothing so painful to the human mind as the pain of a new idea. It is upsetting. It must destroy that which has occu- pied space there before. It is revolutionary.
That is what the world wants today-a new idea. The old is worked out. It is like a deserted coal bank such as you may see many of in Pennsylvania as you pass along on the railroads. There is nothing more of value there. There must be something radical done. The world will welcome that new idea and crucify its author as quickly if it comes from woman as from man. It will also be as quick in one case as the other to almost defy the author of a real thought-one that shall emancipate the race from the slavery of materiality and boost it up the rugged hill of truth into the light of spirituality and beyond the humbug of shoddy and false pretense.
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THE GENTLEMEN
Response to Toast Delivered by Mrs. C. S. Selover at Sorosis Banquet, April 30, 1894
"Ladies and Gentlemen:
"I feel that a great responsibility rests upon me this even- ing in responding to the toast, 'The Gentlemen!'-the Creator's crowning masterpiece, the representatives of the genus homo, embodying the perfection of God's mature plan. Even after the heavens and the earth were carefully selected, assorted and adjusted, from the chaotic-in the beginning, like a gilded spire surmounting some perfect structure, man was placed above all, ruler over all! It is a proud and happy hour when it is our privilege to welcome you to our Sorosis home. It would be doubly so were we in a comfortable, cozy club house of our own, which I presume will be when Cleveland has her new city hall. We ladies carry a heavy indebtedness when we recall how along down through the ages woman has been the grateful recipient of the homage and deference accorded her by a noble and generous manhood. Many times have we sat silent list- eners to words of eloquence and wisdom, wishing it were our privilege to reply. How dear to the heart of every man will the woman's club become when he realizes that therein she has learned the lesson and acquired the confidence which enables her to not only receive these declarations of loyalty, but pay tribute to the honor, nobility and courtesy of our gentlemen. Sometimes in our club room (in whose sanctum no man may enter) we straighten up and talk boldly of our perfect inde- pendence of thought and action, but I have noticed as the hands of the clock approach the hour for homecoming we grew rest- less and the program, however good, becomes void of interest,
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for the preservation of the home circle with our gentlemen en- throned in its center is one of the highest aims of every true woman! When our gentlemen better understand the object and spirit of women's clubs, I am confident they will lighten our burdens by granting us their encouragement and make us happier by feeling they are in sympathy with our work. I can readily see why they are a little fearful of the influence and result of club work. They are not willing to relinquish the grand and lofty position which man has ever held as the champion of women, and that innate feeling which has been coexistent with man that, he being the stronger of the two, woman must look up to him as her protector; the same feeling a mother has to a helpless babe as compared to the child of maturer years-one requires a protective care, while the other only advice and counsel; but the share of love to each is equal. Ah! gentlemen, do not think we wish you to step down; never! Why do we strive to attain a higher degree of intelligence, to think and reason on a broader plane? That we may be the better prepared to perform our duties as wife and mother, to instruct and educate our children, and become more congenial companions to our husbands, who have been enjoying these privileges through an indefinite past; that when they come home with their brain tied up in a double bow knot endeavoring to solve some business problem, the wife need not draw her little ones aside and beg them 'be quiet, papa is worried,' and sit silently and helplessly by, while he, perplexed and wearied, tries unaided to find the thread which will guide him through this business labyrinth. She may take her place beside him and intelligently comprehend while he explains in minutest detail his business complications, and she with a well-balanced mind, suggest plans for his assistance, or, when too much fatigued
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to read, she, enjoying the same line of thought and the same class of literature, may read to him. Is this type of woman less lovable than your careless, thoughtless, dancing doll baby? Woman reaches to her brother's height, not to conquer him, not to rob him of the noble prerogatives of his manhood, but to satisfy his reason. Man has been the intellect of the world, woman its soul; man has reasoned, woman believed. She could not cope with his arguments; he scorned her intuitions, but today we are coming to a better understanding. Plato says: 'All the gifts of nature are equally diffused in man and woman. All the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also, and in all of them woman is but a lesser man.' When has not loyal manhood acknowledged the power of true womanhood? From the time when Adam in their Eden home obeyed the command of Eve, on down through the age of chivalry to this our own nineteenth century, when it is not the hand of man that would retard our progress. We must prepare ourselves for this great step, and not expect, Minervalike, to jump from the head of Jove, fully armed and equipped, into this great arena. May the time never come when woman, howe'er exalted, will fail to bow allegiance to 'Our gentlemen.' "
THE FUTURE OF SOROSIS
Response to Toast Given at Annual Banquet, April 30, 1894, by Mrs. Frank Houghton
I am very much pleased to respond to this toast, for "The Future of Sorosis" is dear to me. It is a subject of vital im- portance to every member of our club, and as I look about upon the many bright and eager faces before me this evening, I be- lieve that our friends have an equal interest in our welfare, our steady advancement and glorious future.
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As set forth in Article I. of our Constitution, the object of Sorosis is to bring together women engaged in literary, artistic, scientific and philanthropic pursuits, with a view to rendering them helpful to each other and useful to society. How shall this be best accomplished for the future?
First-Every member of Sorosis must feel an individual re- sponsibility, and take an active part in some literary work, otherwise she is apt to lose her interest.
Second-All personality must be merged into club individ- uality, then we shall accomplish most harmonious and effective results.
I would advise every member to identify herself with one or the other of our various clubs and classes of study. Last year we had but two-"The Poets' Club," and "The National Science Club." This year four more have been organized- "The Novelists' Club," the "Shakespearean Club," the class for the study of Parliamentary Law, and the Botanical class. All these auxiliaries are most helpful adjuncts to our society's growth, and present a broad scope for individual development.
One of our dreams for "The Future of Sorosis," is a Club House. While we feel greatly indebted to Mayor Blee and the Board of Directors for their many courtesies towards us, and the privileges we enjoy here in the City Hall, we shall be proud of the day that we may invite you all to partake of a banquet given in our own Club House. "The Future of Sorosis" de- mands a Club House.
I am most happy to announce that at least twenty-five of our members are to represent Sorosis at the Second Biennial Convention of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, which is to be held in Philadelphia, May 9, 10 and 11. From three to four hundred clubs, from all parts of the world, are to be represented, even the Sorosis of Bombay, India.
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It is most evident that this is Woman's Era, and that she is preparing herself for the future by intellectual training and experience. The members of Sorosis are just awakening to a realization of our influence, our responsibilities and the wonder- ful possibilities that stretch out before us. We have had a rapid growth. Today we number a membership of nearly three hun- dred. Let us set our faces towards the future, and hand in hand let us take each step and mount to that ideal standard we would all attain.
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