Page:An address to women (Goodwin).djvu/11

 which is appropriate to her. It is the man's business to work hard for the family, and the woman's business to keep a clean and tidy home; and you may depend upon it that one of those businesses is quite as important as the other. But there is a sense, and a very high and important sense, in which there is a perfect equality between man and woman. They are equal in the sight of God. God made man, and God made woman to be his companion; and both one and the other stand before Him as conscious responsible beings, made in His own image.

There is one point which I should like very much to press upon you in speaking of the likeness and the difference between men and women. Women have a power which men cannot possibly have. They are the mothers of the people of England. You, women, have the chief charge of young English men and young English women during the most impressible time of life. You have the moulding of the character of those who are to form the next generation. I have a feeling concerning mothers amounting almost to superstition. I think there is nothing in the world like the pure love and the mighty influence of a mother. Let me illustrate the point from my own heart and my own experience.