Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/293

Rh The speaker spoke of the abuse and injustice done to the Bible by those who make it the shelter and apologist for all the wrong, vileness, and sneaking meanness that the world bears up; and closed with a testimony against the cowardice of those time-serving ministers who allow their manhood to be suffocated by a white cravat, and who never publicly take sides with what they see to be a good. cause, until "popular noises "indicate that the time has come for speaking out their opinions.

The President then introduced to the audience, Esq., of Boston:


 * — I am exceedingly happy to see that this question calls together so large an audience; and perhaps that circumstance will make me take exception to some representations of the previous speakers as to the unpopularity of this movement. The gentleman who occupied this place before me thought that perhaps he might count the numbers of those that occupied this platform as the real advocates of that question. Oh, no! The number of those who sympathize with us must not be counted so. Our idea penetrates the whole life of the people. The shifting hues of public opinion show like the colors on a dove's neck; you can not tell where one ends, or the other begins. [Cheers]. Everybody that holds to raising human beings above the popular ideas, and not caring for artificial distinctions, is on our side; I think I can show my friend that. Whenever a new reform is started, men seem to think that the world is going to take at once a great stride. The world never takes strides. The moral world is exactly like the natural. The sun comes up minute by minute, ray by ray, till the twilight deepens into dawn, and dawn spreads into noon. So it is with this question. Those who look at our little island of time do not see it; but, a hundred years later, everybody will recognize it.

No one need be at all afraid; there is no disruption, no breaking away from old anchorage — not at all. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there were two movements — first, the peasants in the town were striving to fortify each man his own house — to set up the towns against the kings; then, in the colleges, the great philosophers were striving each to fortify his own soul to make a revolution against Rome. The peasants branded the collegians as "infidels," and the collegians showed the peasants to be "traitors." Cordially they hated each other; blindly they went down to their graves, thinking they had been fighting each other; but, under the providence of God, they were entwined in the fame movement. Now, if I could throw you back to-day into the civilization of Greece and Rome, I could show you the fact that our question is two thousand years old. [Cheers.] In the truest sense, it did not begin in 1848, as my friend Dr. Hunt stated; it began centuries ago. Did you ever hear of the old man who went to the doctor, and asked him to teach him to speak prose? "Why, my dear fellow," was the-reply, "you have been speaking prose all your life." But he did not know it. So with some people in regard to the movement for Woman's Rights.

Many think the steps taken since 1850 are shaking this land with a new infidelity. Now, this infidelity is a good deal older than the New Testament. When man began his pilgrimage from the cradle of Asia, woman