is, that the Church did
not undertake to put women in, and it did undertake to fill up the
capacities and relations of the body with men. Now, look at it. No man
goes to the dictionary to find the meaning of the word "layman." There
is not a man that can find out the meaning of our Restrictive Rules from
the dictionary. No living man can make out the meaning of a word in the
Restrictive Rules from Webster's dictionary. You must get it from the
history of the Church. Who is the "General Superintendent" by Webster or
Worcester? The Methodist Episcopacy is the thing that is protected by
the Restrictive Rules. The dictionary does not tell how the Chartered
Fund shall be taken care of. Now they talk about laymen. They do not
seem, I think, to understand the history of the thing. Some of them do
not appear to understand the history of the English language. Why was
the word "layman" ever introduced? Because there was a separate class of
clergy men in the world, but there was not a class of clergywomen in the
world. If there had been, there would have been a term for laywomen and
for clergywomen. And the word was invented to distinguish the laymen
from the _clergy_men. Had there been clergywomen, there would have been
laywomen. The "laity" means all the people, men, women, and children. A
woman is one of the laity, and so is every child in the country or in
the Church one of the laity. But when you speak of man acting as a unit
he is a layman, but you never say a laywoman. You say: a woman. Abraham
Lincoln said, "All these things are done and suffered, that government
of the people, for the people, and by the people should not perish
from the earth." Now, people, the dictionary says, are men, women, and
children. Did Abraham Lincoln mean that any women or children can take
any part in the government of the nation? No, no, no! He meant this.
When he stood up and delivered his inaugural speech, he said this, "The
intent of the lawmaker is the law."

I give them something from one of the greatest lawyers that ever lived
to think of awhile--John Selden: "The only honest meaning of any word is
the intent of the man that wrote it." At the time that the plan of lay
delegation was adopted, there was not a single Conference of the Church
on this wide globe, not one that distinguished between the ministry and
the laity that allowed women to take any part in its law-making body.
Some one will talk about the Quakers. But they deny the exist