ence of the
Church, the sacraments of the Church, and make no distinction between
the ministry and the laity. Let them get up and show that there was ever
one Church in the world worthy of the name that allowed women to make
its laws. There is not one to-day. Let them name a Church, let them name
one that has allowed women in its law-making body; and yet such is the
blinding power of gush that men will say that our fathers all understood
it and proposed to put women in. The fact is, that they only proposed to
allow them to put us in. As soon as the General Conference adjourned the
women made an appeal in a public statement. They were asked to vote for
lay delegation, and were told that then they could set the Church right.
The opponents appealed to them to vote against it on the ground that it
would not make any difference to them. James Porter, Daniel Curry, Dr.
Hodgson (Professor Little thinks he was the greatest of them all) wrote
a series of articles in the _Advocate_, and it never occurred to them
that the women could come into the General Conference. Lay delegation
was only admitted by 33 votes. Had there been a change of 33 votes they
would not have come in. Every member of the New York East Conference
knows that Dr. Curry's influence was so powerful that he could almost
get a majority against it. And they know if any one had set up an
opposition to it on this ground, the whole Conference would have voted
against the movement, and that if it had not been for Bishop Ames and
Bishop Janes, who went to the Wyoming Conference where the majority was
opposed to lay delegation, and by their influence there converted my
friend Olin and others, he knows that if this matter of the women had
been in or understood, the whole Conference would have been against it.
It would not have been possible. Dr. Potts says that it is prejudice.
Nothing of the kind. Do you know there are 12,000 Methodist ministers
that are ciphers all the time except when they vote for delegates? Are
you going to presume that when the Church has a multitude of members,
that it is going to sit here and change, by an interpretation, a
Restrictive Rule, or put in what was never in, and never understood to
be in? The Restrictive Rule fills up the ministerial delegates. Every
time you put a woman in, you put a man out. This subject has never come
up here before. The question is this, Do those Restrictive Rules mean
anything? If they do, you cannot put in anythin