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 anything that the fathers did
not put in. And if you put in women as lawmakers; if you can read those
Rules and put them in there, you can change any one of the Restrictive
Rules by a majority of one. And I want to say to you, that if you do
it, you will prove to the Methodist Episcopal Church that the sole
protection we have against the caprice of a majority of the General
Conference is not worth the paper it is written on. All you have to do
is to get a majority of the Conference against the Episcopacy, and then
put any interpretation, and then you get a few women admitted, and this
you call the progress of the age. Mr. Chairman, I believe in progress,