so far as it usurps, it becomes despotic, and is a despot; and you and
I, so far as our Annual Conferences are concerned, do well to regard
with a deep jealousy an infringement upon our organic rights. The
only safety of the Church is the equipoise that is constituted by the
relation the Annual Conferences sustain to the General Conference,
and far safer is it for us to bring these women of the Church, elect,
honorable women, into the General Conference of the Church by the same
way that their husbands and brothers are here.

There is another thought that I wish to suggest. What are the
possibilities with regard to lay delegation, supposing the design of
those who wish to bring women in without further action is successful?
You make lay delegation a farce in this body. The presiding elders and
pastors of the Church may act in co-operation, and they can elect
their own wives as delegates to this General Conference, and thus
lay delegation comes to be a farce. Some of you may laugh at this
suggestion, but it is an _in posse_, and it may easily be made an _in
esse_. It is important to us that the laity should hold the place they
have by the regulations we have, and they should be changed only to make
them more perfect.

No body is safe without adherence to law. We may set lightly by law; we
may regard it as a thing to be laid aside at the command of excitement
or passion, but the nation that does that is a doomed nation, and the
Church that does that has its history already written. The only safe
course for us to pursue is to pursue the wise, careful, judicious,
and conservative--I mean every word--and conservative course we have
heretofore pursued through all our history. When we boast of what
Methodism has done, or what she is going to do, let us remember it is
because of her firm adherence to law.