e summer of 1880, laughed to scorn the suggestion of
a liberal member, that the status of woman in the Church should
receive some consideration. The speaker referred to the Sisters of
Charity in the Catholic Church, and to the position of woman among the
Quakers; but although the question was twice introduced, it was as
often met with derisive laughter, and no action was taken upon it. A
vote of the New England Society of Friends at their meeting in
Newport, 1878, proves that as liberal as they have been considered
toward woman, even they have not in the past held her as upon a plane
of perfect equality. This body voted that hereafter "women shall be
eligible to office in the management of the Society, shall sign all
conveyances of real estate made by the Society, and shall be
considered equal to the opposite sex."

The Congregational Church is placed upon record through laws governing
certain of its bodies:

"By the word 'church' is meant the adult males duly admitted and
retained in the First Evangelical Congregational Church in
Cambridgeport, present at any regular meeting of said church and
voting by a majority."[214]

In the Unitarian and Universalist churches, which ordain women to
preach and administer the ordinances, these women pastors are made to
feel that the innovation is not universally acceptable.

The Methodist Church, professing to stand upon a broad basis, still
refuses to ordain its most influential women preachers, and, within
the year, has even deprived them of license, though one of them[215]
has brought more converts to the Church than a dozen of its most
influential bishops during the same period. To such bitter lengths has
the opposition to woman's ordination been carried, that a certain
reverend gentlemen, in debating the subject, declared that he would
oppose the admission of the mother of our Lord into the ministry, the
debate taking on a most unseemly form. The _Syracuse Sunday Morning
Courier_ of March 4, 1877, reported this debate as follows:

WOMEN AS PREACHERS.

The subject of permitting women to preach in Methodist pulpits
was incidentally, but rather racily discussed at the Methodist
ministers' meeting in New York city a few days since. A Miss
Oliver--a more or less reverend lady--had been invited to preach
to the ministers at their next meeting, and the question was
raised, by what authority she was inv