ANOTHER TRIUMPH FOR THE WOMEN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue I, 4 July 1896, Page 6

ANOTHER TRIUMPH FOR THE WOMEN.

THE question of the admission of women to the annual conferences of the Methodist Church is at length in a fair way of settlement. After years of earnest and somewhat vehement discussion, in which the ablest men of the church have participated on one side or the other, the General Conference, in session at Cleveland,U.S.,has decided to submit the question of right of women to serve in this capacity to the annual conferences. At the same time it was ordered that the women who were sent as delegates to the Cleveland Conference should retain their seats. The decision of the conference was practically •annihilative of the opposition, four hundred and twenty-five votes being cast in favour of the affirmative report and only ninety-eight in the negative. There is no doubt at all that the women will obtain a three-fourths vote in the annual conferences of the country, and this accomplished, they will be eligible, under the terms of the constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights they have demanded. The result will mark another important step in the progress of woman’s emancipation from limitations which she has

outgrown. At the same time, in view of the fact that women are coming to the front in all departments of civic life, and that the energies and enterprise of the church very largely depend upon their activity and support ; and in view of the further fact that they constitute a very large and decisive majority of every Christian communion, it is amazing that the one denomination which has been conspicuous in all its history for liberal and progressive views should have so long and persistently refused to recognise the trend of events as to woman’s admission to all the larger responsibilities of life.