admitted as members of the United States Senate on the face of their credentials. And why? Because the right of suffrage granted to the freedmen of the South under a constitutional amendment of the nation, carried with it the right of the men whom we fought to free, and did free, in an awful war, to hold office in the nation. Now, sir, you must interpret the law somewhat by the spirit of the times in which you live. That is a mistaken notion to say that you must always go to the men that made the law to get the interpretation of it. If that were true, would it not always be wise for legislators to give their affidavits and place on file their interpretation of the law they had confirmed, and placed on the statute books? There are legal gentlemen in this body who will tell you that it goes for very little when you come to interpret law. And yet you will find this to be true, that a law must be interpreted somewhat by the spirit of the time in which you live. Why, twenty years ago, when the General Conference handed the question of lay delegation down to the Annual Conferences, and the members of our Church, there was not a woman practising law in the Supreme Court of the United States. Go back through the history of jurisprudence of this country and in England, and you will find that it had never been known that a woman practised law in the Supreme Court of this country or England. But to-day women have been admitted to practise law in the Supreme Court of the United States. No amendment to the Constitution of the United States had to be adopted in order to secure this privilege for them. But this is true, that the judges of the Supreme Court, by a more liberal interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, said, "Women may be officers of the Supreme Court, and may practise law there." The same kind of a spirit, in interpreting the Discipline and the Restrictive Rules of the Discipline of the Church, will place these women delegates in this body where they have been sent. The same thing is true of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and in the Courts of Philadelphia. There is no way out, as my judgment sees, and as my conscience tells me, since before the government of God man and woman are equally responsible. There is no way out of this dilemma for this General Conference, but to say that these women delegates shall sit in this body, where they have been sent, and where their names have been called.

   Why, take the missionary operations. The Woman's Missionary Society is to-day raising more money and doing more missionary work than the Parent Missionary Society did fifty years ago. And yet men legislate concerning the missionary operations of women, and give them no voice directly in this 

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