The "Piqua (Ohio) Female Bible Society" was founded in 1818. It consisted at first of nine women. In those early days the country was a wilderness. Other members were added later. It has had in all, over nine hundred members. Mrs. Elizabeth Pettit was its presiding officer from 1840 until 1881—forty-one years. The daughters and the granddaughters are all made members by right of inheritance, and in several instances four generations have been represented at one time. It held its seventy-fifth anniversary in 1893, when all the descendants of the early members were notified, and many were present. It has held a meeting on the first Monday afternoon of each month for seventy-eight years, and the records are preserved intact. The founder was Mrs. Rachael Johnston, wife of the Indian agent. It has sent over fifteen thousand dollars to the parent Bible Society in New York.
It should be remembered that down to the last quarter of the present century, there was little sympathy with organizations of women, not expressly religious, charitable, or intended to promote charitable objects. "What is the object?" was the first question asked of any organization of women, and if it was not the making of garments, or the collection of funds for a church or philanthropic purpose, it was considered unworthy of attention, or injurious doubts were thrown upon its motives. In Germany, even yet, societies of women are not permitted, except such as have a distinctly religious, educational or charitable object.
The Moral Awakening[1]
The life of the world is continuous, morally and spiritually as well as materially. The individual sees it at short range and in fragments. That is the reason why it so often seems dislocated and out of joint. A thoughtful writer, Mrs. L.R. Zerbe, says: "When Goethe made his discovery of the unity of structure in organic life, he gave to the philosophers, who had long taught the value, the 'sovereignty' of the individual, a physiological argument against oppression and tyranny, and put the whole creation on an equal footing."
[Footnote 1: History of the Woman's Club Movement in America.]
The dignity of mind, and the right of the individual to its conscious use and possession, had been already clearly enunciated by Fichte, Herder, and others, who antedated Goethe. But Goethe went farther. He carried the discovery of the rights of the individual to its logical conclusion, which was, that the rights of every created thing should be given a hearing. This was absolutely new doctrine. It brought women and children within the pale of humanity. It moralized and humanized nature itself; bringing birds, trees, flowers, all animate life, into the "brotherhood" of creation.
The writings of Rousseau and Châteaubriand extended the idea, and Madame de Staël and Mary Wollstonecraft were the natural outgrowths of it. It may be said indeed to have been the actuating principle of modern literature, especially of modern English poetry, which vitalizes and idealizes children and nature. Whatever credit may be given to others, it should never be forgotten that to Goethe we owe the discovery of structural unity, that the cell of all organic life is the same.
The ideas that grew out of this discovery reached the higher, thinking class, and inspired the poets with a new enthusiasm for humanity long before it reached the masses. The French nobility were satiated with power. The "Little Trianon" was the only reaction possible to a queen, from the wearisome magnificence of Versailles, the gilded slavery of the court. The people recognized no sentiment of human sympathy in the so-called "whims" and "caprices" of the luxurious occupants of palaces; and maddened by countless wrongs, precipitated the French Revolution, which, it has been said, turned back the tide of progress for one hundred years.
From this movement were developed all those reforms which have made the nineteenth century glorious, monumental in the history of progressive civilization. The abolition of slavery, the development of a spirit of mercy towards dumb animals, the recognition of the human rights of women and children—all these may be traced through many a winding way, back to the German scientists and philosophers, who rediscovered the inner life while working from its outer side.
Yet, as in history there are no sporadic instances, no isolated facts, so this flower of our century—the recognition of the rights of all created things, with all that it involves—belongs to universal history. It is the product of the Reformation and the Renaissance, with roots only the records of Rome and Greece and Egypt may discover.