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Labor—A Woman in the Pulpit

About This Item

  • Title: Labor—A Woman in the Pulpit
  • Date: 17 May 1858
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01278
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 17 May 1858: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Brandi Faulkner Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Labor—A Woman in the Pulpit." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01278.xml (TEI)
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LABOR—A WOMAN IN THE PULPIT.

The women are getting along in the pulpit too—and truly why not? Yesterday at two of the Universalist Churches1 in New York, the “Rev.” Lydia A. Jenkins2, held forth, according to report, “to large and delighted audiences.” At one place her subject was Labor—on which she seems to have made a very fair discourse. Man, says the Rev. Mrs. Jenkins, has not been placed by the Creator in a ready-arranged garden, or a ready-tilled farm, with everything at hand which his appetite might demand, or the wants of his exterior and interior being call for. He is placed amid the roughness and rudeness of nature—with the stormy elements overhead, the billows of the oceans before him, and the rocks of the mountains, and the rank and the often poisonous growths of the valleys stretched uninvitingly in view. To overcome the difficulties these presented required labor—earnest labor, &c., &c., &c.

Notes:

1. The Universalist Churches referenced here hold that all souls will ultimately achieve salvation. Universalist congregations first appeared in North America in the late eighteenth century, most notably those founded in Massachusetts by Adams Streeter (1735–1786).. [back]

2. Lydia Ann Moulton Jenkins (1824/25–1874) was a Universalist advocate and part of a traveling ministry team in the 1850s. [back]

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